Being a Series of Accounts of the Lives and Deeds of Notorious Women, Murderesses, Cheats, Cozeners, on whom Justice was Executed, and of others who, Accused of Crimes, were Acquitted at least in Law; Drawn from Authenticated Sources TO RAFAEL SABATINI TO WHOSE VIRTUES AS AN AUTHOR AND AS A FRIEND THE WRITER WISHES HIS BOOK WERE WORTHIER OF DEDICATION CONTENTS I. — INTRODUCTORY II. — A FAIR NECK FOR THE MAIDEN III: — THE COUNTESS AND THE COZENER IV: — A MODEL FOR MR HOGARTH V: — ALMOST A LADY[27

I had a thought to call this book Pale Hands or Fair Hands Imbrued—so easy it is to fall into the ghastly error of facetiousness. Apart, however, from the desire to avoid pedant or puerile humour, re-examination of my material showed me how near I had been to crashing into a pitfall of another sort. Of the ladies with whose encounters with the law I propose to deal several were assoiled of the charges against them. Their hands, then—unless the present ruddying of female fingernails is the reviva

In her long history there can have been few mornings upon which Edinburgh had more to offer her burghers in the way of gossip and rumour than on that of the 1st of July, 1600. In this 'gate' and that 'gate,' as one may imagine, the douce citizens must have clustered and broke and clustered, like eddied foam on a spated burn. By conjecture, as they have always been a people apt to take to the streets upon small occasion as on large, it is not unlikely that the news which was to drift into the cit

It is hardly likely when that comely but penniless young Scot Robert Carr, of Ferniehurst, fell from his horse and broke his leg that any of the spectators of the accident foresaw how far-reaching it would be in its consequences. It was an accident, none the less, which in its ultimate results was to put several of the necks craned to see it in peril of the hangman's noose. That divinely appointed monarch King James the Sixth of Scotland and First of England had an eye for manly beauty. Though h

On a Sunday, the 5th of February, 1733, there came toddling into that narrow passage of the Temple known as Tanfield Court an elderly lady by the name of Mrs Love. It was just after one o'clock of the afternoon. The giants of St Dunstan's behind her had only a minute before rapped out the hour with their clubs. Mrs Love's business was at once charitable and social. She was going, by appointment made on the previous Friday night, to eat dinner with a frail old lady named Mrs Duncomb, who lived in

Born (probably illegitimately) in a fisherman's cottage, reared in a workhouse, employed in a brothel, won at cards by a royal duke, mistress of that duke, married to a baron, received at Court by three kings (though not much in the way of kings), accused of cozenage and tacitly of murder, died full of piety, 'cutting up' for close on L150,000—there, as it were in a nutshell, you have the life of Sophie Dawes, Baronne de Feucheres. In the introduction to her exhaustive and accomplished biography

On Tuesday, the 1st of July, in the year 1851, two gentlemen, sober of face as of raiment, presented themselves at the office of the Procureur-General in the City of Rennes. There was no need for them to introduce themselves to that official. They were well-known medical men of the city, Drs Pinault and Boudin. The former of the two acted as spokesman. Dr Pinault confessed to some distress of mind. He had been called in by his colleague for consultation in the case of a girl, Rosalie Sarrazin, s

Twenty years separate the cases of these two women, the length of France lies between the scenes in which they are placed: Mme Boursier, Paris, 1823; Mme Lacoste, Riguepeu, a small town in Gascony, 1844. I tie their cases together for reasons which cannot be apparent until both their stories are told—and which may not be so apparent even then. That is not to say I claim those reasons to be profound, recondite, or settled in the deeps of psychology. The matter is, I would not have you believe tha