Turpin, and Duval, and Gilderoy died, in spite of the law, like heroes of romance. Fair ladies shed tears upon their irons in the cells of Newgate, and when each fascinating scoundrel appeared with a noose on his neck and a bouquet in his button-hole, the male beholders cheered, while the women sobbed.
Justice had her revenge, but her victims lived in the ballad poetry of the nation; for even at this very day the songs made upon some of these ancient marauders are sung in parts of Great Britain.
All that is over now, fortunately, and all the unhallowed glory in which formerly a villain died no longer demoralises.
If Peace were reserving himself for display (as for the “neck-verse of Hairibee,” written of by Sir Walter Scott) he would have had to do without an audience.
A century since and such a man would have set London society crazy over his career. He would have made the most of his opportunities, seeing what a figure he had managed to preserve long after the novelty of his deeds might be supposed to have waned.
The publicity into which the man had been forced was largely responsible for his demoralising eminence. It was raking in the sink to publish every shred of correspondence which passed between the condemned brigand and his paramours.
He treated these women cruelly, it would seem; they often had black eyes and bore the weals of a whip.
It is stated that Peace went always armed with a revolver and a knife. The manner in which he used his weapon against Dyson and Robinson proved that he was prepared to take human life on the least provocation, and gives a strong prima facie colour to the fearful tales that were told of him.
There is one good reason why it is well this man was eliminated from the community. He belonged, from all we know of him, to the most desperate and dangerous of his class.
Very few British highwaymen or burglars have shown themselves bloodthirsty as well as dishonest. Most of them, indeed, if they carried firearms, seldom had the heart to load them, and preferred losing their plunder to taking it by fatal violence. But Peace had the ferocious spirit of a Sicilian brigand. Mr. Dyson walked towards him, and he shot him. He was as murderously prompt with Policeman Robinson.