A low murmur ran through the crowd. This was a portion of the gallows.
How strange and absorbing is the interest of every class in all that pertains to death!
Many of those assembled round Broxwill Gaol, remained there all night. These were, of course, the “roughs.”
But it must not be for a moment supposed that the interest was confined to them.
Numbers of persons belonging to the middle and upper classes had engaged seats at windows of those houses commanding a good view of the scaffold.
As the night wore on the throng of persons diminished in numbers. There were, however, many around the apparatus of death when the first few streaks of dawn were visible in the horizon.
In an hour or so after this people debouched from all quarters of the town, hurrying on towards the fatal spot.
As the minutes flew by the multitude increased.
The salesmen of hot potatoes, coffee, pies, and other delicacies, were threading their way through the crowd.
Some loud-voiced fellows began to cry out the last dying speech and confession of the notorious murderer, Gregson, better known as the Bristol Badger. They recited some doggrel lines as they took their way along, which persons of a powerful imagination might suppose to be the production of the wretched man who was about to die.