When at the place of execution and tied up, Blewit and Dickenson, especially, prayed with great fervour and with a becoming earnestness, exhorted all the young persons they saw near them to take warning by them, and not follow such courses as might in time bring them to so terrible an end.  Blewit acknowledged that for sixteen years last past he had lived by stealing and pilfering only.  He had given all the clothes he had to his mother, but being informed that he was to be hung in chains, he desired his mother might return them to prevent his being put up in his shirt.  He then desired the executioner to tie him up so that he might be as soon out of his pain as possible; then he said the Penitential Psalm, and repeated the words of it to the other criminals.  Then they all kissed one another, and after some private devotions the cart drew away and they were turned off.  Dickenson died very hard, kicking off one of his shoes, and loosing the other.

Their bodies were carried back under the same guard which attended them to their execution.  Burnworth and Blewit were afterwards hung in chains over against the sign of the Fighting Cocks, in St. George’s Fields, Dickenson and Berry were hung up on Kennington Common, but the sheriff of Surrey had orders at the same time to suffer his relations to take down the body of Dickenson in order to be interred, after its hanging up one day, which favour was granted on account of his father’s service in the army, who was killed at his post in the late war.  Levee and Higgs were hung up on Putney Common, beyond Wandsworth, which is all we have to add concerning these hardened malefactors who so long defied the justice of their country, and are now, to the joy of all honest people, placed as spectacles for the warning of their companions who frequent the places where they are hung in chains.

FOOTNOTES: 

   [73] Falcon Stairs were just east of where Blackfriars Bridge
        now stands.

   [74] Trig Lane ran from Thames Street to the water’s edge, near
        Lambeth Hill.

The Life of JOHN GILLINGHAM, an Highwayman and Footpad, etc.

As want of education hath brought many who might otherwise have done very well in the world to a miserable end, so the best education and instructions are often of no effect to stubborn and corrupt minds.  This was the case of John Gillingham, of whom we are now to give an account.  He had been brought up at Westminster School, but all he acquired there was only a smattering of learning and a great deal of self-conceit, fancying labour was below him, and that he ought to live the life of a gentleman.  He associated himself with such companions as pretended to teach him this art of easily attaining money.  He was a person very inclinable to follow such advices, and therefore readily came into these proposals as soon as they were made.  Amongst the rest of his acquaintance, he became very intimate with Burnworth, and made one of the number in attacking the chair of the Earl of Scarborough, near St. James’s Church, and was the person who shot the chairman in the shoulder.