I received similar accounts of the street-doings in the case of “mysterious murders,” as those perpetrations are called by the paper workers, when the criminal has escaped, or was unknown. Among those leaving considerable scope to the patterer’s powers of invention were the murders of Mr. Westwood, a watchmaker in Prince’s-street, Leicester-square; of Eliza Davis, a bar-maid, in Frederick-street, Hampstead-road; and of the policeman in Dagenham, Essex. One of the most successful “cocks,” relating to murders which actually occurred, was the “Confession to the Rev. Mr. Cox, Chaplain of Aylesbury Gaol, of John Tawell the Quaker.” I had some conversation with one of the authors of this “Confession,”—for it was got up by three patterers; and he assured me that “it did well, and the facts was soon in some of the newspapers—as what we ’riginates often is.” This sham confession was as follows:

“The Rev. Mr. Cox, the chaplain of Aylesbury Gaol, having been taken ill, and finding his end approaching, sent for his son, and said, ‘Take this confession; now I am as good as my word; I promised that unhappy man, John Tawell, that while I lived his confession should not be made public, owing to the excited state of the public mind. Tawell confessed to me, that besides the murder of Sarah Hart, at Salt-hill, for which he suffered the last penalty of the law at Aylesbury, he was guilty of two other barbarous murders while abroad as a transport in Van Dieman’s Land. One of these barbarous and horrid murders was on the body of one of the keepers. He knocked him down with the keys, which he wrenched from him, and then cut his throat with his own knife, leaving the body locked up in his cell; and before that, to have the better opportunity of having the turnkey single-handed, John Tawell feigned illness. He then locked the keeper, in the cell, and went to a young woman in the town, a beautiful innkeeper’s daughter, whom he had seduced as he worked for her father, as he had the privilege of doing in the day-times. He went to her, and she, seeing him in a flurried state, with blood upon his hand, questioned him. He told the unhappy young woman how he had killed the keeper for the love of her, and the best thing to be done was for her to get possession of all the money she could, and escape with him to this country, where he would marry her, and support her like a lady. The unhappy young woman felt so terrified, that at the moment she was unable to say yes or no. He became alarmed for his safety, and with the identical knife that he killed the keeper with, he left his unhappy victim a weltering in her gore. He then fled from the house unobserved, and went into the bush, where he met three men, who had escaped through his killing the keeper. He advised them to go down with him to an English vessel lying off the coast. When they reached the shore, they met a crew in search of fresh water; to them they made out a pitiful story, and were taken on board the ship. All being young men, and the captain being short of hands, and one of them having been really a seaman transported for mutiny, the captain, after putting questions which the seaman answered, engaged them to work their passage home. Tawell was the captain of the gang, and was most looked up to. They worked their passage home, behaving well during the voyage, so that the captain said he would make each of them a present, and never divulge. When they reached Liverpool, Tawell robbed the captain’s cabin of all the money contained in it, which was a very considerable sum. After that he left Liverpool, and adopted the garb of a Quaker, in which he could not easily be recognized, and then pursued the course of wickedness and crime which led him to a shameful death.’”

The “confession” of Rush to the chaplain of Norwich Castle, was another production which was remunerative to the patterers. “There was soon a bit of it in the newspapers,” said one man, “for us and them treads close on one another’s heels. The newspapers ‘screeved’ about Rush, and his mother, and his wife; but we, in our patter, made him confess to having murdered his old grandmother fourteen years back, and how he buried her under the apple-tree in the garden, and how he murdered his wife as well.”

These ulterior Confessions are very rarely introduced, in lieu of some matter displaced, into the broad-sheet, but form separate bills. It was necessary to mention them here, however, and so preserve the sequence of the whole of the traffic consequent upon a conviction for murder, in this curious trade.

Sometimes the trial, &c., form also separate bills, as well as being embodied afterwards in the Sorrowful Lamentation. This is only, however, in cases which are deemed important. One of the papers I obtained, for instance, is the “Trial of Mr. and Mrs. Manning for the Murder of Mr. Patrick O’Connor.” The trial alone occupies a broad-sheet; it is fairly “got up.” A portrait of Mr. Patrick O’Connor heads the middle column. From the presence of a fur collar to the coat or cloak, and of what is evidently an order with its insignia, round the neck, I have little doubt that the portrait of Mr. O’Connor was originally that of the sovereign in whose service O’Connor was once an excise-officer—King William IV.

The last publication to which the trade has recourse is “the book.” This is usually eight pages, but sometimes only four of a larger size. In authorship, matter, or compilation, it differs little from the narratives I have described. The majority of these books are prepared by one man. They are in a better form for being preserved as a record than is a broad-sheet, and are frequently sold, and almost always offered by the patterers when they cry a new case on a sheet, as “people that loves such reading likes to keep a good account of the best by them; and so, when I’ve sold Manning’s bills, I’ve often shoved off Rush’s books.” The books, like the bills, have generally the letters and the copy of verses.

Some of these books have the title-page set forth in full display,—for example: “Horrible Murder and Mutilation of Lucy Game, aged 15, by her Cruel Brother, William Game, aged 9, at Westmill, Hertfordshire. His Committal and Confession. With a Copy of Letter. Also, Full Particulars of the Poisonings in Essex.” Here, as there was no execution, the matter was extended, to include the poisonings in Essex. The title I have quoted is expanded into thirteen lines. Sometimes the title-page is adorned with a portrait. One, I was told, which was last employed as a portrait of Calcraft, had done severe service since Courvoisier’s time,—for my informant thought that Courvoisier was the original. It is the bust of an ill-looking man, with coat and waistcoat fitting with that unwrinkled closeness which characterises the figures in tailors’ “fashions.”

The above style of work is known in the trade as “the book;” but other publications, in the book or pamphlet form, are common enough. In some I have seen, the title-page is a history in little. I cite one of these:—“Founded on Facts. The Whitby Tragedy; or, the Gambler’s Fate. Containing the Lives of Joseph Carr, aged 21, and his sweetheart, Maria Leslie, aged 19, who were found Dead, lying by each other, on the morning of the 23rd of May. Maria was on her road to Town to buy some Ribbon, &c., for her Wedding Day, when her lover in a state of intoxication fired at her, and then run to rob his prey, but finding it to be his Sweetheart, reloaded his Gun, placed the Muzzle to his Mouth, and blew out his Brains, all through cursed Cards, Drink, &c. Also, an affectionate Copy of Verses.”

To show the extent of the trade in execution broad-sheets, I obtained returns of the number of copies relating to the principal executions of late, that had been sold:

OfRush2,500,000copies.
„the Mannings2,500,000„
„Courvoisier1,666,000„
„Good1,650,000„
„Corder1,650,000„
„Greenacre1,666,000„