Chronicles of Newgate, Vol. 1: From the twelfth to the eighteenth centuryGriffiths, Arthur
History
Chronicles of Newgate, Vol. 1: From the twelfth to the eighteenth century
Griffiths, Arthur
Criminals -- Great Britain; Newgate (Prison : London, England); Prisons -- England; Punishment -- Great Britain
sent in due course to Jamaica, but within a couple of years escaped
from the plantations, and reappeared in England. By some means she
managed to pass off as a rich heiress, and inveigled a rich apothecary
into marriage, but presently robbed him of above £300 and left him. Her
next trick was to take a lodging in the same house with a watchmaker.
One night she invited the landlady and the watchmaker to go to the
play, leaving her maid, who was a confederate, alone in the house.
The maid lost no time in breaking open the watchmaker's coffers, and
stole therefrom thirty watches, with about two hundred pounds in cash,
which she carried off to a secure place in another part of the town.
Meanwhile the "princess" had invited her dupes to supper at the Green
Dragon Tavern in Fleet Street, where she managed to give them the
slip and joined her maid. This was one of the last of her robberies.
Soon afterwards fate overtook her quite by accident. The keeper of
the Marshalsea, in search of some stolen property, came to the house
where she lodged, in New Spring Gardens, and saw her "walking in the
two-pair-of-stairs room in a nightgown." He went in, and continuing his
search, came upon three letters, which he proceeded to examine. "Madam
seemed offended with him, and their dispute caused him to look at her
so steadfastly that he knew her, called her by her name, and carried
away both her and her letters." She was committed and kept a prisoner
till 16th January, 1673, when she was arraigned at the Old Bailey, as
the woman Mary Carelton, for returning from transportation. On the last
day of the Sessions she received sentence of death, "which she heard
with a great deal of intrepidity."
She appeared more gay and brisk than ever on the day of her execution.
When the irons were removed from her on her starting for Tyburn, she
pinned the picture of her husband Carelton to her sleeve, and carried
it with her to the gallows. She discovered herself to a gentleman in
the crowd as a Roman Catholic, and having conversed with him for some
time in French, on parting said, "_Mon ami, le bon Dieu vous benisse_."
At the gallows she harangued the crowd at some length, and died as she
had lived, a reckless although undoubtedly a gifted and intelligent
woman.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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