Mr. Littlewood had written to him for information about robberies which had been committed at Darnall and the neighbourhood, and he had replied to him, telling him that he never did a robbery at Darnall, Hardsworth, or any other place nearer than Sheffield.
Mr. Brion had asked him to send him a letter from the scaffold, and he had promised to do so, but he had not then had time to write it.
He said for several days he had done nothing else but write to his relatives and friends. He had got nearly all the letters ready, and he intended to take them with him to the scaffold.
“You know,” he said, “my hands will be fastened behind me before I leave my cell, but I shall hold the letters, and when I reach the scaffold I shall ask the chaplain to take them out of my hand and to post them to you.”
At this stage of the interview the sound of men hammering reached the cell. Peace listened for a moment, and then said, “That’s a noise that would make some men fall on the floor! I hear they are working at my own scaffold. I have heard them before this morning.”
The chief warder made answer, “You are mistaken, Peace; it is nothing of the sort.”
Peace: No I am not. I have not worked so long with wood without knowing the sound of deals; and they don’t have deals inside a prison for anything else than for scaffolds. I have heard them knocking the nails in, and I am sure I am right.
But (continued he), it does not matter much; it makes no difference to me. I should like to see my own coffin, and my own grave. It would not make the slightest difference to me, because I am prepared. I only look upon the scaffold as a short cut to Heaven. Alluding to the manner in which he would be buried, he said: I shall be thrown into my grave like a dog; but it won’t matter; it will only be my poor body that will be there. My soul, I believe, will be in Heaven.
Peace then told his friends that he had received a letter from the father and mother of young William Habron, who was undergoing a sentence of penal servitude for life, for the murder of Police-constable Cock, asking him if he really had made a confession, and whether there was any probability of their son returning home to them.
Peace said he had written back to them at Manchester telling them that he had made a full confession of the murder, had drawn plans of the place where it occurred, and had sent them to the Home Secretary. He further told them that if their son had justice done to him he would be set at liberty.