The Determined Suicide of an Aged Artist.
Remarkable Letters of Deceased.
Calling the man aside, we ventured upon a conversation with him in the following form:—
——“Well, governor, how does the cock fight?” “Oh, pretty well, sir; but it ain’t a cock; its a genuine thing—the days for cocks, sir, is gone bye—cheap newspapers ’as done ’em up.” “Yes; we see this is a Brighton Newspaper of to-day.” “Oh, yes, that’s right enough—but its all true.” “Yes; we are aware of that and knew the unfortunate man and his family; but you are vending them after the old manner.” “That’s all right enough, sir,—you see I can sell ’em better in that form than as a newspaper—its more natural like for me: I’ve sold between ten and twelve dozen of ’em to-day.” “Yes; but how about to-morrow?” “Oh, then it will be all bottled up—and I must look for a new game, I’m on my way to London, but a hearing of this suicide job, I thought I’d work ’em just to keep my hand in and make a bob or two.” To our question of “Have you got any real old ‘cocks’ by you?” He replied, “No, not a bit of a one; I’ve worked ’em for a good many years, but it ’aint much of a go now. Oh, yes, I know’d ‘old Jemmy Catnach’ fast enough—bought many hundreds, if not thousands of quires of him. Not old enough? Oh, ’aint I though; why I’m turned fifty, and I’ve been a ‘street-paper’ seller all my life. I knows Muster Fortey very well; him as is got the business now in the Dials—he knows his way about, let him alone for that; and he’s a rare good business man let me tell you, and always been good and fair to me; that I will say of him.”
Having rewarded the man with a few half-pence to make him some recompense for having detained him during his business progress, we parted company.
While still prosecuting our enquiries for information on the literature of the streets, we often read of, and heard mention made of, a Mr. John Morgan, as one of the “Seven Bards of the Seven Dials” and his being best able to assist us in the matter we had in hand. The first glimpse we obtained of the Poet! in print was in an article entitled “The Bards of the Seven Dials and their Effusion” and published in “The Town,” of 1839, a weekly journal, conducted by the late Mr. Renton Nicholson, better known as “Baron Nicholson,” of Judge and Jury notoriety:—
REVIEW.
The Life and Death of John William Marchant, who suffered the extreme penalty of the law, in front of the Debtor’s door, Newgate, on Monday, July 8th, 1839, for the murder of Elizabeth Paynton, his fellow servant, on the seventeenth of May last, in Cadogan Place, Chelsea. By John Morgan. London: J. Catnach, 2 and 3, Monmouth Court, 7 Dials.
The work is a quarto page, surrounded with a handsome black border. “Take no thought for to-morrow, what thou shalt eat, or what thou shalt put on,” says a certain writer, whose wisdom we all reverence, and then he adds “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof”—a remark particularly applicable to the bards of Seven Dials, whose pens are kept in constant employment by the fires, rapes, robberies, and murders, which, from one year’s end to the other, present them with a daily allowance of evil sufficient for their subsistence. But, at present, it is only one of these poets, “John Morgan,” as he modestly signs himself, whom we are about to notice; and as some of our readers may be curious to see a specimen of the poetry of Seven Dials, we shall lay certain portions of John Morgan’s last effusion before them, pointing out the beauties and peculiarities of the compositions as we go along. After almost lawyer-like particularity as to dates and places, the poem begins with an invocation from the murderer in propria personæ.
“Oh! give attention awhile to me,
All you good people of each degree;
In Newgate’s dismal and dreary cell,
I bid all people on earth farewell.”
Heaven forbid, say we, that all the people on earth should ever get in Newgate, to receive the farewell of such a blood-thirsty miscreant.