THE summary punishment of a ravisher, by a conscientious Emperor of the Turks, in days of old, if now, perchance, inflicted, might more tend to check the inordinate, unlawful lust of men, than all the public executions of such destroyers of the peace of females.
It is said that Mahmoud, Sultan of Damascus, one night while he was going to bed, was addressed by a poor villager, who complained that a young Turk of distinction had broken into his apartment, and forced him to abandon his wife and family to his abuses. The good sultan charged that, if the Turk returned, he should immediately give him notice of it. Three days after the poor man came again with the same complaint. Mahmoud took a few attendants with him, and, being arrived at the complainant’s, commanded the lights to be extinguished, and rushing in, cut the ravisher to pieces. He then ordered a light, to see whom he had killed, and being satisfied, he fell on his knees and returned God thanks; after which he ate heartily of the poor man’s bread, and gave him a purse of gold. Being asked the reason of this extraordinary behaviour, he replied, “I concluded this ravisher was one who might fancy himself entitled to my protection, and consequently might be no other than my son; therefore, lest the tenderness of nature should enervate the arm of justice, I resolved to give it scope in the dark. But, when I saw that it was only an officer of my guards, I joyfully returned God thanks. Then I asked the injured man for food to satisfy my hunger, having had neither sleep nor sustenance from the moment I heard the accusation till I had thus punished the author of the wrong, and showed myself worthy of my people’s obedience.”
Upon the same principle as that acted upon by the worthy Turkish sultan, the hut of the meanest peasant is, by the law of England, as sacred as the most gorgeous palace, and the chastity of his wife or daughter should be held inviolate. The instances of disobedience to the laws in this respect are but too frequent, and in no case have circumstances of greater atrocity appeared than in that which we shall now detail.
John Whitmore was capitally indicted for a rape on the person of Mary, the wife of Thomas Brown, on the 24th of October, 1810, on the Common between Hayes and West Bedford. The prisoner was a labourer in the powder-mills at Harlington Common; and the prosecutrix, who lived at Hayes, having one of her sons by a former husband living as servant with Mr. Potts, a farmer, at West Bedford, had gone thither about twelve o’clock with some clean linen for him. She stopped at a public-house in the neighbourhood whilst he changed his linen, and there saw the prisoner, who, after asking her several questions, told her she had come much the longest way about, on her way from Hayes, and offered to show her a much shorter cut over the heath on her return. The prosecutrix thanked him, and accepted his offer. He accompanied her as if for that purpose, decoyed her two miles out of her way to an unfrequented part of the heath, amongst some bushes, under pretence of looking after a stray horse, and there brutally violated her person.
The poor woman, who was forty-seven years of age, as soon as she could, ran away from him, over the heath, and again lost her way; by accident she met a gentleman, who put her in the right road, and she reached her home about eight o’clock at night. She was afraid to tell her husband what had occurred till the following Sunday.
The husband next day set out with the constable in search of the prisoner, from the description given by his wife, and on Tuesday traced him to a public-house at Twickenham, where he was known by the familiar appellation of “Old Dasher;” and there, after a stout resistance, he was taken into custody. The facts were, on his trial, which took place at the Old Bailey, in October 1810, clearly established by the poor woman, and the Common Serjeant having summed up the evidence, the prisoner was convicted and received sentence of death, in pursuance of which he was subsequently executed.
AGNES ADAMS.
IMPRISONED FOR UTTERING A FORGED NOTE.
FOR three or four years previous to this trial, numberless impositions had been practised upon the unwary in the metropolis, by the passing of paper manufactured in imitation of the notes of the Bank of England, which were traced to have originated in the Fleet Prison, a receptacle for debtors only.
The notes, it seems, were printed on paper similar to those of the Bank of England; but upon the slightest inspection they were easily detected. The great success of sharpers passing them chiefly arose from the hurry of business, and from the novelty of the fraud. The shopkeeper would see the word one, two, three, &c., an exact imitation of the genuine notes, but did not examine farther, or he would have found, instead of pounds, the counterfeit expressed pence; and instead of “Governor and Company of the Bank of England,” the words “Governor and Company of the Bank of Fleet,” substituted. The offence of publishing these notes, however, was not deemed a forgery.