Note 41 — CAPITAL PUNISHMENTS IN LONDON EIGHTY YEARS AGO.

This fact is not generally known; but a singular proof of the correctness of the above statement has recently been furnished. Within the last three months, the ground having been opened for the common sewer opposite Meux's brewhouse, by the end of Oxford-street, eight or ten, or more, skeletons were discovered. They were supposed to be the remains of suicides, who had been buried there, in the cross roads, under the old law against felo de se. One or two of them had perhaps committed self-destruction; but so many could hardly have been collected by the same act in one spot. It is much more probable that the bones there found were those of malefactors, who after execution had been interred under the gallows on which they suffered.