“Some four years ago, sir, I murdered a young woman. She was the one I kept company with. I was jealous. I threw her into the New River. Sir, I have never had a happy moment since I committed the deed. My life is a burthen to me; and I would gladly terminate it upon the scaffold.”
“Are you quite sure you are telling me the truth?” the chaplain asks.
“The truth, sir—God’s truth. If I am not, may I,” etc.
He detailed the circumstances of the murder with so much circumstantiality that it was thought advisable to take all down in writing, so as to make full inquiry; but both governor and chaplain were “fully convinced that the prisoner had fabricated the whole story in the hopes of getting himself removed to Newgate.” No sort of corroboration was obtained outside, of course, and by and by the matter dropped. I have merely quoted this as a sequel and commentary upon the conduct of Edwards, proving that he was clearly an impostor from first to last.
But not long after this a fatal case occurred. The suicide was a man long suspected of being wrong in his head. Early one morning he was found hanging to the cross beam of his loom, from the framework of which he had jumped, and thereby dislocated his neck. It appeared on inquiry, that the mental derangement of which this man showed symptoms had been kept quite a secret from the governor and medical officer; so also had his frequent requests to see the chaplain; and the officer in charge of the ward was very properly suspended from duty “for culpable neglect, as probably, with timely interference, the prisoner’s life might have been saved.” But whether it might or might not, the news of his death spread rapidly through the prison, and from having occurred but rarely, real or feigned suicides became again quite the fashion. The gossip of an incautious matron took the intelligence first into the female pentagon. That very evening, after the women had been locked up, one yelled to another in the next cell that she meant to hang herself directly, and had a rope concealed, which she dared any one to discover. This woman was made safe at once; but next morning another was found tied up by her apron to the pegs of the clothes rack behind her cell door. She had failed to come out with the rest to wash, and as the officers approached to examine her cell they heard a noise of groaning within. A sort of feeble barricade had been made by the prisoner, with her mattress and pillows, to prevent entrance; but the door was easily opened, and behind it hung Hannah Groats by the neck, to one peg, while she carefully kept herself from harm by holding on by her hands to the two pegs adjoining. She was instantly taken down, when it was seen that she had not sustained the slightest damage. She had, of course, chosen her time just when she knew the cell doors were about to be opened, and she was sure to be quickly discovered.