A stampede commenced immediately, and the hundreds of people streamed back into Leeds. A few still lingered about the place, gazing fitfully at the black signal, and talking together in knots of the strange and adventurous career which had just closed so ignominiously.
THE INQUEST AND VERDICT.
At eleven on the fatal morning the inquest on the body was held in the committee-room at the gaol, before Mr. J. C. Malcolm, the borough coroner. The verdict of the jury certified that the identity of the deceased as Charles Peace was proved, and that the sentence of death passed upon him had been carried out.
Peace’s features were but little changed, and, excepting the usual swollen appearance of the face and neck, always observable in those hung, there was nothing to prevent anyone who had known him alive from identifying the remains as those of the convict.
THE INTERMENT.
The remains were subsequently taken to the murderers’ graveyard, which is inside the walls, and were there unceremoniously interred. Rude stones mark the place of burial of previous victims of the law’s highest penalty, and a headstone has been placed over Peace’s grave similar to that of the others, on which are cut his initials and the date of his death.
PEACE AND HIS REVOLVERS.
The statement made by Mr. Woodward, the London gunsmith, to the effect that the manufacture of bullets like those found in the bodies of the policeman Cock and Mr. Dyson had been discontinued for more than five years, led to the inquiry where Peace could have obtained the bullets that he used.
It appears that Peace stole the revolver from the house of a gentleman at Manchester, in the early part of 1876; and with the revolver, which was in a case, he also stole a box of Eley’s 442 pin-fire cartridges. The box was full, and contained probably 100 cartridges, several of which Peace used.
When the family at Peckham heard that Peace had been arrested at Blackheath, Mrs. Peace and Mrs. Thompson each packed up a large box of articles and left, the one for Nottingham and the other for Sheffield.