ten o'clock
The Edgware Road was then a road , 't is true ; with tinkling waggons passing now and then , and fragrant walls of snowy hawthorn blossoms . The ploughman whistled over Nutford Place ; down the green solitudes of Sovereign Street the merry milkmaid led the lowing kine . Here , then , in the midst of green fields and sweet air -- before ever omnibuses were , and when Pineapple Turnpike and Terrace were alike unknown -- here stood Tyburn : and on the road towards it , perhaps to enjoy the prospect , stood , in the year 1725 , the habitation of Mr. John Hayes . One fine morning in the year 1725 , Mrs. Hayes , who had been abroad in her best hat and riding-hood ; Mr. Hayes , who for a wonder had accompanied her ; and Mrs. Springatt , a lodger , who for a remuneration had the honour of sharing Mrs. Hayes 's friendship and table : all returned , smiling and rosy , at about half-past ten o'clock , from a walk which they had taken to Bayswater . Many thousands of people were likewise seen flocking down the Oxford Road ; and you would rather have thought , from the smartness of their appearance and the pleasure depicted in their countenances , that they were just issuing from a sermon , than quitting the ceremony which they had been to attend . The fact is , that they had just been to see a gentleman hanged , -- a cheap pleasure , which the Hayes family never denied themselves ; and they returned home with a good appetite to breakfast , braced by the walk , and tickled into hunger , as it were , by the spectacle . I can recollect , when I was a gyp at Cambridge , that the `` men '' used to have breakfast-parties for the very same purpose ; and the exhibition of the morning acted infallibly upon the stomach , and caused the young students to eat with much voracity .