FOOTNOTES:
[65] Celebrated Trials and Remarkable Cases of Criminal Jurisprudence from the Earliest Records to the Year 1825. In six volumes. London: Printed for Geo. Knight & Lacey, Paternoster Row, 1825. Price £3, 12s. in boards.
[66] The New and Complete Newgate Calendar or Malefactors Recording Register. By William Jackson. Six vols. 1802.
[67] Cobbett and Howell's State Trials. In thirty-three volumes and index, 1809 to 1828. The last volume, apart from the index, was actually published the year after Borrow's Celebrated Trials, that is, in 1826; but the last trial recorded was that of Thistlewood in 1820. The editors were William Cobbett, Thomas Bayly Howell, and his son, Thomas Jones Howell.
[68] The following note appeared in The Monthly Magazine for 1st July 1824 (vol. lvii. p. 557):
'A Selection of the most remarkable Trials and Criminal Causes is printing in five volumes. It will include all famous cases, from that of Lord Cobham, in the reign of Henry the Fifth, to that of John Thurtell; and those connected with foreign as well as English jurisprudence. Mr. Borrow, the editor, has availed himself of all the resources of the English, German, French, and Italian languages; and his work, including from 150 to 200 of the most interesting cases on record, will appear in October next. The editor of the preceding has ready for the press a Life of Faustus, his Death, and Descent into Hell, which will also appear early in the next winter.'
[69] Did the poet, who had an interest in criminology, know of his father's quite innocent association with the Fauntleroy trial?
[70] Another witness attained fame by her answer to the inquiry, 'Was supper postponed?' with the reply, 'No, it was pork.'
[71] I have already stated (ch. x. p. 111) that three members of the Thurtell family subscribed for Romantic Ballads. I should have hesitated to include John Thurtell among the subscribers, as he was hanged two years before the book was published, had I not the high authority of Mr. Walter Rye, but recently Mayor of Norwich, and the honoured author of a History of Norfolk Families and other works. Mr. Rye, to whom I owe much of the information concerning the Thurtells published here, tells me that there was only this one, 'J. Thurtell.' Borrow had doubtless been appealing for subscribers for a very long time. I cannot, however, accept Mr. Rye's suggestion to me that Borrow left Norwich because he was mixed up with Thurtell in ultra-Whig or Radical scrapes, the intimidation and 'cooping' of Tory voters being a characteristic of the elections of that day with the wilder spirits, of whom Thurtell was doubtless one. Borrow's sympathies were with the Tory party from his childhood up—following his father.
[72] The Fatal Effects of Gambling Exemplified in the Murder of Wm. Weare and the Trial and Fate of John Thurtell, the Murderer, and his Accomplices. London: Thomas Kelly, Paternoster Row. 1824. I have a very considerable number of Weare pamphlets in my possession, one of them being a record of the trial by Pierce Egan, the author of Life in London and Boxiana. Walter Scott writes in his diary of being absorbed in an account of the trial, while he deprecates John Bull's maudlin sentiment over 'the pitiless assassin.' That was in 1826, but in 1828 Scott went out of his way when travelling from London to Edinburgh, to visit Gill's Hill, and describes the scene of the tragedy very vividly. Lockhart's Life, ch. lxxvi.