Curiosities of Street Literature. Various
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Название: Curiosities of Street Literature
Автор: Various
Издательство: Bookwire
Жанр: Языкознание
isbn: 4064066201906
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Before this statement meets the public eye, I shall have quitted England for ever; therefore I have no advantage to gain from its publication. And, for the vanity of knowing, when I shall be a sojourner in a far country, that my name—for good or ill—is talked about in this—such fame would scarcely do even my pride much good, when I dare not lay claim to its identity, But the cause which excites me to write is this—My greatest pleasure, through life, has been the perusal of any extraordinary narratives of fact. An account of a shipwreck in which hundreds have perished; of a plague which has depopulated towns or cities; anecdotes and inquiries connected with the regulations of prisons, hospitals, or lunatic receptacles; nay, the very police reports of a common newspaper—as relative to matters of reality, have always excited a degree of interest in my mind, which cannot be produced by the best-invented tale of fiction. Because I believe, therefore, that to persons of a temper like my own, the reading of that which I have to relate will afford very high gratification;—and because I know also, that what I describe can do mischief to no one, while it may prevent the symptoms and details of a very rare consummation from being lost; for these reasons I am desirous, as far as a very limited education will permit me, to write a plain history of the strange fortunes and miseries to which, during the last twelve months, I have been subjected.
I have stated already, that I have been hanged and am alive. I can gain nothing now by misrepresentation—I was GUILTY of the act for which I suffered. There are individuals of respectability whom my conduct already has disgraced, and I will not revive their shame and grief by publishing my name. But it stands in the list of capital convictions in the Old Bailey Calendar for the Winter Sessions of 18—
Hodges, Printer (from the late J. Pitt’s) Wholesale Toy Warehouse, 31, Dudley Street, 7 Dials.
THE LIVERPOOL TRAGEDY.
Showing how a Father and Mother barbarously Murdered their own Son.
A few days ago a sea-faring man, who had just returned to England after an absence of thirty years in the East Indies, called at a lodging-house, in Liverpool, for sailors, and asked for supper and a bed; the landlord and landlady were elderly people, and apparently poor. The young man entered into conversation with them, invited them to partake of his cheer, asked many questions about themselves and their family, and particularly of a son who had gone to sea when a boy, and whom they had long given over as dead. At night the landlady shewed him to his room, and when she was leaving him he put a large purse of gold into her hand, and desired her to take care of it till the morning, pressed her affectionately by the hand, and bade her good night. She returned to her husband and shewed him the accursed gold: for its sake they mutually agreed to murder the traveller in his sleep.
In the dead of the night, when all was still, the old couple silently creaped into the bed room of their sleeping guest, all was quiet: the landlady approached the bedside, and then cut his throat, severed his head from his body; the old man, upwards of seventy years of age, holding the candle. They put a washing-tub under the bed to catch his blood. And then ransacking the boxes of the murdered man they found more gold, and many handsome and costly articles, the produce of the East Indies, together, with what proved afterwards, to be a marriage certificate.
In the morning, early, came a handsome and elegantly dressed lady and asked, in a joyous tone, for the traveller who had arrived the night before. The old people seemed greatly confused, but said he had risen early and gone away. “Impossible!” said the lady, and bid them go to his bed-room and seek him, adding, “you will be sure to know him as he has a mole on his left arm in the shape of a strawberry. Besides, ’tis your long lost son who has just returned from the East Indies, and I am his wife, and the daughter of a rich planter long settled and very wealthy. Your son has come to make you both happy in the evening of your days, and he resolved to lodge with you one night as a stranger, that he might see you unknown, and judge of your conduct to wayfaring mariners.”
The old couple went up stairs to examine the corpse, and they found the strawberry mark on its arm, and they then knew that they had murdered their own son, they were seized with horror, and each taking a loaded pistol blew out each other’s brains.
Printed by J. Catnach—Sold by Marshall Bristol. Just Published—A Variety of Children’s Books, Battledores, Lotteries, and a quantity of popular Songs, set to Music. Cards, &c., Printed cheap.
THE MASSACRE
OF THE WHOLE OF THE
PASSENGERS AND PART OF THE CREW
OF THE SEA HORSE,
On her Homeward Passage from Sydney, and the Plunder of 18,000 ounces of Gold by the Murderers.
We have just received intelligence of one of the most daring cases of plunder and wholesale murder on the high seas that it is our duty to make public for many years. It appears that the crew and thirteen passengers of the ill-fated ship, the Sea Horse, some of whom had been seeking to better their condition by toiling at the diggings of Ballarat, Bendigo, and the several numerous diggings of the surrounding country, whilst others had gained a respectable position in life by mercantile and other pursuits, all returning light-hearted and elated by their good success to the land of their birth, and to look on the dear faces, and gladden the hearts of the dear ones they had left at home, but whom they were doomed never to meet no more on earth. Among the crew was a Spaniard known by the name of Digo Salvesata, and three others, who were tempted by a love of gold to gain possession of the valuable cargo, to do which, they conceived the horrid idea of putting the whole of the passengers and that part of the crew who would not join them to death. The following are the facts of this demon-like outrage:—It appears that the Sarah Ann, of North Shields, on her passage home, was driven by the gales into the German ocean, and it was in sight of the white cliffs of Old England that these horrible murders were committed. As the Sarah Ann was laying at anchor on the morning of the 12th, at day break they saw through the fog the ill-fated vessel, and not seeing any one on deck they hailed her, and on receiving no answer a boat was immediately lowered, and they went on board, and on getting below a shocking sight met their gaze, with one exception the whole of the passengers and the remainder of the crew were in their berths stiff and cold, with their throats cut, and otherwise dreadfully disfigured. One poor man had a piece of dirty sheet tied tightly round his throat, and about eight inches of it stuffed tightly into his mouth. On this being removed, there was a large wound in the throat four inches in extent from right to left; there were five incisors on the right side ending in one deep one on the left. The windpipe was cut through and the muscles of the neck on the left side; the forehead was contused and scratched. The hair was covered with blood. On the back part of the right hand there were several scratches. Most of the victims were more or less mutilated. On going to the Captain’s cabin another shocking sight presented itself, he was laying completely hacked to pieces, his tongue was completely cut out at the root, and his entrails strewed on the cabin floor, showing that there had been a terrible struggle; it appears from the statement of a man who had stowed in the hold to escape the slaughter, that the second mate, who is one of the murderers, treated the passengers and the rest of the crew with some grog in which some laudnum was mixed, which rendered them senseless, and while in СКАЧАТЬ