inioned. On each side of the carts rode public
officers, the sheriffs, city marshals, the ordinary of Newgate, and
others. I asked a bystander where they were going and what was to be
done to them, for I did not know at the time that I was near Tyburn.

"Why, of course, they are all going to be hung," was his reply. "We are
pretty well accustomed to such sights about here."

"Are they all murderers?" I asked, thinking, perhaps, that they were a
gang of pirates.

"No--oh no!" said my friend. "They are mostly guilty of robbery,
though. You will hear what they have to say for themselves before they
are turned off; I will learn for you, if you have a curiosity to know."

He went away, and soon returned with a paper on which were written the
names of the malefactors and their crimes. One had stolen some wearing
apparel; another had robbed a gentleman of his watch on the highway; a
third had purloined some silks and ribbons from a shop, and so on. None
of the crimes, that I remember, were attended with violence, and most of
the criminals were mere lads, from seventeen to twenty years of age, and
only one or two above it. I remarked this to my companion.

"Yes," he observed. "The older ones are too knowing to be caught."

The poor lads seemed terribly agitated and cast down at their
approaching fate, and shed abundance of tears. One after the other was
led up to the fatal drop and cast off. I could not stop to see the end,
but hurried away. I had seen hundreds of my fellow-creatures die, but I
hoped that I might never again see any put to death as these were.

After this I went down to Chatham to see how the ship was getting on,
and then returned to London. I found the city in a complete state of
uproar and confusion. It was on a Friday, the 2nd of June, when Tom and
I made our way towards the Houses of Parliament, for I had heard that
Lord George Gordon was going with a large body of people to present a
protest against the repeal of any of the penal laws against the Roman
Catholics. I wanted to see the fun. There must have been twenty
thousand people at least, who arrived in three different bodies before
the Houses of Parliament. Here they behaved very orderly, and dispersed
after being addressed by some of the magistrates; but the mob in other
places broke out into all sorts of excesses, and as we went home we
found them busily employed in demolishing a Romish Chapel in Duke
Street, near Lincoln's Inn