Cranstoun sent her the powders, according to promise, and Mr. Blandy being indisposed on the Sunday se’nnight before his death, Susan Gunnel, a maid-servant, made him some water-gruel, into which Miss Blandy conveyed some of the powder, and gave it to her father; and repeating this draught on the following day, he was tormented with the most violent pains in his bowels.
The disorder, which had commenced with symptoms of so dangerous a character, soon increased; and the greatest alarm was felt by the medical attendants of the old gentleman, that death alone would terminate his sufferings. Every effort was made by which it was hoped that his life could be saved; but at length, when all possibility of his recovery was past, his wretched daughter rushed into his presence, and in an agony of tears and lamentations, confessed that she was the author of his sufferings and of his inevitable death. Urged to account for her conduct, which to her father appeared inexplicable, she denied, with the loudest asseverations, all guilty intention. She repeated the tale of her love, and of the insidious arts employed by Cranstoun, but asserted that she was unaware of the deadly nature of the powders, and that her sole object in administering them was to procure her father’s affection for her lover. Death soon terminated the accumulated misery of the wretched parent, and the daughter had scarcely witnessed his demise, ere she became an inmate of a jail.
At the ensuing assizes at Oxford, Miss Blandy was indicted for the wilful murder of her father, and was immediately found guilty, upon the confession which she had made. She addressed the jury at great length, repeating the story which she had before related; but all was of no avail, and sentence of death was passed.
After conviction, the wretched young woman behaved with the utmost decency and penitence. She spent the night before her execution in devotion; and at nine in the morning of the 6th of April 1752, she left her apartment to be conducted to the scaffold, habited in a black bombasin dress, her arms being bound with black ribands. On her ascending the gallows, she begged that she might not be hanged high, “for the sake of decency;” and on her being desired to go a little higher, expressed her fear that she should fall. The rope being put round her neck, she pulled her handkerchief over her face, and was turned off on holding out a book of devotions, which she had been reading.
The crowd of spectators assembled on this occasion was immense; and when she had hung the usual time she was cut down, and the body being put into a hearse, was conveyed to Henley, and interred with her parents, at one o’clock on the following morning.
It will be proper now to return to Cranstoun, who was the original contriver of this horrid murder. Having heard of Miss Blandy’s commitment to Oxford jail, he concealed himself some time in Scotland, and then escaped to Boulogne, in France. Meeting there with Mrs. Ross, who was distantly related to his family, he acquainted her with his situation, and begged her protection; on which she advised him to change his name for her maiden name of Dunbar. Some officers in the French service, who were related to his wife, hearing of his concealment, vowed revenge, if they should meet with him, for his cruelty to the unhappy woman: on which he fled to Paris, from whence he went to Furnes, a town in Flanders, where Mrs. Ross had provided a lodging for his reception. He had not been long at Furnes when he was seized with a severe fit of illness, which brought him to a degree of reflection to which he had been long a stranger. At length he sent for a father belonging to an adjacent convent, and received absolution from his hands, on declaring himself a convert to the Romish faith.
Cranstoun died on the 30th of November, 1752; and the fraternity of monks and friars looked on his conversion as an object of such importance, that solemn mass was sung on the occasion, and the body was followed to the grave not only by the ecclesiastics, but by the magistrates of the town.
JOHN M‘CANELLY AND LUKE MORGAN.
EXECUTED FOR BURGLARY.
THESE men were of that class who usually visit England during harvest, from the sister kingdom, and who, if they possessed honesty, would prove most useful to the community of this country.
It appears that in the year 1751, Mr. Porter, a farmer of great respectability, residing in Cheshire, had engaged a number of Irish people to assist in gathering his harvest, when on one evening in the month of August he was alarmed, while sitting at supper, by hearing that they had attacked his house. Every effort was employed by him and his family to oppose the entry of their assailants, but their power being small, in the course of a few minutes the doors were burst in, and they found themselves surrounded by a gang, whose ferocious demands for money or blood convinced them of the uselessness of resistance. Mr. Porter, however, for a while delayed meeting the demands which were made upon him, in the hope that some assistance might arrive; but his ruffian assailants bound him with cords, and threatened instant destruction if his money and plate were not instantly brought forth. Miss Porter at this moment made her appearance, supplicating for the life of her parent, when she in turn was seized and bound, and was compelled to discover the chest in which the valuables were kept.
In the confusion created by these proceedings, the youngest daughter, a girl of thirteen, whose presence of mind and courage were alike admirable, made her escape, and determined to procure some assistance to repel the attack which had been made; and running into the stable, she got astride the bare back of a horse, with the halter only in his mouth, and galloping over hedges and ditches, so as to avoid the house, from which she might be seen by the villains, she rode to Pulford, a village at a short distance, to inform her eldest brother of the danger to which their relations at the farm were exposed. Young Porter, with a friend named Craven, (whose conduct certainly was the very opposite of his name,) immediately resolved upon attacking the villains in turn, and, with the girl, set off at full speed to render such aid as lay in their power. On their reaching the farm, they discovered a fellow on the watch, whom they instantly killed with so little noise as to create no alarm, and then proceeding to the parlour, they found four others in the very act of placing old Mr. Porter on the fire, having deprived him of his clothes, in order to extort from him a confession of the depository of his money, his daughter being on her knees at their side praying for his life. The appearance of two strangers was sufficient to induce the villains at once to desist from their horrid purpose; and being now violently attacked, they were compelled to use their utmost exertions to defend themselves. A desperate conflict took place, but one of the robbers being felled senseless to the ground, and the others wounded and deprived of their arms, they jumped through the window and ran off.
They were instantly pursued by the young men, and the alarm having by this time been given, M‘Canelly and Morgan were secured on Chester bridge, having a silver tankard in their possession which they had stolen from Mr. Porter’s house. A fellow named Stanley, who turned out to be ringleader in this desperate attack, was subsequently apprehended on board a vessel bound for the West Indies, at Liverpool: and with M‘Canelly, Morgan, and a youth named Boyd, who had been left in the house, was committed to Chester jail for trial.
They were indicted at the ensuing assizes held in March, 1752, and after a long investigation, were found guilty and sentenced to death; but Boyd, in whose case some mitigating circumstances were proved, was respited, and his punishment eventually commuted to transportation for life.
On the night before the execution, Stanley slipped his irons, and got clear off from the jail, not without some suspicion that his escape was connived at by the keeper.
On the 25th May, 1752, M‘Canelly and Morgan were brought out of prison in order to be hanged. Their behaviour was as decent as could be expected