Though vices and extravagancies are the common causes which induce men
to fall into those illegal practices which lead to a shameful death, yet
now and then it happens we find men of outward gravity and serious
deportment as wicked as those whose open licenciousness renders their
committing crimes of this sort the less amazing.
Of the number of these was Richard Trantham, a married man, having a
wife and child living at the time of his death, keeping also a tolerable
house at Mitcham in Surrey. He had been apprehended on the sale of some
stolen silk, and the next sessions following was convicted of having
broken the house of John Follwell, in the night-time, two years before,
and taking thence a silver tankard, a silver salver, and fifty-four
pounds of Bologna silk, valued at £74 and upwards. During the time which
passed between the sentence and execution he behaved in a manner the
most penitent and devout, not only making use of a considerable number
of books which the charity of his friends had furnished him with, but
also reading to all those who were in the condemned hold with them.
The morning he was to die, after having received the Sacrament, he was
exhorted to make a confession of those crimes which he had committed,
particularly as to housebreaking, in which he was thought to have been
long concerned; thereupon he recollected himself a little, and told of
six or seven houses which he had broken open, particularly General
Groves's near St. James's; a stone-cutter in Chiswell Street; and Mr.
Follwell's in Spitalfields, for which he died. At the place of
execution, whither he was conveyed in a mourning coach, he appeared
perfectly composed and submissive to that sentence which his own
misdeeds and the justice of the Law had brought upon him. Before the
halter was put about his neck, he spoke to those who were assembled at
the gallows to see his death, in the following terms:
Good People,
Those wicked and unlawful methods by which, for a considerable time,
I have supported myself, have justly drawn upon me the anger of God,
and the sentence of the Law. As I have injured many and the
substance I have is very small, I fear a restitution would be hard
to make, even if it should be divided. I therefore leave it all to
my wife for the maintenance of her and my child. I entreat you
neither to reflect on her nor on my parents, and pray the blessing
of God upon you all.
He was thirty years old when he died and was executed the same day with
the malefactor afore-mentioned.
The Lives of JOHN TYRRELL, a Horse-dealer, and WILLIAM HAWKSWORTH, a
Murderer
John Tyrrell, the first of these malefactors, was convicted for stealing
two horses in Yorkshire, but selling them in Smithfield he was tried at
the Old Bailey. It seem she had been an old horse-stealer as most people
conjecture, though he himself denied it, and as he pretended at his
trial to have bought those two for which he died at Northampton Fair, so
he continually endeavoured to infuse the same notions into all persons
who spoke to him at the time of his death. He had practised carrying
horses over into Flanders and Germany, and there selling them to persons
of the highest rank, with whom he always dealt so justly and honourably
that, as it was said, his word would have gone there for any sum
whatsoever that was to be laid out in horse-flesh.
He had been bred up a Dissenter, and above all things affected the
character of a religious and sober man, which excepting the instances
for which he died, he never seemed to have forfeited; for whatever else
was said against him after he was condemned, arose merely from
conjectures occasioned by the number of horses he had sold in foreign
parts. He himself professed that he had always led a most regular and
devout life, and in the frequent voyages he made by sea, exhorted the
sailors to leave that dissolute manner of life which too generally they
led. During the whole time he lay under sentence, he talked of nothing
else but his own great piety and devotion, which though, as he
confessed, it had often been rewarded by many singular deliverances
through the hand of Providence, yet since he was suffered to die this
ignominious death and thereby disgrace his family and altogether
overturn that reputation of sanctity with which so much pains himself
had been setting up, he inclined to atheistic notions, and a wavering
belief as to the being of a God at all.
As for the other malefactor, William Hawksworth, he was a Yorkshireman
by birth. His parents, reputable people who took a great care in his
reputation, intended to breed him to some good trade, but a regiment of
soldiers happening to come into the town, Hawksworth imagining great
things might be attained to in the army, would needs go with them, and
accordingly listed himself. But having run through many difficulties and
much hardships, finding also that he was like to meet with little else
while he wore a red coat, he took a great deal of pains and made much
interest to be discharged. At last he effected it, and a gentleman
kindly taking him to live with him as a footman, he there recovered part
of that education which he had lost while in the army. There, also, he
addicted himself for some time to a sober and quiet life, but soon after
giving way to his old roving disposition, he went away from his master,
and listed himself again in the army in one of the regiments of Guards.
His behaviour the last time of his being in the service was honest and
regular, his officers giving him a very good character, and nobody else
a bad one; but happening to be one day commanded on a party to mount
guard at the Admiralty Office, by Charing Cross, they met a man and
woman. The man's name was John Ransom, and this Hawksworth stepping up
to the woman and going to kiss her, Ransom interposed and pushed him
off, upon which Hawksworth knocked him down with the butt end of his
piece, by which blow about nine o'clock that evening he died.
The prisoner insisted continually that as he had no design to kill the
man it was not wilful murder. He and Tyrrell died with less confusion
and seeming concern than most malefactors do. Tyrrell was about thirty
and Hawksworth in the twenty-eighth year of his age, on the 17th of
June, 1723.