On the way to Tyburn he was cursed and pelted. The rest of the batch being tied up, the executioner told Wild he might have any reasonable time to prepare himself. This so incensed the mob that they threatened to knock the hangman on the head if he did not at once perform the duties of his office. The body was buried in the churchyard of Old St. Pancras, but was afterwards removed, by surgeons as was supposed. =1726.= _May 9._ Catherine Hays and Thomas Billings, executed for the murder of John Hays, the husband of Catherine. Thomas Wood, also condemned for the murder, died on May 4 in the “Condemned-Hold.” Hays’s body was cut up by the murderers, and the head thrown into the Thames, but it was recovered and set up on a pole in the churchyard of St. Margaret’s, Westminster. This led to identification and discovery of the criminals. Catherine Hays was drawn on a sledge to Tyburn. Here she was chained to a stake and faggots were piled around her. A rope round her neck was passed through a hole in the stake. When the fire had got well alight and had reached the woman, the executioner pulled the rope, intending to strangle her, but, the fire reaching his hands, he was forced to desist. More faggots were then piled on the woman, and in about three or four hours she was reduced to ashes. Billings was put in irons as he was hanging on the gallows, his body was then cut down, carried to a gibbet about a hundred yards distant, and there suspended in chains (Villette i. 394-428). Thackeray’s “Catherine, A Story,” originally published in _Fraser’s Magazine_, is based on this case, much as Fielding’s “Jonathan Wild the Great” is based upon the career of that worthy. =1732.= _October 9._ Thirteen executed at Tyburn. =1733.= _January 29._ Twelve malefactors, condemned in the three preceding sessions, executed at Tyburn. =1733.= _May 28._ John Davis, feigning sickness, begged that he might not be tied in the cart. When he came to the Tree, he jumped from the cart and ran across two fields. A countyman knocked him down, and he was brought back and hanged. =1733.= _December 19._ Thirteen executed at Tyburn. Among them were a man and a woman condemned for coining. They were, as usual, drawn in a sledge: the man, after being hanged, was slashed across the body. The woman, chained to a stake, was first strangled and then burnt. =1737.= _March 12._ Twelve malefactors executed at Tyburn. =1738.= _January 18._ Thirteen, convicted in October and December, executed at Tyburn. =1738.= _November 8._ Eleven executed at Tyburn. =1739.= _March 14._ Eleven executed at Tyburn. _December 20._ Eleven executed at Tyburn. =1741.= We are so fortunate as to possess an account of an execution written at this time by Samuel Richardson, the first great English novelist. It is found in a volume, printed without the author’s name; a kind of Polite Letter Writer, bearing this portentous title:—