From the literary point of view Peace was unfortunate even in the
hour of his notoriety. In the very year of his trial and
execution, the Annual Register, seized with a fit of
respectability from which it has never recovered, announced that
"the appetite for the strange and marvellous" having considerably
abated since the year 1757 when the Register was first
published, its "Chronicle," hitherto a rich mine of extraordinary
and sensational occurrences, would become henceforth a mere diary
of important events. Simultaneously with the curtailment of
its "Chronicle," it ceased to give those excellent summaries of
celebrated trials which for many years had been a feature of its
volumes. The question whether "the appetite for the strange and
marvellous" has abated in an appreciable degree with the passing
of time and is not perhaps keener than it ever was, is a
debatable one. But it is undeniable that the present volumes of
the Annual Register have fallen away dismally from the variety
and human interest of their predecessors. Of the trial and
execution of Peace the volume for 1879 gives but the barest
record.

Charles Peace was not born of criminal parents. His father, John
Peace, began work as a collier at Burton-on-Trent. Losing his
leg in an accident, he joined Wombwell's wild beast show and soon
acquired some reputation for his remarkable powers as a tamer of
wild animals. About this time Peace married at Rotherham the
daughter of a surgeon in the Navy. On the death of a favourite
son to whom he had imparted successfully the secrets of his
wonderful control over wild beasts of every kind, Mr. Peace gave
up lion-taming and settled in Sheffield as a shoemaker.