Page:A History of Horncastle from the Earliest Period to the Present Time.djvu/174

Rh Calcraft, and succeeded him in 1872; continuing the duties until his death, Sept. 4th, 1883; when he in turn was succeeded by Bartholomew Binns. He was rather short in stature, with large square head and large hands, indicative of firmness of character. His first official act was to hang a man named Francis Horry, at Lincoln, who murdered his wife at Boston, in 1872; his last was to hang a man, James Burton, at Durham, who murdered his young wife, aged only 18, from jealousy. On this occassion the man fainted on the scaffold, and got entangled with the rope under his arm, and Marwood had to lift him in his arms to get him disentangled, and then drop the unconscious man down—a painful scene. This was only about a fortnight before his own death. Among his last executions was that of Charles Peace, a notorious burglar, who shot a man at Banner Cross, near Sheffield. In May, 1882, he went to Dublin to execute the perpetrators of the Phœnix Park murders, three Fenians, who shot Lord E. Cavendish, and his secretary, Mr. Burke. In his last illness, which was short, it was suspected that his health had been in some way injured through Fenian agency, and a post mortem examination was held by order of the Home Secretary, but a verdict was returned of "natural death." Mr. Henry Sharp, Saddler, of the Bull Ring, was one of the jury on this occasion.

Marwood's wife was, for some years, ignorant of her husband's official occupation, as he generally accounted for his absence by saying that he had to go away to settle some legal question. Visiting the slaughter-house of a neighbouring butcher, he observed to him that he could "do" for men as the butcher did for cattle, because the men whom he had to deal with were themselves "beasts."

Some of Marwood's official paraphernalia are still preserved at the Portland Arms Inn, Portland Street, Lincoln, where he generally stayed at an execution. The late Mr. Charles Chicken, who resided in Foundry Street, Horncastle, had a rope 1¼-in. thick, given him by Marwood, with which he had hanged six or seven criminals. Other ropes used by him are in Madam Tussaud's exhibition, in Baker Street, London, where there is also a bust of himself. He used to exhibit his ropes to foreign horse-dealers, who attended the great August Fair at Horncastle, at a charge of 6d. each. There was recently a portrait of Marwood, in crayons, in a barber's shop, 29, Bridge Street, drawn by J. S. Lill, postman, but this has now disappeared. Marwood's favourite dog, Nero, and other effects were sold by auction, after his death in 1883, by Mr. W. B. Parish.

Other Horncastrians whose lives, or circumstances, were more or less exceptional, may be here also briefly noticed.

Mr. Henry Turner, about the middle of the 19th century, was a corn and coal merchant, and also land agent for Sir Henry Dymoke, Bart., of Scrivelsby Court. He occupied the house at the corner of South Street, next the water side, then a private residence, but now the shop of Mr. F. Stuchbery, Iornmonger. He married the widow of Arthur Thistlewood, a native of Horsington, noted, in his later years, as the leader of the "Cato Street Conspiracy," which