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 to Whalebone, when death approached, he laid aside all these excuses
and applied himself to what was much more material, the making a proper
use of that little time which yet remained for repentance. He
acknowledged all the crimes which he had committed in the former part of
his life, and the justice of his sentence by which he had been condemned
to transportation; and having warned the people at his execution to
avoid of all things being led into ill company, he suffered with much
seeming penitence, together with the afore-mentioned malefactors, at
Tyburn, being then about thirty-eight years of age.
The Life of JAMES LITTLE, a Footpad and Highwayman
James Little was a person descended from parents very honest and
industrious, though of small fortune. They bred him up with all the care
they were able, and when he came to a fit age put him out to an honest
employment. But in his youth having taken peculiar fancy to his father's
profession of a painter, he thereto attained in so great a degree as to
be able to earn twelve or fifteen shillings in a week, when he thought
fit to work hard. But that was very seldom, and he soon contracted such
a hatred to working at all that associating with some wild young
fellows, he kept himself continually drunk and mad, not caring what he
did for money, so long as he supplied himself with enough to procure
himself liquor.
Amongst the rest of those debauched persons with whom he conversed there
was especially one Sandford, with whom he was peculiarly intimate. This
fellow was a soldier, of a rude, loose disposition, who took a
particular delight in making persons whom he conversed with as bad as
himself. Having one Sunday, therefore, got Little into his company and
drank him to such a pitch that he had scarce any sense, he next began to
open to him a new method of living, as he called it, which was neither
more than less than going on the highway. Little was so far gone in his
cups that be did not so much as know what he was saying; at last
Sandford rose up, and told him it was a good time now to go out upon
their attempts. Upon this Little got up, too, and went out with him.
They had not gone far before the soldier drew out a pair of pistols, and
robbed two or three persons, while Little stood by, so very drunk that
he was both unable to have hurt the persons, or to have defended
himself, he said.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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