This unhappy person, John Hamp, was born of both honest and reputable
parents in the parish of St. Giles-without-Cripplegate. They took
abundance of pains in his education, and the lad seemed in his juvenile
years to deserve it; he was a boy of abundance of spirit, and his
friends at his own request put him out apprentice to a man whose trade
it was to lath houses. He did not stay out his time with him, but being
one evening with some drunken companions at an alehouse near the Iron
Gate by the Tower, three of them sailors on board a man-of-war (there
being at that time a great want of men, a squadron being fitted out for
the Baltic), these sailors, therefore, observing all the company very
drunk, put into their heard to make an agreement for their going
altogether this voyage to the North. Drink wrought powerfully in their
favour, and in less than two hours time, Hamp and two other of his
companions fell in with the sailors' motion, and talked of nothing but
braving the Czar, and seeing the rarities of Copenhagen. The fourth man
of Hamp's company stood out a little, but half an hour's rhodomantade
and another bowl of punch brought him to a sailor, upon which one of the
seamen stepped out, and gave notice to his lieutenant, who was drinking
not far off, of the great service he had performed, the lieutenant was
mightily pleased with Jack Tar's diligence, promised to pay the
reckoning, and give each of them a guinea besides. A quarter of an hour
after, the Lieutenant came in. The fellows were all so very drunk that
he was forced to send for more hands belonging to the ship, who carried
them to the long-boat, and there laying them down and covering them with
men's coats, carried them on board that night.
There is no doubt that Hamp was very surprised when he found the
situation he was in next morning, but as there was no remedy, he
acquiesced without making any words, and so began the voyage cheerfully.
Everybody knows that there was no fighting in these Baltic expeditions,
so that all the hardships they had to combat with were those of the sea
and the weather, which was indeed bad enough to people of an English
constitution, who were very unfit to bear the extremity of cold.
While they by before Copenhagen, an accident happened to one of Hamp's
great acquaintance, which much affected him at that time, and it would
have certainly have been happy for him if he had retained a just sense
of it always. There was one Scrimgeour, a very merry debonair fellow,
who used to make not only the men, but sometimes the officers merry on
board the ship. He was particularly remarkable for being always full of
money, of which he was no niggard, but ready to do anybody a service,
and consequently was very far from being ill-beloved. This man being one
day on shore and going to purchase some fresh provisions to make merry
with amongst his companions, somebody took notice of a dollar that was
in his hand, and Scrimgeour wanting change, the man readily offered to
give smaller money. Scrimgeour thereupon gave him the dollar, and having
afterwards bargained for what he wanted, was just going on board when a
Danish officer with a file of men, came to apprehend him for a coiner.
The fellow, conscious of his guilt, and suspicious of their intent,
seeing the man amongst them who had changed the dollar, took to his
heels, and springing into the boat, the men rowed him on board
immediately, where as soon as he was got, Scrimgeour fancied himself out
of all danger.
But in this he was terribly mistaken, for early the next morning three
Danish commissaries came on board the admiral, and acquainted him that a
seaman on board his fleet had counterfeited their coin to a very
considerable value, and was yesterday detected in putting off a dollar;
that thereupon an officer had been ordered to seize him, but that he had
made his escape by jumping into the long-boat of such a ship, on board
of which they were informed he was; they therefore desired he might be
given up in order to be punished. The admiral declined that, but assured
them that, upon due proof, he would punish him with the greatest
severity on board; and having in the meanwhile dispatched a lieutenant
and twenty men on board Scrimgeour's ship, with the Dane who detected
him in putting off false money, he was secured immediately. Upon
searching his trunk they found there near a hundred false dollars, so
excellently made that none of the ship's crew could have distinguished
them from the true.
He was immediately carried on board the admiral, who ordered him to be
confined. Soon after a court-martial condemned him to be whipped from
ship to ship, which was performed in the view of the Danish
commissaries, with so much rigour that instead of expressing any notion
of the Englishmen showing favour to their countryman upon any such
occasion, they interposed to mitigate the fellow's sufferings, and
humbly besought the admiral to omit lashing him on board three of the
last ships. But in this request they were civilly refused, and the
sentence which had been pronounced against him was executed upon him
with the utmost severity; and it happening that Hamp was one of the
persons who rowed him from ship to ship, it filled him with so much
terror that he was scarce able to perform his duty; the wretch, himself,
being made such a terrible spectacle of misery that not only Hamp, but
all the rest who saw him after his last lashing, were shocked at the
sight. And though it was shrewdly suspected that some others had been
concerned with him, yet this example had such an effect that there were
no more instances of any false money uttered from that time.
It was near five years after Hamp went first to sea that he began to
think of returning home and working at his trade again; and after this
thought had once got into his head, as is usual with such fellows, he
was never easy until he had accomplished it. An opportunity offered soon
after, the ship he belonged to being recalled and paid off. John had,
however, very little to receive, the great delight he took in drinking
made him so constant a customer to a certain officer in the ship that
all was near spent by the time he came home. That, however, would have
been no great misfortune had he stuck close to his employment and
avoided those excesses of which he been formerly guilty. But alas! this
was by no means in his power; he drank rather harder after his return
than he had done before, and if he might be credited at that time when
the Law allows what is said to pass for evidence, viz., in the agony of
death, it was this love of drink that brought him, without any other
crime, to his shameful end. The manner of which, I shall next fully
relate.
Hamp, passing one night very drunk through the street, a woman, as is
usual enough for common street-walkers to do, took him by the sleeve,
and after some immodest discourse, asked him if he would not go into her
mother's and take a pot with her. To this motion Hamp readily agreed,
and had not been long in the house before he fell fast asleep in the
company of James Bird (who was hanged with him), the woman who brought
him into the house, and an old woman, whom she called her mother. By and
by certain persons came who apprehended him and James Bird for being in
a disorderly house; and having carried them to the watch house, they
were there both charged with robbing and beating, in a most cruel and
barbarous manner, a poor old woman near Rag Fair.[72]
At the next Old Bailey sessions they were both tried for the fact, and
the woman's evidence being positive against them, they were likewise
convicted. Hamp behaved himself with great serenity while under
sentence, declaring always that he had not the least knowledge of Bird
until the time they were taken up; that in all his life time he had
never acquired a halfpenny in a dishonest manner, and that although he
had so much abandoned himself to drinking and other debaucheries, yet he
constantly worked hard at his employment, in order to get money to
support them. As to the robbery, he knew no more of it than the child
unborn, that he readily believed all that the woman swore to be true,
except her mistake in the persons; and that as to Bird, he could not
take upon himself to say that he was concerned in it.
A divine of eminency in the Church, being so charitable as to visit him,
spoke to him very particularly on this head; he told him that a jury of
his countrymen on their oaths had unanimously found him guilty; that the
Law upon such a conviction had appointed him to death, and that there
appeared not the least hopes of his being anyways able to prevent it;
that the denying of his guilt therefore, could not possibly be of any
use to him here, but might probably ruin him for ever hereafter; that he
would act wisely in this unfortunate situation into which his vices had
brought him, if he would make an ample acknowledgment of the crime he
had committed, and own the justice of Providence in bringing him to
condemnation, instead of leaving the world in the assertion of a
falsehood, and rushing into the presence of Almighty God with a lie in
his mouth.
This exhortation was made publicly, and Hamp after having heard it with
great attention, answered it in the following terms. _I am very
sensible, sir, of your goodness in affording me this visit and am no
less obliged to you for your pressing instances to induce me confession.
But as I know the matter of fact, so I am sure, you would not press me
to own it if it be not true; I aver that the charge against me is
utterly false in every particular. I freely acknowledge that I have led
a most dissolute life, and abandoned myself in working all kind of
wickedness; but should I so satisfy some persons' importunities as to
own also the justice of my present sentence, as arising from the truth
of the fact, I should thereby become guilty of the very crime you warn
me of, and go out of the world, indeed, in the very act of telling an
untruth. Besides, of what use would it be to me, who have not the least
hopes of pardon, to persist in a lie, merely for the sake of deceiving
others, who may take my miserable death as a piece of news, and at the
same time cheat myself in what is my last and greatest concern? I beg,
therefore, to be troubled no more on this head, but to be left to make
my peace with God for those sins which I have really committed, without
being pressed to offend Him yet more, by taking upon me that which I
really know nothing of._
The Ordinary of Newgate hereupon went into the hold to examine Bird, who
lay there in a sick and lamentable condition. He confirmed all that Hamp
had said, declared he never saw him in his life before the night in
which they were taken up, acknowledged himself to be a great sinner, and
an old offender, that he had been often taken up before for thefts; but
as to the present case, he peremptorily insisted on his innocence, and
that he knew nothing of it.
At the place of execution, Hamp appeared very composed and with a
cheerfulness that is seldom seen in the countenances of persons when
they come to the tree, and are on the very verge of death. He spoke for
a few moments to the people saying that he been a grievous sinner, much
addicted to women, and much more to drinking; that for these crimes, he
thought the Justice of God righteous in bringing him to a shameful
death; but as to assaulting the woman in Rag Fair, he again protested
his innocence, and declared he never committed any robbery whatsoever,
desired the prayers of the people in his last moments, and then applied
himself to some short private devotions. He resigned himself with much
calmness to his fate, on Wednesday, the 22nd of December, 1725, at
Tyburn, being then in the twenty-fifth year of his age. Bird confirmed,
as well as the craziness of his distempered head would give him leave,
the truth of what Hamp had said.