“He sayd to the executioner, ‘Here are six guinies for you. Pray doe your business well: don’t serue me as you did my Lord Russell. I haue heard you strooke him three or fower tymes. Here (to his seruant), take these remaininge guinies, and giue them to him if he does his worke well.’ And to the executioner he sayd, ‘If you strike me twice I cannot promise you not to stirr.’ Then he lay downe, and soone after raised himselfe vpon his elbowe, and sayd to the executioner, ‘Prithee, let me feele the ax.’ He felt the edge, and sayd, ‘I feare it is not sharpe enough.’ Then he lay downe, the Diuines prayinge earnestly for the acceptance of his repentance, his imperfect repentance, and commended to God his soule and spirit. Soe the executioner did his work: but I heare he had fiue blowes. Soe he died.”[71] As recorded in the Annals, John Price, the Tyburn hangman, was executed in Bunhill-Fields for murder in 1718. In August, 1721, John Meff was executed at Tyburn. At a previous date, not mentioned, he had been condemned to death for housebreaking, but, as he was going to Tyburn, the hangman, bearing the generic name of “Jack Ketch,” was arrested. What became of him is not told, but he probably came to a bad end. In May, 1736, “Jack Ketch,” on his return from doing his office at Tyburn, robbed a woman of 3s. 6d., for which he was committed to Newgate. History is silent as to his fate. In 1750, the hangman, John Thrift, was condemned for killing a man in a quarrel. His sentence was commuted to one of transportation for fourteen years. He was finally pardoned, and in September “resumed the exercise of his office.” “‘Old England,’ September 22, hints, that having become obnoxious to the Jacobites, for his celebrated operations on Tower-Hill and Kennington-Common, he was pardoned _in terrorem_, and to mortify them.”[72] In 1780, Edward Dennis, the hangman, was condemned for taking part in the No Popery riots. He was respited. Dickens has introduced Dennis as a personage in his story of “Barnaby Rudge.” It will be seen that out of the few hangmen of Tyburn whose names have come down to us, several ended their useful lives on the gallows, having failed to profit personally by the lessons they were employed by the State to teach. There was a strange superstition connected with the gallows: what it was will be understood from the following:— A man having been hanged at Tyburn, on May 4, 1767, “a young woman, with a wen upon her neck, was lifted up while he was hanging, and had the wen rubbed with the dead man’s hand, from a superstitious notion that it would effect a cure.” This case is not the only one of its kind on record.[73]