2 Quotes by Susanne Alleyn

A likely thing, too!” replied the strong woman. “If it was ever intended that I should go across salt water, do you suppose Providence would have cast my lot in an island?

The English criminal code, later known as the “Bloody Code,” was brutal in the late 18th century. By the time the first legal reforms were enacted in 1826, 220 crimes – many of them relatively petty crimes against property as Dickens describes in the rest of the paragraph – were punishable by death.