He was cut down after he had hung about an hour. On the preceding Wednesday he had had a carpenter to take his measure for his coffin, and he ordered it to be a strong oak one, plain and neat, requesting that, after he was taken down, he might be put into it immediately, with the apparel he might have on, and carried to the churchyard of Burgh-on-Sands, there to be interred in the evening.
The conscientious parishioners of Burgh, however, objected to his being laid there, and the body was consequently conveyed in the hearse to St. Mary’s, Carlisle, where it was interred in a distant corner of the churchyard, far from the other tombs. No priest attended, and the coffin was lowered without any religious service. Notwithstanding his various and complicated enormities, his untimely end excited considerable commiseration. His manners were extremely polished and insinuating, and he was possessed of qualities which might have rendered him an ornament of society.
FRANCIS SMITH.
CONDEMNED FOR THE MURDER OF A SUPPOSED GHOST.
THE Hammersmith Ghost will be in the remembrance of every one. Its vagaries and mischievous pranks were in some cases productive of very serious consequences, and in no instance were more melancholy effects produced than in that of the unfortunate prisoner, whose case is now before us, who shot a poor man, who offended only in wearing the garb of his trade at night, and who was afterwards tried and condemned to death for the offence.
Among the other evil effects produced by the absurd proceedings of the ghost, it appears that one poor woman in particular, who was far advanced in her pregnancy of a second child, was so much shocked on seeing him, that she took to her bed, and survived only two days. She had been crossing near the churchyard about ten o’clock at night, when she beheld something, as she described, rise from the tomb-stones. The figure was very tall, and very white. She attempted to run, but the ghost soon overtook her, and, pressing her in his arms, she fainted, and fell to the ground. In this situation she remained some hours, till discovered by some neighbours, who kindly led her home, when she took to her bed, from which she never rose.