Note 166 — Chapter X · POLICE AT THE DAWN OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Reading edition
In a letter addressed to The Times of November 14th, 1849—Charles Dickens, himself an eye-witness of one of these brutalising exhibitions, wrote—"I am solemnly convinced that nothing that ingenuity could devise to be done in this city, in the same compass of time, could work such ruin as one public execution, and I stand astounded and appalled by the wickedness it exhibits."