WHEN DICKENS WAS SHOCKED

Hawera Star, Volume L, 26 July 1930, Page 18

WHEN DICKENS WAS SHOCKED

Cl E discovery of two small memorial stones in the 'Condon County Count id Weights and l Measure's Office, Southwark, which stands on the site of the old Morsemouger-iane Gaol, will thrill thousands of Bickens lovers.

'These two -stones, measuring 14in. bv Pin. by 2irf thick, and! marked “F.G.iM., Ex. 13th JSTovr., .1849,” and “M.M., E-xd. 1 3th Novr., 184 P,” are the gravestones of Frederick George Manning and Maria: Manning, the central figures in one of the most famous murder trials of the nineteenth century. whose execution was (witnessed by 'Charles Bickens and 00,000 Londoners. The stones, which were unearthed by Mr George Young, a governor of. the Southwark Polytechnic, and an authority on Southwark history, while inspecting the site of the ■Old gaol, have been in the office, unrecognised, for many years. It was as a result of Bickens’ experience at the execution that lie started an agitation against public hangings, which, according to Dickensian s, had thu effect of ridding London of these ghastly spectacles.

An Historic Find

I Bickens wrote to “The Times’’ on I November 1155, 1849: “I was a witness of the execution at Horsenrouger-lane this morning. I went, there with the I intention of observing the crowd gn'thj ered to behold it. . . . The horrors ! of the gibbet and of the crime lu'hich : brought the wretched murderers to it faded! in my mind before the atrocious ! hearing, looks, and language, of. the 1 assembled spectators Fightings, 'Huntings, whistlings, imitations of i Punch and brutal' jokes added a new j zest to the entertainment. When the .two miserable creatures who attracted i all this ghasly sight, wore turned | quivering into the air, there was no j more thought that two immortal souls had gone to judgment, no more ro.s- ---! train! in any of tlio previous obseenij ties than if the name of Christ had i never been heard in this world. . . .

And when in our prayers and thanksgiving for the season we are humbly

expressing before God our desire to remove the moral evils of the land I would ask your readers to consider whether it is not time to think of this one and to root it out.”