Such is the present depravity of human nature that we have sometimes
instances of infant criminals and children meriting death by their
crimes, before they know or can be expected to know how to do anything
to live. Perhaps there was never a stronger instance of this than in
James Booty, of whom we are now speaking. He was a boy rather without
capacity than obstinate, whose inclinations, one would have expected,
could hardly have attained to that pitch of wickedness in thought, which
it appeared both by evidence and his own confessions, he had actually
practised. His father was a peruke-maker in Holborn, and not in so bad
circumstances but that he could have afforded him a tolerable education,
if he had not been snatched away by death. Thus his son was left to the
care of his mother, who put him to a cabinet-maker, where he might have
been bound apprentice if the unhappy accident (for so indeed I think it
may be called) had not intervened. It seemed his master had taken a
cousin of his, a girl of about fifteen or somewhat more, for a servant.
This girl went into the workshop where the boy lay, under pretence of
mending his coat, which he had torn by falling upon a hook as he
stumbled over the well of the stairs; but instead of darning the hole,
she went to bed to the boy, put out the candle, and gave him the foul
distemper.
Not knowing what was the matter with him, but finding continual pains in
his body, he made a shift at last to learn the cause from some of the
workmen. Not daring to trust even his mother with what was the matter
with him, instead of applying to a proper person to be cured, he
listened as attentively as he could to all discourses about that
distemper, which happened frequently enough amongst his master's
journeymen. There he heard some of the foolish fellows say that lying
with any person who was sound would cure those who were in such a
condition. The extreme anguish of body he was in excited him to try the
experiment, and he injured no less than four or five children, between
four years old and six, before he committed that act for which he was
executed.
He one day carried his master's daughter, Anne Milton, a girl of but
five years and two months old, to the top of the house, and there with
great violence abused her and gave her the foul disease. The parents
were not long before they made the discovery of it, and the child
telling them what Booty had done to her, they sent for a surgeon who
examined him, and found him in a very sad condition with venereal
disease. Upon this he was taken up and committed to Newgate, and upon
very full evidence was convicted at the next sessions, and received
sentence of death; from which time to the day before he was executed, he
was afflicted with so violent a fever as to have little or no sense. But
then coming to himself, he expressed a confused sense of religion and
penitence, desired to be instructed how to go to Heaven, and showed
evident marks of his inclination to do anything which might be for the
good of his soul.
At the place of execution he wept and looked dejected, said his mother
had sought diligently for the wench who did him the injury, and was the
cause of his doing it to so many others; but that although the girl was
known to live in Westminster after she left his master, yet his mother
was never able to find her. Thus was this young creature removed from
the world by an ignominious death at Tyburn, on the 21st May, 1722,
being then somewhat above fifteen years old.