the banking-house of Remington, Stephenson, & Co., absconded, in company with a clerk of the bank. Some suspicion was excited in the minds of the gentlemen who were his securities at the hospital, by the culprit, Mr. Rowland Stephenson, leaving home at four o'clock in a December morning; and they obtained from the president a check for 5000l. on the bank, whereby the balance at the bank might be lessened. The check was presented and paid at eleven o'clock; and at half-past one the bank stopped. The delinquents got off from the Welsh coast for Savannah.1 eye A crime more remarkable than these, and unspeakably odious to public feeling, was that of the abduction of a young lady, an only child, by the conspiracy of a rapacious family. The Wakefields were the conspirators, and one of them was the principal in the case, the husband as he hoped to be, and as he was, in the of the law, till a divorce could be obtained; a process which was quickly completed in a case where the universal sympathy was with the wronged parents, and their deceived and affectionate child. This young lady, aged only fifteen, was fetched away from school at Liverpool, on false pretences, and then made the victim of her attachment to her parents, by means of stories of their illness, pecuniary embarrassment, and so forth; so that she was carried to Gretna Green, and married there, and then conveyed abroad, where she was soon overtaken and rescued by her uncle. She went through the suffering of the prosecution of her enemy, and of the divorce process; married not long afterwards, and died early. The brothers Wakefield were imprisoned for three years, Edward Gibbon Wakefield in Newgate, and his brother William in Lancaster Castle.2 A delinquent, who has ever since been a standing satire on the gullibility of English men and women, made his first appearance in public in May, 1830. Joseph Ady then wrote his first recorded letter, offering mysterious advantages on payment of a sovereign; and, the promised advantages not being apparent, he was brought before a magistrate on a charge of swindling. And he has never since left off swindling, in precisely the same manner, making, it is believed, a good living for many years, by the credulity of his correspondents. He baffled the ingenuity of every one who wished to stop his career, till the assistance of the Post-office authorities was called in. By making him responsible for the postage of his unaccepted letters, he has been checked at last, and laid up as a debtor to the Postmaster-general. But, in the intervening eighteen years, it may be safely alleged that no one per 1 Annual Register, 1828, Chron. p. 185. son in the kingdom has consumed so much time and patience of the magistrates in London, or, in his character of swindler, so tickled the fancy of the wide public, a multitude of whom, all the while fully aware of his dealings with others, hesitated to forego the chance of some great advantage which might be purchased for one sovereign. Many are the young and old ladies; many the shopkeepers, with entries of bad debts, possibly recoverable, in their books; many the professional men, experienced in the odd turns of human life and fortunes, who have held a letter of Joseph Ady's between the finger and thumb, waiting for some suggestion which would save them from shame and ridicule in the act of sending a sovereign to the noted Joseph. He is an old man now; but who will say that he is too old to find more dupes, if ever he escapes from the grasp of the Postmastergeneral? fired. At four o'clock in the morning of Monday, the 2d of February, York Minster 1829, a man passed through the minster-yard at York, and saw a light in the building. Supposing that somebody was at work about a vault, he took no notice; and, indeed, the last thing likely to occur to any one was that York Minster could be on fire. Between six and seven, a boy, one of the choristers, passing the same way, set his foot on a piece of ice, and fell on his back, when, dusk as it was, he saw that smoke was coming out at various parts of the roof. He ran to the man who had the keys. On entering, it was found that the fine carved wood-work of the choir was all on fire.1 That carving, done in the fourteenth century, with its curious devices, long become monumental, was evidently doomed. The preservation of any part now seemed to depend on the roof not catching fire; but the wood of the roof was extremely dry, and it presently kindled as a tongue of flame touched it here and there; and, at half-past eight, it fell in. The mourning multitude who looked on now told each other that their beautiful minster was gone. But such exertions were used that the flames were checked, less by the efforts of the people—though every thing possible was done than by the failure of any combustible substance when the tower was reached. The great east window, the glory of the fabric, suffered but little; and the stone-screen which separated the communion-table from the Layde Chapel was capable of repair. The clustered pillars of the choir were ruined, being of magnesian limestone, and splitting into fragments under the action of the fire. On inquiry, it was immediately ascertained that the mischief was done by an insane man, named Jonathan Martin, who believed himself directed by a divine voice to destroy the minster. 1 Annual Register, 1829, Chron. p. 23. He told his wife of his supposed commission; and she nearly diverted him from his purpose by asking what was to become of their child. The voice, however, urged him again: he travelled to York, secreted himself in the minster on the Sunday evening, struck a light at night with a razor, flint, and tinder, shouted "Glory to God!" till he was weary, and at three in the morning collected the cushions, set fire to them with a bundle of matches, broke a window, and let himself down to the ground outside by the knotted rope of the prayer-bell. Such was his own account; and several persons testified to having heard noises in the cathedral in the course of the night. How it was that no one of them took steps to ascertain the cause has never been explained. At the end of a month, the estimates for the restoration were prepared, and a meeting was held, the tone of which was so earnest and spirited as to leave no doubt that the work would be well and completely done. Happily, some drawings of the stalls and screen of the choir remained in the hands of the dean and chapter, which facilitated the imitation of the work destroyed; and it was resolved that the imitation should be as complete as possible. The poor lunatic was of course so confined as to be kept out of the way of further mischief. He had done enough for one lifetime. Accidents: On the 27th of April, there was a yet more serious alarm; for Westminster Abbey was on fire. A little after ten at night, flames were seen issuing from the north transept. Westminster As the news spread, it caused a pang in many hearts, Abbey. -so strong seemed the probability that the fashion of burning cathedrals would spread, as the fashion of desperate crimes is wont to spread, among infirm brains. The anxiety of the moment was about the difficulty of getting at the place that was burning. The dean was out of town; but his function was well filled, and the mischief soon stopped. A cast-off screen, used in the Westminster plays, and put away here, with other lumber, in a corner, was on fire, and, falling, had kindled the boards. When an entrance was obtained, the flames were climbing rapidly to the roof; and it was considered certain that the delay of half an hour would have caused the destruction of the building.1 There was for some time a good deal of mystery about the origin of the fire. The only thing clear at first was that it must have been done by somebody secreted among the lumber; but the finding of a mass of lead in a strange place, and traces of hobnailed shoes, were thought to show that thieves had come to steal lead from the roof, and that the fire was caused by them. A fearful accident occurred during this period, which occasioned a useful amount of discussion, the coroner's jury sitting for six 1 Annual Register, 1829, Chron. p. 80. had been weeks. A new theatre · the Brunswick Theatre New Bruns recently erected in Wells Street, for the eastern part wick Theatre. of London. The walls, twenty-two inches thick, supported a cast-iron roof. The architect thought this roof enough, though not too much, for the walls to support; and when he saw the proprietors adding one weight after another,suspending the carpenters' shops, heavy scenes, &c., from the roof, he gave repeated warnings of the danger of the experiment. The theatre was opened on Monday, the 25th of February; the audience little dreaming, as they left it, what a danger they had escaped. On the Friday following, the 29th, at the time of rehearsal, when many people were in the theatre, the walls gave way, and the iron roof came crashing down. Ten houses on the opposite side of the street were destroyed, and some passengers and a dray and horses crushed. Eleven persons within the theatre were immediately killed, and twenty were seriously hurt. The jury returned a verdict of strong censure against the proprietors, in which the architect was not implicated. The most interesting class of casualties which happened during The Thames this period was that of Thames Tunnel accidents. Tunnel. Every man, woman, and child, who read newspapers, had some ideas and feelings about this great work. They knew that though many persons had thought of tunnels under rivers, none had been able to make them; and that, in this case, the credit of doing the thing was infinitely greater than that of conceiving of it. They had some idea of the great commercial importance of this work; but the predominant interest was from sympathy with the gallant engineer, Mr. Brunel. The tunnel itself was begun with the year 1826; and the first nine feet were easy, the soil being stiff clay.1 Through this substance, the celebrated shield of Mr. Brunel pushed its way, inch by inch, as the worm from whose boring process he took the idea of his enterprise-works in its cylindrical shell, by hair-breadths, through the hardest wood.2 Before the middle of February, the workmen came to a dangerous part, a tract of loose, watery sand; and, for thirty-two days, there was momentary danger of the river breaking in. On the 14th of March, they came to clay again; and they went on very happily, boring through it, till they had built 260 feet of their great cylinder. On the 14th of September occurred the first breach, when the river poured down upon the top of the shield. The engineer had foreseen the danger, and provided against it. A month after, the same thing happened again; and again his foresight had been equal to the occasion. With a few alarms, the work went on well till the following April, when the soil became so moist, that men were sent 1 Edinburgh Encyclopedia, art. Tunnel. 2 London, iii. pp. 56, 61. down from a boat in a diving-bell, to see what was the matter. The men left behind them a shovel and hammer at the bottom of the river, and these tools were presently washed into the tunnel on the removal of a board,—showing how loose was the soil throughout the eighteen feet which lay between the top of the tunnel and the bottom of the river. In the middle of May, some vessels moored just above the tunnel-works, and this occasioned an unusual washing of the waters overhead. On the 18th occurred the first great irruption of the river. In it came, sweeping men and casks before it, glittering for a moment in the light of the gas-lamps, and then putting them out, and blowing up the lower staircase of the shaft. The workmen barely escaped; and one who was in the water was rescued by Mr. Brunel. The roll was instantly called, and not one was absent. The cavity above was closed with bags of clay; and, before August was out, the traces of the disaster were cleared away, and all were at work again as if nothing had happened. By the beginning of 1828, the middle of the river was reached; and, whatever had been the wear and tear of anxiety, vigilance, and apprehension, for two years, the engineer had thus far succeeded without the loss of a single life. On the 12th of the next August, a rush of water occurred which caused the death of six men. Mr. Brunel himself was hurt; and his life was saved only by the rush of water carrying him up the shaft. When the riverbottom was explored, by means of the diving-bell, the cavity was found to be so large that scarcely any one but Mr. Brunel would have thought of filling it up; but he undertook and achieved it, four thousand tons of clay being required for the purpose. But the directors were discouraged; the funds were exhausted; the tunnel was shut up for seven years; and Mr. Brunel had to bear the long mortification of this suspense. He knew the substantial character of the work, as far as it had gone; and he never lost the hope of being permitted to finish it; and, meantime, he had the sympathy of a multitude of the English people in his toils, his sufferings, and his indomitable courage and perseverance. It was no uncommon thing, in those days, to overhear little boys telling their sisters the story of the enterprise, or arguing with each other as to whether it would ever be completed; and in the factories and farmsteads and public-houses of the land, the romance of the tunnel engaged a large share of true English pride and hopefulness. Some other public works prospered better; and one great event in the commercial history of this period was the St. Cathaopening of St. Catharine's Dock. The privileges of rine's Dock. the older docks were to die out between the years 1822 and 1827; and some of the principal merchants of London considered |