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Excerpt from Remarkable Rogues: The Careers of Some Notable Criminals of Europe and America

That interest in crime and the Criminal is universal no one will deny. In a cruder age it was the custom to organize arties to Witness the public execution of notable scoundrel)s - Monckton Milnes (lord Houghton) took Thackeray and, I believe, Dickens, to see Courvoisier's but nowadays we are more decorous, although on occa sion several thousand persons can assemble outside a prison and stare at a blank wall during a private hanging inside. Most of us, however, are content to behold crime through the eyes of our favourite journal and it is impossible to complain that the press does not cater fully for us in this respect. That crime retains its fascination for high and low is proved almost every time there is a sensational trial at the Central Criminal Court, for the attendance invariably includes distinguished politicians, authors, artists and representatives of that nebulous class termed Society. It is, however, no longer possible for a special box to be efected at the Old Bailey to enable members of the Royal Family to watch a man on trial for his life, and it is now bad form for a popular judge to surround himself with princes and peers and audibly keep them da fait with the evidence. These things have passed away and we have headlines and contents-bills in their place. We are, in fact, more respectable if less robust, but sin and sinners will intrigue us to the end of Time.

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