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
Hawes, indeed, did not persist quite so long, but submitted to that
justice which he saw was unavoidable, after he had endured, as I have
said before, so great a weight in the press. The bruises he received on
the chest pained him so exceedingly during the short remainder of his
life that he was hardly able to perform those devotions which the near
approach of death made him desirous to offer up for so profligate a
life. He laid aside, then, those wild notions which had been so fatal to
him through the whole course of his days, and so remarkably unfortunate
to him in this last age of life. He confessed frankly what crimes he
could remember and seemed very desirous of acquitting some innocent
persons who were at that time imprisoned, or suspected, for certain
villainies which were committed by Hawes and his gang; particularly a
footman, then in the Poultry Compter, and a man's son at an alehouse,
who, though Hawes declared he knew no harm of him, yet at the place of
execution he said that as he desired his death might be a warning to all
in general, so he wished it might be particularly considered by him.
Though, as I have said, he was fully convinced of the folly of those
notions which he had formerly entertained, yet he did not, as most of
those braves do, go from one degree of extravagance to the other, that
is, from daring everything to sinking into the meanest cowardice, for
Hawes went to his death very composedly, as he had received the
Sacrament the day before, with all the outward marks of devotion. He
suffered on the 22nd day of September, 1721, at which time he was scarce
twenty years of age.
FOOTNOTES:
[14] This was the Clerkenwell House of Detention, where
prisoners were sent after being sentenced, pending their
disposal at a House of Correction. It was originally intended
for the overflow from Newgate. The prison stood in Clerkenwell
Close.
The Life of JOHN JONES, a Pickpocket
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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