a warm bed, and if it were possible, some blood taken from him, for he was in great hopes that he might be brought to life again; but if he was not, he desired him to defray the expenses of his funeral, and return the overplus to his poor mother.  Then he resumed his usual discourse about his robberies and in the last moments of his life endeavoured to divert himself from the thoughts of death.  Yet so uncertain and various was he in his behaviour that he told one whom he had a great desire to see on the morning that he died, that he had then a satisfaction at his heart, as if he were going to enjoy two hundred pounds per annum.

At the place of execution, to which he was conveyed in a cart, with iron handcuffs on, he behaved himself very gravely, confessing his robbery of Mr. Philips and Mrs. Cook, but denied that he and Joseph Blake had William Field in their company when they broke open the house of Mr. Kneebone.  After this he submitted to his fate on the 16th of November, 1724, much pitied by the mob.[49]

FOOTNOTES: 

   [48] While in Newgate he sat for his portrait to Sir James Thornhill.

   [49] Over 200,000 persons witnessed his execution at Tyburn,
        and a riot which broke out concerning the disposal of his corpse
        was quelled by soldiers with fixed bayonets.

The Life of LEWIS HOUSSART, the French Barber, a Murderer

As there is not any crime more shocking to human nature or more contrary to all laws human and divine than murder, so perhaps there has been few committed in these last years accompanied with more odd circumstances than that for which this criminal suffered.

Lewis Houssart was born at Sedan, a town in Champaigne in the kingdom of France.  His own paper says that he was bred a surgeon and qualified for that business.  However that were, he was here no better than a penny barber, only that he let blood, and thereby got a little and not much money.  As to the other circumstances of his life, my memoirs are not full enough to assist me in speaking thereto.  All I can say of him is that while his wife, Anne Rondeau, was living, he married another woman, and the night of the marriage before sitting down to supper, he went out a little space.  During the interval between that and his coming in, it was judged from the circumstances that I shall mention hereafter, that he cut the throat of the poor woman who was his first wife, with a razor.  For this being apprehended he was tried at the Old Bailey, but for want of proof sufficient was acquitted.