The Prisoner: So help me God I am innocent of all intention to murder James Burdon.
Proclamation was then made to keep silence in the court.
Lord Abinger, having put on the black cap, addressed the prisoner as follows:—Robert Blakesley, you stand convicted by a jury of your countrymen of the atrocious and abominable crime of murder. Though you appeal to God to bear witness of your innocence, yet it is by human tribunals that you must be judged. If you are innocent God will not hear that appeal in vain, but we can judge only by human testimony, and the means we have of investigating guilt. Upon that investigation no doubt can be entertained that you are guilty of the crime laid to your charge. You intended to commit another murder; the first person whose life you aimed at taking away was your wife. You then aimed at taking away that of the unfortunate man who became the victim of your anger, and his life has been taken by you, who gave it not, and who cannot restore it. You have, to a certain extent, by your remorse, appeared conscious of your offence. It is impossible for me, sitting in this place, to take any other notice of that remorse than to express a hope that it may be genuine, and that you may, in the short time you have to pass in this world, endeavour to make your peace with God, whose laws in this life you have violated by your crime. An attempt has been made to excuse you on the ground of temporary insanity. You have had a merciful and deliberate jury, who have paid the greatest attention to to the evidence adduced before them upon that subject, and your own father, who appears to be a person highly respectable, has come forward to endeavour to prove that, as far as he could do so consistently with the truth on your behalf. But, notwithstanding, all the inclination which the jury must have felt to yield, if possible, to the anxious wish of your parent, we have all found it impossible to doubt that you committed this act with malice, with deliberation, and with an intention you had no right or authority to feel, much less to execute. You have taken away the life of one of your fellow-creatures; another, that of your own wife, still remains in jeopardy. What can you expect from human tribunals but that the law should be executed with the utmost severity against you? Its sentence, and I pronounce it with pain and sorrow, is, that you be taken to the place whence you came, to be thence removed to the place of execution, then that you be hanged by the neck till you are dead, and that your corpse be buried in the place of your imprisonment, and may the Lord have mercy on your soul.
The prisoner, who had preserved the same coutenance and demeanour unmoved, was then taken from the dock.
THE EXECUTION.
The moment the culprit appeared on the scaffold, there was a yell from the multitude, but he took no notice of it, but muttering a few words in prayer, he was launched into eternity. For the first couple of minutes, the wretched man struggled very much, to the great gratification of the crowd, at the pain he was supposed to be suffering. After hanging the usual time, the body was cut down, and deposited in a shell, in which he is to be buried to-night within the precintes of the gaol.
Paul & Co., Printers, 2, 3, Monmouth Court, Seven Dials.