“Luke Dillon, Esq., Home’s Hotel, Usher’s-island.”
In her further cross-examination, she affirmed she wrote to him in these affectionate terms because Mrs. O’Reardon told her, that if she called him a villain or a wretch, he would never come back to her; and that she wrote the letter for the purpose of bringing him back. After she had been under examination and cross-examination upwards of five hours, her mother, Mrs. Frizell, and Mrs. O’Reardon, were examined, and they corroborated her testimony as far as they had any knowledge of the facts.
For the defence, several persons from the hotel or house where the affair took place stated that the lady was a consenting party, and that no outrage had been committed.—In their cross-examination, however, they prevaricated a good deal, and acknowledged visiting the prisoner in Newgate.
Judge Torrens charged the jury in a luminous speech, who, after one hour and three quarters’ deliberation, returned a verdict of Guilty, but strongly recommended the prisoner to mercy on account of his youth.
On the next day he was brought up for judgment, when, in answer why sentence of death should not be passed on him, he replied, in a low, but rather firm voice, that standing in the awful situation in which he did, it was not for him to arraign the verdict of twelve men on their oaths, and he should, therefore, bow with submission to the sentence of the court.—Judge Torrens then, in an impressive manner, observed, that after a most anxious consideration of his case, the recommendation of the jury could not be attended to. His lordship, in a tremulous accent, pronounced the awful sentence of the law, fixing Saturday, the 7th of May, for his execution.
The most strenuous exertions were made to save the life of this unhappy but most guilty culprit; and petitions signed by many persons of the highest respectability were forwarded to the crown in his favour. The recommendation of the jury was also most strongly represented, and as it was said that even the friends of the young lady herself were unwilling that he should expiate the foul crime of which he had been convicted on the scaffold, a reprieve was granted, and his punishment was eventually commuted to transportation for life.
The wretched young man was eventually transmitted to Sydney with other convicts; but here his fortune and the respectability of his connexions enabled him to obtain privileges not usually granted to persons in his situation. He was of an excellent family in the county of Roscommon, and by the death of some of his relations came into a handsome fortune. Money, in the colony in which he was compelled to reside, would obtain for him every luxury which he could desire; and from recent accounts received from that place, it appears that he was among the gayest of the gay of that extraordinary society.
We have but one other fact to add to our recital of this most distressing case. The unhappy object of Dillon’s machinations and brutal crime died in the month of June 1831, a victim to her own sensitive feelings. She had gone to Bangor, in Wales, in hope that a change of scene might relieve her of the melancholy which appeared to have settled upon her mind, but she died there of a broken heart.