Wilkinson, of Clerkenwell, having had
some words with Hannah Hyfield, and requiring satisfaction, do
invite her to meet me on the stage and box with me for three
guineas, each woman holding half-a-crown in each hand, and the
first woman that drops her money to lose the battle" (this was
to prevent scratching). The acceptance ran, "I, Hannah Hyfield,
of Newgate Market, hearing of the resoluteness of Elizabeth
Wilkinson, will not fail, God willing, to give her more blows
than words, desiring home blows and from her no favour."

The Life of MATTHIAS BRINSDEN, a Murderer

Though all offences against the laws of God and the land are highly
criminal in themselves, as well as fatal in their consequences, yet
there is certainly some degree in guilt; and petty thieveries and crimes
of a like nature seem to fall very short in comparison of the atrocious
guilt of murder and the imbrueing one's hands in blood, more especially
when a crime of so deep a dye in itself is heightened by aggravating
circumstances.

Matthias Brinsden, who is to be the subject of our present narration,
was a man in tolerable circumstances at the time the misfortune happened
to him for which he died. He had several children by his wife whom he
murdered, and with whom he had lived in great uneasiness for a long
time. The deceased Mrs. Brinsden was a woman of a great spirit, much
addicted to company and not a little to drinking. This had occasioned
many quarrels between her and her husband on the score of those
extravagancies she was guilty of, Mr. Brinsden thinking it hard that she
should squander away his money when he had a large family, and scarce
knew how to maintain it.

Their quarrels frequently rose to such a height as to alarm the
neighbourhood, the man being of a cruel, and the woman of an obstinate
temper, and it seemed rather a wonder that the murder had not ensued
before than that it happened when it did, they seldom falling out and
fighting without drawing blood, or having some grievous accident or
other happening therefrom. Once he burnt her arms with a red-hot iron,
and but a week before her death he ran a great pair of scissors into her
skull, which covered her with blood, and made him and all who saw her
think he had murdered her then. But after bleeding prodigiously she came
a little to herself, and on the application of proper remedies
recovered. Brinsden, in the