[72] This was in Rosemary Lane, Wellclose Square,
Whitechapel--"a place near the Tower of London where old clothes
and frippery are sold"--according to Pope.
The Lives of JOHN AUSTIN, a Footpad, JOHN FOSTER, a Housebreaker, and
RICHARD SCURRIER, a Shoplifter
Amongst the number of those extraordinary events which may be remarked
in the course of these melancholy memoirs of those who have fallen
martyrs to sin, and victims to justice, there is scarce anything more
remarkable than the finding a man who hath led an honest and reputable
life, till he hath attained the summit of life, and then, without
abandoning himself to any notorious vices that may be supposed to lead
him into rapine and stealth in order to support him, to take himself on
a sudden to robbing on the highway, and to finish a painful and
industrious life by a violent and shameful death. Yet this is exactly
the case before us.
The criminal of whom we are first to speak, viz., John Austin, was the
son of very honest people, having not only been bred up in good
principles, but seeming also to retain them. He was put out young to a
gardener, in which employment being brought up, he became afterwards a
master for himself, and lived, as all his neighbours report it, with as
fair character as any man thereabout. On a sudden he was taken up for
assaulting and knocking down a man in Stepney Fields, with a short,
round, heavy club, and taking from him his coat, in the beginning of
November, 1725, about seven o'clock in the morning. The evidence being
very clear and direct, the jury, notwithstanding the persons he called
to his character, found him guilty. He received sentence of death
accordingly, and after a report had been made to his Majesty he was
ordered for execution.
During the space he lay under conviction, he at first denied, then
endeavoured to extenuate his crime, by saying he did indeed knock the
man down, but that the man struck him first with an iron rod he had in
his hand; and in this story for some time he firmly persisted. But when
death made a nearer approach he acknowledged the falsity of these
pretences, and owned the robbery in the manner in which he had been
charged therewith. Being asked how a man in his circumstances, being
under no necessities, but on the contrary, in a way very likely to do
well, came to be guilty of so unaccountable an act as the knocking down
a poor man and taking away his coat, he said that though he was in a
fair way of living, and had a very careful and industrious wife, yet for
some time past, he had been disturbed in his mind, and that the morning
he committed the robbery he took the club out of his own house, being an
instrument made use of by his wife in the trade of a silk-throwster, and
from a sudden impulse of mind attacked the man in the manner which had
been sworn against him.
He appeared to be a person of no vicious principles, had been guilty of
very few enormous crimes, except drinking to excess sometimes, and that
but seldom. The sin which most troubled him was (his ordinary practice)
as a gardener, in spending the Lord's day mostly in hard work, viz., in
packing up things for Monday's market. He was very penitent for the
offence which he had committed; he attended the service of chapel daily,
prayed constantly and fervently in the place of his confinement, and
suffered death with much serenity and resolution; averring with his last
breath, that it was the first and last act which he had ever committed,
being at the time of death about thirty-seven years old.
The second of these malefactors, John Foster, was the son of a very poor
man, who yet did his utmost to give his son all the education that was
in his power; and finding he was resolved to do nothing else, sent him
with a very honest gentleman to sea. He continued there about seven
years, and as he met with no remarkable accidents in the voyages he made
himself, my readers may perhaps not be displeased if I mention a very
singular one which befell his master. His ship having the misfortune to
fall into the hands of the French, they plundered it of everything that
was in the least degree valuable, and then left him, with thirty-five
men, to the mercy of the waves. In this distressed condition, he with
much difficulty made the shore of Newfoundland, and had nothing to
subsist on but biscuit and a little water. Knowing it was no purpose to
ask those who were settled there for provisions without money or
effects, he landed himself and eighteen men, and carried off a dozen
sheep and eight pigs. They were scarce returned on board, before it
sprung up a brisk gale, which driving them from their anchors, obliged
them to be put to sea. It blew hard all that day and the next night; the
morning following the wind abated and they discovered a little vessel
before them which, by crowding all the sails she was able, endeavoured
to bear away. The captain thereupon gave her chase, and coming at last
up with her, perceived she was French, upon which he gave her a
broadside, and the master knowing it was impossible to defend her,
immediately struck. They found in her a large quantity of provisions and
in the master's cabin a bag with seven hundred pistoles. No sooner had
the English taken out the booty, but they gave the captain and his crew
liberty to sail where they pleased, leaving them sufficient provisions
for a subsistance, themselves standing in again for Newfoundland, where
the captain paid the person who was owner of the sheep and hogs he had
taken as much as he demanded, making him also a handsome present
besides; thereby giving Foster a remarkable example of integrity and
justice, if he had had grace enough to have followed it.
When the ship came home, and its crew were paid off, Foster betook
himself to loose company, loved drinking and idling about, especially
with ill women. At last he was drawn in by some of his companions to
assist in breaking open the house of Captain Tolson, and stealing thence
linen and other things to a very great value. For this offence being
apprehended, some promises were made him in case of discoveries, which,
as he said, he made accordingly, and therefore thought it a great
hardship that they were not performed. But the gentleman, whoever he
was, that made him those promises, took no further notice of him, so
that Foster being tried thereupon, the evidence was very dear against
him, and the jury, after a very short consideration, found him guilty.
Under sentence he behaved with very great sorrow for his offence; he
wept whenever any exhortations were made to him, confessed himself one
of the greatest of sinners, and with many heavy expressions of grief,
seemed to doubt whether even from the mercy of God he could expect
forgiveness. Those whose duty it was to instruct him how to prepare
himself for death, did all they could to convince him that the greatest
danger of not being forgiven arose from such doubtings, and persuaded
him to allay the fears of death by a settled faith and hope in Jesus
Christ. When he had a while reflected on the promises made in Scripture
on the nature of repentance itself, and the relation there is between
creatures and their Creator, he became at last better satisfied, and
bore the approach of death with tolerable cheerfulness.
When the day of execution came, he received the Sacrament, as is usual
for persons in his condition. He declared, then, that he heartily
forgave him who had injured him, and particularly the person who, by
giving him hopes of life, had endangered his eternal safety. He
submitted cheerfully to the decrees of Providence and the Law of the
land; being at the time he suffered about thirty-seven years of age.
Richard Scurrier was the son of a blacksmith of the same name, at
Kingston-upon-Thames. He followed for a time his father's business, but
growing totally weary of working honestly for his bread, he left his
relations, and without any just motive or expectation came up to London.
He here betook himself to driving a hackney-coach, which, as he himself
acknowledged, was the first inlet into all his misfortunes, for thereby
he got into loose and extravagant company, living in a continued series
of vice, unenlightened by the grace of God, or any intervals of a
virtuous practice.
Such a road of wickedness soon induced him to take illegal methods for
money to support it. The papers which I have in my hands concerning him,
do not say whether the fact he committed was done at the persuasion of
others, or merely out of his own wicked inclinations; nay, I cannot be
so much as positive whether he had any associates or no; but in the
beginning of his thievish practices, he committed _petit_ larceny, which
was immediately discovered. He thereupon was apprehended and committed
to Newgate. At the next sessions he was tried, and the fact being plain,
he was convicted; but being very young, the Court, through its usual
tenderness, determined to soften his punishment into a private
whipping. But before that was done, he joined with some other desperate
fellows, forced the outward door of the prison as the keeper was going
in and escaped.
He was no sooner at liberty but he fell to his old trade, and was just
as unlucky as he was before; for taking it into his head to rub off with
a firkin of butter, which he saw standing in a cheesemonger's shop, he
was again taken in the fact, and in the space of a few weeks recommitted
to his old lodging. At first he apprehended the crime to be so trivial
that he was not in the least afraid of death, and therefore his
amazement was the greater when he was capitally convicted. During the
first day after sentence had been pronounced, the extremity of grief and
fear made him behave like one distracted; as he came a little to
himself, and was instructed by those who charitably visited him, he
owned the justice of his sentence, which had been passed upon him, and
the notorious wickedness of his misspent life. He behaved with great
decency at chapel, and as well as a mean capacity and a small education
would give him leave, prayed in the place of his confinement.
As there is little remarkable in this malefactor's life, permit me to
add an observation or two concerning the nature of crimes punished with
death in England, and the reasonableness of any project which would
answer the same end as death, viz., securing the public from any of
their future rapines, without sending the poor wretches to the gallows,
and pushing them headlong into the other world for every little offence.
The galleys in other nations serve for this purpose and the punishment
seems very well suited to the crime; for his life is preserved, and he,
notwithstanding, effectually deprived of all means of doing further
mischief. We have no galleys, it is true, in the service of the crown of
Britain, but there are many other laborious works to which they might be
put so as to be useful to their country. As to transportation, though it
may at first sight seem intended for their purpose, yet if we look into
it with ever so little attention, we shall see that it does not at all
answer the end; for we find by experience that in a year's time, many of
them are here again, and are ten times more dangerous rogues than they
were before; and in the plantations they generally behave themselves so
ill that many of them have refused to receive them, and have even laid
penalties on the captains who shall land them within the bounds of their
jurisdiction. It were certainly therefore, more advantageous to the
public that they worked hard here, than either forced upon the planters
abroad, or left in a capacity to return to their villainies at home,
where the punishment being capital, serves only to make them less
merciful and more resolute. This I propose only, and pretend not to
dictate.
But it is now time we return to the last mentioned criminal, Richard
Scurrier, and inform ye that at the time he suffered, he was scarce
eighteen years of age, dying with the malefactors Hamp, Bird, Austin and
Foster, before-mentioned, on the 22nd of December, 1725, at Tyburn.