above stairs the house was crowded with
lodgers, to all of whom any sort of infection
would have proved the more disastrous from
living next door, as it were, to Death. It is
terrible to reflect that every decease happening
among the myriads of the population a little
lower in circumstances than this baker, deals
around it its proportion of destruction to
the living, from the same causes. True,
that had it been impossible to retain the
body where death occurred—as chances when
several persons live in the same room—it
would have been removed. But where.—The
coroner and jury would have had to view it
in the tap-room of a public-house.

There is another objection—all-powerful in
the eyes of a lawyer. He recognises as a
first necessity that the jurors should have no
opportunity of communicating with witnesses,
except when before the Court. But here the
melancholy honours of the baker's shop and
parlour were performed by the two persons
from whose evidence the cause of death was
to be chiefly elicited;—the journeyman and a
female relative of the deceased, who were in
the house when the last blows were dealt,
and when the woman died. They received
the fifteen jurymen who were presently to
judge of their testimony; and there was
nothing but the strong sense of propriety
which actuated these gentlemen on the
present occasion, to prevent the witnesses from
telling their own story privately in their
own way, to any one or half dozen of the
inquest, and thus to give a premature bent
to opinions, the materials for forming which,
ought to be strictly reserved for the public
Court. Many examples can be supplied in
illustration of this evil. We select one:—
Some years ago, an old woman in the most
wretched part of Westminster, was found
dead in her bed—strangled. When the
Coroner and jury went to view the body, they
were ushered by a young female—a relative
—who lived with the deceased. She
explained there and then all about the death.
When the Court re-assembled, she was—
chiefly, it was understood, in consequence of
what had previously passed—examined as
first and principal witness, and upon her
evidence, the verdict arrived at, was ' Temporary
insanity.' The case, however, subsequently
passed through more formal judicial ordeals,
and the result was, that the coroner's prime
witness was hanged for the murder of the
old woman. We must have it distinctly
understood that not the faintest shade of
parallel exists between the two cases. We
bring them together solely to illustrate the
evils of a system.

On passing into the baker's parlour, dumb
witnesses presented themselves, which—
properly or improperly—must have had their
effect on the promoters of the inquiry. The
piano indicated hours formerly spent, and
thoughts once indulged, which, when imagined
by minds fresh from the appalling reality in
the squalid kitchen, must have excited new
throes of indignation and pity. One portrait
was that of the bruised and crushed corpse
when living and young. Then she must have
been comely; now no feature could be
recognised as ever having been human. Then, she
was cleanly and neatly dressed, and, if the
pictured smile might be trusted, happy; now,
she lay amidst dirt, the victim of long, long ill-
usage and lingering misery, ended in
premature death. The other, was a likeness of
her husband. Had words of love ever passed
between the originals of those painted effigies?
Had they ever courted? It seemed that one
of the jurors was inwardly asking some such
question while gazing at the portraits, for he
was visibly affected.

We all at length made our way to the
' Two Spies ' in Whitehart Yard, Brydges
Street. The accommodation afforded was a
little more spacious than those of the Old
Drury; but the delegated Majesty of the
Crown had no dignity imparted to it from
the coroner's figure being brought out in
relief by a clothes-horse and table cloth
which were, during the inquiry, placed behind
him to serve as a fire-screen. Neither did
the case of stuffed birds, the sampler of
Moses in the bulrushes, the picture of the
licensed victuallers' school, or the portraits of
the rubicund host and of his 'good lady,'
tend to impress the minds of jury, witnesses,
or spectators, with that awe for the supremacy
of the Law which a court of justice is expected
to inspire.

The circumstances as detailed by the
witnesses are already familiar to the readers of
newspapers; but from the insecutive manner
in which the evidence was produced, it is
difficult to frame a coherent narrative. It all
tended to prove that the husband had for
several years exercised great harshness
towards his wife. That boxing her ears and
kicking her were among his 'habits.' On
the Friday previous to her decease, the
journeyman had been, as usual, ' bolted
down ' in the bake-house for the night,
(such, he said, being the custom in the trade)
and from eleven o'clock till three in the morning
he heard a great noise overhead as of two
persons quarrelling, and of one person dragging
the other across the room. There were
cries of distress from the deceased woman.
Another witness—a second cousin of the wife
—called on Saturday afternoon. She found
the wife in a pitiable state from ill-usage
and want of rest. Her left ear and all that
part of the head was much bruised. There
were cuts, and the hair was matted with
congealed blood. The husband was told how
much she was injured, but he did not appear
to take any notice of it. A trait of the dread
in which the woman lived of the man was here
mentioned; she asked the witness to ask her
husband to allow her to lie down. She dared
not prefer so reasonable a request herself;
although she had been up all the previous