The Sun.
London, England, 1849-11-13 00:00:00

OF THE

MANNINGS.

(THIS DAY.)

To-day, in this great metropolis, an appalling
crime has been consummated by an appalling
expiation. Once more, for the instruction and
warning of the civilized world at large, has the
inviolability of human life been vindicated and
symbolized ly the ignominious immolation of those
by whom it was outraged. Once again inflexible
justice proclaims " An eye for an eye, and a tooth
for a tooth." Swift and unerring oft is the pursuit
of justice. But three short months ago and
the inhabitants of this great city were
horrified by the discovery and details of a
deed of blood, as atrocious as any that has ever
stained, with indelible infamy, its gloomy annals ef
crime. Now,-;:after a brief interval, the perpetrators
of that deed, for a time shrouded in mystery, have

been dragged into the light of day and put to a
fearful end ; and the public mind again sickens at
the spectacle or the recital. Vain alike were the
precautions taken to baffle discovery or to facilitate
flight. A few days more, and all trace of the ill-fated
Patrick O'Connor would have been completely obli-
terated ; the quick lime would have rapidly done its
work of decomposition ; and the Mannings, husband
and wife, rescued from justice, would have walked
the earth carrying about with them a hor-
rible secret, than which death itself would
have been a thousand times preferable.
They might have revelled in the luxuries which their
ill-gotten wealth would have commanded, but their
cup would have been embittered by an ingredient
with which the sufferings and privations of the se-
verest, if virtuous, penury are never mingled. But it
was otherwise ordered, as it ever is in all such cases ;
and_outragei Justice has, in the fact which so speedily
vindicates her omnipotence, mercifully rescued her
victims from a life, which, though it might
have given scope and opportunity for repent-
ance, could only have been haunted by a fearful
reminiscence, rendering it intolerably burdensome.
The same amazing infatuation characterised the
perpetrators of this crime which ever distinguishes
the agents and actors in all kindred ones. As if
bereft of ordinary instinct or reason, invariably do
they carry about with them some indelible or damning
evidence of their guilt or complicity. There is
always the spot of blood, overlooked or half erased,
on the murderer's habiliments, or some incident,
slight and trivial in itself, constituting often
the only link wanting in the chain which
indissolubly connects him with the crime and
seals his doom. Alarmed at the first appearance
of the emissaries of justice, Aiaria Manning
sought safety in flight, and but that, with incredible
fatuity, she carried about her person the documents
which established her guilt beyond all question, she
might, in all human probability, long have remained
at large, though she must, sooner or later, inevitably
have been captured. Equally demented was the
partner alike of her crime and her bosom. Weeks, in
which a distant flight might have been achieved,
penniless and destitute though he soon must
have become, were spent in hovering about
the very confines of the land which he had Folluted
by his crime, as if he were spell-bound by emotions
which disarmed him alike of common prudence and
that feeling of self-preservation which is the strongest
instinct of the human heart. But it is always so.
The circumstances in such cases may be varied, but
the issue is ever the same. There is something
attaching to the crime of murder which defies conceal-
ment, and sooner or later conducts its perpetrators to
the scaffold. By this enormous crime and its
results the world is taught a solemn,
an impressive lesson. It shows to what
a fearful termination the evil passions of our common
humanity, once let loose, may lead. The intimacy
of the Mannings with Patrick O'Connor was an un-
hallowed one—characterized by an insatiate lust on
the one side and the greatest avarice and cupidity on
the other. It is beyond a doubt that, throwing to
the winds the sacred obligations of marriage, and the
sweet and ennobling impulses of chastity, she had
for some time carried on an adulterous intercourse
with the man in whose blood she eventually
imbrued her hands. Her youth and beauty had from
the first awakened in him the livelieat emotions of
affection, which, though legitimate in the beginning,
found after wards an unhallowed and forbidden
gratification. For him, who had passed his prime,
and could no longer boast of the vigour or comeliness
of early manhood, she could have had no passion but
au unholy one. Obeying the strong native instinct of
a youthful heart, she united herself in the holy
relationship of marriage with one who was at least
her equal in years and in station. So far her motives
were pure and praiseworthy; but, forgetful of the
requirements of that new relationship, she continued
to yield to the solicitations of a previous amour, and
in that consisted her first great lapse from the paths
of virtue. Nor was her husband blameless in this
matter. He appears to have connived at her intimacy
with O'Connor,and to have stifled the feelings of jealousy
and manly indignation which it would have awakened
in an ingenuous mind, or merged them in the same
mercenary considerations which animated his faith-
less wife. Mark the end ! See how, eventually, the
unholy passion of O'Connor, the avarice of his para-
mour, and the baseness of Manning himself, culmi-
nated in that atrocious catastrophe which consigned
the first, " unanointed and unanealed,": to: a violent
death, and an unconsecrated grave, and the two last
to the ignominy of the scaffold. What a stern moral
lesson is here taught to the men and women of this
vast metropolis, and wherever the details of this
horrible crime and its awful retribution shall find
their way. To those who have long held dalliance
with vice in any shape or form, or who may be
hovering on the verge of crime itself, rightly applied,
" read, marked, and inwardly digested," it may be
the means of snatching them from the abyss of an
impending doom ; and to those, happier far, who have
never wandered from "the direct forethought " and
the straight line of duty, may it prove the medium of
confirming them more stedfastly in the choice and
pursuit of virtue, which shall secure to them all that
is delightful, or joyous, or ennobling, in this mortal
life, and the blessed enjoyment of another and a
better one. "He that hath ears to hear let him hear.,
Proceed we now to a detail of the circumstances pre-
ceding and attending the execution.
THE LOCALITY OF THE PRISON AND ITS
APPROACHES.

Long before daybreak this morning we were
bending our way from a distant suburb mto the scene
of execution, in the discharge of our public duty.
Surprised were we to find as we :proceeded so little
indication of " the coming event." The great
thoroughfares through which we passed were
comparatively silent and deserted. In Cheapside
itself, that great artery of the metropolis, only here
and there did we discover a solitary individual or
two, who seemed wending their way to the same
destination as ourselves. But as we neared London-
bridge, and the day began to break, which was
cloudless and serene in the extreme, the
scene wore a very different phase. Crowds
of persona, mostly young men and boys,
of the operative class, were seen emerging
from the streets and purlieus in every direction, and
filing along the bridge ; and as we threaded our way
through the Borough the immense moving mass of
human beings, which gathered strength as it pro
seeded, became denser and denser still. In Black-
man-street it was met by equally formidable crowds,
who had approached the scene by way of Black-
friars, Waterloo, and Westminster bridges.
It was a motley tumult of jaded prostitutes, emaciated
artizans, and dirty, raw, and scantily-clothed lads.
We were surprised to see in the crowd so large a num-
ber of persons apparently respectable, so far as dress
made them so, but most of all to meet many young
women, tidily and well apparelled. The only consider-
able approach to the scaffold was from Blackman-
street, through Trinity and Swan-streets; and by
seven o'clock both of those were thronged by an im
meme crowd such as we have described. At the foot
of Swan-street a barrier was thrown across, which
prevented the space in the immediate vicinage of the