CAPTURE OF DAN DAWSON.

39

across the hill almost every morning, and passes our house about the time when the horses go out to exercise, at a very early hour. He carries his head as though he were ashamed to have his face seen."

One

As soon as the horses were taken ill, Dan Dawson left the "Five Bells." The First Spring Meeting of 1811 was then near its close, and several months were yet to elapse before the suspected culprit was arrested at Cambridge, on August 12, 1812. Into the details of his trial and death sentence I shall not enter, beyond saying that it seems incredible in these days that a man should be hanged for such an offence. justification of the sentence being carried out in its full severity was said to be, that although horses were the only sufferers, it was obvious that human beings might with equal facility have been poisoned, because in the summer months the lads on the backs of the horses frequently drank at the same troughs. Mrs Tilbrook of the "Five Bells," being, like most of her sex, of an inquisitive disposition, had examined Dan Dawson's luggage, which he kept under his bed at her house. She soon discovered a bottle marked "poison" in one of his trunks; and in the neck of this bottle there was a flaw which made it easy of identification. The bottle was afterwards found in Dan Dawson's possession, and was shown to Mrs Tilbrook, who stated, "If it be the same bottle I found under his

bed, there is a 'delve' in it into which I can put my thumb." This evidence led to Dawson's conviction and public execution at Cambridge, in from twelve to fifteen thousand persons.

presence of

If I am censured by some impatient readers for entering at this length into a transaction with which many are familiar, I can but plead that the details given are generally inaccurate, and that my father was intimately connected with the discovery of this dastardly crime, and was never tired, in my youth, of talking about it. I remember that it was his habit to impress upon me most forcibly, what I afterwards learned from my own experience, that it was impossible to exercise too much vigilance as to the water supplied to horses away from home. This caution was not forgotten by me when I had Surplice at Epsom, just before the Derby of 1848.

I remarked at the beginning of this chapter that it would have been enough for me to state that I was the son of a trainer, and born at Newmarket, in explanation of the fact that I myself followed my father's profession. This, however, was not my father's desire. He would infinitely have preferred that I should have studied chemistry at the laboratory of a relative of his and mine, at Stratford, in Essex. The firm in question was that of Messrs Howard, Gibson, & Kent. I was placed under their care for a short time; but soon after, my father became a widower, and