Genre:

Short Fiction, Drollery

Relevant illustrations:

wdct.

Illustrators:

T Hood

Subjects:

Crime, Natural History, Population, Menageries, Cruelty, Phrenology, Instruments

    Tony, an Italian caught counterfeiting money, is sentenced to death. He asks to be allowed the company of 'a little reptile, or insect of some sort that he had brought over from Italy', a whim that is granted (4). The lord mayor and sheriffs are anxious to 'attend very ceremoniously' to show Tony out of the world; their coachmen and footmen are also 'all Malthusians' (11). Tony is examined on points of faith, including whether the lions in Pilgrim's Progress were bred 'at Mr. Wombwell's or Mr. Cross's, or at the Tower of London' (11–12). The hour arrives for Tony to be 'ornithologised by sentence of the great Law Bird, genus Black-cap, into the jail bird, genus Wryneck' (12). Large numbers of Londoners race to attend the hanging. The Royal Humane Society and the Society for Preventing Cruelty to Animals are the first to arrive. The Medical Society also 'came to see one die by the New Dropsy' (13). At the gallows, the hangman and the condemned man inexplicably begin dancing wildly. Others join in, including 'three Phrenologists who were waiting to take a cast of the skull' (21). Amidst all the dancing, Tony's pet creature is 'completely atomised', so that even with a 'solar microscope' one would not be able to find the slightest trace of 'A Tarantula' (23). The illustration captioned 'A Tranatula' (23) depicts a dancing spider.