Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences
History
Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences
Crime -- Great Britain; Criminals -- Great Britain -- Biography
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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