Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 1.djvu/271

 i2 s. i. AL i, 1916.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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3. The dates tally exactly with the sur- rounding facts. Fielding was living at Bath in 1744 when Charlotte Fielding died. She was buried in St. Martin's - in'- the - Fields early in November, after which he would require a house for himself and children. Similarly he would determine his tenancy before the last quarter in 1747, when he re-married and removed to Twickenham.

4. I assume Old Boswell Court is meant by Boswell Court. It stood between Carey Street and Butcher Row, on part of the site now occupied by the Royal Courts of Justice. New Boswell Court lay just north of it, being joined thereto by a covered passage (see Rocque's ' Survey,' 1746). The Rate- Books show that among the other tenants of the Court were Mr. Thomas Lane, the then Chairman of the Middlesex Quarter Sessions, Mr. Serjeant Leeds, Mr. Serjeant Wynne (Fielding's neighbour), and Mr. Justice Wright. It was, therefore, a legal quarter of repute, and it is not uninteresting to note that with the exception of Mr. Lane, who had stables attached to his premises, no tenant lived in a more expensive house than Fielding.

5. Fielding was never in arrears with his rates ; those who were are duly recorded under the fifth column. " G. S.," who doubtless meant well enough, was amusing himself and his readers at the expense of Fielding's reputation as a man of integrity a course too many have followed. Further- more, the officers of the Court would never have accepted Fielding as a surety for 400Z. had he been an individual notorious for dodging rate-collectors. Although foreign to my present purpose, I may say that Fielding had to pay.

6. Beaufort Buildings stood on the site now known as Savoy Court, which leads direct to the Savoy Hotel. The directors,

hotel approach a tablet commemorating Fielding's residence. The facts here brought forward make the statement legendary, but curiously enough the Rate- Books for Beaufort Street show that if the name of Fielding were obliterated, and that of Tobias Smollett inserted, the tablet would justify its existence.
 * with commendable grace, have erected in the

7. Incidentally it may be noted that Fielding was not merely a surety in the case of Walton v. Collier ; he appears to have acted as counsel also. The documents show that he drafted the demurrer on appeal from the Exchequer Court to the Exchequer

Chamber. With the exception of some legal manuscript in the writer's possession and in the Morrison Manuscripts, this appears to be the only piece of legal work extant by the great novelist before his appointment to the bench at Bow Street. J. PAUL DE CASTRO. 1 Essex Court, Temple, E.G.

MEMOIRS OF PATRICK MADAN. I have come across recently the following curious tract :

" Authentic Memoirs of the Life, Numerous Adventures and Remarkable Escapes of the Celebrated Patrick Madan....By a Gentleman of the Inner Temple .... London : Printed for A. Milne, No. 202, High Holborn " No date.

It has not been mentioned previously in ' N. & Q.,' and it is unnoticed by Lowndes.

The hero of the biography, a son of Thomas Madan, " head gardener and park- keeper of a nobleman, near Carrickfergus," was born in Ireland on April 20, 1752, along* with a twin sister. Proceeding to England in, 1764, the pair achieved notoriety at an early age, Patrick as a gentleman of the road, Mary as a lady of easy virtue. He acted as a hired bully during the Wilkes Riots in 1768 ; he was suspected of being concerned in a famous murder committed by the brothers Kennedy. Before long his misdeeds brought him to Newgate. The accounts of some of the strange adventures described in. the memoirs are corroborated elsewhere.. Thus the attempt to break out of Newgate int October, 1771, and his sentence to death on July 6, 1774, are noticed in The Gentleman's Magazine, xli. 517 ; xliv. 330. His reprieve at the Tyburn gallows is described in 'The Newgate Calendar' by William Jackson (1818), v. pp. 146-7. His sentence to death for a second time on Dec. 9, 1780, is men- tioned in The Gentleman's Magazine, 1. 586.

For many years he was the leader of a gang of thieves, spending most of his life in gaol. He is said to have made two desperate attempts to escape from Newgate ; he took part in a fierce riot in the Savoy prison. The second sentence of death being commuted on condition " that he should serve His Majesty as a soldier on the coast of Africa during his natural life," he was put aboard a transport at Chatham, bound for Senegal ; but when the vessel touched at Portsmouth he made another dash for liberty. Being captured, he received 500 lashes, and afterwards was " conveyed to Haslar Hospital to be cured," from which place, however, he soon managed to escape. After a short spell of liberty he-