Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 8.djvu/509

 12 s. vm. MAY 2i f i92i.i NOTES AND QUERIES. 419 MABY BENSON, alias MARIA THERESA PHIPOE (12 S. viii. 370). There is a fairly full account of this notorious criminal and her many enormities in ' Chronicles of Crime,' by Camden Pelham (vol. i. p. 358). The book was republished by Reeves and Turner, 196, Strand, in 1886, and is, I fancy, now out of print and scarce. It is ad- mirably illustrated by " Phiz " and is probably the best and most complete record of criminal trials down to 1840 that has ever been compiled. WlLLOUGHBY MAYCOCK. Full particulars of this case are given in The Gentleman's Magazine, vol. Ixvi., p. 347, and vol. Ixvii., p. 1122. The criminal is re- ferred to in the same magazine for 1818, vol. ii. , p. 644, where it is stated that " she was once connected with a respectable family in the sister island." This may mean that she was wife of a Mr. Phepoe (as the correct spelling was). If so, I should like to know whether her husband was one of the family mentioned below, which once occupied a prominent position in Dublin. She does not appear to be a relation to do them credit ! Richard Phepoe, of Dublin, Esq., married at St. Paul's, Dublin, Dec. 7, 1733, Eliza- beth, daughter of Richard Walker, of Dublin, and by her, who died March, 1762, had at his death, March 16 or 17, 1777, with other children, who died young, and were buried in Alderman William Walker's ground at St. Patrick's Cathedral, three daughters (Elizabeth, wife, first, of Arthur Langford Carter, son of the Rev. Oliver Carter, Rector of Knockmark, Co. Meath, and, second, of Henry Clarke ; Rose, wife of Adam Nixon, of Greeny, Co. Cavan, Cornet, 13th Light Dragoons, son of the Rev. Andrew Nixon, of Nixon Lodge, Co. Cavan ; and Jane, wife of William George Dowley Hearn, son of the Ven. Daniel Hearn, Archdeacon of Cashel), and a son, John Phepoe, of Dublin, Esq., married June, 1770, Jane, daughter of Thomas Taylor, Lord Mayor of Dublin, 1751, by Anne, daughter of Michael Beresford, son of Sir Tristram Beresford, Bart., and had issue. H. B. SWANZY. The Vicarage, Newry, Co. Down. An account of this woman and her crimes is in * The Chronicles of Crime ; or, New Newgate CalendaV by Camden Pelham. Two vols., 1841. Reprinted 1891. W. B. H. on JPoofeg. The Tower of London. By Walter George Bell. (John Lane. 6s. net.) MR. BELL'S many readers will certainly thank him for this unassuming but charming and well- imagined book. No doubt he is justified in reproaching Londoners with their general igno- rance of the Tower. Yet this book which is as good for its purpose as it well could be itself goes some way to explain the neglect. Few buildings in the world are involved in such majestic and such unrelieved gloom. The Castle of St. Angelo, which Mr. Bell will have to be its only rival, has its legend and a history in which splendid vicissitudes are mingled with terror, and pious associations with deeds of darkness. The Tower of London, built to confront extremes of danger, has never even known assault. It has held martyrs, but martyrs who died for causes which now ring very faintly in the ears of the average Londoner, however precious their wit- ness still is to those who understand. Cruelty, and the miscarrying of plots and treasons ; the unhappiness, extreme and pitiable, of second- rate persons who over-reached themselves, and for whom admiration is hardly possible, make up most of the human history of which this sombre inviolate fortress is the background. All the more tragic for that, no doubt, and with all the more poignant an appeal to the imagination. Then there is that unrivalled length of centuries behind it, frowning down the pretensions of other State prisons. But, whether we look on its history or on the thickness and shape of its walls and its plan as a fortress, it needs a trained imagination to perceive its claims : and the more those claims are felt the more, it must be con- fessed, does the melancholy of the Tower increase upon the mind. This is pleasing to many, but still, perhaps, only to a minority. However, this book of Mr. Bell's ought to incite a multitude of readers to repair their carelessness. These chapters, he tells us, were written originally for The Daily Telegraph, and not for any further purpose than to awaken an interest in a possession so greatly neglected. They contain little or nothing that a student of London will not have come across before. Even the student, though, may be glad of the vivid and detailed description, authoritatively given, of the nightly ceremony of the salute of the King's keys. The present writer was grateful also for a note on the nine- teenth-century history of the Norman Chapel in the Keep. It appears that upon the removal of the public documents thence to the Record Office there was a proposal to convert this into a military tailor's warehouse ; and it was upon the Prince Consort's protest that Queen Victoria ordered that it should be restored to religious use. Mr. Bell gives us a facsimile of a card, dated April 1, 1856, to admit the bearer to view "the annual ceremony of the Washing of the Lions." He does not say how often this joke was perpe- trated at the expense of guileless visitors from the country. The early history of the Tower is skilfully touched in, the history of persons bearing a happy proportion to the description of the build- ings. Those Westminster monks are mentioned