Though there have been some instances of felons adhering so closely
together as not to give up one another to Justice, even for the sake of
saving life, yet are such instances very rare, and examples of the
contrary very common.
Richard Whittingham was a young man of very good natural inclinations,
had he not been of too easy a temper, and ready to yield to the
inducements of bad women. His friends had placed him as an apprentice to
a hot-presser, with whom he lived very honestly for some time; but at
last, the idle women with whom he conversed continually pressing him for
money in return for their lewd favours, he was by that means drawn in to
run away from his master, and subsist by picking pockets. In the
prosecution of this trade, he contracted an infamous friendship with
Jones, Applebee and Lee, three notorious villains of the same stamp,
with whom he committed abundance of robberies in the streets, especially
by cutting off women's pockets, and such other exploits. This, he
pretended, was performed with great address and regularity, for he said
that after many consultations, 'twas resolved to attack persons only in
broad streets for the future, from whence they found it much less
troublesome to escape than when they committed them in alleys and such
like close places, whereupon a pursuit once begun, they seldom or never
missed being taken. He added, that when they had determined to go out to
plunder, each had his different post assigned him, and that while one
laid his leg before a passenger, another gave him a jolt on the
shoulders, and as soon as he was down a third came to their assistance,
whereupon they immediately went to stripping and binding those who were
so unlucky as thus to fall into their hands. Upon Applebee's being
apprehended, and himself impeached, Whittingham withdrew to Rochester,
with an intent to have gone out of the kingdom, but after all he could
not prevail with himself to quit his native country.
On his return to London, he fled for sanctuary to the house of his
former master, who treated him with great kindness, supplied him with
work, sent up his victuals privately, and did all in his power to
conceal him. But Jones and Lee, his former companions, found means to
discover him as they had already impeached him, and so, on their
evidence and that of the prosecutor, he was convicted of robbing William
Garnet, in the area of Red Lion Square, when Applebee knocked him down,
and Jones and Lee held their hands upon his eyes, and crammed his own
neck-cloth down his throat.
When he found he was to die, he was far from behaving himself
obstinately, but as far as his capacity would give him leave,
endeavoured to pray, and to fit himself for his approaching dissolution.
He had married a young wife, for whom he expressed a very tender
affection, and seemed more cast down with the thoughts of those miseries
to which she would be exposed by his death, than he was at what he
himself was to suffer.
During the time he lay in the condemned hold, he complained often of the
great interruptions those under sentence of death met with from some
prisoners who were confined underneath, and who, through the crevice,
endeavoured as usual, by talking to them lewdly and profanely, to
disturb them even in their last moments. At the place of execution he
wept bitterly, and seemed to be much affrighted at death and very sorry
for his having committed those crimes which brought him thither. He was
but nineteen years old when he suffered, which was on the 21st of May,
1722.