IN BOHEMIA 25 



the year 1 868, when an Act of Parliament ordered 

 them to be conducted in private. It was, indeed, 

 until comparatively recent times considered essen- 

 tial that executions, like trials, should be public, 

 and be carried out in a manner to impress evil-doers. 

 But the methods of execution were unseemly — 

 as delineated in Hogarth's well-known etching of 

 the Execution of the Idle Apprentice — and were 

 ineffectual in reducing the bulk of crime. The 

 many scandals attending public hangings led to an 

 attempt to alter the law in 1841, although many 

 protests had been made long before, notably those 

 of Fielding. No doubt, the most forcible and 

 effectual were those of Charles Dickens in his 

 letters to the Times, written after mixing with 

 the crowd gathered to witness the execution of 

 the Mannings at Horsemonger Lane Gaol in 1849. 

 At the period I am now referring to, the execution 

 of prisoners by the half-dozen or more was, said 

 Mr. Tegetmeier, common at the Old Bailey. 

 " Anxious to see the effect," he wrote, " of such 

 a sight on the assembled multitude, I went early 

 one morning to a coffee-shop opposite the debtors' 

 door where the executions took place, being 

 attracted by the invitation of the owner to secure 

 a seat on the first floor on the moderate terms of 

 (to use his own vernacular) 'a bob a nob.' " The 

 narrative ends here, but the old man told me 

 personally that the scene in the Old Bailey was 

 too horrible for description. A firm in which I 



