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No man of peace: the life and times of a Victorian-era celebrity thug

Charlie Peace: His Amazing Life and Astounding Legend
by Michael Eaton
(Five Leaves Publications, £14.99)

CHARLIE PEACE, born in 1832, met his end on the scaffold in 1879. The whole of his adult life had been spent either in prison or as a notorious cat burglar operating under any number of aliases.

He made good his escape on one occasion by shooting dead a policeman, for which the law framed a poor labourer, and he shot and wounded another constable when he was arrested for the last time.

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