TWO DEATH STONES

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 986, 31 May 1930, Page 31

TWO DEATH STONES

GRUESOME LONDON FIND WHEN DICKENS WAS SHOCKED The discovery of two small memorial stones in the London County Council weights and measures office, Southwark, which stands on the site of the old Horsemonger Lane gaol, has thrilled thousands of Dickens lovers. These two stones, measuring 14in by 9in by 2in thick, and marked: “F.G.M., Exd. 13th Nov., 1549.” and “M.M.. Exd. 13th Nov., 1549,” are the gravestones of Frederick George Manning and Maria Manning, the central figures in one of the most famous murder trials of the 19th century, whose execution was witnessed by Charles Dickens and 50,000 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 Dickens’s experience at the execution that he started an agitation against public hangings, which, according to Dickensians, had the effect of ridding London of these ghastly spectacles. Dickens wrote to “The Times” ou November 13, ISI9: —"I was a witness of the execution at Horsemonger Lane this morning. I went there with the intention of observing the crowd gathered to behold it. . . . The horrors of the gibbet and of the crimes which brought the wretched murderers to it faded in my mind before the atrocious bearing, looks and language of the assembled spectators. . . . Fightings, fain-tings, whistlings, imitations of Punch, and brutal jokes added a new zest to the entertainment. “When the two miserable creatures who attracted all this ghastly sight were turjjpd quivering into the air there waa Oo more thought -that two immortal souls had gone to judgment, no more restraint in any of the previous obscenities than if the name of Christ had never been heard in this world. . . . And when in our prayers and thanksgivings 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 a time to think of this one and to root it out.”