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The sentence was then passed as usual, that he be hanged till dead,
and anatomized; and an order of Court was made out, to execute him
on Monday, at Kentish Town, as near as possible to the house of the
deceased.
THE EXECUTION.
Joseph Richards, a youth about eighteen, who was convicted on Friday
last, for the wilful murder of Walter Horseman, with whom he lived
servant, was executed at Kentish Town, opposite the house where the
horrid fact was perpetrated. The malefactor came out of Newgate about
twenty minutes before eight o’clock, and with some alertness stepped
into the cart, which conveyed him through Smithfield, Cow Cross, and
by the two small-pox hospitals to the spot, where he was removed from
that society of which he had proved himself a most unworthy member,
at a time of life when such atrocity of guilt as he possessed has
been seldom known to degrade humanity. In his way to the place of
execution, the convict appeared to be in a state of mind bordering upon
stupefaction; he had no book, nor did he employ the short remnant of
time in those preparations for eternity which his miserable situation
rendered so indispensably necessray.
Before being turned off, the prisoner desired to see the widow of the
deceased; she was sent for to her house, but was gone to London; he
declared he had no accomplice in the fact, and that he was induced to
the perpetration thereof by the supposition, that after the decease
of his master he should succeed to his business as a milkman. Just
before coming to the village, he burst into tears, and when he came
to the place of execution, wept bitterly; his expressions of sorrow
and contrition being only interrupted by fervent appeals to Heaven for
mercy till the last moment of his existence.
OLD BAILEY INTELLIGENCE.--Execution of Six Unfortunate Malefactors,
and the Barbarious Execution and Burning of Phœbe Harris, for Coining
Silver, on the 21st of June, 1786.
[Illustration]
The following male convicts, viz., Edward Griffiths, George Woodward,
William Watts, Daniel Keefe, Jonathan Harwood, and William Smith, were
executed pursuant to their sentence, on the scaffold usually erected
opposite Newgate. They were brought out at half-past seven in the
morning, and the platform dropped about eight o’clock. Woodward was so
exceedingly weak, that he was obliged to sit down till the executioneer
had tied up the rest, and was then supported by two men.
The Barbarious Execution and Burning of Phœbe Harris.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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