entered after this fashion, and much valuable property stolen.
Peace was arrested, and with him a girl with whom he was keeping
company, and his sister, Mary Ann, at that time Mrs. Neil. On
October 20, 1854, Peace was sentenced at Doncaster Sessions to
four years' penal servitude, and the ladies who had been found in
possession of the stolen property to six months apiece. Mrs.
Neil did not long survive her misfortune. She would seem to have
been married to a brutal and drunken husband, whom Peace thrashed
on more than one occasion for ill-treating his sister. After one
of these punishments Neil set a bull-dog on to Peace; but Peace
caught the dog by the lower jaw and punched it into a state of
coma. The death in 1859 of the unhappy Mrs. Neil was lamented in
appropriate verse, probably the work of her brother:

"I was so long with pain opprest
That wore my strength away;
It made me long for endless rest
Which never can decay."


On coming out of prison in 1858, Peace resumed his fiddling, but
it was now no more than a musical accompaniment to burglary.
This had become the serious business of Peace's life, to be
pursued, should necessity arise, even to the peril of men's
lives. His operations extended beyond the bounds of his native
town. The house of a lady living in Manchester was broken into
on the night of August 11, 1859, and a substantial booty carried
away. This was found the following day concealed in a hole in a
field. The police left it undisturbed and awaited the return of
the robber. When Peace and another man arrived to carry it away,