courage and effrontery of his class. After he
mounted the ladder, he talked half an hour with
the hangman, then threw himself resolutely off,
and died in a moment.

He was only thirty-three, but in that time he
had crammed as much mischief as a man
well could. His body lay in state all that day
at the Blue Boar at Castle-gate, and the next
morning was buried in St. George's churchyard
within Fishergate-postern. The next evening
the surgeons dug up the body for dissection,
and removed it to a garden. The mob, with a
sympathy so often misplaced, was furious, and
carried the corpse on a board covered with straw
in triumph through the streets of York; they
then strewed the coffin with lime, replaced the
body, and interred it in the old place.

II. HALF-HANGED SMITH.

Naval officers, who have been saved from
drowning at the last moment, have recorded
their impressions of their feelings, as they sank
down fathoms deep into a liquid grave; at
that moment, we are told, the pressure on the
brain sometimes seems to wake the memory into
supernatural activity, and every small detail of
past life defiles in one instant before the
eyes. Men, after weeks of cannibalism, have
described the miseries that drove them to that
horrible extremity, and the remorse that
followed the act. After the Black Hole business
at Calcutta, there was one reflective man who
survived to set down in writing the horrible
phenomena of excessive and prolonged thirst.
Not many philosophers, however, have escaped
from the gallows to tell us the feelings that follow
hanging; of the few that have, Half-Hanged
Smith's experiences are the most curious.

Smith was the misguided son of a farmer at
Malton, Yorkshire. He was bound apprentice
to a packer in London, and afterwards went on
board a man-of-war, and distinguished himself
in Sir George Rooks's gallant attack on the
French and Spanish galleons at Vigo in 1702.
He then enlisted in the Guards, became thievish
and dissolute, and turned house-breaker and
highwayman. On the 5th of December, 1705,
he was arraigned on four different indictments,
convicted on two, and sentenced to death.

On the 24th, he rode to Tyburn, performed his
devotions, and was hung in the usual way. When
he had been suspended fully fifteen minutes,
there was a murmur in the distant crowd, that
gradually grew into an excited shout of
"Reprieve, reprieve!'' The mob divided into two
parts, a horseman, waving a broad paper, dashed
up to the gibbet: Smith was reprieved. The
mob instantly cut the rope, caught the man in
their arms, bore him into the nearest house,
and bled him till he slowly recovered.

When he perfectly regained his senses, he
was asked what were his feelings at the
time of execution, to which he replied:
"That when he was turned off, he, for some
time, was sensible of very great pain,
occasioned by the weight of his body, and felt his
spirits in a strange commotion, violently pressing
upwards; that having forced Iheir way to
his head, he, as it were, saw a great blaze, or
glaring light, which seemed to go out at his eyes
with a flash, and then he lost all sense of pain.
That after he was cut down, and began to come
to himself, the blood and spirits, forcing themselves
into their former channels, put him, by a
sort of pricking or shooting, to such intolerable
pain that he could have wished those hanged
who had cut him down."

After this narrow escape, Smith pleaded for
pardon, and was discharged. He was always
after known among the London thieves and
constables as "Half-Hanged Smith."

The old ties were, however, too strong; again
he got on the road, and was found tampering with
other people's doors. He was soon after again
tried at the Old Bailey for house-breaking, but
the jury being uncertain, and leaving it to the
twelve judges, Smith was eventually acquitted.
Fortune was never tired of rescuing this rogue,
surely born under a lucky star, for, at a third
trial, he obtained his liberty by the sudden death
of the prosecutor.

Such escapes were not very uncommon
before the new drop rendered death inevitable
when the bolt was once drawn. In 1740, a
man named Dewell, who had been hung, came
to life on the dissecting-table at Surgeons' Hall,
and in consideration of this was, on his recovery
only transported. There is an Edinburgh
story of an old woman who recovered, after
hanging, from the jolting of the cart that was
taking her to the churchyard. There was a thief
at Dublin, too, who was recovered after being
hung, and who had the boundless audacity to
appear in the Ormond Quay Theatre the same
night, and hoarsely, but boastingly, report the
fact to the delighted "boys" in the gallery.

III.  THE PRESS-ROOM AT NEWGATE.

On the 1st of November, 1720, two
highwaymen, named Spiggott and Phillips, with three
companions, all in masks, stopped the Wendover
waggon, near Tyburn. The thieves tumbled the
boxes out of the waggon, carried off the
portmanteau of a Buckinghamshire gentleman,
knocked the waggoner down, and one of them,
who came on foot, rode off with a pack-horse
The portmanteau contained a gold
watch, twelve Holland shirts, two pairs of laced
ruffles, four turnovers, two cambric bosoms,
two pair of stockings, a hat, a periwig, and
twelve guineas. A Mr. Merrit, and some officers
instantly assisted the disconsolate carrier, and
hid themselves in an inn in the Broadway,
Westminster, where the highwaymen were in
the habit of coming to hire horses. Spiggott,
Phillips, and a third man came into the stable
for horses about ten o'clock in the morning.
Merrit and his men instantly closed on them.
A man named Rowlet fell on Spiggott, tripped
up his heels, and scuffled with him for nearly
half an hour. The highwaymen fired two pistols,
and shot Rowlet through the left shoulder.
Spiggott was trying to draw his sword, and
had got it half out. A constable, named