Si un jour, vous êtes atteint d’une curiosité maladive à la limite du voyeurisme, allez vous épancher sur Early Eighteenth-Century Newspaper Reports. Vous y trouverez une incroyable collection d’articles de presse datant du 18e siècle et ainsi savourerez dans un fauteuil les petites joies de l’insécurité de ces temps révolus : crimes passionnels, vols, meurtres, assassinats, perversions et j’en passe et des meilleurs.
Dans la rubrique Barbarous Cruelties, on apprend ainsi que :
22 April 1727 : Last week died one Merry, in Berry-street, St. James’s; a poor man who was four months confin’d in Newgate upon false information; for robbing a Gentleman’s stables in Essex; when he came upon his tryal in Essex, whither he was mov’d by Habeas Corpus, his accuser was so shock’d at the sight of him, and struck with horror of conscience, that he confess’d the whole fact in open Court, acknowledged he had sworn falsly, in order to save himself; and that he alone was guilty: Merry was upon this acquitted, and the other who had been formerly the Gentleman’s servant was convicted by his own confession, and received sentence accordingly: By his [i.e. Merry’s] confinement, himself, his wife, and three young Children were reduced to the utmost want, so that when he came came home, they were all forced to lye in one bed, by which he gave them all the jail distemper [a kind of typhoid common in overcrowded jails], which has already cost him his life and one of his children; and ’tis hourly expected that his wife and another child will follow him. (The Weekly Journal; or, British Gazetteer)
Horreur, malheur ! Qu’on leur envoie Sarkozy, il nettoiera au karcher !
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