But that lucubration appeared in the Daily Telegraph, a journal which is happy in the possession of a class of readers who do not require good grammar to help down nasty stories. And this time the story was nasty enough to suit the palate of an epicure in Topsyturvydom.
Every step, every pause on that vulgar via dolorosa that leads from the prison door to the scaffold was counted, criticised, described. Little scraps of the beautiful Burial Service were desecrated by being quoted beside the doomed man’s call for drink.
The demeanour and voice of the hangman, the culprit’s dress, his tremours, his appetite, his letters, his speeches, the scaffold itself, with its draping of black sacking or black glazed calico (authorities differ), all this forms as pretty a page of contemporary history as confirmed Daily Telegraph writers will ever care to dwell upon.
Well might the moribund hypocrite address his last whimpering to “you reporters;” the reporters make the “celebrity” of such as he was.
And we may add that the journalist just mentioned not only makes the celebrity but suggests imitation by its morbid habit of manufacturing monsters out of such sorry rascals as Charles Peace.
Its epitaph on the dead sinner is, “We hanged his detestable body because it was in the highest degree expedient to rid the world of a monster of iniquity.” Common gratitude to a subject that has filled its most readable columns and suggested its most high-flown homilies for a long three months might have moved even the Daily Telegraph to tardy and temporary charity.
It is pleasant to record that the unfortunate young Irishman Habron has received her Majesty’s pardon, and is at present in Ireland, a small yearly stipend having been settled upon him sufficient to support him in comparative comfort for the remainder of his life.
This is as it should be. A great wrong was done to the ill-fated young man, but every possible means has been taken to place him in a respectable position, for which it is understood he is duly grateful.
It will be needful before concluding to take a cursory glance at the other characters who have figured in this strange eventful history.
None of our hero’s quondam companions was more pained and mortified on discovering the depth of guilt into which he had been plunged than “Bandy-Legged Bill,” who, however, despite the overwhelming weight of evidence, stuck to his friend “Charlie” to the last, but after Peace’s trial and conviction Bill Rawton became an altered man.