provocation. Murderous duels and affrays were of constant occurrence. So-called affairs of honour could only be washed out in blood. Sometimes it was a causeless quarrel in a club or coffee-house ending in a fatal encounter. Richard Savage the poet was tried for his life for a murder of this kind. In company with two friends, all three of them being the worse for drink, he forced his way into a private room in Robinson’s coffee-house, near Charing Cross, occupied by another party carousing. One of Savage’s friends kicked down the table without provocation. “What do you mean by that?” cried one side. “What do you mean?” cried the other. Swords were drawn, and a fight ensued. Savage, who found himself in front of one Sinclair, made several thrusts at his opponent, and ran him through the body. Lights were put out, and Savage tried to escape, but was captured in a back court. He and his associates were committed first to the gatehouse and thence to Newgate. Three weeks later they were arraigned at the Old Bailey, found guilty of murder, and cast for death.[151] The king’s pardon was, however, obtained for Savage through the intercession of influential friends, but contrary, it is said, to the expressed wish of his mother. Savage was the illegitimate child of the Countess of Macclesfield, the fruit of a guilty intrigue with Captain Richard Savage, afterwards Earl Rivers. Lady Macclesfield was divorced, and subsequently married Lord Rivers; but she conceived a violent hatred for the child, and only consented to settle an annuity of £50 upon him when grown to man’s estate, under threat of exposure in the first publication of Savage’s poems. Savage, after his release from Newgate, retired into Wales, but he continued in very distressed circumstances, and being arrested for debt, lingered out the remainder of his days in Bristol Gaol.
The case of Major Oneby is still more typical of the times. He was a military officer who had served in Marlbro’s wars, and not without distinction, although enjoying an evil reputation as a duellist. When the army lay in winter quarters at Bruges, he had been “out,” and had killed his man; again in Jamaica he had wounded an adversary who presently died. After the peace of Utrecht Major Oneby was placed on half pay, and to eke out his narrow means he became a professional gambler, being seldom without cards and dice in his pocket. He was soon known as a swaggerer and a bully, with whom it was wisest not to quarrel. One night, however, he was at play in the Castle Tavern in Drury Lane, when a Mr. Gower and he fell out about a bet. Oneby threw a decanter at Gower, and Gower returned the fire with a glass. Swords were drawn, but at the interposition of others put up again. Gower was for making peace, but Oneby sullenly swore he would have the other’s blood. When the party broke up he called Gower into another room and shut the door. A clashing of swords was heard within, the waiter broke open the door, and the company rushed in to find Oneby holding up Gower with his left hand, having his sword in his right. Blood was seen streaming through Gower’s waistcoat, and his sword lay upon the floor. Some one said to Oneby, “You have killed him;” but the Major replied, “No, I might have done it if I would, but I have only frightened him,” adding, that if he had killed him in the heat of passion the law would have been on his side. But his unfortunate adversary did actually die of his wound the following day, whereupon Major Oneby was apprehended and locked up in Newgate. He was tried the following month at the Old Bailey, but the jury could not decide as to the exact measure of the Major’s guilt, except that it was clear he had given the first provocation, while it was not denied he had killed the deceased.
A special verdict was agreed to, and the case with its various points referred to the twelve judges. The prisoner, who had hoped to escape with a conviction for manslaughter, was remanded to Newgate, and remained there in the State side without judgment for the space of two years. Becoming impatient, he prayed the Court of King’s Bench that counsel might be heard in his case, and he was accordingly brought into Court before the Lord Chief Justice Raymond, when his counsel and those for the Crown were fully heard. The Judge reserved his judgment till he had consulted his eleven brethren; but the Major, elated at the ingenious arguments of his lawyer, fully counted upon speedy release. On his way back to gaol he entertained his friends at a handsome dinner given at the Crown and Anchor Tavern.[152] He continued to carouse and live high in Newgate for several months more, little doubting the result of the Judges’ conference. They met after considerable delay in Sergeant’s Inn Hall, counsel was heard on both sides, and the pleadings lasted a whole day. A friend called in the evening, and told him when he was making merry over a bowl of punch that eleven of the Judges had decided against him. This greatly alarmed him; next day the keeper of Newgate (Mr. Akerman) came to put irons on him, unless he was prepared to pay for a special keeper to occupy the same room. Oneby was indignant, but helpless. He felt the ground slipping from under his feet, and he was almost prepared for the judgment delivered in open court that he had been guilty of murder, his threat that he would have Gower’s blood having had great weight in his disfavour.
Oneby spent the days before execution in fruitless efforts to get relations and friends to use their influence in obtaining him a pardon. But to the first he was so overbearing that they would not visit him in Newgate, and the latter, if he had any, would not stir a finger to help him. His last moments seem to have been spent between laughing at the broad jokes of his personal gaoler, who now never left him, one John Hooper, afterwards public executioner,[153] and fits of rage against those who had deserted him in his extremity. He was further exasperated by a letter from an undertaker in Drury Lane, who, having heard that the Major was to die on the following Monday, promised to perform the funeral “as cheap and in as decent a manner as any man alive.” Another cause of annoyance was the publication of a broad sheet, entitled ‘The Weight of Blood, or the Case of Major John Oneby,’ the writer of which had visited the prisoner, ostensibly to offer to suppress the publication, but really as an “interviewer” to obtain some additional facts for his catch-penny pamphlet. The Major was so indignant that he laid a trap for the author by inviting him to revisit Newgate, promising himself the pleasure of thrashing him when he appeared, but the man declined to be caught. On the Saturday night before execution Oneby, learning that a petition had been presented and rejected, prepared to die. He slept soundly till four in the morning, then calling for a glass of brandy and writing materials, he wrote his will. It was brief, and to the following effect:
“Cousin Turvill, give Mr. Akerman, for the turnkey below stairs, half a guinea, and Jack Hooper who waits in my room five shillings. The poor devils have had a great deal of trouble with me since I have been here.” After this he begged to be left to sleep; but a friend called about seven, the Major cried feebly to his servant, “Philip, who is that?” and it was found that he was bleeding to death from a deep gash in his wrist. He was dead before a surgeon could be called in.
In these disastrous affrays both antagonists were armed. But reckless roysterers and swaggering bobadils were easily provoked, and they did not hesitate, in a moment of mad passion, to use their swords upon defenceless men. Bailiffs and the lesser officers of justice were especially obnoxious to these high-tempered bloods. I read in ‘Luttrell,’ under date Feb. 1698, “Captain Dancy of the Guards killed a bailiff in Exeter Street, and is committed to Newgate.” Again in 1705, “Captain Carlton, formerly a Justice of the Peace for Middlesex, is committed to Newgate for running a Marshal’s man through the body who endeavoured to arrest him on the parade by the Horse Guards in St. James’ Park, of which wound it is thought the man will die.” I can find no mention of the fate which overtook these murderers; but the ‘Calendars’ contain a detailed account of another murder of much the same kind, that perpetrated by the Marquis de Paleoti upon his servant, John Niccolo, otherwise John the Italian, in 1718. The Marquis had come to England to visit his sister, who had married the Duke of Shrewsbury in Rome, and had launched out into a career of wild extravagance. The Duchess had paid his debts several times, but at length declined to assist him further. He was arrested and imprisoned, but his sister privately procured his discharge. After his enlargement, being without funds, the Marquis sent Niccolo to borrow what he could. But “the servant, having met with frequent denials, declined going, at which the Marquis drew his sword and killed him on the spot.”[154] The Marquis seems to have hoped to have found sanctuary at the Bishop of Salisbury’s, to whose house he repaired as soon as Niccolo’s body was found. But he was arrested there after having behaved so rudely, that his sword, all bloody with gore, had to be taken from him, and he was conveyed to Newgate. His defence was weak, his guilt clear, and much to his surprise, he was sentenced to be hanged. He declared that it was disgraceful “to put a nobleman to death like a common malefactor for killing a servant;” but his plea availed little, and he suffered at Tyburn five weeks after the murder. Forty years later an English nobleman, Earl Ferrers, paid the same extreme penalty for murdering his steward. His lordship was tried by his peers, and after sentence until his execution was lodged in the Tower, and not in Newgate. His case is sufficiently well known, and has already been briefly referred to.
Another aristocratic miscreant, whose crimes only fell short of murder, was Colonel Francis Charteris. Well born, well educated, well introduced into life, he joined the army under Marlborough in the Low Countries as a cornet of horse, and soon became noted as a bold and dexterous gambler. His greed and rapacity were unbounded; he lent money at usurious rates to those whom he had already despoiled of large sums by foul play, and having thus ruined many of his brother officers, he was brought to trial, found guilty of disgraceful conduct, and sentenced by Court Martial to be cashiered. On his way back to Scotland, by falsely swearing he had been robbed at an inn, he swindled the landlord out of a large sum of money as an indemnity, and does not seem to have been called to account for his fraud. In spite of his antecedents, Charteris obtained a new commission through powerful friends, and was soon advanced to the grade of Colonel. Moving in the best society, he extended his gambling operations, and nearly robbed the Duchess of Queensbury of £3000 by placing her near a mirror, so that he could see all her cards. Escaping punishment for this he continued his depredations till he acquired a considerable fortune and several landed estates. Fate overtook him at last, and he became the victim of his own profligacy. Long notorious as an unprincipled and systematic seducer, by means of stratagems and bribes he effected the ruin of numbers, but was at length arrested on a charge of criminal assault. He lay in Newgate on the State side, lightly ironed, and enjoying the best of the prison until the trial at the Old Bailey in Feb. 1730. He was convicted and sentenced to die, but through the strenuous exertions of his son-in-law, the Earl of Wemyss, obtained the king’s pardon. He died two years later, miserably, in Edinburgh, whither he had retired after his release. He was long remembered with obloquy. Dr. Arbuthnot, who wrote his epitaph, has best depicted his detestable character, as a villain, “who with an inflexible constancy and inimitable impunity of life persisted, in spite of age and infirmity, in the practice of every human vice except prodigality and hypocrisy, his insatiable avarice exempting him from the first, and his matchless impudence from the latter, ... and who, having done every day of his life something worthy of a gibbet, was once condemned to one for what he had not done.” Dr. Arbuthnot appears from this to have dissented from the verdict of the jury by which Charteris was tried.