Part 11

“Very much vexed at my disappointment, I determined to make the best of my way to Bristol; and as I was disappointed at Plymouth, resolved to destroy Bristol entirely and all the shipping. I arrived at Bristol on Monday, the 13th of January, and spent the whole of Tuesday, the 14th, in acquainting myself with the shipping, upon which I intended to make the first attempt, supposing, if I had any success, they would communicate the flames to the whole town. About midnight I proceeded with all my materials towards the quay. I got on board the _Savannah la Mar_, a Jamaicaman, and placed a quantity of turpentine, rosin, pitch, &c., round the mizen mast, to which I set fire. I then went on board the _La Fame_, another Jamaicaman, which lay at a little distance, in which I also placed a like quantity of combustible matter, and set fire to it. I then proceeded to another part of the quay, and got on board the _Hibernia_, an Irish trader, in which I placed a like quantity of inflammable materials, and a quart bottle of spirits of turpentine, to which I also set fire. I then broke open a warehouse belonging to a druggist, in Cypher Lane, supposing there were large quantities of oils and spirits of different kinds, which would occasion a dreadful fire in that part of the town. I set fire to a box in the middle of the warehouse, which I supposed would soon communicate to all parts of it. Having, as I thought, effected my business very complete, I walked almost four miles out of town, and stayed till near eight o’clock in the morning; but not perceiving anything of the fire, I returned to see whether it had taken effect, which I could do without suspicion, as I supposed people would see that I had just come into town. I went to the quay, where I observed one vessel, the _Savannah la Mar_, was much burnt; but the fire in the other two had gone out without taking effect. I also found I had miscarried in Cypher Lane, where the box of combustible matter had burnt out without doing any damage, which I thought very extraordinary, as I made sure of burning all that part of the town by this means. I was mostly vexed at the miscarriage among the shipping, as I found a strict watch was to be kept up in future which rendered all future attempts upon them impracticable; I thought of one scheme, however, which I had some hopes of succeeding in. Observing a vast number of barrels of oil upon the quay, situated very near a line of ships, I contrived the ensuing night to convey a large quantity of combustible materials amongst them, to which I set fire, hoping by this means to burn all the ships that lay near: but herein also I found myself disappointed; my matches went out without effecting the intended mischief, though greatly to my mortification. About two o’clock the next morning I proceeded to my new business, having the evening before fixed upon a number of warehouses, which I supposed, as it was now Sunday morning, would not be frequented, and therefore little danger of the fire being discovered till it had taken proper effect. I laid matches in upwards of a dozen warehouses, which I supposed would take fire before daylight, and from their number and situation be impossible to be got under, so that I promised myself I had accomplished the destruction of the whole town, or at least that part of it which was of most consequence. With this persuasion I left Bristol about six o’clock in the morning, and walked about three miles out of town, when turning round, I thought the whole element was in flames, so dreadful was the appearance it had at that distance, which tempted me to return to be an eyewitness of the destruction I had wrought. On my nearer approach the flames seemed to abate; but I found the whole city in consternation and terror; though my scheme had not answered my full intention. My matches had only taken effect in Quay Lane among the warehouses of Mr. Browne, bookseller, which occasioned a dreadful fire in that part of the town: in every other part I found my endeavours had failed. To compensate for this, I determined to make a fresh attempt on the Sunday night, and made every preparation for that purpose. Between one and two o’clock on Monday morning I set about this business, but was prevented by the vigilance of the watch raised by the inhabitants of the city, to patrol the streets, which obliged me to decline anything further that night. I made several fresh attempts the Monday and Tuesday nights following, but the patrol were too vigilant to allow me time to proceed. I therefore left Bristol, finding it impossible to complete my design.

“I now determined to make the best of my way to Paris, to acquaint Mr. Deane with my success, and I reached Calne, where observing a haberdasher’s shop, kept by one Mr. Lowe, I broke it open, and stole therefrom twenty pounds, some muslin, &c. It was to this little town that Mr. Lowe, whose shop I had broken open, and Mr. Dalby, keeper of Andover Bridewell, had both traced me. Mr. Lowe had got a description of my person from his wife, who observed me take particular notice of the shop, and concluded the next day that I had committed the burglary. Mr. Dalby had heard of my going through Andover, and finding I answered the description of the person advertised in the papers for setting fire to Portsmouth Dock, he set out in pursuit of me, and took me at this town, in whose custody Mr. Lowe found me on his arrival shortly after. I was taken before the Hon. Sir H. P. St. John, Knt., who committed me to Odiham Bridewell on suspicion of breaking open Mr. Lowe’s house; but Government having notice of my being in custody ordered me to the New Prison, Clerkenwell, to be examined before Sir John Fielding, relative to the fire at Portsmouth. Nothing appearing sufficiently strong against me to prove guilt in this particular, I was remanded back to New Prison, in order to be conveyed to Salisbury to take my trial for breaking open Mr. Lowe’s house; but my being decoyed into the trap set for me by Mr. Baldwin, to whom I disclosed the whole of my proceedings against Government, has brought me a death which the enormity of my crime deserves; but which, through sincere repentance, I hope will be forgiven as I forgive Mr. Baldwin and all the world.—James Aitken.”

A debate in Parliament on the subject of Jack the Painter and his offences led to a speech by Sir William Meredith against capital punishments, which was so remarkable for being uttered at that terrible penal period of our criminal jurisprudence, that I cannot refrain from inserting the whole of it here. The occasion was this:—On the 13th of May, 1777, the House of Commons sat in committee on a bill for the better securing and preserving the dockyards, magazines, ships, vessels, stores, warehouses, goods, and merchandizes, being the property of private persons within this kingdom.

Sir Charles Bunbury, M.P. for Suffolk, moved to the effect, that persons found guilty of offences against which the bill provided should not be punished with death.

Mr. Combe, of Earns Hill, Somerset, M.P. for Aldborough, Suffolk, thereupon thus expressed himself:—

“Whoever reads your statute book and sees how many crimes are punished with death, which are much less heinous than burning of ships, I am surprised any gentleman should it think not high time to put to death such dangerous and wicked incendiaries. It is true John the Painter was hanged for burning Portsmouth Dock, because there is an Act of Parliament that makes it death to burn royal docks: but there is no Act of Parliament to hang men for burning merchants’ ships or warehouses; and if John the Painter had burned all the ships and warehouses in Bristol, he would not have been hanged. And I think the example of death full as proper in one case as the other.”

The Right Hon. Sir Wm. Meredith, M.P. for Liverpool, thus eloquently replied to Mr. Combe:—

“I agree with my hon. friend that no greater crime can be committed than the wilfully setting fire to merchants’ ships, which may endanger not only lives and properties, but public safety. I should think this crime above all others fit to be punished with death, if I could suppose the infliction of death at all useful in the prevention of crimes. But, in subjects of this nature, we are to consider not what the individual is nor what he may have done, we are to consider only what is right for public example and private safety. Whether hanging ever did or can answer any good purpose, I doubt; but the cruel exhibition of every execution day is a proof that hanging carries no terror with it; and I am confident that every new sanguinary law operates as an encouragement to commit capital offences; for it is not the mode but the certainty of punishment that creates terror. What men know they must endure, they fear; but what they think they can escape, they despise. The multiplicity of our hanging laws has produced these two things, frequency of condemnation and frequency of pardons. As hope is the first and great spring of action, if it was so, that out of twenty convicts only one was to be pardoned, the thief would say, ‘Why may not I be that one?’ But since, as our laws are actually administered, not one in five is executed, the thief acts on the chance of five to one in his favour; he acts on a fair and reasonable presumption of indemnity: and I verily believe that the confident hope of indemnity is the cause of nineteen in twenty of the robberies that are committed. But if we look to the executions themselves, what example do they give? The thief dies either hardened or penitent. We are not to consider such reflections as occur to reasonable and good men, but such impressions as are made on the thoughtless, the desperate, and the wicked. These men look on the hardened villain with envy and admiration. All that animation and contempt of death with which heroes and martyrs inspire good men in a good cause, the abandoned villain feels in seeing a desperado, like himself, meet death with intrepidity. The penitent thief, on the other hand, often makes the sober villain think this way. Himself oppressed with poverty and want, he sees a man die with that penitence which promised pardon for his sins here and happiness hereafter: that he thinks, that by robbery, forgery, or murder, he can relieve all his wants; and if he be brought to justice the punishment will be short and trifling, and the reward eternal. Even in crimes which are seldom or never pardoned, death is no prevention. Housebreakers, forgers, and coiners, are sure to be hanged; yet housebreaking, forging, and coining, are the very crimes which are oftenest committed. Strange it is, that, in the case of blood, of which we ought to be most tender, we should still go on against reason and against experience, to make unavailing slaughter of our fellow creatures! A recent event has proved that policy will do what blood cannot do: I mean the late regulation of the coinage. Thirty years together men were continually hanged for coining; still it went on, but, on the new regulation of the gold coin, ceased. This event proves these two things: the efficacy of police and the inefficacy of hanging. But is it not very extraordinary that, since the regulation of the gold coin, an Act has passed making it treason to coin silver? But has it stopped the coining of silver? On the contrary, do not you hear of it more than ever? It seems as if the law and the crime bore the same date. I do not know what the hon. member thinks who brought in the bill; but perhaps some feelings may come across his own mind when he sees how many lives he is taking away for no purpose. Had it been fairly stated and specifically pointed out what the mischief in coining silver in the utmost extent is, that hanging bill might not have been so readily adopted: under the name of treason it found an easy passage. I, indeed, have always understood treason to be nothing less than some act or conspiracy against the life or honour of the king and the safety of the state; but what the king or state can suffer by my taking now and then a bad sixpence or a bad shilling I cannot imagine. By this nickname of treason, however, there lies at this moment in Newgate, under sentence to be burnt alive, a girl just turned of fourteen. At her master’s bidding she hid some whitewashed farthings behind her stays; on which the jury found her guilty as an accomplice with her master in the treason. The master was hanged last Wednesday, and the fagots all lay ready—no reprieve came till just as the cart was setting out—and the girl would have been burnt alive on the same day had it not been for the humane but casual interference of Lord Weymouth. Good God! Sir, are we taught to execrate the fires at Smithfield, and are we lighting them now to burn a poor harmless child for hiding a whitewashed farthing? And yet this barbarous sentence, which ought to make men shudder at the thought of shedding blood for such trivial causes, is brought as a reason for more hanging and burning. It was recommended to me not many days ago to bring in a bill to make it treason to coin copper as well as gold and silver. Yet in the formation of these sanguinary laws humanity, religion and policy are thrown out of the question. This one wise argument is always sufficient. If you hang for one fault, why not for another? If for stealing a sheep, why not a cow or a horse; if for a shilling, why not for a handkerchief worth eighteen pence; and so on? We therefore ought to oppose the increase of these new laws; the more, because every fresh one begets twenty others.

“When a member of Parliament brings in a new hanging law, he begins with mentioning some injury that may be done to private property, for which a man is not yet liable to be hanged, and then proposes the gallows as the specific infallible means of cure and prevention; but the bill in its progress often makes crimes capital that scarce deserve whipping. For instance, the shoplifting act was to prevent bankers and silversmiths, and other shops where there are commonly goods of great value, from being robbed; but it goes so far as to make it death to lift anything off a counter with an intent to steal. Under this act, Mary Jones was executed, whose case I shall just mention. It was at the time when press warrants were issued on the alarm about Falkland’s Islands. The woman’s husband was pressed, their goods seized for some debts of his, and she, with two small children, turned into the streets a-begging. ’Tis a circumstance not to be forgotten that she was very young (under nineteen), and most remarkably handsome. She went to a linendraper’s shop, took some coarse linen off the counter, and slipped it under her cloak; the shopman saw her, and she laid it down. For this she was hanged. Her defence was (I have the trial in my pocket), ‘That she had lived in credit, and wanted for nothing, till a press-gang came and stole her husband from her; but, since then, she had no bed to lie on, nothing to give her children to eat, and they were almost naked; and perhaps she might have done something wrong, for she hardly knew what she did.’ The parish officers testified the truth of this story; but it seems there had been a good deal of shoplifting about Ludgate; an example was thought necessary, and this woman was hanged for the comfort and satisfaction of some shopkeepers in Ludgate Street. When brought to receive sentence, she behaved in such a frantic manner, as proved her mind to be in a distracted and desponding state; and the child was sucking at her breast when she set out for Tyburn.

“Let us reflect a little on this woman’s fate. The poet says:—

“‘An honest man’s the noblest work of God.’

He might have said, with equal truth, that

“‘A beauteous woman’s the noblest work of God.’

“But for what cause was God’s creation robbed of this its noblest work? It was for no injury, but for a mere attempt to clothe two naked children by unlawful means. Compare this with what the State did, and what the law did. The State bereaved the woman of her husband, and the children of a father, who was all their support; the law deprived the woman of her life, and the children of their remaining parent, exposing them to every danger, insult, and merciless treatment that destitute and helpless orphans suffer. Take all the circumstances together, I do not believe that a fouler murder was ever committed against law than the murder of this woman by law. Some who hear me are perhaps blaming the judges, the jury, and the hangman; but neither judge, jury, nor hangman are to blame; they are but ministerial agents. The true hangman is the member of Parliament; he who frames the bloody laws is answerable for all the blood that is shed under it. But there is a further consideration still. Dying as these unhappy wretches often do, who knows what their future lot may be? Perhaps my honourable friend who moves this bill has not yet considered himself in the light of an executioner. No man has more humanity, no man a stronger sense of religion than himself: and I verily believe that at this moment he wishes as little success to his hanging law as I do. His nature must recoil at making himself the cause, not only of shedding the blood, but perhaps destroying the soul of his fellow-creature.

“But the wretches who die are not the only sufferers; there are more and greater objects still: I mean the surviving relations and friends. Who knows how many innocent children we may be dooming to ignominy and wretchedness? Who knows how many widows’ hearts we may break with grief, how many grey hairs of parents we may bring with sorrow to the grave?

“The Mosaic law ordained that for a sheep or an ox four or five-fold should be restored; and for robbing a house, double;—that is, one fold for reparation, the rest for example; and the forfeiture was greater, as the property was more exposed. If the thief came by night, it was lawful to kill him; but if he came by day, he was only to make restitution; and if he had nothing, he was to be sold for his theft. This is all that God required in felonies; nor can I find in history any sample of such laws as ours, except a code that was framed at Athens by Draco. He made every offence capital, upon this modern way of reasoning:—‘That petty crimes deserved death, and he knew nothing worse for the greatest.’ His laws, it is said, were not written with ink, but with blood; but they were of short duration, being all repealed by Solon, except one for murder.

“An attempt was made some years ago by my honourable friend, Sir Charles Bunbury, to repeal some of the most absurd and cruel of our capital laws. The bill passed this House, but was rejected by the Lords for this reason: ‘It was an innovation,’ they said, ‘and subversion of law.’ The very reverse is the truth. The hanging laws are themselves innovations. No less than three-and-thirty of them passed during the last reign. I believed I myself was the first person who checked the progress of them. When the great Alfred came to the throne, he found the kingdom overrun with robbers; but the silly expedient of hanging never came into his head. He instituted a police, which was to make every township answerable for the felonies committed in it. Thus property became the guardian of property; and all robbery was so effectually stopped, that (the historians tell us) in a very short time any man might travel through the kingdom unarmed with his purse in his hand.

“Treason, murder, rape, and burning a dwelling-house were all the crimes that were liable to be punished with death by our good old common law; and such was the tenderness, such the reluctance to shed blood, that if recompense could possibly be made, life was not to be touched. Treason being against the King, the remission of that crime was in the Crown. In case of murder itself, if compensation could be made, the next of kin might discharge the prosecution, which, if once discharged, could never be revived. If a ravisher could make the injured woman satisfaction, the law had no power over him; she might marry the man under the gallows if she pleased, and take him from the jaws of death to the lips of matrimony. But so fatally are we deviated from the benignity of our ancient laws, that there is now under sentence of death an unfortunate clergyman,[13] who made satisfaction for the injury he attempted; the satisfaction was accepted, and yet the acceptance of the satisfaction and the prosecution bear the same date.

“There does not occur to my thoughts a proposition more abhorrent from nature and from reason than that, in a matter of property, when restitution is made, blood should still be required. But in regard to our whole system of criminal law, and much more to our habits of thinking and reasoning upon it, there is a sentence of the great Roman orator which I wish those who hear me to remark, exhorting the Senate to put a stop to executions. He says:—‘_Nolite, Quirites, hanc sævitium diutius pati, quæ non modo tot cives atrocissimè sustulit, sed humanitatem ipsam ademit consuetudine incommodorum._’

“Having said so much on the general principles of our criminal laws, I have only a short word or two to add on the two propositions now before us: one, as moved by the honourable gentleman (Mr. Combe) to hang persons that wilfully set fire to ships; the other, moved as an amendment by my honourable friend (Sir Charles Bunbury), is to send such offenders to work seven years on the Thames.