This is so well written.
It flows, despite all the details woven in. The detailing is fascinating in itself, and the drama of what is going is as captivating as it is appalling.
The detailing example quoted above demonstrates what I mean.
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Hanged for Shoplifting, Being a True History of Mary Jones’ Sad Life and Death
- Thread starter Praefectus Praetorio
- Start date
This is so well written.
It flows, despite all the details woven in. The detailing is fascinating in itself, and the drama of what is going is as captivating as it is appalling.
The detailing example quoted above demonstrates what I mean.
Praefectus Praetorio
R.I.P. Brother of the Quill
Newgate:
The seven ancient gates in the London walls give their names to many a street, neighborhood, and building. Here is a map showing the area of the Great fire and the locations of the gates.
Newgate prison:
Old Bailey
For those familiar with court docket numbers today, the number of Mary and Ann's case should be familiar.
Case t17710911-32 Case heard in court: "t" (Old Bailey), date: 17710911, Number of the day: 32.
Here is a facsimile of the original printed report of this proceeding:
Not a fictional entry. The historical record of a real girl's trial, conviction, and sentencing.
The seven ancient gates in the London walls give their names to many a street, neighborhood, and building. Here is a map showing the area of the Great fire and the locations of the gates.
Newgate prison:
Old Bailey
For those familiar with court docket numbers today, the number of Mary and Ann's case should be familiar.
Case t17710911-32 Case heard in court: "t" (Old Bailey), date: 17710911, Number of the day: 32.
Here is a facsimile of the original printed report of this proceeding:
Not a fictional entry. The historical record of a real girl's trial, conviction, and sentencing.
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And when I turn on my computer today, guess what pic Windows has chosen to welcome me with?
(Is Bill Gates following this story?
)
Did the judges have any discretion? I think probably not, this is an example of the grave injustice of mandatory sentences, which our political leaders are still all too happy to impose on the judiciary, to gratify the electorate and the tabloid press, irrespective of the circumstances of the crime. Fortunately in the UK, we no longer have mandatory death sentences. Other places have not achieved that level of enlightenment.
twonines
LIMERICUS
The problem is that we inevitably judge these events of more than two hundred years ago by 21st century standards, and it is highly likely that in the 23rd century there will be many people deploring the inhumanity and ignorance of the actions which we today regard as perfectly normal.
Praefectus Praetorio
R.I.P. Brother of the Quill
As I said, "prosecutors, judges, and jurors exercised considerable discretion in how they interpreted the law." However, most all in the justice system still bought into the belief that only draconian sentences would deter crime. Judges had clear laws passed by Parliament setting forth the punishment. They rarely demured. And remember, the politics I pointed out earlier. The judges were City officials (including the Lord Mayor) and were beholding to the merchants how wanted shoplifting punished severely.
However, there were two safeguards built into the system. First, the Recorder of London has to report death sentences, with or without a recommendation for mercy.
Second, the report went to the King and Privy Council who could commute the sentence. If any deserved that, Mary did.
During 1771, 62 men and six women were sentenced to death of whom only 34 men and 2 women would actually hang. When death was commuted, it was usually to transportation in a prison ship to the Colonies - where we get all those Aussies and Kiwis today!
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Praefectus Praetorio
R.I.P. Brother of the Quill
Grand Tetons?
poem21045
Tribunus Plebis
Yep, pretty well the same pic!
twonines
LIMERICUS
Convicts were never sent to New Zealand, but a lot went to Virginia and other parts of America.
Praefectus Praetorio
R.I.P. Brother of the Quill
My bad. Lazy about my research
In a Pestilential Prison
Upon her return to Newgate, Mary was chained and sent to a different section. Those who had been sentenced to death stayed in the Condemned Hold, a cellar beneath the keeper’s house, essentially an open sewer lined with chains and shackles to encourage submission, and cause the prisoners to “reflect on their sinful ways.” These narrow somber cells were separated from Newgate Street by a thick wall and received only a dim light from the inner courtyard.
Mary Jones was to spend the next 35 days with her baby in this hell-hole with death by hanging awaiting her at the end. I think there is no way for the average person to imagine the feeling of despair for the 17-year-old wife and mother of two.
A small blessing for Mary in these dreadful circumstances was the appearance of the Reverend John Wood, the Ordinary of Newgate. The Ordinary was an Anglican priest who served as a kind of chaplain in the prison. Like all the attendants at Newgate, the position was woefully underpaid. And like the other attendants, the Ordinary found other sources of revenue to get by. For example, he would hold services only for those who could pay.
The greatest income for the Ordinaries in the eighteenth century was The Ordinary of Newgate's Account of the Behaviour, Confession and Dying Words of the Condemned Criminals...Executed at Tyburn, a sister publication of the Old Bailey's Proceedings, regularly published from 1676 to 1772 and containing biographies, confessions, and last dying speeches of the prisoners executed at Tyburn during that period. Usually published after each hanging day at Tyburn, it earned the Ordinaries over £200 annually at its peak. Since the Ordinary would refuse to give the sacraments to the condemned unless they confessed to him (a normal requirement in the church and a great lever since most believed without the sacrament they were doomed to hell), he was able to extract detailed confessions of the crimes with salutary expressions of the wages of sin and heartrending statements from the gallows. These often graphic and lurid stories ensured strong sales of the publication and a helpful income to the priest.
By the late 18th century, popular disgust at the frequent executions under the “Bloody Codes” and the increasing awareness of the horrible conditions in the prisons, combined to lessen interest in stories of death. Rev. Wood also seemed to lose interest in writing these. In fact, 1772 was the last year the Accounts were regularly published.
When Mary Jones arrived in the Condemned Hold, Rev. Wood had been Ordinary of Newgate for over two years. After two years of dealing with the filth and brutality of the prison and talking for hours with condemned prisoners, some of whom were undeserving of their fate, and some who had committed the most horrendous and despicable crimes imaginable, any man who’d remained sane, would have found distancing methods and callous feeling essential. But there was something about young Mary Jones that captivated the aging (56) divine. His records give no clue. It may have simply been a pity for an innocent sentenced unfairly to death. It may have been her youth and beauty (for he did comment at great length on her favorable appearance). “It is a circumstance not to be forgotten, that she was very young, and most remarkably handsome.” “A sweeter face or figure was not to be found in faire England.” “A halo of gold touched with auburn tresses like heaven’s angels.” “Though small and thin of frame, she carried paps, swollen by motherhood that were most impressive.” It may have been compassion for her mother’s love of the baby suckling at her breast. We simply do not know. Nevertheless, that the Rev. Wood developed a special attention, and maybe affection, for the condemned woman is clear.
Surely the kind and chaste attention of the senior minister provided some comfort for Mary. But day after day in the dark, damp cells while trying to care for a now three-month-old baby weighed heavily on the girl. At times the despair would be overwhelming, causing her to weep for hours on end. The total lack of information on her son, whom she hadn’t seen for over a month, tortured her mind. Such was her isolation and distraction, that she was unaware that, five days after her trial, the anniversary of her own birth passed, unnoticed even by her, as she attained the still tender, but mature, age of 18.
On September 18, some good news came to cheer the poor condemned girl. A note from Ann, full of love and best wishes, would have been helpful. However, the concluding lines were heaven-sent:
“Things be hard, here, with an extra mouth to feed. As begards, Jean, know, in truth, he is well and adjusting to the absence of his mother. The neighbors all like him and gladly take turns having him in when I needs to work alone (you’ll recall me having “fun” with my "bucks"). A proper note came from your neighbors on Red Lion Street, asking after you and the wee ones. I’m a-guessing them might take them in, leastways till their papa returns. That'd be a God-send for me! I’m a-gone to visit them soon to find out.”
It is impossible to find words for the warm joy in Mary’s heart kindled by reading these words. Having some hope that her son and daughter might have a home, even for a little while, was more than she had hoped for.
A Damsel in Distress
However, other factors conspired to dampen Mary’s spirits and increase her distress. Now that she had been in the Condemned Hold for over a week, the filth, damp, and darkness, as well as the meager rations, were weighing on her soul as she tried to entertain a baby under near-impossible condition.
The day after Ann’s letter had cheered her a little, the guards started to make things worse for the young mother. They became bolder in admiring and exploiting the beauty and comeliness of their prisoner. These condemned prisoners were the most vulnerable and abused of the whole institution. Never to walk free again, and largely shunned by others both inside and outside the jail, and confined in single cells, sealed off from all observation or concern of others. The guards could feel little constraint or concern over what they did.
Soon guards, singly or in pairs, began visiting Mary, alone in her cell with her baby. While their size and strength would have easily allowed them to do anything they wished with the girl, they enjoyed using the added lever of threatening the babe, allowed them to compel her to perform however they wanted.
At first, they were content to observe her feeding her child, her full, white breasts, and swollen pink nipples in small areolas on display. After a few days, even this invasive, erotic, sight wasn’t sufficient to gratify their desires. They began to demand and receive more. Before they would allow her to feed the child, she had to lower her smock to her waist, baring her whole upper body down her narrow middle and deep-set bellybutton. As they leered at her half-naked body, they made terrible, lewd remarks, and Mary could smell the gin on their breath even over the stench in the cell.
The next escalation, a fortnight after her trial, was two drunken guards bursting into her cell and demanding she strip to the waist and pivot, arms overhead so they could “inspect her body. The word of this performance quickly spread and soon other guards took turns watching her slowly pivot with her hands on her head, giving a panoramic view of her naked torso. with the full young breasts raised and tempting.
Criminal procedures of the day required any death sentence to be referred to the monarch for review and possible clemency. On September 24, the Recorder of London prepared his report for the King and Privy Council. In it, there was no recommendation for mercy for Mary, despite her age and circumstances. Why it was omitted is not known. Almost one-half of death sentences were commuted at that year. However, for reasons we do not know, the Privy Council let the sentence stand. Blame the vagaries fo the system.
Condemned criminals were permitted to attend religious services in the Newgate prison chapel. There was a special section, in the middle of the room for the condemned, surrounded by a high partition so that they could not mix with the other prisoners. On the table in front of them was a coffin.
On the 1st of October, the guards increased their exploitation of Mary. Two of the nastier and more brutish guards were enjoying her rotating display when one said, “Pull that dress down to your knees, bitch. Show us your thatch!” Mary looked to the other for relief, but he looked lustfully at her and nodded, “Yes, girl. You’ve been hiding your honey-pot too long.”
Sobbing with shame and embarrassment, Mary tugged down her skirt, displaying her whole body naked to the lecherous men. They spent a long time staring at her charms before allowing her to redress and feed Abby.
From that time until her execution, several of the guards in that wing took opportunities to have the girl strip naked for them and pose in the most revealing and humiliating poses. However, the draconian (severe whipping, pillory, and imprisonment) penalties prescribed for having sexual contact with a prisoner, restrained any from touching her or taking the final, climactic step. Some of the guards looked down on these voyeuristic activities, but were loath to report their fellows.
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Praefectus Praetorio
R.I.P. Brother of the Quill
The Ordinary of Newgate's Account
Chapel Services at Newgate
Chapel Services at Newgate
Praefectus Praetorio
R.I.P. Brother of the Quill
To Sit in Solemn Silence
The few remaining days in the short, sad life of Mary Jones passed without the world taking any notice. Outside the walls of Newgate, life in the great city continued onward, with events great and small transpiring. The first meeting of the Society of Civil Engineers, the oldest engineering group in the world, took place. On 2 October – Prince Henry, Duke of Cumberland and Strathearn, brother to the King, married a commoner, the widow Anne Horton, in Mayfair, against the King’s wishes, precipitating a major scandal. It led to the passage of the Royal Marriages Act in 1772 which gave the Monarch a veto over marriages of members of the Royal Family that wasn’t repealed until the 2011 Perth Agreement. Many marveled at the news from Scotland that Edinburgh botanist James Robertson made the first recorded ascent of Ben Nevis.
On October 6th, three days before the scheduled execution, guards came to the Condemned Hold to announce to the prisoners that the justices at the Old Bailey had respited their sentences until October 16th. It seemed that the Lord Mayor’s birthday party was on the 9th and the City Marshal, who was required to oversee executions, wished to attend the party. Thus, the justices, in their mercy, granted the condemned an extra week of life in the gentle confines of Newgate.
The Man of the Hour
Exactly at noon on the 15th of October, 1771, Edward Dennis, the official executioner of London and Middlesex, began his customary pre-hanging rounds of the Condemned Hold at Newgate. The fourth of five children born to a middling entrepreneur in the Seven Dials neighborhood in 1729, Ned had, inexplicably, from the earliest age, a fascination with death. He was known to sit and stare at a dead cat in the street for hours. His father, William, supplied him with an above-average education and encouraged him to enter the family domestic services contracting business. His cheerful and loving mother, Rebecca, tried to help the boy with brighter interests and to make friends. Despite it all, Ned persisted in being a withdrawn child with few friends and a morbid interest in death. He often walked all four miles from their home to Tyburn to watch, in fascination, the public hangings.
When his mother died in 1758, the young man had a falling out with his father. William, for reasons he could never tell his son, had a particular opposition and even revulsion toward hanging. In deep grief at the passing of his wife, he commanded his son to never attend an execution again. The dispute came to loud words and even some blows, with the upshot, that Edward left his home, and the job with his father, changed his last name to Dennis, and became an apprentice to the then-current hangman, Thomas Turlis.
In his role as assistant hangman, Dennis worked at the executions of over 159 individuals. Notable hangings were Laurence Shirley, 4th Earl Ferrers, the last peer hanged for murder, and Elizabeth Brownrigg, who murdered by prolonged beating, neglect, and starvation, her fourteen-year-old domestic servant, Mary Clifford. In January of 1771, Turlis died walking home from a hanging, and Edward, 42, became the “Lord of the Manor of Tyburn” as the executioners were jocularly known.
A man of medium height, but with a powerful build, Dennis had learned from Turlis an approach of utmost care and professionalism in his work. Under him nothing was ever left to chance and in his fifteen years as executioner, there was never a “botched job” in the 201 hangings and three burnings he supervised at Tyburn and later Newgate. One of his busiest days was 2 February, 1785 when he hung 20 men, without the slightest mishap.
Thus, his pre-hanging-day rounds in Newgate were his final preparation to ensure that the hangings the following day were completed without incident. He, along with his assistant, William Brunskill, went from cell to cell, checking off the prisoners’ names against the list provided by the Recorder of London. They measured each’s height, estimated weight, and strength of neck in order to choose the correct thickness and length of rope for the nooses that William would prepare that evening.
When they came to Mary’s cell, both were taken aback by her youth and beauty and the presence of the baby girl. However, Dennis, unswayable from his duty, ordered Brunskill to take the measurements. The assistant did as he was told, secretly deriving great enjoyment from handling her body and wrapping his tape around her delicate, white neck.
Mary, shyly asked what would happen to her child on the morrow.
Dennis was taken aback. He not intentionally cruel, but had also learned to not engage emotionally with his “clients” as he liked to refer to the condemned. “Tain’t my affair, Miss Jones. I’s just hangs ye,” he said in his slightly Kentish accent from his mother. Mary’s hand went involuntarily to her neck in horror. “Him, the City officer, or that Ordinary man, they’s must decide.” Turning to William, who seemed to be lingering overlong on inspecting Mary’s generous figure, he said, “You done, boy?” Receiving an affirmative nod, Ned bid his usual adieu, “See you at Tyburn, Miss,” and left the cell. Mary started to weep in despair.
In a Dull, Dark, Dock…with a Life-Long Lock
The wonders of modern astronomy and computers allow us to know that the sun set on London town precisely at 5:06 PM on Tuesday October, 15th 1771. In the poorly lit cell of the Condemned Hold, pitch blackness would soon follow. Alone with her baby girl and facing death on the morrow, the cold damp blackness must have felt like death itself to the sweet young woman. About an hour after sunset, Ordinary Wood appeared with a small candle lantern. He knelt with the girl to hear her last confession, to give her absolution, and to pray together. Later, he described how tears ran in streams down his cheeks and hers, how he held her close for a very long time, whispering encouragement and stroking her soft reddish-blonde hair. As he turned to leave, Mary asked him, softly, in a voice hoarse from sobbing, what would become of her baby. He only could say, “Trust the Lord, my child,” and hurried from the cell.
Sometime later, in the black gloom of her cell, Mary Jones slipped off to a fitful sleep for the last night of her life.
A little past midnight, the clerk of St Sepulchre-without-Newgate came around ringing a handbell outside the condemned cells, a tradition on the night before execution and announcing the news by repeating the following "wholesome advice":
All you that in the condemned hold do lie,
Prepare you, for to-morrow you shall die;
Watch all, and pray, the hour is drawing near
That you before the Almighty must appear;
Examine well yourselves, in time repent,
That you may not to eternal flames be sent.
And when St Sepulchre's bell to-morrow tolls,
The Lord above have mercy on your souls.
- Past twelve o'clock!
The few remaining days in the short, sad life of Mary Jones passed without the world taking any notice. Outside the walls of Newgate, life in the great city continued onward, with events great and small transpiring. The first meeting of the Society of Civil Engineers, the oldest engineering group in the world, took place. On 2 October – Prince Henry, Duke of Cumberland and Strathearn, brother to the King, married a commoner, the widow Anne Horton, in Mayfair, against the King’s wishes, precipitating a major scandal. It led to the passage of the Royal Marriages Act in 1772 which gave the Monarch a veto over marriages of members of the Royal Family that wasn’t repealed until the 2011 Perth Agreement. Many marveled at the news from Scotland that Edinburgh botanist James Robertson made the first recorded ascent of Ben Nevis.
On October 6th, three days before the scheduled execution, guards came to the Condemned Hold to announce to the prisoners that the justices at the Old Bailey had respited their sentences until October 16th. It seemed that the Lord Mayor’s birthday party was on the 9th and the City Marshal, who was required to oversee executions, wished to attend the party. Thus, the justices, in their mercy, granted the condemned an extra week of life in the gentle confines of Newgate.
The Man of the Hour
Exactly at noon on the 15th of October, 1771, Edward Dennis, the official executioner of London and Middlesex, began his customary pre-hanging rounds of the Condemned Hold at Newgate. The fourth of five children born to a middling entrepreneur in the Seven Dials neighborhood in 1729, Ned had, inexplicably, from the earliest age, a fascination with death. He was known to sit and stare at a dead cat in the street for hours. His father, William, supplied him with an above-average education and encouraged him to enter the family domestic services contracting business. His cheerful and loving mother, Rebecca, tried to help the boy with brighter interests and to make friends. Despite it all, Ned persisted in being a withdrawn child with few friends and a morbid interest in death. He often walked all four miles from their home to Tyburn to watch, in fascination, the public hangings.
When his mother died in 1758, the young man had a falling out with his father. William, for reasons he could never tell his son, had a particular opposition and even revulsion toward hanging. In deep grief at the passing of his wife, he commanded his son to never attend an execution again. The dispute came to loud words and even some blows, with the upshot, that Edward left his home, and the job with his father, changed his last name to Dennis, and became an apprentice to the then-current hangman, Thomas Turlis.
In his role as assistant hangman, Dennis worked at the executions of over 159 individuals. Notable hangings were Laurence Shirley, 4th Earl Ferrers, the last peer hanged for murder, and Elizabeth Brownrigg, who murdered by prolonged beating, neglect, and starvation, her fourteen-year-old domestic servant, Mary Clifford. In January of 1771, Turlis died walking home from a hanging, and Edward, 42, became the “Lord of the Manor of Tyburn” as the executioners were jocularly known.
A man of medium height, but with a powerful build, Dennis had learned from Turlis an approach of utmost care and professionalism in his work. Under him nothing was ever left to chance and in his fifteen years as executioner, there was never a “botched job” in the 201 hangings and three burnings he supervised at Tyburn and later Newgate. One of his busiest days was 2 February, 1785 when he hung 20 men, without the slightest mishap.
Thus, his pre-hanging-day rounds in Newgate were his final preparation to ensure that the hangings the following day were completed without incident. He, along with his assistant, William Brunskill, went from cell to cell, checking off the prisoners’ names against the list provided by the Recorder of London. They measured each’s height, estimated weight, and strength of neck in order to choose the correct thickness and length of rope for the nooses that William would prepare that evening.
When they came to Mary’s cell, both were taken aback by her youth and beauty and the presence of the baby girl. However, Dennis, unswayable from his duty, ordered Brunskill to take the measurements. The assistant did as he was told, secretly deriving great enjoyment from handling her body and wrapping his tape around her delicate, white neck.
Mary, shyly asked what would happen to her child on the morrow.
Dennis was taken aback. He not intentionally cruel, but had also learned to not engage emotionally with his “clients” as he liked to refer to the condemned. “Tain’t my affair, Miss Jones. I’s just hangs ye,” he said in his slightly Kentish accent from his mother. Mary’s hand went involuntarily to her neck in horror. “Him, the City officer, or that Ordinary man, they’s must decide.” Turning to William, who seemed to be lingering overlong on inspecting Mary’s generous figure, he said, “You done, boy?” Receiving an affirmative nod, Ned bid his usual adieu, “See you at Tyburn, Miss,” and left the cell. Mary started to weep in despair.
In a Dull, Dark, Dock…with a Life-Long Lock
The wonders of modern astronomy and computers allow us to know that the sun set on London town precisely at 5:06 PM on Tuesday October, 15th 1771. In the poorly lit cell of the Condemned Hold, pitch blackness would soon follow. Alone with her baby girl and facing death on the morrow, the cold damp blackness must have felt like death itself to the sweet young woman. About an hour after sunset, Ordinary Wood appeared with a small candle lantern. He knelt with the girl to hear her last confession, to give her absolution, and to pray together. Later, he described how tears ran in streams down his cheeks and hers, how he held her close for a very long time, whispering encouragement and stroking her soft reddish-blonde hair. As he turned to leave, Mary asked him, softly, in a voice hoarse from sobbing, what would become of her baby. He only could say, “Trust the Lord, my child,” and hurried from the cell.
Sometime later, in the black gloom of her cell, Mary Jones slipped off to a fitful sleep for the last night of her life.
A little past midnight, the clerk of St Sepulchre-without-Newgate came around ringing a handbell outside the condemned cells, a tradition on the night before execution and announcing the news by repeating the following "wholesome advice":
All you that in the condemned hold do lie,
Prepare you, for to-morrow you shall die;
Watch all, and pray, the hour is drawing near
That you before the Almighty must appear;
Examine well yourselves, in time repent,
That you may not to eternal flames be sent.
And when St Sepulchre's bell to-morrow tolls,
The Lord above have mercy on your souls.
- Past twelve o'clock!
Praefectus Praetorio
R.I.P. Brother of the Quill
In 1605, London merchant tailor Mr. John Dowe paid the parish of St Sepulchre £50 to buy a handbell on the condition that it would be rung to mark the execution of a prisoner at Newgate. This handbell, known as the Execution Bell, now resides in a glass case to the south of the nave.
The handbell pictured was rung for the condemned, including Mary, just after midnight on October 16th, 1771.
The handbell pictured was rung for the condemned, including Mary, just after midnight on October 16th, 1771.
Praefectus Praetorio
R.I.P. Brother of the Quill
The tradition of ringing the handbell for the condemned in Newgate, is just part of a larger folk tradition. Many of our older readers should remember a Nursery Rhyme/Singing Game, called Oranges and Lemons. I remember singing and playing it in kindergarten. It features in that strange film, The Wicker Man.
The earliest known versions of the lyrics were first published in 1744 in the “Pretty Song Book” by Tommy Thumb.
Pathe Films Take
Children at St. Clement Dane – where the tower bells change ring the tune still today.
The song is used in a children's singing game with the same name, in which the players file, in pairs, through an arch made by two of them. The challenge comes during the final lines:
Here comes a candle to light you to bed.
Here comes a chopper to chop off your head.
(Chip chop, chip chop, the last man's dead.)
On the last word, the children forming the arch drop their arms to catch the pair of children currently passing through, who are then "out" and must form another arch next to the existing one. In this way, the series of arches become a steadily lengthening tunnel through which each set of two players has to run faster and faster to escape in time.
Church names vary, but some are clear, St. Clement Danes, near the wharves where merchantmen landed citrus fruits; St Martin Orgar in the City, destroyed in the great fire; Old Bailey is St Sepulchre-without-Newgate; St Leonard's, Shoreditch; St Dunstan's, Stepney; St Mary-le-Bow in Cheapside; and St Helen's Bishopsgate.
For @minyoo
Dong, Dong, Dongdaemun, Korean nursery rhyme for playing a similar game to Oranges and Lemons.
The earliest known versions of the lyrics were first published in 1744 in the “Pretty Song Book” by Tommy Thumb.
Pathe Films Take
Children at St. Clement Dane – where the tower bells change ring the tune still today.
The song is used in a children's singing game with the same name, in which the players file, in pairs, through an arch made by two of them. The challenge comes during the final lines:
Here comes a candle to light you to bed.
Here comes a chopper to chop off your head.
(Chip chop, chip chop, the last man's dead.)
On the last word, the children forming the arch drop their arms to catch the pair of children currently passing through, who are then "out" and must form another arch next to the existing one. In this way, the series of arches become a steadily lengthening tunnel through which each set of two players has to run faster and faster to escape in time.
Church names vary, but some are clear, St. Clement Danes, near the wharves where merchantmen landed citrus fruits; St Martin Orgar in the City, destroyed in the great fire; Old Bailey is St Sepulchre-without-Newgate; St Leonard's, Shoreditch; St Dunstan's, Stepney; St Mary-le-Bow in Cheapside; and St Helen's Bishopsgate.
For @minyoo
Dong, Dong, Dongdaemun, Korean nursery rhyme for playing a similar game to Oranges and Lemons.
fallenmystic
Tribune
It's impressive how you are knowledgeable even in such an obscure bit of Korean culture
As with many other children's play songs, there are many variations of the title. But I suppose it's most commonly called either as '동대문 놀이 노래(literally, "The Eastern Gate Play Song"),' or '동동동대문을 열어라(Dong, Dong, Dong-dae-mun Eul Yol Uh Ra - literally, "Open the E-E-Eastern Gate").':On a side note, I only realised too late that the story lies outside my comfort zone because it's about a real person who didn't give consent to be involved in a sexual fantasy.
I decided, however, to stay with the thread because it's such a good story and all the details provided of the judicial procedure in the 18th century Britain are quite fascinating, even when I have so little knowledge of the subject.
I'm not sure if I'm just making up an excuse, but I suppose it may not be such a disrespectful thing for Mary Jones, if I learn about her tragic fate by this story and remember her.
Praefectus Praetorio
R.I.P. Brother of the Quill
Praefectus Praetorio
R.I.P. Brother of the Quill
I am truly sorry to have seduced you into a story that might violate your personal standards. I fully understand where you are coming from. Let me here restate and warn of the remaining part of the story (which only has six more chapters):
1. The story centers on the true story of a real person, Mary Jones.
2. Every other named person in the story is a real historical person. (with one minor exception which I will point out when he appears).
3. The plot follows as closely as possible the actual recorded events of Mary's life. I have filled in the gaps in the record with likely events. These are few and minor to the plot.
4. Inner thoughts, motivations, and everyday dialog are, of course, invented. However, I have tried to be as true to the characters in their situations as possible.
5. Up to the guards' voyeuristic exploitation of Mary, there was no sexual or violent content. The guards' treatment of their prisoner is not recorded. I invented the action as it seemed likely and, after all, this is cruxforums and stories here usually have some sex and violence.
6. I cannot reveal the details of the rest of the story. However, broadly speaking there will be significantly more non-consensual discomfort and humiliation for Mary.
If my evocation of the historical person of Mary Jones, makes her so real in your mind and, therefore, causes you to be unable, in good conscience, to complete her story, it would be for me a great compliment, in that I have accomplished my main purpose here.
"it may not be such a disrespectful thing for Mary Jones, if I learn about her tragic fate by this story and remember her." A major reason I agreed to write the story!
On the other hand, let me ask: Would you read a story concerning Boudica and her daughters, raped by the Romans? What about a witch-burning that named the real victim in 1512? What about the story of Jesus's crucifixion?
On a separate note, I introduced my one clear cheat in this chapter just posted. It doesn't make any of the plot untrue, but it is an extra invention that is clearly fictional if you catch it! Go ahead, loyal readers - find it!