Abraham Deval, who had been a clerk to the Lottery Office, at last took
it into his head to coin tickets for himself, and had such good luck
therein that he at one time counterfeited a certificate for £52 12s.
0d., for seven blank lottery tickets, in the year 1723. Two or three
other facts of the same nature he perpetrated with the like success, but
happening to counterfeit two blank tickets of the lottery in the year in
which he died, they were discovered, and he thereupon apprehended and
tried at the Old Bailey. On the first indictment, for want of evidence
he was acquitted, upon which he behaved himself with great insolence,
lolled out his tongue at the Court, and told them he did not value the
second indictment. But herein he happened to be mistaken, for the jury
found him guilty of that indictment and thereupon he received sentence
of death accordingly.
Notwithstanding that impudence with which he had treated the Court at
his trial, he complained very loudly of their not showing him favour;
nay, he even pretended that he had not justice done him. This he
grounded upon the score that the ticket he was indicted for was No. 39,
in the 651st course of payment. Now it seems that in searching of his
brother-in-law Parson's room, the original ticket was found, though very
much torn, from whence Deval would have had it taken to be no more than
a duplicate, and much blamed his counsel for not insisting long enough
upon this point, which if he had done, Deval entertained a strong
opinion that he could not have been convicted.
The apprehension of this and the uneasiness he was under with his irons
made him pass his last moments with great unquietness and discontent. He
said it was against the law to put men in irons, that fettering English
subjects (except they attempted to break prisons) was altogether
illegal. But after having raved at this rate for a small space, when he
found it did him no good, and that there were no hopes of a reprieve, he
even began to settle himself to the performance of those duties which
became a man in his sad condition and when he did apply himself
thereto, nobody could appear to have a juster sense than he of that
miserable and sad condition into which the folly and wickedness of his
life had brought him.
It is certain the man did not want parts, though sometimes he applied
them to the worst of purposes, and was cursed with an insolent and
overbearing temper which hindered him from being loved or respected
anywhere, and which never did him any service but in the last moments of
his life, where if it had not been for the severity of his behaviour,
Julian, the black boy, would have been very troublesome, both to him and
to the other person who was under sentence at the same time.
At the place of execution Deval owned the fact, but wished the
spectators to consider whether for all that he was legally convicted,
and so suffered in the thirtieth year of his age.