so
cheaply.

So great was the concourse of people to visit the house in Camberwell
Lane, where Greenacre murdered Hannah Brown, in 1837, that it was found
necessary to station a strong detachment of police on the spot. The crowd
was so eager to obtain a relic of the house of this atrocious criminal,
that the police were obliged to employ force to prevent the tables and
chairs, and even the doors, from being carried away.

In earlier times, a singular superstition was attached to the hand of a
criminal who had suffered execution. It was thought that by merely rubbing
the dead hand on the body, the patient afflicted with the king's evil
would be instantly cured. The executioner at Newgate formerly derived no
inconsiderable revenue from this foolish practice. The possession of the
hand was thought to be of still greater efficacy in the cure of diseases
and the prevention of misfortunes. In the time of Charles II., as much as
ten guineas was thought a small price for one of these disgusting relics.

When the maniac, Thom, or Courtenay, was shot, in the spring of 1838, the
relic-hunters were immediately in motion to obtain a memento of so
extraordinary an individual. His long black beard and hair, which were cut
off by the surgeons, fell into the hands of his disciples, by whom they
were treasured with the utmost reverence. A lock of his hair commanded a
great price, not only amongst his followers, but among the more wealthy
inhabitants of Canterbury and its neighbourhood. The tree against which he
fell when he was shot, was stripped of all its bark by the curious; while
a letter, with his signature to it, was paid for in gold coins; and his
favourite horse became as celebrated as its master. Parties of ladies and
gentlemen went to Boughton from a distance of a hundred and fifty miles,
to visit the scene of that fatal affray, and stroke on the back the horse
of the "mad knight of Malta." If a strict watch had not been kept over his
grave for months, the body would have been disinterred, and the bones
carried away as memorials.

Among the Chinese no relics are more valued than the _boots_ which have
been worn by an upright magistrate. In Davis's interesting description of
the empire of China, we are informed, that whenever a judge of unusual
integrity resigns his situation, the people all congregate to do him
honour. If he leaves the city where he has presided, the crowd accompany
him from his residence to the gates, where