The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 338: what you’re looking at

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

312 THE COURT OF LONDON young women dwelling in her house likewise had bones broken, and a third daughter of crime was most severely injured, all by the random blows which Daniel Coffin had struck with the formidable weapon. Soon afterward Lawrence Sampson and several of his men arrived at the house, and received from the Buttoner’s lips a full confirmation of the tale which had been recorded in the document drawn up by Mrs. Young. He had but just strength enough to repeat the particulars, and the surgeon who had been summoned to attend on the wounded at Mrs. Young’s house declared that the Buttoner could not be removed for a day or two. A Bow Street runner was accord- ingly left to keep watch upon him, while Larry Sampson and the rest of his men proceeded to Jacob’s Island to arrest Bencull. As the reader has already been informed, the Mushroom Faker and the Durrynacker were captured at the same time with Bencull himself, but the Hangman had evaded the search of the officers of justice. Soon after it was daylight in the morning,— that same Sabbath morning, be it recollected, which was marked by the horrible crimes of Daniel Coffin at the abode of Jeremy Humpage in Whitechapel, — several persons made their ap- pearance with drags at the Folly Bridges to fish for the corpse of the murdered Nell Gibson. This proceeding naturally excited an immense sensation at Jacob’s Island, and in a very few minutes after the rumour had circulated for what purpose the men were come, the windows of all the dingy, dilapidated houses overlooking the black ditch on both sides were crowded, even at that early hour, with anxious faces. A glance thrown around upon those countenances so marked with the traces of squalor, wretchedness, and demoralization would have afforded a perfect index to the condition of that neighbourhood, as if to the reading of the hidden pages of a volume filled with obscenities, vices, and horrors. The men, however, who had come to drag the dike took no such philosophic view of the scene, but addressed themselves in right good earnest to the loathsome task which they were there to fulfil. On each of the bridges did two of these men begin to drag, and, at first, innumerable were the rotting remains of cats and dogs that the drags brought up from the thick, slimy ditch. All kinds of filth, offal, and garbage were thus dis- COMmMIicoooks (C(O)