The inimitable Letters of Horace Walpole contain, as might be expected, more than one mention of this cause celebre.  Writing on 23rd March, 1752, to Horace Mann, he says, “There are two wretched women that just now are as much talked of [as the two Miss Gunnings], a Miss Jefferies and a Miss Blandy; the one condemned for murdering her uncle, the other her father.  Both their stories have horrid circumstances; the first having been debauched by her uncle; the other had so tender a parent, that his whole concern while he was expiring, and knew her for his murderess, was to save her life.  It is shocking to think what shambles this country is grown!  Seventeen were executed this morning, after having murdered the turnkey on Friday night, and almost forced open Newgate.  One is forced to travel, even at noon, as if one was going to battle.”  And again, on 13th May, “Miss Blandy died with a coolness of courage that is astonishing, and denying the fact, which has made a kind of party in her favour; as if a woman who would not stick at parricide would scruple a lie!  We have made a law for immediate execution on conviction of murder:  it will appear extraordinary to me if it has any effect; for I can’t help believing that the terrible part of death must be the preparation for it.”  The “law” regarding summary executions to which Walpole refers is the Act already mentioned.  To Henry Seymour Conway, on 23rd June, he writes, “Since the two Misses [Blandy and Jefferies] were hanged, and the two Misses [the beautiful Gunnings] were married, there is nothing at all talked of.”  On 28th August he writes to George Montague, “I have since been with Mr. Conway at Park Place, where I saw the individual Mr. Cooper, a banker, and lord of the manor of Henley, who had those two extraordinary forfeitures from the executions of the Misses Blandy and Jefferies, two fields from the former, and a malthouse from the latter.  I had scarce credited the story, and was pleased to hear it confirmed by the very person:  though it was not quite so remarkable as it was reported, for both forfeitures were in the same manor.”  This circumstance is noted in the Annual Register for 1768, in connection with the death of Mr. Cooper, at the age of eighty.  From the following references it would appear that the empty old house in Hart Street had acquired a sinister reputation.  On 8th November Walpole writes to Conway, “Have the Coopers seen Miss Blandy’s ghost, or have they made Mr. Cranston poison a dozen or two more private gentlewomen?”—­the allusion being to the deaths of Mrs. Blandy and Mrs. Pocock; and again, on 4th August, 1753, to John Chute.  “The town of Henley has been extremely disturbed with an engagement between the ghosts of Miss Blandy and her father, which continued so violent, that some bold persons, to prevent further bloodshed broke in, and found it was two jackasses which had got into the kitchen.”

[Illustration:  Miss Mary Blandy in Oxford Castle Gaol (From an Engraving in the British Museum.)]