On the Sunday before their execution, the victims were permitted to receive visits from all their friends, who brought special gifts for the journey to Tyburn: a white cap with black ribbons, a prayer-book, a nosegay; and always an orange to hold in the hand as they sat on their own coffin, trundling along in the cart to the scaffold. These same friends often lingered at the foot of the Triple Tree, when, the three-mile journey over, the sentence was carried out, in order to be at hand to hang on to the legs of the condemned and thus put a speedy end to his sufferings. Not so friendly was the purpose of the respectably-dressed women in deep mourning, who, professing to be the nearest of kin to the deceased, mingled in the crowd in the hope of securing the body for some anatomist. In the beginning of the eighteenth century people began to travel farther afield. They were richer, more numerous, and more enterprising; they made journeys by coach to Bath and Cheltenham to drink the waters, or went out for the evening to Vauxhall Gardens to dine and gamble, dance and make merry. Fine clothes, costly jewels, and gambling gains were spoils easily disposed of, and highwaymen and footpads quickly followed in their wake. Naturally, places near the Metropolis were the most lucrative. If nothing of value was secured from the coach belonging to Lord A——, another coach owned by the Marquis of B—— soon passed by, and loot might be forthcoming; if not, the highwaymen waited for Mr. C——. Outlying districts of London became unsafe at night, and Highgate, Hampstead, Richmond, Hounslow, and Shooter’s Hill were all hot-beds of robbery by these “gentlemen of the road.” Hyde Park and Knightsbridge came in for a share of petty larcenies and assaults by the meaner footpads and outlaws who lurked at many a dark corner, and few persons thought of going home by night except under escort, and with torches to light the gloom of the streets. It was a short life, if a desperate and at times a merry one. Of all the famous highwaymen who dangled on Tyburn gibbet, one finds few who lived to see the age of thirty. Jack Sheppard, though not the romantic figure of the moonlit heath, but a meaner thief, must, I suppose, take pride of place. Never was there a more dare-devil character hanged at Hyde Park. Fielding and Harrison Ainsworth have glorified his career, and some of the facts of his life are told in a pamphlet published by Daniel Defoe at the request of Sheppard himself, containing a _Narrative of all the Robberies, Escapes, etc., of John Sheppard_. This, he declares, was “written by himselfe during his confinement in the Middle Stone Room” at Newgate. Says Jack: