The Chronicles of Crime or The New Newgate Calendar. v. 1/2: being a series of memoirs and anecdotes of notorious characters who have outraged the laws of Great Britain from the earliest period to 1841.Pelham, Camden
History
The Chronicles of Crime or The New Newgate Calendar. v. 1/2: being a series of memoirs and anecdotes of notorious characters who have outraged the laws of Great Britain from the earliest period to 1841.
Pelham, Camden
Crime -- Great Britain; Criminals -- Great Britain; Newgate (Prison : London, England)
The office of public executioner becoming vacant, it was given to him,
and but for his extravagance, he might have long continued in it, and
subsisted on its dreadfully-earned wages. On returning from an
execution, however, he was arrested in Holborn for debt, which he
discharged, in part, with the wages he had that day earned, and the
remainder with the produce of three suits of clothes, which he had taken
from the bodies of the executed men; but soon afterwards he was lodged
in the Marshalsea prison for other debts, and there he remained for want
of bail; in consequence of which one William Marvel was appointed in his
stead. He continued some time longer in the Marshalsea, when he and a
fellow-prisoner broke a hole in the wall, through which they made their
escape. It was not long after this that Price committed the offence for
which he was executed. He was indicted on the 20th April, 1718, for the
murder of Elizabeth, the wife of William White, on the 13th of the
preceding month.
In the course of the evidence it appeared that Price met the deceased
near ten at night in Moorfields, and attempted to ravish her; but the
poor woman (who was the wife of a watchman, and sold gingerbread in the
streets) doing all in her power to resist his villanous attacks, he beat
her so cruelly that streams of blood issued from her eyes and mouth, one
of her arms was broken, some of her teeth were knocked out, her head was
bruised in a most dreadful manner, and one of her eyes was forced from
the socket. Some persons, hearing the cries of the unhappy creature,
repaired to the spot, took Price into custody, and lodged him in the
watch-house; and the woman, being attended by a surgeon and a nurse, was
unable to speak, but she answered the nurse's questions by signs, and in
that manner described what had happened to her. She died, after having
languished four days. The prisoner, on his trial, denied that he was
guilty of the murder; but he was found guilty and sentenced to death. He
then gave himself up to the use of intoxicating liquors, and continued
obstinately to deny his guilt until the day of execution. He then,
however, admitted the justice of his punishment, but said that he was in
a state of intoxication when he committed the crime for which he
suffered. He was executed on the 21st May, 1718 at Bunhill-row, and was
afterwards hung in chains at Holloway.
It maybe remarked, that this case affords a striking instance of the
absence of the effect of example: for, however much the miserable
calling of the unhappy man may have hardened his mind, and rendered him
callous to those feelings of degradation which would arise in the heart
of any ordinary person, placed in a similar situation, it cannot be
supposed that his fear of the dreadful punishment of death could have
been in any degree abated by his having so frequently witnessed its
execution in all its horrors.
BARBARA SPENCER.
STRANGLED, AND THEN BURNED, FOR COINING.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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