The Chronicles of Crime. Camden Pelham

himself, he was exasperated against her, and struck her so violently that she fell from her chair. The noise of her fall alarmed the neighbours; but, as frequent quarrels had happened between them, no immediate notice was taken of the affair. In about fifteen minutes, the wife was heard to cry out “Murder! help! fire! the rogue is murdering me!” and the neighbours, now apprehending real danger, knocked at the door; but no person being in the house but Brown and his wife, admission was refused. The woman, meantime, was heard to groan most shockingly, and a person looking through the keyhole, saw Brown holding his wife to the fire. He was called on to open the door, but refused to do so; and the candle being extinguished, and the woman still continuing her cries, the door was at length forced open. When the neighbours went in, they beheld her a most shocking spectacle, lying half naked before the fire, and her flesh in part broiled. In the interim, Brown had got into bed, pretending to be asleep, and when spoken to, appeared ignorant of the transaction. The woman, though so dreadfully burnt, retained her senses, and accused her husband of the murder, and told in what manner it was perpetrated. She survived till the following morning, still continuing in the same tale, and then expired in the utmost agony.

      The murderer was now seized, and being lodged in the jail of Edinburgh, was brought to trial and capitally convicted.

      On August the 14th, 1754, he was attended to the place of execution at Edinburgh by the Rev. Dr. Brown; but to the last he denied having been guilty of the crime for which he suffered.

      After execution he was hung in chains; but the body was stolen from the gibbet, and thrown into a pond, where being found, it was exposed as before. In a few days, however, it was again stolen; and though a reward was offered for its discovery, it was not again found.

EDWARD MORGAN.

       EXECUTED FOR MURDER.

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      THE circumstances which came out on the trial of Edward Morgan, at the assizes of Glamorgan, were these:—According to annual custom, he had been invited by Mr. Rees Morgan, of Lanvabon, his cousin, to spend the Christmas holidays. He had partaken of the first day’s festivity, and retired to bed along with a young man, apprentice to Mr. Rees Morgan. No sooner had he laid his head upon the pillow, to use his own expression, than the devil whispered him to get up and murder the whole family, and he determined to obey.

      He first made an attempt on the apprentice, his bedfellow; but he struggled so far as to effect his escape, and hid himself. The murderer then provided himself with a knife, which he sharpened on a stone as deliberately as the butcher uses his steel; and thus prepared, he softly crept to the bedchamber of his host and hostess, and cut their throats in their sleep. He then proceeded to the bed of their beautiful daughter, with whom the monster had but an hour before been sporting and playing, and with equal expedition, and by the same means, robbed her of life. Not satisfied, however, with these deeds of blood, he seized a firebrand, and proceeded to the barn and outhouses, setting fire to them all; and, to complete the sum of his crime, he fired the dwelling-house, after plundering it of some articles.

      “The Gloucester Journal,” of the year 1757, describes the property consumed by fire on this melancholy occasion to have been “the dwelling-house, a barn full of corn, a beast-house, with twelve head of cattle in it.”

      It was at first conjectured that the unfortunate people had perished in the conflagration. Their murdered bodies, it is too true, were consumed to ashes; but the manner of their death was subsequently proved, partly by what the concealed apprentice overheard, but chiefly from the murderer’s own confession. Morgan was executed at Glamorgan, April the 6th, 1757.

The Rev. JOHN GRIERSON and the Rev. Mr. WILKINSON

       TRANSPORTED FOR UNLAWFULLY PERFORMING THE MARRIAGE CEREMONY.

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      AMONG the singular customs of our forefathers, arising in a great measure from their indifference to decorum, one of the most remarkable was matrimony, solemnised, we were going to say, but the fittest word would be “performed,” by the parsons in the Fleet prison, to which reference has already frequently been made. These clerical functionaries were disreputable and dissolute men, mostly prisoners for debt, who, to the great injury of public morals, dared to insult the dignity of their holy profession by marrying in the precincts of the Fleet prison, at a minute’s notice, any persons who might present themselves for that purpose. No questions were asked, no stipulations made, except as to the amount of the fee for the service, or the quantity of liquor to be drunk on the occasion. It not unfrequently happened, indeed, that the clergyman, the clerk, the bride groom and the bride, were drunk at the very time the ceremony was performed. These disgraceful members of the sacred calling had their “plyers,” or “barkers,” who, if they caught sight of a man and woman walking together along the streets of the neighbourhood, pestered them as the Jew clothesmen in the present day tease the passers-by in Holywell Street, with solicitations, not easily to be shaken off, as to whether they wanted a clergyman to marry them. Mr. Burn, a gentleman who has recently published a curious work on the Fleet Registers, says he has in his possession an engraving (published about 1747) of “A Fleet Wedding between a brisk young Sailor and Landlady’s daughter at Rederiff.” “The print,” he adds, “represents the old Fleet market and prison, with the sailor, landlady, and daughter, just stepping from a hackney-coach, while two Fleet parsons in canonicals are contending for the job. The following verses are in the margin:

      “Scarce had the coach discharg’d its trusty fare,

       But gaping crowds surround th’ amorous pair;

       The busy Plyers make a mighty stir,

       And whisp’ring cry, D’ye want the Parson, Sir?

       Pray step this way—just to the Pen in Hand,

       The Doctor’s ready there at your command:

       This way (another cries), Sir, I declare,

       The true and ancient Register is here:

      “Th’ alarmed Parsons quickly hear the din,

       And haste with soothing words t’ invite ’em in:

       In this confusion jostled to and fro,

       Th’ inamour’d couple know not where to go,

       Till, slow advancing from the coach’s side,

       Th’ experienc’d matron came, (an artful guide,)

       She led the way without regarding either,

       And the first Parson splic’d ’em both together.”

      One of the most notorious of these scandalous officials was a man of the name of George Keith, a Scotch minister, who, being in desperate circumstances, set up a marriage-office in May-Fair, and subsequently in the Fleet, and carried on the same trade which has since been practised in front of the blacksmith’s anvil at Gretna Green. This man’s wedding-business was so extensive and so scandalous, that the Bishop of London found it necessary to excommunicate him. It has been said of this person and “his journeyman,” that one morning, during the Whitsun holidays, they united a greater number of couples than had been married at any ten churches within the bills of mortality. Keith lived till he was eighty-nine years of age, and died in 1735. The Rev. Dr. Gaynham, another infamous functionary, was familiarly called the Bishop of Hell.

      “Many of the early Fleet weddings,” observes Mr. Burn, “were really performed at the chapel of the Fleet; but as the practice extended, it was found more convenient to have other places, within the Rules of the Fleet, (added to which, the Warden was forbidden, by act of parliament, to suffer them,) and, thereupon, many of the Fleet parsons and tavern-keepers in the neighbourhood fitted up a room in their respective lodgings or houses as a chapel! The parsons took the fees, allowing a portion to the plyers, &c.; and the tavern-keepers, besides sharing in the money paid, derived a profit from the sale of liquors which the wedding-party