Anecdote Lives of Wits and Humourists (Volume 1) (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1872 edition. Excerpt: ...road, should seize and hurry Sir John into a boat on the river, and thence secrete him in the purser's cabin of the Ruby. The whole thing was wonderfully devised to assume the character of one of those outrages far from uncommon in seaports in those days; but as usual, the artifice was overdone. The Captain's publicly-acted reconciliation directed suspicion against him; even among the savage instruments of this dreadful deed, some sparks of feeling and conscience were struck out; and one man, who saw through the crevice in the woodwork of the cabin two of the worst ruffians in the ship strangle the poor struggling victim, swore also, in confirmation of the evidence of others who had witnessed their commander's watch outside the door, at the supposed time of the murder, and his subsequent disappearance inside, that in about a minute after the deed was done, he saw an arm stretched out, and a white hand on the throat of the deceased.--Forster's Essays. The captain remained on board the ship with the dead body till he was apprehended. The plea of insanity failed: and Captain Goodere, and the two accomplices, were tried, and hanged at Bristol. Murphy states that Foote's first production as an author was a version which he wrote of the above transaction--" a pamphlet giving an account of one of his uncles who was executed for murdering his other uncle." It was a sort of defence of the justly-hanged captain--an attempt to lessen the family discredit. Foote certainly wrote the pamphlet for ten pounds, for an Old Bailey bookseller, on condition that his name as its writer should be suppressed. Mr. Forster has seen what purports to be a copy of the pamphlet: it is the recent reprint of a sixpenny pamphlet published in the locality of the...