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
Jonathan at last pretended to be overcome with the reasons which had
been offered to him on the subject of self-murder. But it plainly
appeared that in this he was a hypocrite; for the day before his
execution, notwithstanding the keepers had the strictest eye on him
imaginable, somebody conveyed to him a bottle of liquid laudanum, of
which having taken a very large quantity, he hoped it would forestall
his dying at the gallows. But as he had not been sparing in the dose, so
the largeness of it made a speedy effect, which was perceived by his
fellow-prisoners seeing he could not open his eyes at the time that
prayers were said to them as usual in the condemned hold. Whereupon they
walked him about, which first made him sweat exceedingly, and he was
then very sick. At last he vomited, and they continuing still to lead
him, he threw the greatest part of the laudanum off from his stomach.
Notwithstanding that, he continued very drowsy, stupid and unable to do
anything but gasp out his breath until it was stopped by the halter.
He went to execution in a cart, and instead of expressing any kind of
pity or compassion for him, the people continued to throw stones and
dirt all the way along, reviling and cursing him to die last, and
plainly showed by their behaviour how much the blackness and notoriety
of his crimes had made him abhorred, and how little tenderness the
enemies of mankind meet with, when overtaken by the hand of Justice.
When he arrived at Tyburn, having by that gathered a little strength
(nature recovering from the convulsions in which the laudanum had thrown
him), the executioner told him he might take what time he pleased to
prepare his death. He therefore sat down in the cart for some small
time, during which the people were so uneasy that they called out
incessantly to the executioner to dispatch him, and at last threatened
to tear him to pieces if he did not tie him up immediately. Such a
furious spirit was hardly ever discovered in the populace upon such an
occasion. They generally look on blood with tenderness, and behold even
the stroke of Justice with tears; but so far were they from it in this
case that had a reprieve really come, 'tis highly questionable whether
the prisoner could ever have been brought back with safety, it being far
more likely that as they wounded him dangerously in the head in his
passage to Tyburn, they would have knocked him on the head outright, if
any had attempted to have brought mm back.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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