The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 202: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE PASTILLES 179 standing together, while we relate some particulars which are essential to the progress of our story. As the reader has seen, rewards had been offered for the apprehension of the Smedleys and the Burker, and we may add that no efforts had been left untried by the police to get upon the track of either or all of these individuals. The horrible revelations made by the subterranean of the gold-beater’s house in Lambeth had excited the public feeling to a high degree, and the officers of justice therefore considered it absolutely necessary that the miscreants should be hunted down and brought to the bar of a criminal tribunal. But if in such a case it were desirable to capture a particular one rather than the others, this one was the Burker. His complicity in the hideous murder of the lawyer Pollard at Liverpool, his escape from the gaol in that town, and his daring, desperate conduct toward the police officials at the Smedleys’ house, were motives in ad- dition to all others which rendered it absolutely necessary for the security of society that such a diabolic fiend should be cut short in his iniquitous career. But, as we have seen, the Burker as well as the Smedleys had hitherto evaded the pursuit of justice. The secretary for the Home Department, acting upon the representations of the police authorities, determined to take a step which it was hoped would have the effect of bringing the gang of miscreants within the range of the law’s operation. Hand-bills were accordingly printed, pro- claiming that the mercy of the Crown would be to a certain degree extended to any one of the gang (the Burker himself excepted) ,.who would give such information as should place the others in the hands of the police, or the same benefits would be extended to that one of the said gang who would surrender up the Burker alone to the authorities. These bills were printed early on the morning of which we have been writing, and they began to be circulated in the metrop- olis at the time the Burker took his station at the West End, disguised as a Jew, and with his tray of pastilles before him. The police officers were active in scattering the bills amidst the low quarters of London, knowing that in these districts they were far more likely to have the effect of attaining their object than in the superior districts of EOMINGIOOKS (CO)