The date of this piece is confirmed by the following paragraph in The Grub-street journal, March 4, 1731: "We hear from the Theatre-Royal in Drury-lane, that there is now in rehearsal, and to be performed on Tuesday, March 16, a new Scots Opera, called The Highland Fair, or Union of the Clans, &c." The subject being too local for the English stage, it met with little or no success.
1732.
1. Sarah Malcolm,[1] executed March 7, 1732, for murdering Mrs. Lydia Duncombe her mistress, Elizabeth Harrison, and Anne Price; drawn in Newgate. W. Hogarth (ad vivum) pinxit & sculpsit.[2] Some copies are dated 1733, and have only Hogarth pinx. She was about twenty-five years of age.[3] "This woman put on red to sit to him for her picture two days before her execution."[4] Mr. Walpole paid Hogarth five guineas for the original. Professor Martyn dissected this notorious murderess, and afterwards presented her skeleton, in a glass case, to the Botanic Garden at Cambridge, where it still remains.
[1] On Sunday morning, the 4th of February, Mrs. Lydia Duncombe, aged 80, Elizabeth Harrison, her companion, aged 60, were found strangled, and Ann Price, her maid, aged 17, with her throat cut, in their beds, at the said Mrs. Duncombe's apartments in Tanfield-Court in The Temple. Sarah Malcolm, a chare-woman, was apprehended the same evening on the information of Mr. Kerrol, who had chambers on the same stair-case, and had found some bloody linen under his bed, and a silver tankard in his close-stool, which she had hid there. She made a pretended confession, and gave information against Thomas Alexander, James Alexander, and Mary Tracey, that they committed the murder and robbery, and she only stood on the stairs as a watch; that they took away three hundred pounds and some valuable goods, of which she had not more than her share; but the coroner's inquest gave their verdict Wilful Murder against Malcolm only.—On the 23d her trial came on at The Old Bailey: when it appeared that Mrs. Duncombe had but 54 l. in her box, and 53 l. 11 s. 6 d. of it were found upon Malcolm betwixt her cap and hair. She owned her being concerned in the robbery, but denied she knew any thing of the murder till she went in with other company to see the deceased. The jury found her guilty of both. She was strongly suspected to have been concerned in the murder of Mr. Nesbit in 1729, near Drury-lane, for which one Kelly, alias Owen, was hanged; the grounds for his conviction being only a bloody razor found under the murdered man's head that was known to be his. But he denied to the last his being concerned in the murder; and said, in his defence, he lent the razor to a woman he did not know.—On Wednesday, March 7, she was executed on a gibbet opposite Mitre-court, Fleet-street, where the crowd was so great, that a Mrs. Strangways, who lived in Fleet-street, near Serjeant's-Inn, crossed the street, from her own house to Mrs. Coulthurst's on the opposite side of the way, over the heads and shoulders of the mob. She went to execution neatly dressed in a crape mourning gown, holding up her head in the cart with an air, and looking as if she was painted, which some did not scruple to affirm. Her corpse was carried to an undertaker's upon Snow-hill, where multitudes of people resorted, and gave money to see it: among the rest a gentleman in deep mourning, who kissed her, and gave the people half a crown. She was attended by the Rev. Mr. Pedington, lecturer of St. Bartholomew the Great, seemed penitent, and desired to see her master Kerrol; but, as she did not, protested all accusations against him were false. During her imprisonment she received a letter from her father at Dublin, who was in too bad circumstances to send her such a sum as 17 l. which she pretended he did. The night before her execution, she delivered a paper to Mr. Pedington (the copy of which he sold for 20 l.), of which the substance is printed in The Gentleman's Magazine, 1733, p. 137. She had given much the same account before, at her trial, in a long and fluent speech.
[2] The words "& sculpsit" are wanting in the copies. In the three last of them the figure also is reversed.
[3] "This woman," said Hogarth, after he had drawn Sarah Malcolm, "by her features, is capable of any wickedness."
[4] "Monday Sarah Malcolm sat for her picture in Newgate, which was taken by the ingenious Mr. Hogarth: Sir James Thornhill was likewise present." Craftsman, Saturday, March 10, 1732-3.
2. An engraved copy of ditto.
3. Ditto, mezzotinto.