James Wright, the malefactor whose life we are going to relate at
present, was born at Enfield, of very honest and industrious parents,
who, that he might get a living honestly, put him apprentice to a
peruke-maker. At this trade, after having served his time, he set up in
the Old Bailey, and lived there for some time in very good credit. But
being much given up to women, and an idle habit of life, his expenses
quickly outwent his profits, and thus in the space of some months
reduced him to downright want. This put him upon the illegal ways he
afterwards took to support himself in the enjoyment of those pleasures
which even the evils he had already felt could not make him wise enough
to shun.
He was very far from being a hardened criminal, hardly ever robbing a
passenger without tears in his eyes, and always framing resolutions to
himself of quitting that infamous manner of life, as soon as ever it
should be in his power. He fancied that as the rich could better spare
it than the poor, there was less crime in taking it from them, and
valued himself not a little that he had never injured any poor man, but
always singled out those who from their equipage were likeliest to yield
him a good booty, and at the same time not be much the worse for it
themselves. He had gone on for a considerable space in the commission of
villainies with impunity, but at last being apprehended for a robbery
committed by him in the county of Surrey, he was thereupon indicted and
tried at the ensuing assizes at Kingston, and by some means or other,
was so lucky as to be acquitted, no doubt to his very great joy; and on
this deliverance he again renewed his vows of amendment.
After this acquittal a friend of his was so kind as to take him down to
his house in the country, in hopes of keeping him out of harm's way; and
indeed 'tis highly probable that he had totally given over all evil
intention of that sort, when he was unfortunately impeached by Hawkins,
one of his old companions, and on his evidence and that of the
prosecutor whom he found out, Wright was taken up, tried and convicted
at the Old Bailey. When he perceived there was no hope of life he
applied himself to the great business of his soul, and behaved with the
greatest composure imaginable. He declared himself a Roman Catholic, yet
frequented the chapel all the time he was in Newgate, and seemed only
studious how to make peace with God.
When the fatal day of execution approached, he was far from seeming
amazed, notwithstanding that after mature deliberation he refused to
declare his associates, or how they might be found, saying that perhaps
they might repent, and he hoped some of them had done so, and he would
not bring them to the same ignominious death with himself. The fact he
died for, viz., robbing Mr. Towers, with some ladies in a coach in
Marlborough Street, he confessed, also that his companion called out to
him, _What, do they resist? Shoot 'em._ He suffered with all the outward
signs of penitence, on the 22nd of December, 1721, being about
thirty-four years of age.