Old Crimes Confessed

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28950, 18 July 1959, Page 3

Old Crimes Confessed

Criminals Confess. By Belton Cobb. Faber and Faber. 205 pp. This book contains the confessions of eight people convicted of criminal offences during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. At this time it was common for condemned criminals to make long and detailed confessions of their crimes in order to protest their innocence, shield their accomplices, show their repentance or boast of their deeds. The practice of making such a confession was encouraged by the prison chaplains as a sign of repentance which would lead to Divine forgiveness and by publishers as a source of sensational copy which would lead to a substantial profit. This common interest on the part of chaplains and publishers often worked apparently to their mutual financial advantage. While confessidns were not always reliable, those included in this book do fit the known facts They may be embellished a little in places so as to place the convicted person in a better light, but in broad outline they would appear to be accurate. All but one of the confessions were made in the last days—or what were thought to be the last days of the convicted person. Lengthy

confessions are provided by the pathetic arsonist, John the Painter; the pickpocket and jewelthief, James Vaux; and John Holloway who gives a detailed account of a gruesome murder, which must certainly have delighted the heart of the lucky publisher. Other confessions may be briefer, but they add to the variety and interest. Among them are the confessions of William Parsons, highwayman; John Richardson, philanderer, mutineer and murderer; Alexander Pierce who confessed to crimes which could never have been discovered as a form of suicide; Sarah Malcolm who was almost certainly innocent of the murder for which she was. executed; and Joseph Hunt, an accomplice in a murder who lived to become a respectable Chief Constable of an Australian town. Those who like their week-end reading on crime to be stranger than fiction and to have an authentic historical flavour should find the narratives included in “Criminals Confess” interesting and pleasantly gruesome.