The punishment for the crime of forgery, a few years only before this time, was much less severe than that which was now inflicted, the increase of the offence having rendered an alteration in its severity necessary. It would appear, however, that the efforts of legislators produced anything but the desired effect, the frequency of the offence being increased instead of diminished. The ancient punishment for this crime we find thus minutely described in a London periodical publication for the year 1731:—

“June 9th.—This day, about noon, Japhet Crook, alias St. Peter Stranger, was brought to the pillory at Charing Cross, according to his sentence for forgery. He stood an hour thereon; after which a chair was set on the pillory; and he being put therein, the hangman with a sort of pruning-knife cut off both his ears, and immediately a surgeon clapped a styptic thereon. Then the executioner, with a pair of scissors, cut his left nostril twice before it was quite through, and afterwards cut through the right nostril at once. He bore all this with great patience; but when, in pursuance of his sentence, his right nostril was seared with a red-hot iron, he was in such violent pain that his left nostril was let alone, and he went from the pillory bleeding. He was conveyed from thence to the King’s Bench Prison, there to remain for life. He died in confinement about three years after.”

JANE COX.
EXECUTED FOR MURDER.

THE practice of apothecaries selling poison in their shops to strangers, who purchase it under the pretence of its having to be employed in killing rats, is one which cannot be too severely reprobated, and even punished. In Mantua of old, it appears from Shakspeare’s Romeo and Juliet, that it was an offence punishable with death, for the Apothecary says,

“Such mortal drugs I have, but Mantua’s law
Is death to any he that utters them;”

and the peace and safety of society might be secured, and crime and suicide rendered much less frequent, if some such provision were made in England.

On the subject of selling poison for the purpose of committing murder, we find, from “Hill’s Journey through Sicily and Calabria,” that in the year 1791, at Palermo, a city not far distant from Mantua, an old woman was executed for dealing out such mortal drugs.

“Many people in this town and neighbourhood,” (Palermo,) says this author, “died in a sudden and extraordinary manner; they were generally seized with vomiting, and expired in a few hours. A young woman went to an officer of justice to make some complaints concerning her husband; he desired her to be reconciled, and refused to proceed against him, upon which she turned away in a rage, muttering that she knew how to be revenged. The magistrate paid attention to what she said, and gave orders for her being arrested; when, upon strict inquiry concerning the meaning of her word, she confessed that it was her intention to poison her husband, by purchasing a bottle of vinegar from an old woman, who prepared it for that purpose. In order to ascertain the truth of this story, another woman was sent to the old jade, to demand some of the vinegar, which was sold for about ten pence a bottle. ‘What do you want with it?’ said the vender: ‘Why,’ replied the other, ‘I have a very bad husband, and I want to get rid of him.’ Hereupon the old woman, seventy-two years of age, produced the fatal dose; upon which she was immediately seized, and conducted to prison, where she confessed that she had sold forty-five or forty-six bottles. Many people were taken up; but as, upon further inquiry, it was discovered that several of the nobility had been purchasers, the affair was dropped, and the old woman alone suffered death.”

To proceed, however, to the case of the unfortunate prisoner whose name heads this article. On the 9th of August, 1811, she was indicted at the Assizes for the county of Devon, for the wilful murder of John Trenaman, an infant sixteen months old; and Arthur Tucker was indicted as an accessory before the fact.