False ones, the tales that in this world are told
Swell in his voice.
He knows not where to end,
Like one discouraging an absent friend.”
On an enclosure addressed to Governor Keene was written “Please give the enclosed to my poor John.”
The convict, absurd as it seems, was of a poetical turn, and he was very fond of reading and reciting poetry. Indeed, he had a weakness for versification, and had in his time written many a jingling rhyme. One of his favourite compositions that he was wont to declaim began with the lines:—
“Lion-hearted I’ve lived,
And when my time comes
Lion-hearted I’ll die.”
When news of Peace’s arrest, reached the inmates of the house at 5, Evelina-road, Peckham, the Dyson letters, so called, were given by Mrs. Thompson to Willie Ward to burn. Both Hannah Peace and the woman Thompson were in a terrible flutter, as the house contained things that would get them into trouble should the police search the premises. The letters entrusted to Willie Ward were with two or three exceptions all burned, the women foolishly thinking their existence might tend to the incrimination of Peace. This fact was well known to the detectives, it is said. The letters in question destroyed, in whosoever’s handwriting they were, are stated to have contained requests for money, and their contents were not such as could have been written by a pure-minded person.