g a man,
James Burton, at Durham, who murdered his young wife, aged only 18, from
jealousy. On this occasion the man fainted on the scaffold, and got
entangled with the rope under his arm, and Marwood had to lift him in his
arms to get him disentangled, and then drop the unconscious man down--a
painful scene. {155} This was only about a fortnight before his own
death. Among his last executions was that of Charles Peace, a notorious
burglar, who shot a man at Banner Cross, near Sheffield. In May, 1882,
he went to Dublin to execute the perpetrators of the Phoenix Park
murders, three Fenians, who shot Lord E. Cavendish, and his secretary,
Mr. Burke. In his last illness, which was short, it was suspected that
his health had been in some way injured through Fenian agency, and a post
mortem examination was held by order of the Home Secretary, but a verdict
was returned of "natural death." Mr. Henry Sharp, Saddler, of the Bull
Ring, was one of the jury on this occasion.

Marwood's wife was, for some years, ignorant of her husband's official
occupation, as he generally accounted for his absence by saying that he
had to go away to settle some legal question. Visiting the
slaughter-house of a neighbouring butcher, he observed to him that he
could "do" for men as the butcher did for cattle, because the men whom he
had to deal with were themselves "beasts."

Some of Marwood's official paraphernalia are still preserved at the
Portland Arms Inn, Portland Street, Lincoln, where he generally stayed at
an execution. The late Mr. Charles Chicken, who resided in Foundry
Street, Horncastle, had a rope 1.25-in. thick, given him by Marwood, with
which he had hanged six or seven criminals. Other ropes used by him are
in Madam Tussaud's exhibition, in Baker Street, London, where there is
also a bust of himself. He used to exhibit his ropes to foreign
horse-dealers, who attended the great August Fair at Horncastle, at a
charge of 6d. each. There was recently a portrait of Marwood, in
crayons, in a barber's shop, 29, Bridge Street, drawn by J. S. Lill,
postman, but this has now disappeared. Marwood's favourite dog, Nero,
and other effects were sold by auction, after his death in 1883, by Mr.
W. B. Parish.

* * * * *

Other Horncastrians whose lives, or circumstances, were more or less
exceptional, may be here also briefly noticed.

HENRY TURNER.

Mr. Henry Turner, about the middle of the 1