PEACEIANA.
Peace, it will be remembered, on more than one occasion assumed the role of a hawker of spectacles, and he provided himself with the necessary proof had his representation been challenged.
On one occasion, when visiting his friends at Hull, he was asked what he was doing, and he replied, “I am selling spectacles.” At the same time he produced a travelling sample case, made of leather and elaborately gilded, and on opening it exposed to view some thirty pairs of spectacles of different kinds.
He never did much in the way of pushing the spectacle trade; but no doubt the taking of it up assisted to conceal his identity. He had for many years worn the gold-framed spectacles about which so much has since been said. Previous to his murdering Mr. Dyson he only used them when reading or doing fine work; but afterwards he wore them out in the streets, and was seldom seen without them.
Peace was once terribly annoyed at a disappointment he met with at Croydon. He went down there one afternoon, and selected a house to rob. The same night he visited it again, expecting to obtain a good booty.
He reached one of the bedroom windows and forced back the hasp, but to his chagrin he found that the sash was secured from opening wider than a hand-breadth by patent fasteners—those little metal knobs, the shape of an acorn, that screw into a brass socket. He could not, therefore, open either that or any other window within reach.
He returned home in a most ill-conditioned humour, and made no secret how he had been “duffed,” but he said he would not be beaten. Provided with the necessary tools, he went to the same house the next night; took off the strips of wood which held the sashes of the bedroom window in its place, drew the lower sash forward and got into the bedroom.
He then not only gathered up jewellery and other articles of considerable value, but revenged himself for the disappointment he had experienced on the previous night by taking the patent fasteners off the window. When he got home he threw them on the table, and with an air of triumph exclaimed—“There’s your patent fasteners!”
A good many versions have been given as to the circumstances under which Peace met with the injury to his hand. The account he gave to his family was that one night in October, while he was living in the Brocco, he was going up Hollis-croft, when a young man struck him. He was about to return the blow, when either his assailant or some companion shot at him with a pistol, blowing off the first finger and otherwise injuring his left hand.
Peace walked to the Public Hospital, where he was treated as an in-patient for a month. He then took his discharge and “doctored his hand himself.” The police never discovered his assailant; and the opinion some of them arrived at was, that the injuries were self-inflicted—accidentally of course. They believed that Peace was carrying the pistol in his pocket, and that it exploded and shattered his hand.