“Let it not be forgotten, however, that Robinson’s share in the transaction terminated there. Without him nothing would have been done; yet after Peace’s bullet pierced his arm and the two constables came to his help, Robinson dropped the thread, which was picked up by Inspector Phillips and Inspector Bonny.
“These officers have been indefatigable in their exertions to bring home the graver charge against Peace. Day by day, and night after night they have laboured, and many a night since the memorable evening when Peace was caught in the act, they have slept not, neither have they rested, so anxious have they been to close once for all the career of the dreadful villain whose escape made everybody so uneasy.
“But it should not be forgotten (observed a writer at the time) if testimonials are spoken of, to remember these two officers.
“Robinson was a brave fellow, and acted like a hero; yet if Bonny and Phillips had not used their brains, and set their highly-trained wits to work, ‘John Ward’ might have been convicted of the Blackheath burglary and the shooting of the intrepid Robinson, and he might have been sentenced to penal servitude for life; but in Sheffield the Bannercross murder would have been regarded as an undiscovered crime.
“To Bonny and Phillips belong the credit of proving that Ward was Peace, that Blackheath meant Bannercross, that burglary was overshadowed by the bigger crime of murder. A wave of relief swept over Sheffield when it was known that Peace had really been captured at last. To Phillips and Bonny was due the fact that he was thought of at all as the man who shot Dyson two years before.
THE TROUBLES OF THE PEACES.
“There is really no peace for the Peaces. Now that Charles Peace, the man of Bannercross, has been caught there are dozens of persons who are anxious to tell all they know about him and his family.
“Several of them have got it into their heads that there is only one family of Peace, the head and front of which now awaits in Newgate the reward of his desperate misdeeds.
“Thus it comes about that several most excellent people are getting uneasy about the name they bear, particularly when they find it connected with some of the early doings of “the insignificant-looking” gentleman who has recently sprung into so much significance.
“The latest instance is that of a family of Peace who lived some time ago in Philadelphia—not the Philadelphia which figures in Sacred Writ, but the exceedingly secular locality of that name which figures in Sheffield.