Edward Burnworth, _alias_ Frazier, was the extraordinary person who framed this project for bringing rapine into method, and bounding even the practice of licentiousness with some kind of order. It may seem reasonable therefore, to begin his life preferable to the rest, and in so doing we must inform our readers that his father was by trade a painter, though so low in his circumstances as to be able to afford his son but a very mean education. However, he gave him as much as would have been sufficient for him in that trade to which he bound him apprentice, viz., to a buckle-maker in Grub Street, where for some time Edward lived honestly and much in favour with his master. But his father dying and his unhappy mother being reduced thereby into very narrow circumstances, restraint grew uneasy to him, and the weight of a parent's authority being now lost with him, he began to associate himself with those loose incorrigible vagrants, who frequent the ring at Moorfields, and from idleness and debauchery, go on in a very swift progression to robbery and picking of pockets. Edward was a young fellow, active in his person and enterprising in his genius; he soon distinguished himself in cudgel playing, and such other Moorfields exercises as qualify a man first for the road and then for the gallows. The mob who frequented this place, where one Frazier kept the ring, were so highly pleased with Burnworth's performances that they thought nothing could express their applause so much as conferring on him the title of Young Frazier. This agreeing with the ferocity of his disposition, made him so vain thereof, that, quitting his own name, he chose to go by this, and accordingly was so called by all his companions. Burnworth's grand associates were these, William Blewit, Emanuel Dickenson, Thomas Berry, John Levee, William Marjoram, John Higgs, John Wilson, John Mason, Thomas Mekins, William Gillingham, John Barton, William Swift, and some others that it is not material here to mention. At first he and his associates contented themselves with picking pockets, and such other exercises in the lowest class of thieving, in which however they went on very assiduously for a considerable space, and did more mischief that way than any gang which had been before them for twenty years. They rose afterwards to exploits of a more hazardous nature, viz., snatching women's pockets, swords, hats, etc. The usual places for their carrying on such infamous practices were about the Royal Exchange, Cheapside, St. Paul's Churchyard, Fleet Street, the Strand and Charing Cross. Here they stuck a good while, nor is it probable they would ever have risen higher if Burnworth, their captain, had not been detected in an affair of this kind, and committed thereupon to Bridewell, from whence, on some apprehension of the keepers, he was removed to New Prison, where he had not continued long before he projected an escape, which he afterwards put into execution.