mr. james cosgrove's personal narrative finishes here, for the hand of death interrupted the ingenious author soon after the period which this memoir was compiled, after he had lived nineteen years an inmate of the fleet prison, where the prison records state he died of delirium tremens.
his faithful old mother joined him in his lonely exile, and had a bedroom in fleet market over the way. she would come and stay the whole day with him in prison working.
the countess was never out of love with her husband, and, as long as she lived, james enjoyed his income of 300 pounds per year and was, perhaps, as happy in prison, as at any period of his existence.
when her ladyship died, her son sternly cut off the annuity, devoting the sum to charities, which, he said, would make a nobler use of it than the scoundrel who had enjoyed it hitherto.
when the famous character lost his income, his spirit entirely failed. he was removed into the pauper's ward, where he was known to black boots for wealthier prisoners, and where he was detected in stealing a tobacco box.
his mother attained a prodigious old age, and the inhabitants of the place in her time can record, with accuracy, the daily disputes which used to take place between mother and son, until the latter, from habits of intoxication, falling into a state of almost imbecility, was tended by his tough old parent as a baby almost, and would cry if deprived of his necessary glass of brandy.