Crime & punishment > Whinny Park murder

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trial and the number of witnesses summoned, caused the
greatest excitement : there were more than 90 persons
cited as evidence, most of whom were of course from the
neighbourhood of Whinny Park : so that in the adjoining
district it formed almost the whole topic of conversation ;
this feeling was partly also kept up by the number of id¬
lers who thronged to see the garden, shop, and other spots
connected with the murder; and who were described by
the neighbours as sitting on some days about the pre¬
mises as thick as “ folk at a tent preaching.” From all
parts of our own, and many of the neighbouring counties,
people continued, without intermission, to throng the
route that leads to the place. Sometimes solitary indi¬
viduals, at other times, groups were seen demanding the
road, or wandering on their way thither; nor was it al¬
ways pedestrians who were smitten with the desire of
witnessing the palpable evidences of innocently shed
blood, but the glittering equipages and the quality of
the equestrian shewed that the wealthy and the gay, the
learned and the grave, have the same feelings to gratify,
the same thirst of vengeance for the taking away of man’s
life, which we find is more keenly whetted after an in¬
spection of the blood-stained premises; and even the
softer and more refined portion of society were the loud¬
est in their outcry against the steely heart of the fiend
that plotted and executed the execrable deed. But it is
a surprising anomaly that those who were the most for¬
ward to visit this now celebrated spot, were the* who feel
the greatest horror at the crime, and who would shrink
with the utmost repugnance from passing this lonely road
on an evening; still they must have found a strange un¬
explained gratification in contemplating the act of a man
upon whom, in their minds, the avenues of pity were for
ever closed. For, having seen the blood and the grave,
and the bed where the victim slept calmly, and the loom
upon which he may be supposed to have struggled violent¬
ly, and the elegant and complete house, formerly the resort
of innocence and the pride of his life, they appeared to
appease their excited feelings with the belief that fearful
remorse and a dreadful futurity will smite the victim of
passion and vice. Shreds of cloth and pirns, or whatever