Marrin's Bookshop

Item Description

9-1/2" x 7-1/2" verse broadside. Main text in two columns separated by rules Good condition. [The murder was provoked by a shouting match between Bishop and another man on a nearby street that woke Cartwright. Irritated, he called the police. Bishop was arrested and an angry Cartwright followed him and the policemen, proclaiming angrily that he intended to press charges against his noisy neighbor. Angered by his taunting, Bishop broke free of the police and stabbed Cartwright to death. Bishop was sentenced at the Old Bailey but hanged outside Maidstone Prison, Kent, 27 days later. It was the last public execution to take place in Kent, less than a month before the last public execution in England, which occurred in London on May 26, 1868. The Swiss Cottage was a pub on the corner of Wastdale Road and Stanstead Road. Alfred Cartwright lived in Wastdale Road and his parents Henry, a shoemaker, and Matilda lived round the corner in Malham Road. Approaching midnight on 2 April 1868 Alfred and his parents left the Swiss Cottage to go to Alfred's home. As they walked along Wastdale Road they saw, in the words of Matilda, a group of men "making a great noise, quarrelling and talking very loud, and talking about fighting - they were challenging each other to fight for a shilling". An argument over the noise led to a fight, a policeman appeared and tried to "disperse the mob". It was while he was taking Richard Bishop to the police station in Dartmouth Road, with the Cartwright family and others following, that Bishop produced a knife and stabbed Alfred. Bishop's trial at the Old Bailey began four days later. The evidence against him was apparently overwhelming. In his defence, presumably hoping for a verdict of manslaughter, Bishop admitted that he had "drunk a good deal that night... rum and beer". This didn't help. He was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. Less than four weeks later he was hanged outside Maidstone Gaol. It's unlikely that Richard Bishop had even modest poetic inclinations. However, it seems his mother employed a solicitor to try to get the verdict altered or the sentence reduced. The poem appeared as a broadsheet (a single printed sheet distributed rather like a flyer) before her son's execution and it seems possible that she, or someone she knew, wrote the poem.] INFORMATION FROM: Sydenham Town forum.