I cannot understand in any other way what he meant by saying that he would make me so that neither man nor woman should look at me.
My opinion is that Peace is a perfect demon—not a man. I am told that since he has been sentenced to death he has become a changed character. That I don’t believe. The place to which the wicked go is not bad enough for him. I think its occupants, bad as they might be, are too good to be where he is. No matter where he goes, I am satisfied there will be hell. Not even a Shakespeare could adequately paint such a man as he has been. My life-long regret will be that I ever knew him.
CHAPTER CLXV.
PEACE CONFESSES HIMSELF TO BE THE MURDERER OF A POLICEMAN NEAR MANCHESTER—THE CONVICT AND MRS. THOMPSON.
It was understood on the Wednesday night that the convict Charles Peace was expected to confess to having murdered Constable Cock, at Whalley Range, near Manchester—a crime for which a youth of eighteen years of age, named William Habron, had been sentenced to death, and only escaped with a commutation of his sentence to penal servitude for life. Peace, in justice to this young man, made a full and explicit confession. He admitted, with many professions of penitence, that he murdered the officer, and declared Habron to be perfectly innocent of the crime, for which he was at that time so cruelly and injustly suffering.
When, in July, 1876, Peace heard that Mrs. Dyson had taken out a warrant against him, he packed up his “tools” and some other things and prepared to leave Darnall. His family asked him where he was going, and he replied, “To Manchester.” He had often been there before. Indeed, it was a favourite resort of his. When he lived on the Brocco, and in Scotland-street, as well as after he went to Darnall, he frequently ran over to Manchester, sometimes remaining there for a week or more.
It is no secret that he went there to commit robberies. There was a man there to whom he sold his plunder, and he would come back to Sheffield with nothing but the proceeds in hard cash. Of course there was nothing remarkable in his going to Manchester, and he confessed that he went there on this particular occasion—as he had often gone before—“to work.”
On the afternoon of the 1st August he went round by Whalley Range to select a likely house as the object of his burglarious intentions, and he “put up” that occupied by Mr. Gatrix, at West Point, where three public roads, and an occupation road, converge. Towards midnight he went to the place, and as he was creeping along under the overhanging trees on the opposite side of the road he saw Mr. Simpson and the two policemen, Cock and Beanland, talking together on the footpath.
Presently he left his hiding-place and crossed from Upper Chorlton-road to Seymour-grove, looking distinctly at the officers as he passed. He entered Mr. Gatrix’s grounds, but before he could get up to the house he heard a policeman on his track; and it is a fact that Beanland followed him.
Peace doubled, and attempted to leave the grounds by another way, when he was confronted by Police-constable Cock, who attempted to apprehend him. Said Peace, I told him to “Stand back!” and, to frighten him, I fired one barrel of my revolver. He, however, came towards me, and was about to collar me, when I hit him. By “hitting him” Peace meant that he fired at him; the officer fell and he escaped.