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CHAPTER XVI 



Capital punishments — Crimes of every description that were punishable 

 by death — Numbers at every assize left for execution — Hanks and 

 the two Cribbs for horse stealing — Sheep stealers — The new drop — 

 Baron Garrow — A hanging judge — John Thompson at Maidstone 

 — Instance of superstitious belief in the charm of the dead hand 

 • — Mislaid death-warrant found, and years after sentence woman 

 taken from wash-tub and hung. 



It is almost impossible to understand at the present 

 time the blood-thirstiness of the law in respect to 

 capital punishment, or the sentence to death. A 

 large number of crimes, now considered com- 

 paratively frivolous, for which short terms of im- 

 prisonment are deemed sufficiently deterrent, were 

 then punished with death. I perfectly remember 

 when a boy hearing that dreadful sentence being 

 pronounced against a young man named Saunders 

 for a burglary with violence, but nothing out of the 

 common run of such offences, and he underwent the 

 extreme penalty of the law. My father's residence 

 was next to the old Bucks County Prison, in the town 

 of Aylesbury, and in front of this gaol were the 

 Courts of Justice, and I had frequent opportunities of 

 hearing trials at the assizes, and oftentimes, as was 

 then the custom, of visiting prisoners under sentence 

 of death. I recollect on one occasion seeing five 

 men who had been sentenced to death at that 



