On Friday, April 7, an inquest was held at the Rose and Ball public-house, Bankside, Southwark, before R. Carter, Esq. Upon the return of the jury after viewing the body, all of whom expressed their astonishment at the decrepitude and peculiar formation of the singular little man. The surgeon in attendance having described the death to have occurred in consequence of apoplexy. The jury brought in a verdict in accordance with the medical evidence that the deceased died of “Apoplexy.”
The day after the inquest sat on the body it was conveyed to St. Saviour’s Burial ground, and interred in a grave dug 14 feet in depth from the surface, over which were placed three other coffins, in order to secure it against the resurrection-men, who were anxious to have the corpse to dispose of.
Subsequently to the death of Billy Waters, the notorious black mendicant fiddler—March, 1823; “Little Jemmy” acquired the soubriquet of The King of the Beggars.
The Tread-Mill at Brixton.
In the year 1817, Mr.—afterwards Sir William—Cubitt, of Ipswich, erected a Tread-Mill at Brixton Gaol—and soon afterwards in other large prisons, as a species of preventive punishment, which excited much attention and terror to evil doers, and proved eminently useful in decreasing the number of commitments; the strict discipline had a most salutary effect upon the prisoners not easily to be forgotten. Yet, the inventor’s name gave rise to many jokes on the subject among such of the prisoners who could laugh at their own crimes, who said that they were now punished by the cubit!
In nearly all the new and fa—vour—ite comic songs of the day allusion was made to the Treadmill of Brixton as—The Everlasting Stairs!—The Stepping Mill!—The New Dancing Academy! &c. A street-ballad on the subject was issued from the “Catnach Press” and had a most unprecedented sale, keeping the pressmen and boys working for weeks:—