Some thirty years ago there appeared in the second series of the Great Metropolis[34] a sketch of one Mr. Curtis, an eccentric person who was to be seen in the New Court in the Old Bailey, as constantly as the Judge himself. He (Curtis) was known to everybody in and about the place. For nearly a quarter of a century he had been in constant attendance at the Old Bailey from the opening to the close of each session, never being absent with the exception of two occasions, when attending the county assizes. He wrote short-hand, and was so passionately fond of reporting that he had taken down for his own special amusement every case verbatim which came before the New Court; and such was his horror of the Old Court, that you might as soon expect to hear the Bishop of London in a Dissenters' chapel as to find Mr. Curtis in the Old Court. He was notable for early rising: four o'clock in the morning he considered a late hour. It was an event in his life to lie in bed till five. By seven he had completed his morning journeys, which usually embraced a distance—for he was particularly fond of going over the same ground twice if not thrice in a morning—of from six to eight miles. Among the places visited, Farringdon Market, Covent Garden Market, Hungerford Market, and Billingsgate were never under any circumstances omitted. His own notion was that he had walked as much within thirty years before seven in the morning as would have made the circuit of the globe three or four times. He was, perhaps, the most inveterate pedestrian known; locomotion seemed to be a necessity of his nature. There was only one exception to this rule—that was, when he was taking down the trials at the Old Bailey. He considered it as the greatest favour that could be conferred on him to be asked to walk ten or twelve miles by an acquaintance. He was very partial to wet weather, and as fond of a rainy day as if he were a duck. He was never so comfortable as when thoroughly drenched. Thunder and lightning threw him into ecstasies; he was known to have luxuriated for some hours on Dover cliff in one of the most violent thunderstorms ever remembered in this country. He once walked from the City to Croydon Fair and back again on three consecutive days of the Fair; making with his locomotive achievements in Croydon a distance of nearly fifty miles a-day; and this without any other motive than that of gratifying his pedestrian propensities. He had a horror of coaches, cabs, omnibuses, and all sorts of vehicles; and he was not known to have been ever seen in one. Judging from his partiality to heavy showers of rain, he seemed to be to a certain extent an amphibious being; and he often declared, with infinite glee, that he was once thrown into a pond without suffering any inconvenience. The benefits of air and exercise were manifest in his cheerful disposition and healthy-looking, though somewhat weather-beaten countenance: he seemed the happiest little thick-built man alive.
He not only rose very early, but was also late in going to bed. On an average, he had not for twenty years slept above four hours in the twenty-four. He was often weeks without going to bed at all, and it sufficed him to have two or three hours' doze in his arm-chair, and with his clothes on. In the year 1834, he performed an unusual feat in this way: he sat up one hundred consecutive nights and days, without stretching himself on a bed, or putting himself into an horizontal position, even for a moment. For one century of consecutive nights, as Curtis phrased it, he neither put off his clothes to lie down in bed, nor anywhere else, for a second; all the sleep he had during the time was an occasional doze in his arm-chair.
Curtis's taste for witnessing executions, and for the society of persons sentenced to death, was remarkable. He had been present at every execution in the metropolis and its neighbourhood for the last quarter of a century. He actually walked before breakfast to Chelmsford, which is twenty-nine miles from London, to be present at the execution of Captain Moir. For many years he had not only heard the condemned sermons preached in Newgate, but spent many hours in the gloomy cells with the persons who had been executed in London during that period. He passed much time with Fauntleroy, and was with him a considerable part of the day previous to his execution. With Corder, too, of Red Barn notoriety, he contracted a friendship: immediately on the discovery of the murder of Maria Martin, he hastened to the scene, and remained there till Corder's execution. He afterwards wrote the Memoirs of Corder, which were published by Alderman Kelly, Lord Mayor, in 1837-8: the work had portraits of Corder and Maria Martin, and of Curtis, and nothing pleased him better than to be called the biographer of Corder.
By some unaccountable fatality, Curtis, where he was unknown, often had the mortification of being mistaken under very awkward circumstances for other persons. At Dover he was once locked up all night on suspicion of being a spy. When he went to Chelmsford to be present at Captain Moir's execution, he engaged a bed at the Three Cups inn; on returning thither in the evening the servants rushed out of his sight, or stared suspiciously at him, he knew not why, till at length the landlady, keeping some yards distant from him, said in tremulous accents, "We cannot give you a bed here; when I promised you one, I did not know the house was full." "Ma'am," replied Curtis, indignantly, "I have taken my bed, and I insist on having it." "I am very sorry for it, but you cannot sleep here to-night," was the reply. "I will sleep here to-night; I've engaged my bed, and refuse me at your peril," reiterated Curtis. The landlady then offered him the price of a bed in another place, to which Curtis replied, resenting the affront, "No, ma'am; I insist upon my rights as a public man; I have a duty to perform to-morrow." "It's all true. He says he's a public man, and that he has a duty to perform," were words which every person in the room exchanged in suppressed whispers with each other. The waiter now stepped up to Mr. Curtis, and taking him aside, said—"The reason why Mistress will not give you a bed is because you're the executioner." Curtis was astounded, but in a few moments laughed heartily at the mistake. "I'll soon convince you of your error, ma'am," said Curtis, walking out of the house. He returned in a few minutes with a gentleman of the place, who having testified to his identity being different from that supposed, the landlady apologized for the mistake, and, as some reparation, gave him the best bed in the inn.
However, a still more awkward mistake occurred. After passing night after night with Corder in prison, Curtis accompanied him to his trial, and stood up close behind him at the bar. An artist had been sent from Ipswich to sketch a portrait of Corder for one of the newspapers of that town; but the sketcher mistook Curtis for Corder, and in the next number of the journal Mr. Curtis figured at full length as the murderer of Maria Martin! He bore the mistake with good humour, and regarded this as one of the most amusing incidents of his life.
Amidst these harmless eccentricities, Mr. Curtis effected much good amongst prisoners under sentence of death. "I speak within bounds," says the author of the Great Metropolis, "when I mention that he has from first to last spent more than a hundred nights with unhappy prisoners under sentence of death, conversing with them with all seriousness and with much intelligence on the great concerns of that eternal world on whose brink they were standing. I saw a long and sensible letter which the unhappy man named Pegsworth, who was executed in March, 1837, for the crime of murder, addressed a few days before his death to Mr. Curtis, and in which he most heartily thanked Mr. C. for all the religious instructions and admonitions he had given him; adding, that he believed he had derived great spiritual benefit from them."
[Bone and Shell Exhibition.]
It is curious to note with what odd results of patient labour our forefathers were amused to the top of their bent. They were Curiosities in the strictest sense of the term; but as to the information conveyed by their exhibition, it was generally a lucus à non lucendo.
In Suffolk Street, Cockspur Street, an ingenious Mrs. Dards got up a display of this kind, consisting of an immense collection of artificial flowers, made entirely by herself with fish-bones, the incessant labour of many years, of which she said to Mr. J. T. Smith:—"No one can imagine the trouble I had in collecting the bones for that bunch of lilies of the valley. Each cup consists of the bones which contain the brains of the turbot; and from the difficulty of matching the sizes, I never should have completed my task had it not been for the kindness of the proprietors of the London, Freemasons', and Crown and Anchor taverns, who desired their waiters to save the fish-bones for me."