The circumstances of the crime for which he was executed were as follow.
After having been drinking at an alehouse in the Canongate, he went home at about eleven at night, in a high degree of intoxication. His wife was also much in liquor; but, though equally criminal himself, he was exasperated against her, and struck her so violently that she fell from her chair. The noise of her fall alarmed the neighbours; but, as frequent quarrels had happened between them, no immediate notice was taken of the affair. In about fifteen minutes, the wife was heard to cry out “Murder! help! fire! the rogue is murdering me!” and the neighbours, now apprehending real danger, knocked at the door; but no person being in the house but Brown and his wife, admission was refused. The woman, meantime, was heard to groan most shockingly, and a person looking through the keyhole, saw Brown holding his wife to the fire. He was called on to open the door, but refused to do so; and the candle being extinguished, and the woman still continuing her cries, the door was at length forced open. When the neighbours went in, they beheld her a most shocking spectacle, lying half naked before the fire, and her flesh in part broiled. In the interim, Brown had got into bed, pretending to be asleep, and when spoken to, appeared ignorant of the transaction. The woman, though so dreadfully burnt, retained her senses, and accused her husband of the murder, and told in what manner it was perpetrated. She survived till the following morning, still continuing in the same tale, and then expired in the utmost agony.
The murderer was now seized, and being lodged in the jail of Edinburgh, was brought to trial and capitally convicted.
On August the 14th, 1754, he was attended to the place of execution at Edinburgh by the Rev. Dr. Brown; but to the last he denied having been guilty of the crime for which he suffered.
After execution he was hung in chains; but the body was stolen from the gibbet, and thrown into a pond, where being found, it was exposed as before. In a few days, however, it was again stolen; and though a reward was offered for its discovery, it was not again found.
EDWARD MORGAN.
EXECUTED FOR MURDER.
THE circumstances which came out on the trial of Edward Morgan, at the assizes of Glamorgan, were these:—According to annual custom, he had been invited by Mr. Rees Morgan, of Lanvabon, his cousin, to spend the Christmas holidays. He had partaken of the first day’s festivity, and retired to bed along with a young man, apprentice to Mr. Rees Morgan. No sooner had he laid his head upon the pillow, to use his own expression, than the devil whispered him to get up and murder the whole family, and he determined to obey.
He first made an attempt on the apprentice, his bedfellow; but he struggled so far as to effect his escape, and hid himself. The murderer then provided himself with a knife, which he sharpened on a stone as deliberately as the butcher uses his steel; and thus prepared, he softly crept to the bedchamber of his host and hostess, and cut their throats in their sleep. He then proceeded to the bed of their beautiful daughter, with whom the monster had but an hour before been sporting and playing, and with equal expedition, and by the same means, robbed her of life. Not satisfied, however, with these deeds of blood, he seized a firebrand, and proceeded to the barn and outhouses, setting fire to them all; and, to complete the sum of his crime, he fired the dwelling-house, after plundering it of some articles.
“The Gloucester Journal,” of the year 1757, describes the property consumed by fire on this melancholy occasion to have been “the dwelling-house, a barn full of corn, a beast-house, with twelve head of cattle in it.”