However, he at last grew tired of that also; and resolving to betake
himself to some more settled and honest employment, he hired himself to
a man who kept swine, and there behaved himself both with honesty and
diligence. But his master breaking a little time after he had been with
him, though as he affirmed without his wronging him in the least, he was
reduced to look for some new way of maintaining himself. This being
about the time of the late Rebellion,[22] and great encouragement being
then offered for those who would enter themselves in the late king's
service at sea, Neal accepted thereof, and shipped himself on board the
_Gosport_ man-of-war, which sailed to the Western Islands of Scotland.
What between the cold and the hard fare he suffered deeply, and never,
as be said, tasted any degree of comfort till he returned to the West of
England The Rebellion being then over, Neal with very great joy accepted
his discharge from the service, and once more in search of business came
up to London.

The reputation of an honest servant he had acquired from the hog
merchant he had formerly lived with, quickly procured him a place with
another of the same trade, with him he lived too (as was said) very
honestly; and having been trusted with twenty or thirty pounds at a
time, was always found very trusty and faithful. But happening,
unluckily, to work here with one Pincher, who in the course of his life
had been as unhappy as himself, they thereupon grew very intimate
together, and being a couple of fellows of very odd tempers, after
having got half drunk at the Hampshire Hog, they took it into their
heads that there was not in the world two fellows so unhappy as
themselves. The subject began when they were maudlin, and as they grew
quite drunk, they came to a resolution to go out and beat everybody they
met, for being happier than themselves.

The first persons they met in this expedition were a poor old man whose
name was Dormer and his wife. The woman they abused grossly, and Pincher
knocked the man down, though very much in years, Neal afterwards
rolling him about, and either took or shook out of his pocket all the
money he had, which was but three pence farthing. For this unaccountable
action they were both apprehended, tried and convicted, with three other
persons, in the November sessions, 1722. But their inhuman behaviour to
the old man made such an impression on the Court to their disadvantage,
that when the death warrant came down, they two only were appointed for
execution.

At the near approach of death, Neal appeared excessively astonished, and
what between fear and concern, his senses grew disordered. However, at
the place of execution he seemed more composed than he had been before,
and said that it was very fit he should die, but added he suffered
rather for being drunk than any design he had either to rob or use the
man cruelly. As for William Pincher, his companion both in the robbery
and its punishment, he seemed to be the counterpart of Neal, a downright
Norfolk clown, born within six miles of Lynn and by the kindness of a
master of good fortune, taken into his house with an intent to breed him
up, on his father's going for a soldier. At first he behaved himself
diligently and thereby got much into the favour of his master, but
falling into loose company and addicting himself to sotting in
alehouses, his once kind and indulgent master, finding him incorrigible,
dismissed him from his service, and having given him some small matter
by way of encouragement, he set out for London. Here he got into the
business before mentioned, and said himself, that he might have lived
very comfortably thereon, if he had been industrious and frugal; but
that addicting himself to his old custom of sitting continually in an
alehouse had drawn him into very great inconveniences. In order to draw
himself out of these he thought of following certain courses, by which,
as he had heard some company where he used say, a young man might get as
much money as he could spend, let him live as extravagantly as he would.
This occasioned his persuading Neal into that fatal undertaking which
cost them their lives. His behaviour under sentence was irreproachable,
being always taken up either in reading, praying or singing of Psalms,
performing all things that so short a space would give him leave to do,
and showing as evident marks of true repentance as perhaps any unhappy
person ever did in his condition.

Thus these two companions in misfortune suffered together on die last
day of the year 1722, Edmund Neal being then about thirty years of age,
and Pincher about twenty-six.

FOOTNOTES:

[21] This was opened, about 1680, by a certain Sadler, as a
public music-room and house of entertainment. The discovery of a
spring of mineral water in the garden attracted general
attention and the place soon became a place of popular resort.

[22] The Jacobite rising of 1715.




The Life of CHARLES WEAVER, a Murderer


Hastiness of temper and yielding to all the rash dictates of anger, as
it is an offence the most unworthy a rational creature, so it is
attended also with consequences as fatal as any other crime whatever. A
wild expression thrown out in the heat of passion has often cost men
dearer than even a real injury would have done, had it been offered to
the same person. A blow intended for the slightest has often taken away
life, and the sudden anger of a moment produced the sorrow of years, and
has been, after all, irreparable in its effect.

Charles Weaver, of whom we are now speaking, was the son of parents in
very good circumstances in the city of Gloucester, who put him
apprentice to a goldsmith. He served about four years of his time with
his master, and having in that space run out into so much lewdness and
extravagance that his friends refused any longer to supply or to support
him, he then thought fit to go into the service of the Queen, as a
soldier, and in that capacity went over with those who were sent into
America to quell the Indians. These people were at that time instigated
by the French to attack our plantations on the main near which they lay.
The greater part of these poor creatures were without European arms, yet
several amongst them had fusees, powder and ball from the French, with
which, being very good marksmen, they did abundance of mischief from
their ambuscades in the woods.

At the time Weaver served against them, they were commanded by one
Ouranaquoy, a man of a bloody disposition, great courage and greater
cunning. He had commanded his nation in war against another Indian
nation, from whom he took about forty prisoners, who according to the
Indian custom were immediately destined to death; but being prevailed
upon, by the presence of the French, to turn his arms against the
English, on the confines of whose plantations he had gained his last
victory, Ouranaquoy having sent for the prisoners he had taken before
him, told them that if they would fall upon a village about three miles
distant, he would not only give them their liberty, but also such a
reward for the scalp of every Englishman, woman or child, they brought.
They readily agreed on these terms and immediately went and plundered
the village.

The English army lay about seven miles off, and no sooner heard of such
an outrage committed by such a nation, but they immediately attacked the
people to whom the prisoners belonged, marching their whole army for
that purpose against the village, which if we may call it so, was the
capital of their country. By this policy Ouranaquoy gained two
advantages, for first he involved the English in a war with the people
with whom they had entertained a friendship for twenty years, and in the
next place gained time, while the English army were so employed, to
enter twenty-five miles within their country, destroying fourscore
whites and three hundred Indians and negroes. But this insult did not
remain long unrevenged, for the troops in which Weaver served arriving
immediately after from Europe, the army (who before they had done any
considerable mischief to the people against whom they marched, had
learnt the stratagem by which they had been deceived by Ouranaquoy)
returned suddenly into his country, and exercised such severities upon
the people thereof that to appease and make peace with the English the
chiefs sent them the scalps of Ouranaquoy, his three brothers and nine
sons.

On Weaver's return into England from this expedition, he shipped himself
again as a recruit for that army which was then commanded by the Earl of
Peterborough in Spain. He served also under the Duke of Ormond when his
grace took Vigo, and Weaver had the good luck to get some hundred pounds
for his share in the booty, but that money which he, in his thoughts,
had designed for setting himself up in England, being insensibly
squandered and decayed, he was obliged to list himself again, and so
became a second time spectator of the taking of Vigo under the Lord
Cobham.[23]

While he served in the second regiment of Foot-guards, he behaved
himself so well as to engage his officer to take him into his own house,
where he lived for a considerable space; and he had been twice actually
reviewed in order to his going into the Life-guards, when he committed
the act for which he died, which according to the evidence given at his
trial happened thus. He was going into a boat in company with Eleanor
Clark, widow, and Edward Morris. After they were in the boat, some words
arising, the woman bid Weaver pay Morris what he owed him, upon which
Weaver in a great passion got up, and endeavoured to overturn the boat
with them all. But Thomas Watkins, the waterman, preventing that, Weaver
immediately drew his sword, and swore he would murder them all, making
several passes at them as if he had firmly intended to be as good as his
word. The men defended themselves so well as to escape hurt, and
endeavoured all they could to have preserved the woman, but Weaver
making a pass, the sword entered underneath her left shoulder, and
thereby gave her a wound seven inches deep, after which she gave but one
groan and immediately expired. For this bloody fact Weaver was tried and
convicted, and thereupon received sentence of death.

During the space between the passing of sentence and its execution an
accident happened which added grievously to all his misfortunes. His
wife, big with child, coming about a fortnight before his death to see
him in Newgate, was run over by a dray and killed upon the spot. Weaver
himself, though in the course of the life he had led he had totally
forgot both reading and writing, yet came duly to prayers, and gave all
possible marks of sorrow and repentance for his misspent life, though he
all along pretended that the woman's death happened by accident, and
that he had had no intent to murder her. He suffered the 8th day of
February, 1722-3, being at that time about thirty years of age.

FOOTNOTES:

[23] See page 49.




The Life of JOHN LEVEE, a Highwayman, Footpad, etc.


There is a certain busy sprightliness in some young people which from I
know not what views, parents are apt to encourage in hopes of its one
day producing great effects. I will not say that they are always
disappointed in their expectations, but I will venture to pronounce that
where one bold spirit has succeeded in the world, five have been ruined,
by a busy turbulent temper.

This was the case with this criminal, John Levee, who, to cover the
disgrace his family suffered in him, called himself Junks. His father
was a French gentleman, who came over with King Charles II at the
Restoration, taught French to persons of distinction in court, and
particularly to some of that prince's natural children. For the
convenience of his scholars, he kept a large boarding-school in Pall
Mall, whereby he acquired such a fortune as enabled him to set up for a
wine merchant. In this capacity he dealt with France for many years to
the amount of thousands _per annum._ His children received the best
education that could be given them and never stirred out of doors but
with a footman to attend them.

But Mr. Levee, the merchant, falling into misfortunes by some of his
correspondents' failures, withdrew from his family into Holland; and
this son John being taken by the French Society, in order to be put out
apprentice and provided for, being induced thereto by the boy's natural
vivacity and warmth of temper in which he had been foolishly encouraged,
they sent him to sea with a captain of a man-of-war. He was on board the
_Essex_ when Sir George Byng, now Viscount Torrington, engaged the
Spaniards at Messina.[24] He served afterwards on board the squadron
commanded by Sir John Norris in the Baltic, and when he returned home,
public affairs being in a more quiet state, his friends thought it
better for him to learn merchants' accounts than to go any more voyages,
where there was now little prospect of advantage.

But book-keeping was too quiet an employment for one of Levee's warm
disposition, who far from being discouraged at the hardships of sea,
only complained of his ill-luck in not being in an engagement. And so,
to amuse this martial disposition, he with some companions went upon the
road, which they practised for a very considerable time, robbing in a
very genteel manner, by putting a hat into the coach and desiring the
passengers to contribute as they thought proper, being always contented
with what they gave them, though sometimes part of it was farthings.
Nay, they were so civil that Blueskin and this Levee, once robbing a
single gentlewoman in a coach, she happening to have a basket full of
buns and cakes, Levee took some of them, but Blueskin proceeded to
search her for money, but found none. The woman in the meanwhile
scratched him and called him a thousand hard names, giving him two or
three sound slaps in the face, at which they only laughed, as it was a
woman, and went away without further ill-usage, a civility she would
hardly have met with from any other gentlemen of their profession.

In October, he and his great companion Blueskin,[25] met a coach with
two ladies and a little miss riding between their knees, coming from the
Gravel Pits at Kensington.[26] Levee stopped the coach and without more
ado, ordered both the coachmen and footman to jump the ditch, or he'd
shoot them. They then stripped the ladies of their necklaces, cut a gold
girdle buckle from the side of the child, and took away about ten
shillings in money, with a little white metal image of a man, which they
thought had been solid silver, but proved a mere trifle.

At a grand consultation of the whole gang, and a report of great booties
that were to be made (and that, too, with much safety) on Blackheath,
they agreed to make some attempts there. Accordingly they set out,
being six horsemen well armed and mounted; but after having continued
about six hours upon the Heath, and not meeting so much as one person,
and the same ill luck being three or four times repeated, they left off
going on that road for the future. In December following, he and another
person robbed a butcher on horseback, on the road coming from Hampstead.
He told them he had sold two lambs there. Levee's companion said
immediately, _Then you have eight-and-twenty shillings about you, for
lambs sold to-day at fourteen shillings apiece._ After some grumbling
and hard words they made him deliver and by way of punishment for his
sauciness, as they phrased it, they took away his great coat into the
bargain, and had probably used him worse had not Levee seen a Jew's
coach coming that way, and been conscious to himself that those within
it knew him; whereupon he persuaded his associates to go off without
robbing it.

Levee never used anybody cruelly in any of his adventures, excepting
only one Betts, who foolishly struck him three or four blows on the
head, whereupon Levee with one blow of his pistol struck his eye out.
One night, upon the same road, Blake and Matthew Flood being in company
with this unhappy youth, they stopped the chariot of Mr. Young, the same
person who hanged Molony and Carrick.[27] Blake calling out to lay hold,
and Flood stopping the horses, Levee went into the coach and took from
Mr. Young a gold watch and chain, one Richard Oakey also assisting, who
died likewise for this fact. They robbed also Col. Cope, who was in the
same chariot, of his gold watch, chain and ring, and twenty-two
shillings in money. Levee said it would have been a very easy matter for
the gentleman to have taken him, he going into the coach without arms,
and his companions being on the other side of the hedge; but they gave
him the things very readily, and it was hard to say who behaved
themselves most civilly one towards the other, the gentlemen or he. One
of them desired to have a cornelian ring returned, which Levee inclined
to do, but that his companions would not permit him.

As they were going home after taking this booty, they met a poor man on
horseback. Notwithstanding the considerable sum they had taken just
before, they turned out of the road, carried him behind two haycocks
because the moon shone light, and there finding that he had but two
shillings in the world, the rest of his companions were for binding and
beating him, but upon the man's saying that he was very sick and
begging earnestly that they would not abuse him, Levee prevailed with
them not only to set him on his horse again, but to restore him his two
shillings, and lead him into the road where they left him.

Levee, Flood and Oakey were soon apprehended and Blake turning evidence,
they were convicted the next sessions at the Old Bailey, and ordered for
execution. Levee behaved himself while under condemnation very seriously
and modestly, though before that time, he had acted too much the bravo,
from the mistaken opinion that people are apt to entertain of courage
and resolution. But when death approached near, he laid aside all this,
and applied himself with great seriousness and attention to prayers and
other duties becoming a person in his condition.

At the place of execution he fell into a strange passion at his hands
being to be tied, and his cap pulled over his face. Passion signifying
nothing there, he was obliged to submit as the others did, being at the
time of his execution, aged about twenty-seven.

FOOTNOTES:

[24] See page 66.

[25] His real name was Joseph Blake, see page 177.

[26] This was a portion of what is now the Bayswater Road,
roughly between Petersburgh Place and the Notting Hill Tube
Station. Swift had lodgings there and it was a fairly
fashionable residential spot.

[27] See page 89.




The Lives of RICHARD OAKEY and MATTHEW FLOOD, Street-Robbers and
Footpads


The first of these criminals, Richard Oakey, had been by his friends put
apprentice to a tailor. In about two years his master failed, and from
thence to the day of his unhappy death, Oakey continually followed
thieving in one way or other. At first he wholly practised picking of
women's pockets, which he said he did in a manner peculiar to himself;
for being dressed pretty genteelly, he passed by the person he intended
to rob, took up their upper petticoat and cut off the pocket at once,
tripping them down at the same time. Then he stepped softly on the other
side of the way, walked on and was never suspected. He said that while a
lad, he had committed several hundred robberies in this way. As he grew
older he made use of a woman to assist him, by pushing the people
against the wall, while he took the opportunity of cutting their
pockets; or at other times this woman came behind folks as they were
crossing the way, and catching them by the arm, cried out, _There's a
coach will run over ye_; while Oakey, in the moment of their surprise,
whipped off their pocket.

This woman, who had followed the trade for a considerable time, happened
one night at a bawdy-house to incense her bully so far as to make him
beat her; she thereupon gave him still more provoking language, till
at last he used her so cruelly, that she roared out _Murder_; and not
without occasion, for she died of the bruises, though the people of the
house concealed it for fear of trouble, and buried her privately. Upon
this Oakey was obliged to go on his old way by himself.

[Illustration: THE HANGMAN ARRESTED WHEN ATTENDING JOHN MEFF TO TYBURN

(_From the Annals of Newgate_)]

The robberies he committed being numerous and successful, he bethought
himself of doing something, as he called it, in a higher way; upon
which, scraping acquaintance with two as abandoned fellows as himself,
they took to housebreaking. In this they were so unlucky as to be
detected in their second adventure, which was upon a house in Southwark
near the Mint, where they stole calicoes to the value of twenty pounds
and upwards. For this his two associates were convicted at Kingston
assizes, he himself being the witness against them, by which method he
at that time escaped. And being cured of any desire to go
a-housebreaking again, he fell upon his old trade of picking pockets,
till he got into the acquaintance of another as bad as himself, whom
they called Will the Sailor. This fellow's practice was to wear a long
sword, and then by jostling the gentleman whom they designed to rob,
first created a quarrel, and while the fray lasted, gave his companion
the opportunity of rubbing off with the booty. But whether Will grew
tired of his companion, or of the dangerous trade which he was engaged
in, certain it is that he left it off, and got again out of England on
ship-board.

Oakey then got acquainted with Hawes, Milksop, Lincoln, Reading,
Wilkinson, and half a dozen others, with whom one way or other he was
continually concerned while they reigned in their villainies. And as
they were in a short space all executed, he became acquainted with
Levee, Flood, Blake and the rest of that gang, in whose association he
continued until his crimes and theirs brought them together to the
gallows. After condemnation his behaviour was such as became his
condition, getting up in the night to pray so often and manifesting all
the signs of a sincere repentance.

Matthew Flood was the son of a man who kept the Clink Prison[28] in the
parish of St. Mary Overys, who had given him as good an education as was
in his power, and bound him apprentice to one Mr. Williams, a
lighterman. In this occupation he might certainly have done well, if he
had not fallen into the company of those lewd persons who brought him to
his fate. He had been about three months concerned with Blake, Levee,
etc., and had committed many facts.

His behaviour under sentence was very penitent and modest, nor did he
suffer the continual hopes his friends gave him of a reprieve ever to
make him neglect his devotions. At the place of execution he said he was
more particularly concerned for a robbery he had committed on a woman in
Cornhill, not only because he took from her a good many guineas which
were in her pocket, but that at the same time also he had taken a will
which he burnt, and which he feared would be more to her prejudice than
the loss of her money.

Oakey was about twenty-five years old at the time of his death, and
Matthew Flood somewhat younger. They suffered on the same day with
Weaver and the last-mentioned malefactor Levee, at Tyburn.

FOOTNOTES:

[28] The Clink Prison was, until 1745, at the corner of Maid
Lane, Southwark. It was originally used as a house of detention
for heretics and offenders against the bishop of Winchester,
whose palace stood nearby.




The Life of WILLIAM BURK, a Footpad and Highwayman


As indulgence is a very common parent of wickedness and disobedience, so
immoderate correction and treating children as if they were Stocks is as
likely a method as the other to make them stubborn and obstinate, and
perhaps even force upon them taking ill methods to avoid usage which
they cannot bear.

William Burk, the unfortunate criminal whose enterprises are to be the
subject of our present narration, was born towards Wapping of parents
honest and willing to give him education, though their condition in the
world rendered them not able. He was thereupon put to the charity
school, the master of which being of a morose temper and he a boy of
very indifferent disposition, the discipline with which he was treated
was so severe that it created in him an aversion towards all learning;
and one day, after a more severe whipping than ordinary, he determined
(though but eleven years of age) to run away.

He sought out, therefore, for a captain who might want a boy, and that
being no difficult matter to find in their neighbourhood, he went on
board the _Salisbury_, Captain Hosier, then lying at the Buoy in the
Nore, bound for Jamaica. His poor mother followed him in great
affliction, and endeavoured all she could to persuade him to return, but
her arguments were all in vain, for he had contracted so great an
antipathy to school, from his master's treatment, that instead of being
glad to go back, he earnestly intreated the captain to interpose his
authority and keep him on board. His request was complied with, and the
poor woman was forced to depart without her son.

It was the latter end of Queen Anne's War when they sailed to Jamaica,
and during the time they were out, took two Spanish galleons very richly
laden. Their first engagement was obstinate and bloody, and he, though a
boy, was dangerously hurt as he bustled about one way or another as the
captain commanded him. The second prize carried 74 guns and 650 men, yet
the _Salisbury_ (but a 60-gun ship) took her without the loss of a
single man; only a woman, who was the only one on board, going to peep
at the engagement, had her head and shoulders shot off. Burk said the
prize money of each sailor came but to £15, but some of the officers
shared so handsomely as never to be obliged to go to sea again, being
enabled to live easily on shore.

Three years he continued in the West Indies, and there (especially in
Jamaica) he learned so much wickedness that when he came home, hardly
any of the gangs into which he entered were half so bad, though inured
to plunder, as he when he came amongst them a fresh man. From this
voyage he went another in the slave trade to the coast of Guinea. Here
he endured very great hardships, especially when he had the misfortune
to be on board where the negroes rose upon the English, and had like to
have overcome them; but at last having been vanquished, and tied down in
a convenient place, they were used with severity enough. Upon his return
into England from this voyage, he went into the Baltic in the
_Worcester_ man-of-war, in which he suffered prodigious hardships from
the coldness of the climate and other difficulties he went through.

The many miseries he had experienced in a life at sea might possibly
have induced him to the resolution he made of never going on ship-board
any more. How he came to take to robbing does not very clearly appear,
further than that he was induced thereto by bad women; but he behaved
himself with very great cruelty, for going over the first field from
Stepney, armed with a hedging-bill, he attacked one William Fitzer, and
robbed him of his jacket, tobacco-box, a knife and fork, etc. He robbed,
also, one James Westwood, of a coat and ten shillings in money; last of
all, attacking John Andrews and Robert his son, coming over the fields,
he dove the old man down. His son taking up the stick boldly attacked
Burk, and a neighbour, one Perkinson, coming in at the noise, he was
overpowered and apprehended. As the fact was very plainly proved, he was
on a short trial convicted, and the barbarity of the fact being so
great, left no room for his being omitted in the warrant for execution.

As he lay a long time under condemnation, and had no hopes of life, from
the moment of his confinement he applied himself to make his peace with
that Being whom he had so much offended by his profligate course of
life. On all occasions he expressed his readiness to confess anything
which might be for the promoting of justice or public good, in all
respects manifesting a thorough sorrow and penitence for that cruelty
with which he had treated poor old Andrews. At the tree he stood up in
the car, beckoned for silence, and then spoke to the multitude in these
terms.

Good People,

I never was concerned but in four robberies in my life. I desire all
men who see my fatal end to let my death teach them to lead a sober
and regular life, and above all to shun the company of ill-women,
which has brought me to this shameful end and place. I desire that
nobody may reflect upon my wife after my decease, since she was so
far from having any knowledge of the ills I committed, that she was
continually exciting me to live a sober and honest life. Wherefore I
hope God will bless her, as I also pray He may do all of you.

This malefactor, William Burk, was in the twenty-second year of his age
when executed at Tyburn, April the 8th, 1723.




The Life of LUKE NUNNEY, a murderer


Though drunkenness in itself is a shocking and beastly crime, yet in its
consequences it is also often so bloody and inhuman that one would
wonder persons of understanding should indulge themselves in a sin at
once so odious and so fatal both to body and soul. The instances of
persons who have committed murders when drunk, and those accompanied
with circumstances of such barbarity as even those persons themselves
could not have heard without trembling, are so many and so well known to
all of any reading, or who have made any reflection, that I need not
dwell longer than the bare narration of this malefactor's misfortunes
will detain me, to warn against a vice which makes them always monsters
and often murderers.

Luke Nunney, of whom we are to speak, was a young fellow of some parts,
and of a tolerable education, his father, at the time of his death,
being a shoemaker in tolerable circumstances, and very careful in the
bringing up of his children. He was more particularly zealous in
affording them due notions of religion, and took abundance of pains
himself to inculcate them in their tender years, which at first had so
good an effect upon this Luke that his whole thoughts ran upon finding
out that method of worship in which he was most likely to please God.
Sometimes, though his parents were at the Church of England, he slipped
to a Presbyterian Meeting-house, where he was so much affected with the
preacher's vehemency in prayer and his plain and pious method of
preaching that he often regretted not being bred up in that way, and the
loss his parents sustained by their not having a relish for religion
ungraced with exterior ornaments. These were his thoughts, and his
practice was suitable to them, until the misfortunes of his father
obliged him to break up the house, and put Luke out to work at another
place.

The men where Nunney went to work were lewd and profligate fellows,
always talking idly or lewdly, relating stories of what had passed in
the country before they came up to work in London, the intrigues they
had had with vicious women, and such loose and unprofitable discourses.
This quickly destroyed the former good inclinations of Luke, who first
began to waver in religion, and as he had quitted the Church of England
to turn to the Dissenters, so now he had some thoughts of leaving them
for the Quakers; but after going often to their meetings he professed he
thought their behaviour so ridiculous and absurd as not to deserve the
name either of religion or Divine worship.

His instability of mind pressed him also to go out into the world, for
it appeared to him a great evil that while all the rest of his
companions were continually discoursing of their adventures, he should
have none to mention of his own. Some of them, also, having slightingly
called him Cockney and reproaching him with never having been seven
miles from London, he remembered that his father had some near relations
in the west of England, so he took a sudden resolution of going down
thither to work at his trade. Full of these notions he went over one
evening pretty late with his brother to Southwark, and meeting there
with an acquaintance who would needs make him drink, they stayed pretty
long at the house, insomuch that Luke got very drunk, and being always
quarrelsome when he had liquor, insulted and abused everybody in the
room. As he was quarrelling particularly with one James Young, William
Bramston who stood by, came up and desired him to be quiet, advised him
to go home with his company, and not stay and make a disturbance where
nobody had a mind to quarrel but himself. Without making any reply Luke
struck him a blow on the face. Bramston thereupon held up his fist as if
he would have struck him, but did not. However Nunney struck him again
and pushed him forwards, upon which Bramston reeled, cried out he was
stabbed and a dead man, that Nunney was the person who gave him the
wound, and Luke thereupon (drunk as he was) attempted to run away.

Upon this he was apprehended, committed prisoner to Newgate, and the
next sessions, on the evidence of such of his companions as were
present, he was convicted and received sentence of death. He behaved
himself from that time as a person who had as little desire as hopes of
continuing in the world, enquired diligently both of the Ordinary and of
the man who was under sentence with him, how he should prepare himself
for his latter end, coming constantly to chapel, and praying regularly
at all times. Yet at the place of execution he declared himself a
Papist. He added, that at the time the murder was committed he had no
knife nor could he imagine how it was done, being so drunk that he knew
nothing that had happened until the morning, when he found himself in
custody. He was about twenty years of age at the time of his suffering
on the 25th of May, 1723.




The Life of RICHARD TRANTHAM, a Housebreaker


Though vices and extravagancies are the common causes which induce men
to fall into those illegal practices which lead to a shameful death, yet
now and then it happens we find men of outward gravity and serious
deportment as wicked as those whose open licenciousness renders their
committing crimes of this sort the less amazing.

Of the number of these was Richard Trantham, a married man, having a
wife and child living at the time of his death, keeping also a tolerable
house at Mitcham in Surrey. He had been apprehended on the sale of some
stolen silk, and the next sessions following was convicted of having
broken the house of John Follwell, in the night-time, two years before,
and taking thence a silver tankard, a silver salver, and fifty-four
pounds of Bologna silk, valued at £74 and upwards. During the time which
passed between the sentence and execution he behaved in a manner the
most penitent and devout, not only making use of a considerable number
of books which the charity of his friends had furnished him with, but
also reading to all those who were in the condemned hold with them.

The morning he was to die, after having received the Sacrament, he was
exhorted to make a confession of those crimes which he had committed,
particularly as to housebreaking, in which he was thought to have been
long concerned; thereupon he recollected himself a little, and told of
six or seven houses which he had broken open, particularly General
Groves's near St. James's; a stone-cutter in Chiswell Street; and Mr.
Follwell's in Spitalfields, for which he died. At the place of
execution, whither he was conveyed in a mourning coach, he appeared
perfectly composed and submissive to that sentence which his own
misdeeds and the justice of the Law had brought upon him. Before the
halter was put about his neck, he spoke to those who were assembled at
the gallows to see his death, in the following terms:

Good People,

Those wicked and unlawful methods by which, for a considerable time,
I have supported myself, have justly drawn upon me the anger of God,
and the sentence of the Law. As I have injured many and the
substance I have is very small, I fear a restitution would be hard
to make, even if it should be divided. I therefore leave it all to
my wife for the maintenance of her and my child. I entreat you
neither to reflect on her nor on my parents, and pray the blessing
of God upon you all.

He was thirty years old when he died and was executed the same day with
the malefactor afore-mentioned.




The Lives of JOHN TYRRELL, a Horse-dealer, and WILLIAM HAWKSWORTH, a
Murderer


John Tyrrell, the first of these malefactors, was convicted for stealing
two horses in Yorkshire, but selling them in Smithfield he was tried at
the Old Bailey. It seem she had been an old horse-stealer as most people
conjecture, though he himself denied it, and as he pretended at his
trial to have bought those two for which he died at Northampton Fair, so
he continually endeavoured to infuse the same notions into all persons
who spoke to him at the time of his death. He had practised carrying
horses over into Flanders and Germany, and there selling them to persons
of the highest rank, with whom he always dealt so justly and honourably
that, as it was said, his word would have gone there for any sum
whatsoever that was to be laid out in horse-flesh.

He had been bred up a Dissenter, and above all things affected the
character of a religious and sober man, which excepting the instances
for which he died, he never seemed to have forfeited; for whatever else
was said against him after he was condemned, arose merely from
conjectures occasioned by the number of horses he had sold in foreign
parts. He himself professed that he had always led a most regular and
devout life, and in the frequent voyages he made by sea, exhorted the
sailors to leave that dissolute manner of life which too generally they
led. During the whole time he lay under sentence, he talked of nothing
else but his own great piety and devotion, which though, as he
confessed, it had often been rewarded by many singular deliverances
through the hand of Providence, yet since he was suffered to die this
ignominious death and thereby disgrace his family and altogether
overturn that reputation of sanctity with which so much pains himself
had been setting up, he inclined to atheistic notions, and a wavering
belief as to the being of a God at all.

As for the other malefactor, William Hawksworth, he was a Yorkshireman
by birth. His parents, reputable people who took a great care in his
reputation, intended to breed him to some good trade, but a regiment of
soldiers happening to come into the town, Hawksworth imagining great
things might be attained to in the army, would needs go with them, and
accordingly listed himself. But having run through many difficulties and
much hardships, finding also that he was like to meet with little else
while he wore a red coat, he took a great deal of pains and made much
interest to be discharged. At last he effected it, and a gentleman
kindly taking him to live with him as a footman, he there recovered part
of that education which he had lost while in the army. There, also, he
addicted himself for some time to a sober and quiet life, but soon after
giving way to his old roving disposition, he went away from his master,