llads_,[71] and it is certain that
Borrow must often have met Thurtell, that is to say looked at him from a
distance, in some of the scenes of prize-fighting which both affected,
Borrow merely as a youthful spectator, Thurtell as a reckless backer of
one or other combatant. Thurtell's father was an alderman of Norwich
living in a good house on the Ipswich Road when the son's name rang
through England as that of a murderer. The father was born in 1765 and
died in 1846. Four years after his son John was hanged he was elected
Mayor of Norwich, in recognition of his violent ultra-Whig or blue and
white political opinions. He had been nominated as mayor both in 1818
and 1820, but it was perhaps the extraordinary 'advertisement' of his
son's shameful death that gave the citizens of Norwich the necessary
enthusiasm to elect Alderman Thurtell as mayor in 1828. It was in those
oligarchical days a not unnatural fashion to be against the Government.
The feast at the Guildhall on this occasion was attended by four hundred
and sixty guests. A year before John Thurtell was hanged, in 1823, his
father moved a violent political resolution in Norwich, but was
out-Heroded by Cobbett, who moved a much more extreme one over his head
and carried it by an immense majority. It was a brutal time, and there
cannot be a doubt but that Alderman Thurtell, while busy setting the
world straight, failed to bring up his family very well. John, as we
shall see, was hanged; Thomas, another brother, was associated with him
in many disgraceful transactions; while a third brother, George, also a
subscriber, by the way, to Borrow's _Romantic Ballads_, who was a
landscape gardener at Eaton, died in prison in 1848 under sentence for
theft. Apart from a rather riotous and bad bringing up, which may be
pleaded in extenuation, it is not possible to waste much sympathy over
John Thurtell. He had thoroughly disgraced himself in Norwich before he
removed to London. There he got further and further into difficulties,
and one of the many publications which arose out of his trial and
execution was devoted to pointing the moral of the evils of
gambling.[72] It was bad luck at cards, and the loss of much money to
William Weare, who seems to have been an exceedingly vile person, that
led to the murder. Thurtell had a friend named Probert who lived in a
quiet cottage in a byway of Hertfordshire--Gill's Hill, near Elstree. He
suggested to Weare in a friendly way that they sh