Who not admire thee, thus translating Pope?
Translating Pope in never-dying lays,
Bereft of books, of liberty and ease:
Translating Pope, beneath severest doom,
In numbers worthy old Augustan Rome:
Whose ablest sons might glory in thy strains,
Tho’ sung in Massy, Dire, incumb’ring chains.
The catalogue of the library of the British Museum includes ten works by Usher Gahagan.
1749. October 18. Fifteen malefactors were executed at Tyburn. There had been a riot in the Strand, where a number of sailors had wrecked a house in which a sailor had been maltreated. There exists a well-known print of the riot. The London Magazine gives the following account of the execution:—
About nine in the morning the criminals were put into the carts. Mr. Sheriff Janssen, holding his white wand, and on horseback, attended the execution, accompanied by his proper officers. At Holborn-bars Mr. Sheriff dismissed very civilly the party of foot-guards, who otherwise would have marched to Tyburn. The multitude of spectators was infinite. Though a rescue had been threatened by many (on account of Wilson and Penlez, the two ill-fated young rioters, both of whom were expected to suffer) there yet was not the least disturbance, except during a moment at the gallows, where a vast body of sailors, some of whom were armed with cutlasses, and all with bludgeons, began to be very clamorous as the unhappy sufferers were going to be turned off, which Mr. Sheriff perceiving, he rode up to them and enquired in the mildest terms the reason of their tumult. Being answered that they only wanted to save the bodies of their brethren from the surgeons, and the Sheriff promising that the latter should not have them, the sailors thanked the above magistrate, wished every blessing to attend him, and assured him that they had no design to interrupt him in the execution of his office. The criminals seemed very penitent, and were turned off about twelve.