PETERSFIELD.
THE STORY OF THE EXECUTION OF STEPHEN DRAKE, AND THE DISTRIBUTION OF 300 LOAVES ANNUALLY IN PETERSFIELD.—A little volume has recently made its appearance at the railway book stalls, entitled ‟Undiscovered Crimes” by ‟Waters,” and from this we gather an exciting story of one Stephen Drake, who was found guilty at the Winchester March Assizes, in 1750, of stealing a pony, and was hanged. The evidence adduced against this prisoner at the trial appears to have been of the flimsiest kind; and in reality the unhappy man was not hung for stealing the pony, but on account of a murder which he was supposed to have committed, but which could not be brought home to him clearly. The author of the book likens his trial to an anecdote told by O’Connell: ‟A prisoner of notoriously bad character was arraigned at a Clonmel assize for wilful murder. Whilst the trial was proceeding, the man said to have been murdered suddenly made his appearance in court. There was no doubt as to the new comer’s identity, no question that he was the supposedly dead man, and the judge in a few words directed the jury to return a formal verdict of acquittal. The gentlemen of the jury demurred to such hasty ruling, conferred together, retired for more deliberate consultation, and finally found the prisoner guilty. ‘Guilty!’ exclaimed the astounded judge; ‘why, good heavens, the man alleged to have been murdered is here alive and well.’ ‘That is true, your lordship,’ gravely replied the foreman of the twelve; ‘it is very clear that the prisoner did not murder Dennis Ryan, but it is quite as certain that he stole my horse last spring.’” But to resume the story of Stephen Drake. He was born at Teignmouth in Devonshire, in 1726, and received a tolerable education. At an early age his father died and he was living with an aunt in good style—A Mrs. Priscilla Drake, at Cadiz House. One day a circus party came round to the town, and among the company was a young girl named Maria Bissington, a clever, seductive damsel, who by some accident fell from her horse when the circus cavalcade was opposite to Cadiz House. She was taken into the house, and Mrs. Drake ordered every attention to be paid to the fair equestrian. This girl, it appears, trumped up a story to the effect that she had been taken from her parents, who were rich and unknown to her, and that she abhorred circus life. The kind lady took compassion on her, and kept her at Cadiz House. She was a beautiful girl in complexion, although a most wicked and designing woman. Stephen Drake, as may be supposed, then a young man of 20, fell in love with her, and she pretended to love hime, and called him ‟dear Stephen.” However, this young man was intended for the sea, and his vessel was to sail in a few days from Plymouth. Before it started Maria Bissington had a favor to ask of her ‟dear Stephen.” It was that he would take a box, containing valuable documents to prove her identity, to Exeter. Maria had taken this from the circus proprietor, and she feared he would claim it, and thus all chance of proving her birthright would be lost. Stephen was only too happy to undertake the journey. She said to him: ‟At whatever hour in the day you arrive at Exeter, you will find a gipsy woman near the cathedral gate. You will say in a low tone, ‘the cathedral clock is fast, I think. Do you know how much?’ Then give the woman the box, and leave her without another word. You will do me this favor—this great service—I know, dear Stephen, and be back in time to sail in the Pegasus. Mind that.” Stephen undertook the journey on foot to Exeter, and everything turned out as he was told. Having duly delivered the box to the old hag at the Cathedral, he started by the Highflyer coach, for Plymouth for his ship. The coach, however, overturned, and Stephen Drake was so hurt that he could not get to Plymouth, and he was compelled to return to Teignmouth. He alighted at the Jolly Fisherman public-house, and immediately walk-up straight to bed. Had he entered the parlour of the said house he would have seen a hand-bill offering a reward of £100 to anyone who could give information of the perpetrators of a great jewellery robbery at Cadiz House! In fact, the very box he had taken to Exeter! But he saw nothing of it, and before he hardly returned Maria Bissington was at the Jolly Fisherman, demanding to see Drake. He saw her, and she told him a story of how she was hunted by the circus proprietor, and he (dear Stephen) alone could save her, by going to Norwood, near London, and visiting the gipsy camp, and finding Esther Mann, the woman who had taken the box from him. The love-sick young fellow was again allured by the designing girl, and they chatted together until the coach was off, and away went ‟dear Stephen.” without learning anything of the jewel robbery. The gipsies at this time were a dangerous race, and the design was now evidently to get rid of Stephen Drake, whom they thought was at sea and safe. He found himself at Hainault forest, then swarming with gipsies, and he was led by Esther Mann to a solitary encampment. He was here spoken to and offered liquor. A little girl, Lizzy, whispered to him not to drink it, as it would make him sleepy. It was a drug. Gradually eight rough looking gipsies entered the camp, and they sat chatting and drinking. The object was Stephen Drake’s life. They, however, fell asleep, and the girl advised Drake to pretend to sleep, but to keep his eyes open. He did so. One man alone was awake, bur gradually his pipe fell from his mouth. ‟One, two, three hours might have passed—Drake knew not how many or how few—when a little hand, passed through a slit in the blanket, touched his forehead, and a soft, fearful voice whispered, ‘Now is your chance! Be swift and silent! Drag yourself through this rent—softly—softly! Now then,’ said Lizzy, when she with Stephen Drake had gained a distance of tow or three hundred yards from the gipsy tent, ‘now then, make the best of your way in the direction of yonder lights: they are only five miles distant.’” Stephen Drake reached the Lord Rodney public-house safely. Soon after this he went to sea, and removed away from England under Captain Saumarez in the Nottingham for ten years. The ship returned to Portsmouth and was paid off. He was a good, honest sailor. In a day or two after he was paid off, he visited Netley Abbey with his companions, and there, curiously enough, he saw Maria Bissington, leaning on the arm of an old gentleman, pig tailed and powdered, and who was 60 or 70 years of age; and Drake was told that she was the niece of the gentleman whose name was Mr. John Parsons. ‟He is a rich fellow and very proud of her. He has a nice place on Shirley Common, and being a bachelor, it is believed the niece will have everything.” A great deal of gossip, however, had been current as to the relations between Miss Bissington and Mr. Parsons. It was not long before Stephen Drake renewed a clandestine acquaintance with his old love, and it was agreed that they should elope together. The night was fixed for the elopement, and they met together, crossed the ferry, and as Drake and his lady love were emerging from a lane close to Bitterne, a cruel blow was dealt to Stephen from behind on his head, and he was felled to the ground, insensible. He was taken to a hut close by and restored. The next morning it was found that Mr. John Parsons had been discovered murdered in his bed! The real or pretended niece was no where to be found, and the place had been plundered of a large sum in gold coin, and plate, and costly jewels. Miss Bissington’s bonnet was found floating on the river, and the evidence went to show that Drake was in her company, that they had intended to elope, and he had drowned Miss Bissington in the river. Poor fellow! he was taken before the magistrates. He did not know of the murder of Mr. Parsons, and told a lie in saying that he had not seen Miss Bissington for a fortnight. This was disputed by the ferryman, who said he saw him with her at twelve o’clock on the night of the murder. ‟Murder,”exclaimed Drake, ‟what murder.” On being told he fell in a fit and was borne away. Suffice it to say, there was not enough legal evidence to bring home the crime of murder to Drake, and he was acquitted. ‟This decision,” added the Mayor, ‟will not be a bar to the prisoner’s immediate apprehension, should any new fact, which is highly probable, come to light tending to brand him with the guilt of this great crime, or, more exactly, these great crimes.”—‟Technically acquitted, Stephen Drake remained under the crushing moral weight of the accusation. His solicitor’s defence was stigmatized as mere clap-trap, and the magistrates egregious fools to have been influenced by it. Thenceforth Drake was a man forbid. He could obtain no employment, folks shuddered to come in contact with him. Still the veriest pariah must live, if he can; so poor Stephen Drake, who had, or believed he had, some knowledge of horse flesh, bethought him of chaffering for the purchase and sale in a humble way of nags, ponies, donkeys, a speculation, which we have seen, came to an untimely end at Winchester, when Drake was condemned to death, nominally for stealing a pony, really for having murdered John Parsons and Maria Bissington.” He was doomed to be hung ————At last, a missive was received from the Home Office, announcing that the last respite from execution granted to Stephen Drake, which would expire in about a fortnight, would not be renewed, and that the law consequently must take its course. It was generally believed that the decision of the Home Secretary had been influenced by the urgent representations of a county magistrate and M.P. nearly relate to the deceased Mr. Parsons. Be that as it may, the influential county magistrate and M.P. read at his own dinner table the official announcement, that Stephen Drake was, after all, to be hanged by the neck till he was dead, with what some might have thought indecent glee. Early on the morning of the day fixed for the execution at Winchester, at 10 p.m., of Stephen Drake, a gipsy girl called at the stately residence, near Petersfield, Hampshire, of the influential county magistrate and M.P. She humbly requested to speak with Mr. ———. That distinguished gentleman could not then be spoken with. By and by, after he had finished breakfast, he would hear what the gipsy wench had to say. In vain did the girl stamp, well, rave, insist, it being, she said, a matter of life and death, upon seeing Mr. ——— immediately. The influential county magistrate and M.P.’s plush-proud menials treated her passionate appeals with lofty indifference, and it wanted just five minutes to ten when the girl, our former acquaintance, Lizzy, was admitted to the great man’s presence. ‟Well, what is your business, what have you to say?” ‟I have to say,” sobbed the girl, ‟that my sister, my now dying sister, whom you know as Maria Bissington, only heard last evening that they— that you, you, you were going to hang poor, innocent Stephen Drake. She is not far off. Come and speak with while she has still breath to speak.” The girl’s words were thunder-strokes upon the brain of Mr. ———. He stared wildly, rose as if to ring the bell, was arrested, paralysed, as it were, by the chiming of the clock bell. ‟Ten. Too late, too late!” he exclaimed, and sank upon the floor, smitten, for the first time, with apoplexy. He was a man of full habit of body, and sanguine temperament. He lived on till 1768. By a provision in his last will and testament, three hundred loaves, not weighing less than four pounds each are to this day giveaway to the poor of Petersfield, on the anniversary of the day upon which Stephen Drake was hanged; ‟the distribution to begin at ten precisely, and the church bell to toll (in payment of which five shillings are to be given) till the distribution be finished.” (See also 27-Dec-1862)