There cannot, perhaps, be a greater misfortune to a man than his having
a woman of ill-principles about him, whether as a wife or otherwise.
When they once lay aside principles either of modesty or honesty, women
become commonly the most abandoned; and as their sex renders them
capable of seducing, so their vices tempt them not often to persuade men
to such crimes as otherwise, perhaps, they would never have thought of.
This was the case of the malefactor, the story of whose misfortunes we
are now to relate.
Joseph Picken was the son of a tailor in Clerkenwell, who worked hard at
his employment and took pleasure in nothing but providing for, and
bringing up his family. This unhappy son, Joseph, was his darling, and
nothing grieved him so much upon his death-bed, as the fears of what
might befall the boy, being then an infant of five years old. However,
his mother, though a widow, took so much care of his education, that he
was well enough instructed for the business she designed him, viz., that
of a vintner, to which profession he was bound at a noted tavern near
Billingsgate.
He served his time very faithfully and with great approbation, but
falling in love, or to speak more properly, taking a whim of marriage in
his head, he accepted of a young woman in the neighbourhood as his
partner for life. Soon after this, he removed to Windsor, where he took
the tap at a well-accustomed inn, and began the world in a very probable
way of doing well. However, partly through his own misfortunes, and
partly through the extravagance of his wife, in a little more than a
twelve months' time he found himself thirty pound in debt, and in no
likelihood from his trade of getting money to pay it. This made him very
melancholy, and nothing added so great a weight to his load of
affliction as the uneasiness he was under at the misfortunes which might
befall his wife, to whom as yet this fall in his circumstances was not
known.
However, fearing it would be soon discovered in another way, at last he
mentioned it to her, at the same time telling her that she must retrench
her expenses, for he was now so far from being able to support them that
he could hardly get him family bread. Her mother and she thereupon
removed to a lodging, where by the side of the bed, poor Picken used to
slumber upon the boards, heavily disconsolate with the weight of his
misfortunes. One day after talking of them to his wife, he said: _I am
now quite at my wits' end. I have no way left to get anything to support
us; what shall I do? Do_, answered she, _why, what should a man do that
wants money and has any courage, but go upon the highway._
The poor man, not knowing how else to gain anything, even took her
advice, and recollecting a certain companion of his who had once upon a
time offered the same expedient for relieving their joint misfortunes,
Picken thereupon found him out, and without saying it was his wife's
proposal, pretended that his sorrows had at last so prevailed upon him
that he was resolved to repair the injuries of Fortune by taking away
something from those she had used better than him. His comrade unhappily
addicted himself still to his old way of thinking, and instead of
dissuading him from his purpose, seemed pleased that he had taken such a
resolution. He told him that for his part he always thought danger
rather to be chosen than want, and that while soldiers hazarded their
lives in war for sixpence a day, he thought it was cowardice to make a
man starve, where he had a chance of getting so much more than those who
hazarded as much as they did.
Accordingly Picken and his companion provided themselves that week with
all necessaries for their expedition, and going upon it in the beginning
of the next, set out and had success, as they called it, in two or three
enterprises. But returning to London in the end of the week, they were
apprehended for a robbery committed on one Charles Cooper, on Finchley
Common, for which they were tried the next sessions, and both capitally
convicted.
Through fear of death and want of necessaries, Joseph Picken fell into a
low and languishing state of health, under which, however, he gave all
the signs of penitence and sorrow that could be expected for the crimes
he had committed. Yet though he loaded his wife with the weight of all
his crimes, he forebore any harsh or shocking reproaches against her,
saying only that as she had brought him into all the miseries he now
felt, so she had left him to bear the weight of them alone, without
either ever coming near him, or affording him any assistance. However,
he said he was so well satisfied of the multitude of his own sins, and
the need he had of forgiveness from God, that he thought it a small
condition to forgive her, which he did freely from his heart.
In these sentiments he took the Holy Sacrament, and continued with great
calmness to wait the execution of his sentence. In the passage to
execution and even at the fatal tree, he behaved himself with amazing
circumstances of quietness and resignation, and though he appeared much
less fearful than any of those who died with him, yet he parted with
life almost as soon as the cart was drawn away. He was about twenty-two
years of age, or somewhat more, at the time he suffered, which was on
the 24th of February, 1724-5, much pitied by the spectators, and much
lamented by those that knew him.