The Treadmill.
This Brixton Mill’s a fearful ill,
And he who brought the Bill in,
Is threat’n’d by the cribbing coves,
That he shall have a milling.
They say he shew’d a simple pate,
To think of felons mending;
As every step which here they take
They’re still in crime ascending.
Tom, Jerry, Logic, three prime sprigs,
Find here they cannot come it,
For though their fancy soars aloft,
They ne’er will reach the summit.
Corinthian Kate and buxom Sue
Must change their warm direction,
For if they make one false step more
They’ll have Cold Bath Correction.
“The gallows does well: But how does it well? it does well to those that do ill.”—Hamlet, Act v., sc. i.
There can be little doubt that Jemmy Catnach, the great publisher of the Seven Dials, had his mind mostly centred upon the chronicling of doubtful scandals, fabulous duels between ladies of fashion, “cooked” assassinations, and sudden deaths of eminent individuals, apochryphal elopements, real or catch-penny account of murders, impossible robberies, delusive suicides, dark deeds, and—though last, not least, in his love—public executions, vulgo “Hanging Matches,” to which was usually attached the all-important and necessary “Sorrowful Lamentations,” or “Copy of Affectionate Verses,” which according to the established custom, the criminal composed in the condemned cell the night before his execution, after this manner:—
The Flying Stationer, otherwise Patterer.
“All you that have got feeling, I pray you now attend
To these few lines so sad and true, a solemn silence lend;
It is of a cruel murder, to you I will unfold——
The bare recital of the tale must make your blood run cold.”
“Mercy on earth I’ll not implore, to crave it would be vain,
My hands are dyed with human gore, none can wash off the stain,
But the merits of a Saviour, whose mercy alone I crave;
Good Christians pray, as thus I die, I may His pardon have.”