The Chronicles of Crime or The New Newgate Calendar. v. 2/2: being a series of memoirs and anecdotes of notorious characters who have outraged the laws of Great Britain from the earliest period to 1841Pelham, Camden
History
The Chronicles of Crime or The New Newgate Calendar. v. 2/2: 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)
Davidson, though a man of colour, had a prepossessing person, and was
upon the point of marriage with the daughter of a respectable tradesman
at Liverpool, when, however, the match was broken off by his friends. He
then took a passage on board a West-India merchantman, intending to
return to his father; but he was again impressed on the voyage. On his
return to port, he took the first opportunity of running away, and
having obtained some money from his friends, he got work as a
journeyman, at Litchfield. He subsequently paid his addresses to a Miss
Salt, who was possessed of about 7,000_l._ of her own money, but her
friends disapproving of the match, he became unsettled in his mind, and
indisposed for business; and although his mother supplied him with
1200_l._ to commence trade on his own account, at Birmingham, in the
course of twelve months he spent the whole of that sum, and repaired to
London. Here he again obtained work, and was eventually married to a
Mrs. Lane, a widow, with four children, who lived at Walworth, with
whose assistance he began trade on his own account. Success, however,
did not attend him, and he was compelled to remove to London, and to
take a lodging at Mary-le-bone. While here, he appears to have joined
the conspirators, into whose plans he entered with great willingness. He
left two children of his own, by his wife, both of whom were under four
years of age.
John Thomas Brunt was born in Union-street, Oxford-street; where his
father carried on business as a tailor. He was for some time employed in
the shop of a shoemaker, and he subsequently became an excellent workman
in that business, and up to the age of twenty-three was the chief
supporter of his mother, his father having died while he was yet young.
At that age he married a respectable young woman, named Welch. On the
1st of May 1806, she brought him a boy, who was fourteen years of age on
the day his unfortunate father suffered the sentence of the law. Brunt
was thirty-eight years of age.
The following particulars with regard to Edwards, whose name so
frequently occurs during the preceding narrative, will enable the reader
to form, a just estimate of his character.
It appears that he had been originally a modeller, and kept a little
shop in Fleet-street, where he sold plaster-of-Paris images. His poverty
had been always apparent until a few months previous to the Cato-street
plot, when there is no doubt he accepted the wages of government, and
became a spy. For this office he appears to have been admirably adapted,
as he was shrewd, artful, and unprincipled. His former acquaintance with
the Spenceans procured him the confidence of some of its deluded
members; and through them he got acquainted with Thistlewood and the
others.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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