It is an observation which must be obvious to all my readers, that few
who addict themselves to robbing and stealing ever continue long in the
practice of those crimes before they are overtaken by Justice, not
seldom as soon as they set out.
This man had been bred a plasterer, but seems to have fallen very early
into ill courses and felonious methods of getting money, in which horrid
practice he spent his years, till taking up with an old woman who sold
brandy upon Finchley Common, she sometimes persuaded him, of late years,
to work at his trade.
There has been great suspicions that he murdered the old husband to this
woman, who was found dead in a barn or outhouse not far from Hornsey;
but Wigley, though he confessed an unlawful correspondence with the
woman, yet constantly averred his innocency of that fact, and always
asserted that though the old man's death was sudden, yet it was natural.
He used to account for it by saying that the deceased was a great
brandy-drinker, by which he had worn out his constitution, and that
being one evening benighted in his return home from London, he crawled
into that barn where he was found dead next morning, and was currently
reported to have been murdered.
Though this malefactor had committed a multitude of robberies, yet he
generally chose to go on such expeditions alone, having always great
aversion for those confederacies in villainy which we call gangs, in
which he always affirmed there was little safety, notwithstanding any
oaths, by which they might bind themselves to secrecy. For
notwithstanding some instances of their neglecting rewards when they
were to be obtained by betraying their companions, yet when life came to
be touched, they hardly ever failed of betraying all they knew. Yet he
once receded from the resolution he had made of never robbing in
company, and went out one night with two others of the same occupation
towards Islington, there they met with one Symbol Conyers, whom they
robbed of a watch, a pair of silver spurs, and four shillings in money,
at the same time treating him very ill, and terrifying him with their
pistols.
For this fact, soon after it was done, Wigley was apprehended, and
convicted at the ensuing sessions. When all hopes of life were lost, he
seemed disposed to suffer with cheerfulness and resignation that death
to which the Law had doomed him. He said, in the midst of his
afflictions it was some comfort to him that he had no children who might
be exposed by his death to the wide world, not only in a helpless and
desolate condition, but also liable to the reflections incident from his
crimes. He also observed that the immediate hand of Providence seemed to
dissipate whatever wicked persons got by rapine and plunder, so as not
only to prevent their acquiring a subsistence which might set them above
the necessity of continuing in such courses, but that they even wanted
bread to support them, when overtaken by Justice. He was near forty
years of age at the time of his death, which happened on the same day as
the malefactors last mentioned.