ion is made in the books, magazines, and newspapers of
that period, of the bodies of malefactors conveyed after execution to
Blackheath, Finchley, and Kennington Commons, or Hounslow Heath, for
the purpose of being there permanently suspended. In those days the
approach to London on all sides seems to have lain through serried
files of gibbets, growing closer and more thronged as the distance
from the city diminished, till they and their occupants arranged
themselves in rows of ghastly and grinning sentinels along both sides
of the principal avenues."

This picture is not over-coloured; and it is to the following occurrence
in the main Fulham Road that the removal of these offensive exhibitions
is to be attributed. Two or three fashionable parsons, who had
sacrificed superabundantly to the jolly god at Fulham, returning to
London, where they desired to arrive quickly, had intellect enough to
discover that the driver of their post-chaise did not make his horses
proceed at a pace equal to their wishes, and, after in vain urging him to
more speed, one of them declared that, if he did not use his whip with
better effect, he should be made an example of for the public benefit,
and hanged up at the first gibbet. The correctness of the old saying,
that "when the head is hot the hand is ready," was soon verified by the
postboy being desired to stop at the gibbet opposite Walnut-tree Walk,
which order, unluckily for himself, he obeyed, instead of proceeding at a
quicker pace. Out sprung the inmates of his chaise; they seized him,
bound him hand and foot, and throwing a rope, which they had fastened
round his body, over the gibbet, he soon found himself, in spite of his
cries and entreaties, elevated in air beside the tarred remains of the
Chelsea pensioner.

The reverend perpetrators of the deed drove off, leaving the luckless
postboy to protest, loudly and vainly, to "the dull, cold ear of death,"
against the loathsome companionship. When the first market-gardener's
cart passed by, most lustily did he call for help; but every effort to
get free only tended to prolong his suspense. What could the carters and
other early travellers imagine upon hearing shouts proceeding from the
gibbet, but that the identical murderer of Mr. Knight had by some miracle
come to life, and now called out, "Stop! stop!" with the intention of
robbing and murdering them also? And they, feeling that supernatural
od