When we meet with accounts of persons doubly remarkable for the
multitude of their offences and the tenderness of their age, it is
almost impossible for us to determine whether we should most pity or
detest a mind so preternaturally abandoned to wickedness as to transcend
its usual course, and make itself remarkable as a sinner, before taken
notice of as a man.
This was exactly the case with the unfortunate criminal whom we are now
to mention. He was the son of parents in the lowest circumstances, who
yet had strained those circumstances to give him a tolerable education,
which he, instead of improving, forgot as fast as it was possible, and
seemed solicitous about nothing but out-doing in villainy all his
contemporaries of the same unhappy cast. During his junior years he
addicted himself continually to picking and stealing whatever he could
lay his hands on, and although his father had been exceedingly careful
in causing him to be taught his own trade of a weaver, yet he seldom or
never worked at it, but went on at this rate, from one crime to another,
until he at last arrived at those which brought him to the ignominious
end, and thereby rendered him a subject for our memoirs.
At twelve years old, he took up the trade of housebreaking, to which he
applied himself very closely, for the last six years of his life.
Hampstead, Highgate, Hackney, and other villages round the town were the
places which he generally made choice of to play his tricks in, and as
people are much more ingenious in wickedness than ever they are in the
pursuit of honest employments, so by degrees he became (even while a
boy) the most dexterous housebreaker of his time; insomuch that as is
usual amongst those unhappy people, the gang commended him so much, that
believing himself some great person, he went on with an air of
confidence, in the commission of a multitude of burglaries, in and about
the streets of this metropolis.
Young as he was at that time, he plunged himself, as it were with
industry, into all manner of lusts, wickedness and illegal pleasures,
which, as it wasted all he acquired by the thefts he committed, so it
injured his health and damaged his understanding to such a degree that
when he came to die, he could scarce be looked on as a rational
creature.
The offence which proved fatal to him was the breaking into the house of
Mr. Samuel Smith, in the night-time, on the 31st of May, 1729, with an
intent to steal. At his trial the prosecutor swore that between the
hours of eleven and one of the dock of the night laid in the indictment
he was called up by his neighbours, and found that his window was broken
open; whereupon, searching about very narrowly, he at last found the
prisoner got up the chimney, and landing on the pole whereon the
pothooks hung. In his defence the prisoner told the Court that meeting
with a person who said he lodged in the prosecutor's house, and it being
late, he accepted the man's proposition to lie with him; thereupon his
new acquaintance carried him to Mr. Smith's, let him in, and then ran
away, so that he had never seen or heard of him since. This relation
being every way improbable and ridiculous, the jury very readily found
him guilty of the fact, and he with the rest, on the last day of the
sessions received sentence of death accordingly.
While he lay in the cells, his behaviour was as stupid in all outward
appearance as ever had appeared in any who came to that miserable place.
However, he persuaded his companions, of whom we shall speak hereafter,
to attempt breaking out and to encourage them told them that there was
no brick or free stone wall in the world could keep him in, if he had
but a few tools proper for loosening the stones. These were quickly
procured, and Grundy put his companions into so proper a method of
working, that if a discovery had not been made on the Sunday morning in
a very few hours space they would have broken their way into Phoenix
Court, and so have undoubtedly got off. But as soon as the keepers came
to the knowledge of their design, they removed the three persons
concerned in it, into the old condemned hold, and there stapled them
down to the ground.
Then this lad began to repent. He wept bitterly, but said it was not so
much for the fear of death as the apprehension of his soul being thrown
into the pit of destruction and eternal misery. However, by degrees, he
recovered a little spirit, confessed all the enormities of his past
life, and begged pardon of God, and of the persons whom he had injured.
If we were to attempt an account of them, it would not only seem
improbable but incredible; and therefore, as there was nothing in them
otherwise extraordinary than as they were committed by a lad of his age,
we shall not dwell any longer upon them than to inform our readers that
with much sorrow, and grievous agonies, he expired at Tyburn, on the
22nd of August, 1729, being about eighteen years old.