His house at Peckham was most beautifully furnished. In the drawing-room was a suite of walnut-wood, worth fifty or sixty guineas; a Turkey carpet, mirrors, and all the et ceteras which were considered necessary in the house of a gentleman of good position.
Upon the bijou piano was an inlaid Spanish guitar worth thirty guineas, the result of some depredation, and said to be the property of a countess.
His “sitting room” was a model of comfort: there was not a side table missing where it appeared requisite. In every essential it was fit for an independent gentleman, and even the slippers which were provided for his convenience were beaded so as to show their value.
The residents of Peckham wondered, for the favours in the way of burglaries which for a year past had seemed the exclusives of Lambeth and Greenwich, recommenced in that neighbourhood.
The police were again on the alert, but of no avail. The public press called attention to this abominable state of things; householders lost their goods, and Charles Peace prospered. He added to his earthly store of wealth and furniture.
Peace had always loved a “bit of music.” Even in his less prosperous days he had bought a wooden canary which could sing a song, and as the residents of Peckham wondered why, in addition to the robberies of plate and jewels from their abodes, there was always sure to be a good fiddle missing if it had been near the plate, yet the store of musical instruments in Peace’s dwelling gradually and more surely increased.
At length he had so many musical instruments that his new sanctum would not hold them, and he was obliged to ask a neighbour to place a few in his house.
He was considered, as before observed, to be a “gentleman of independent means,” and as he “never played anything but sacred music” people believed him to be a discreet and proper sort of man.
His home life at Peckham appears to be quite different to that of his previous career—to say the least, the occupants of the house in the Evelina-road were not altogether a happy or united family.
Peace, with the heavy burthen of the murders on his conscience, was in many respects an altered man. He had his hour of conviviality and relaxation, it is true, but he was soured in temper, and at times was brutal to his two female associates or housekeepers.