Читать книгу True Crime Chronicles - Camden Pelham - Страница 93

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THE circumstances of this case are marked by peculiar atrocity. It appears that a man named Vere, a sheriff’s officer, having put an execution into a house of Mr. Brailsford, in Petty France, Westminster, he placed Leonard, Graves, and Gay, three of his followers, in possession.

A young woman named Boss resided in an apartment on the second floor of the house, and on the 15th June, 1773, the family of Mr. Brailsford having all gone out in search of the means of getting rid of their unwelcome visitants, she was left alone in the house with the three officers. She was at work in her own room, when, about mid-day, Leonard opened the door, and began in a familiar manner to speak to her. Terror for a while deprived her of utterance; but finding him proceed to take those liberties which female virtue can never suffer, she resisted, screamed out, seized the villain by the throat, struggled until she was exhausted, and then sank down, deprived of reason. In this situation her assailant used her in the way that constituted the offence for which he was justly executed.

A neighbour hearing the cries of the distressed female, and suspecting some foul deed, knocked at the street-door, and inquired the cause of the noise; to which Leonard, opening the window, replied that it was only a drunken woman: and the inquirer retired.

The three villains, Leonard, Graves, and Gay, were afterwards indicted for this cruel outrage: Leonard as the principal, and the others as accessories to the fact; and upon their trial they were all found guilty. Graves and Gay were burned in the hand and imprisoned; but sentence of death was immediately passed upon Leonard.

Although convicted upon the clearest evidence, this obdurate man denied that he was guilty; and on the Sunday before he suffered, he received the sacrament from the hands of the Rev. Mr. Temple, and then, in the most solemn manner, declared to that gentleman that he was entirely innocent of the fact for which he was to die; that he had been repeatedly intimate with Miss Boss, with her own consent; and that all the reason he could conjecture for her prosecuting him was, that he had communicated this matter to Graves, one of the other followers, who availed himself of the secret, and found means to get into the young lady’s room, and who really perpetrated the fact with which she had falsely accused him.

In this story he persisted all the time he remained in Newgate; but Mr. Temple, suspecting his veracity, delivered a paper to Mr. Toll, another gentleman who usually administered spiritual comfort to the malefactors in their last moments, in which he requested him to ask Leonard about those two assertions before he was turned off.

This request Mr. Toll and his colleague punctually complied with, and the unhappy man then acknowledged that he had taken the sacrament to an absolute falsehood; that there was not a word of truth in his impeaching Miss Boss, but that he alone abused her; that he was taught in Newgate to believe that the falsehood might do him service; that he found his mistake too late, and all the atonement he could make was to acknowledge the truth before he left the world, and to beg pardon of God for having acted in so atrocious a manner.

He was executed on the 11th August, 1773, at Tyburn.