ury, many a criminal, far less
notable or individual than Charley Peace, finds his or her place in that
great record of the past achievements of our countrymen. Room has
been denied to perhaps the greatest and most naturally gifted criminal
England has produced, one whose character is all the more remarkable for
its modesty, its entire freedom from that vanity and vaingloriousness
so common among his class.

The only possible reason that can be suggested for so singular an
omission is the fact that in the strict order of alphabetical succession
the biography of Charles Peace would have followed immediately on that
of George Peabody. It may have been thought that the contrast was too
glaring, that even the exigencies of national biography had no right
to make the philanthropist Peabody rub shoulders with man's constant
enemy, Peace. To the memory of Peace these few pages can make but
poor amends for the supreme injustice, but, by giving a particular and
authentic account of his career, they may serve as material for
the correction of this grave omission should remorse overtake those
responsible for so undeserved a slur on one of the most unruly of
England's famous sons.

From the literary point of view Peace was unfortunate even in the hour
of his notoriety. In the very year of his trial and execution, the
Annual Register, seized with a fit of respectability from which it
has never recovered, announced that "the appetite for the strange and
marvellous" having considerably abated since the year 1757 when the
Register was first published, its "Chronicle," hitherto a rich mine of
extraordinary and sensational occurrences, would become henceforth a
mere diary of important events. Simultaneously with the curtailment
of its "Chronicle," it ceased to give those excellent summaries of
celebrated trials which for many years had been a feature of its
volumes. The question whether "the appetite for the strange and
marvellous" has abated in an appreciable degree with the passing of time
and is not perhaps keener than it ever was, is a debatable one. But
it is undeniable that the present volumes of the Annual Register have
fallen away dismally from the variety and human interest of their
predecessors. Of the trial and execution of Peace the volume for 1879
gives but the barest record.

Charles Peace was not born of criminal parents. His father, John
Peace, began work as a collier at Burton-on-Trent. Losing his leg in an
accident,