She delivered these fibs—for fibs they surely must be—in the short, quick, staccato manner, perfectly at her ease, and alternately munching an orange and blowing her nose between every word. She had a solicitor, too, in attendance upon her—a little wee man, inclining to threescore, who evidently spent more in hair-powder than in soap; and to him she appealed at the close of every sentence she uttered—"'Pon my honour it's true!—there's my solicitor, ask him;" and the solicitor as regularly bowed his powdered little head in assent.
The wretched old German stated, that this lady came as a lodger to his house in the first instance, and took every opportunity of attending to him in his illness; till at length, finding she had ingratiated herself with him, she proposed to him to make her his wife. This he very ungallantly declined; and she contented herself with only passing for his wife, and assuming more than the privileges of one. She turned out his lodgers, and got creatures of her own in lieu of them. She forbade his friends and countrymen from coming near him. She pretended they only wanted to rob him, and prevailed on him to make his will, leaving all his property to her; and having accomplished this, she confined him in a little room, fed him scantily, and beat him whenever he remonstrated with her on her altered conduct. In conclusion, he expressed his thankfulness that he had been rescued from her tyranny, and implored the magistrate to protect him from her in future.
The magistrate said he could easily afford protection to his person, but he wished to protect his property also.
The solicitor here informed his worship, that the complainant had no property to protect—inasmuch as he had given the lady a bill of sale of all he possessed, in consideration of a hundred pounds she had lent him at different times.
This, the wretched old foreigner denied. He declared that she had never lent him but 13l., and even that she forced upon him; that he knew nothing of any bill of sale, and that she had taken away the lease of his house, and hid it.
A long desultory altercation ensued, and eventually this disinterested lady was ordered to find bail for repeatedly assaulting the object of her love; and not being prepared with any, she was delivered into the custody of the gaoler, whilst the old man was carried out of the office again on the back of his countryman.
BEER—NOT BODIES.
A poor hunchback'd little printer, whose dreary destinies have driven him to seek an asylum in St. Clement's workhouse, was brought before the magistrate, charged on suspicion of being a resurrection man.
His accusers, a couple of large-sized watchmen, told the following story; or rather, a story to the following effect:—In the dead of the night, "when churchyards yawn, and graves give up their dead," a man came to these watchmen and told them, he verily believed there were three resurrection men at work among the graves in the burial-ground adjoining St. Clement's workhouse—that identical burying-ground which contains all that is left in this world of the once merry Joe Miller. The watchmen, having received this intelligence, and trimmed their lanterns, went straightway to the burial-ground, and clambering over the iron railing, they searched the whole place, grave by grave, until at last they found—not three stout resurrection men, with pick-axes and spades; but one solitary being—the poor hunchbacked unfortunate little pauper printer above mentioned. He was sitting, all alone, on the top-mast round of a ladder; which ladder was reared against the window of a house bordering on the burial-ground; and in that window there was a dim glimmering light; and, therefore, the watchmen took the moping little man into custody, and had him away to the watch-house.—For they had heard that bodies had often been conveyed away from the burial-ground through the windows of that house, and so out at the front door in St. Clement's-lane, and away at once to the dissecting-rooms—Guy's Hospital, perchance, or the cadaverous halls of Blenheim-street. Bodies, now-a-days, as they said, fetched a big price, and who so likely to be tempted by a big price as a poor pennyless pauper; ergo, the little hunchback printer, being a poor pennyless pauper, and being at such a time of night in such a place, with a ladder reared against such a house, offering every facility for such a purpose, must, no doubt, be concerned in some such deadly doings. And, as a further proof, if any were wanting, one of the watchmen concluded his evidence in these remarkable words:—