The efforts to secure a respite for Mrs. Pearcey, the
Kentish Town murderess, on the ground of her liability to epileptic attacks, failed, Mr. Matthews, who as regards the administra- tion of justice has been an excellent Home Secretary, seeing no excuse in facts which were equally true of Mahommed and Napoleir n. The fanatics of life, who must regard Providence as horribly cruel for killing everybody, had no voting pressure to threaten, for the populace was deeply incensed against the criminal. She was executed on Tuesday, and in the terrible cold of that morning a great crowd gathered round the Old Bailey, to cheer lustily as the black flag went up, and to con- gratulate each other that justice had been done. tip to a late moment, Mrs. Pearcey, whose nerve to the last was unshaken, stoutly though coldly maintained her innocence, and amused herself by telling her solicitor a wild romance about her having, at sixteen, contracted a secret marriage in a drawing-room in Piccadilly, with some one who now lives " in Madrid." As the last moment approached, however, she admitted to the chaplain that "the sentence was a just one, though the evidence,—or much of the evidence,—was false," that is, inaccurate, a favourite idea of criminals, who think it unjust to condemn them for poisoning with strychnine, when in fact they have used powdered glass. It is said that the wretched woman has written a letter completely exonerating her para- mour, whom she wished to see on the day before her death, but who maintained the admirable consistency of his character by refusing to go.
