"'No,' said he, 'there must be a real corpse. I think it can be managed, but I cannot have more than a thousand pounds for myself, the remainder of the money must be divided between two other persons, on whose co-operation I feel certain that I can fully rely.'
"We agreed upon the plan, and for several days I was really sick, made so by artificial means—spirits, laudanum, tobacco, and other things were used in various ways. Half of the stipulated sum was brought by my brother, and paid to the gaoler in the condemned cell. The other men were removed to another part of the building. At length I died, you understand; and on that night a corpse was introduced into my cell by the gaoler himself. It was of my size, and was procured from the neighbouring burial ground of the Hospital fields, vulgarly termed Bully's Acre; but unlike the generality of such disinterments, it was to go back there again, and to be buried in my name. I was informed that there would be an inquest on me; but as I had died of putrid, spotted fever of the most infectious description, it was not likely that the coroner or the jury would view my body, unless at the greatest possible distance. I assisted the gaoler to arrange the supposed corpse of myself, placing the face to the wall, and then I was quietly let out upon the high road, after having paid the balance of the fifteen hundred pounds. My brother who had brought the money, was in waiting, but we soon separated. He thought it would prevent suspicion being raised if he attended the funeral of my substitute; and I set out on foot, taking the road to Wicklow, and stopping in the morning to have a little rest and refreshment at Loughlinstown. About the time of my funeral, I was passing Coolagad, near Delgany, and was alarmed by a pack of hounds crossing the road close to where I was walking. There were some riders following them whom I knew, but they were too much engaged in the sport to think about, or even to look at me. I proceeded by Wicklow and Arklow to Wexford, and there I got a passage to Jersey. From that island I was taken by a smuggler to St. Malo, on the supposition that I was extremely anxious to join the Irish Brigade. My life was now safe from the hangman, but I had much trouble and suffering to encounter. I was suspected of being a spy, although I could not speak a word of French; and the possession of some of your guineas was a great crime in the eyes of those who wished to get them for themselves. At Chartres I met a fellow-countryman, who was in Berwick's regiment, and at his instance I enlisted to get rid of the annoyance I was suffering, and to avoid the poverty which I saw approaching, and which was certain to overtake a stranger, whose only resource was military service. I took, on enlisting, the name of Vaughan, which was that of my mother's family. I have again to express my deep sorrow for the wrongful act I committed, and I hope you will never regret that I was not hanged."
Colonel Vesey parted with Martin Keogh, alias Vaughan, in the kindest manner, and was soon after enabled to proceed to England. His military career was terminated by a wound at the capture of Quebec, in 1761, which incapacitated him for further service: he died at Bath in 1776. The Count de St. Woostan accompanied the gallant but much calumniated Lally-Tollendahl to India. He possessed his confidence, shared in his dangers and subsequent persecutions, but eventually, freed from every imputation, restored to the rank and emoluments of colonel, he died at Amboise, in 1782. His name was Alen, and he belonged to a family which, located at St. Woolstans, near Celbridge, in the county of Kildare, occupied high position in Ireland previous to the reign of Elizabeth, and from a collateral branch of which the ducal Howards of Norfolk derive the additional name of Fitzalen.
Martin Vaughan married, in 1758, a blanchisseuse de fin, who had a comfortable dwelling and profitable business in the Rue de Bellechase, Paris. His name disappears from the register of the Invalides, in 1769. His escape from Old Kilmainham protracted his existence twenty-six years. It was effected by means which would not be practicable in any prison of the British Empire at the present time. Officials have become more respectable, and their integrity is protected from temptation by the intervention of a vigilant superintending authority, unknown at the period to which the foregoing narrative refers. It will, in all probability, occur to the reader that the two persons whose co-operation the gaoler considered as indispensable in effecting the escape of Martin Keogh, were the coroner of the county and the medical officer of the prison. Such a conclusion is almost inevitable. Still, a similar project could not now be accomplished by a similar combination. There have been, however, some inquests held in the same county (Dublin) which seriously compromised the coroner of the time and the medical man habitually employed by him, but none of them originated in a prison. It is right to state that they occurred anterior to the appointment of the present coroners and of their respective immediate predecessors. I shall recur to them in a subsequent page or two, when I come to the narration of some extraordinary incidents entirely within my personal knowledge and recollection. As yet I have placed no female character prominently before my readers. I shall proceed to introduce one; and however I may distrust my own powers of description, I feel that the mere facts which I shall detail will not prove uninteresting, especially as they refer to her whom I may term the heroine of the story.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] This gratuitous cruelty did not cease when Old Kilmainham was taken down. Similar disgusting figures have been seen by me, on the door and walls of the condemned yard, in the present county gaol.—F. T. P.
CHAPTER III. MARY TUDOR.
Longevity, although desired by almost all human beings, is a subject of contemplation to very few. We attach, in general, a greater interest to an aged tree or an antique building, than to a venerable individual whose life may connect with the present time the stirring period of the American war of Independence or the awful period of the French Revolution. It is, perhaps, better for ourselves that as we attain old age we should meet with respect and care, without being sought as close companions by our juniors: we thus become habituated to think more on those who have gone before us, and of our own approach to that solemn moment which is to quench the socket-glimmer of earthly existence. Nevertheless, we occasionally meet with some whose mental faculties have not yielded to the attacks of time, in proportion to the effects produced by his inexorable hand upon the corporeal frame, and whose society is sought by many who observe that they can, even in the years of senectude, revert to their early days, and seek to enjoy the pleasures of memory by detailing to others the scenes through which they have passed, and the points of character they have noted. Such a person I can truly designate my father to have been. His frame was robust, and his general health very good, even after he had attained to fourscore years. Accident had rendered him lame, but his mind and memory were strong, and his disposition affable. Whilst he perfectly recollected the past, he evinced a warm interest in the present; and almost immediately after the opening of the Great Southern and Western Railway of Ireland, he sped from Dublin to Cork and back, merely to contrast the five hours' performance of the "Iron Horse" with the four days' journey of his early years. It was a great gratification to him to take a slow drive through Dublin, and recount to his companions, of whom I was generally one, the former appearance of places, and the habits and peculiarities of their occupiers; but no part of the city called forth his recollections more strongly than the locality of Christ Church Place. He never mentioned it by its present name; with him it continued "Skinner Row;" and it was no small pleasure to him to remark that the house in which he had lived and prospered at the beginning of the present century, was still remaining, whilst the entire of the opposite side of the "Row" had disappeared. He regretted the change even whilst he admitted the advantage of the alteration; but he could not refrain from reinstating in his imagination, and describing, the narrow-fronted houses within eighteen feet of the opposite dwellings, rising to a height which effectually precluded even half-an-hour's sunshine from reaching the thoroughfare. His mind reverted to the former tenants, jewellers, silversmiths, and booksellers, by which trades the "Row" had been monopolized; and it was more agreeable to him to recollect Dick Tudor, Tom Delancy, Jemmy Wilson, and many others, cleaning their windows and sweeping their shops, than to remark that such avocations, in the present day, had ceased to be incumbent on even the junior apprentices, and had devolved upon menial servants.