This sixpenny (2½p) Edwardian book tells the stirring tale of the life of so-called master criminal Charles Peace (1832-1879). The cover shows his failed attempt to escape from custody by leaping from a moving train.
Printed cheaply, on paper that is now brown and crumbling, books of this kind fed a popular interest in crime, which continues unabated today. Recent publications, as the inside cover noted, included a first-hand account by the American born murderess Florence Maybrick, who was convicted of killing her husband, and released from prison in 1904 after a fifteen year incarceration, and the story of John Lee, "the man they could not hang", both of whom merit their own Wikipedia page, along with Charles Peace
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Peace
Peace was a petty thief, burglar and double murderer who would hardly seem to warrant his notoriety, for, although a career criminal, he was certainly not a "master criminal". But his early inclusion as a wax exhibit at Madame Tussauds Chamber of Horrors, which showed him at his execution, as well as several instant books and articles recording, and perhaps embroidering, his exploits, and frequent repetition of the same in later compilations of the lives of victorian criminals, together, I suspect, with a fascination with his rather unique and villanous appearance, served to guarantee his lasting fame.
A police description given of Peace was as follows:
"He is thin and slightly built, from fifty-five to sixty years of age [he was actually forty-five]
, five feet four inches or five high, grey (nearly white) hair, beard and whiskers...He lacks one or more fingers off the left hand, walks with his legs rather wide apart, speaks rather peculiarly as though his tongue was too large for his mouth, and is a great boaster..."
This account of his life and exploits is only sparsely illustrated, and the text contains some dubiously precise examples of conversations supposedly made, but the story is nevertheless well written and eminently readable. In this illustration, Peace is challenged by a servant whilst committing a burglary.
Here Peace grapples with fellow prisoner Sims who has betrayed him over some matter.
And in the final scene, Peace is shown at his trial being sentenced to death for the murder of his neighbour Albert Dyson, with whose wife he had become unnaturally obsessed. He later confessed to the earlier murder of Police Constable Nicholas Cock, for which another man had been wrongly convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Peace was executed at Armley Jail, Leeds on the 25th February 1879, before which he penned several letters to family and friends including the following to his brother.
"Dear Brother, I write to you hoping you will take this as a warning from the scaffold. as I intend it to be handed to my chaplain when upon the scaffold the moment before I die. I am sorry to say that I have been a very bad, base, and wicked man the whole course of my life. None but God and myself know the extent of my terrible deeds. And what has it all profited me now? Oh, let me beg of you in my last moments to give yourself to God and try and walk in the narrow path that leads to eternal life. And may the great God in His merciful goodness pardon all of your sins, and may we all meet in the end at His right hand in glory...That these few lines may have the desired effect upon you is the dying prayer of Your Brother."
It was salutary advice to all brothers to steer away from the path of evil!
