As he stood up he clutched at the rail in front and appeared to wish to speak, but his keepers paid no attention to the desire.
He bowed to his solicitor, and expressed in a word or two thanks for his efforts; then disappeared to his doom.
THE TRIAL.
In the Crown Court, at the Leeds Assizes, Charles Peace, described as a picture-frame dealer, forty-seven years of age, was placed upon his trial, before Mr. Justice Lopes, for the murder of Mr. Arthur Dyson; civil engineer, at Bannercross, Sheffield, on the 29th November, 1876.
It is almost unnecessary to say that the case has created the greatest possible interest—an interest not felt simply in Sheffield, but throughout the country.
This had arisen not so much because of the murder itself—for the facts were exceedingly simple—but because of the extraordinary career of the prisoner, his sudden disappearance after the murder, and his subsequent identity as the notorious burglar who kept Blackheath in a state of considerable excitement for some months.
Peace was already under a sentence of penal servitude for life for shooting at Police-constable Robinson, who apprehended him whilst he was endeavouring to escape from a house which he had burglariously entered at Blackheath.
At that time Peace was known as John Ward, a half-caste, who had, according to his own statement, recently arrived in this country. For considerably more than a week this was all that was known of him.
Then information came to the police, through a woman with whom he had been living, that the prisoner under remand at Greenwich was not Ward, but Peace, who was wanted for murder, and for whose apprehension a reward of £100 had been in vain offered for more than a couple of years.
Subsequent investigations resulted in some extraordinary disclosures. It was found that Peace had been living in a semi-detached villa at Peckham, in company with a woman named Thompson, who was supposed to be his wife; that he kept a pony and trap, and that he lived in a style of considerable comfort.