Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 1,040 pages of information about Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences.

Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 1,040 pages of information about Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences.

He threw aside all hopes of life as soon as he was apprehended, as having no friends to make intercession likely to procure a pardon.  He was, indeed, a poor young creature, rather stupid than wicked and his vices more owing to his folly than to the malignity of his inclinations.  He seemed to have a just notion both of the heinousness of that crime which he had committed and of the shame and ignominy he had brought upon himself and his relations.  He was particularly affected with the miseries which were likely to fall upon his poor wife for his folly, and when the day of his death came, he seemed very easy and contented under it, declaring, however, at last that he died in the communion of the Church of Rome.  This was on the 27th of June, 1726, being then not much above eighteen years old.

The Life of JOHN MURREL, a Horse-Stealer

This malefactor was descended of very honest and reputable parents in the county of York, who took care not only that he should read and write tolerably well, but also that he should be instructed in the principles of religion.  They brought him up in their own way of business, which was grazing of cattle (both black cattle and horses), and afterwards selling them at market.  As he grew up a man, he settled in the same occupation, farming what is called in Yorkshire a grazing room, for which he paid near a hundred pounds a year rent, and dealt very considerably himself in the same way which had been followed by his parents.  He married also a young woman with a tolerable fortune, who bore him several children, five of which were alive at the time of his execution, and lived with their mother upon some little estate she had of her own.

For some years after his marriage he lived with tolerable reputation in the country, but being lavish in his expenses, he quickly consumed both his own little fortune and what he had with his wife, and then failing in his business, a whim took him in the head to come to London, whither also he brought his son.  Here he soon fell into bad company, and getting acquaintance with a woman whom he thought was capable of maintaining him, he married her, or at least lived with her as if they had been married, for a considerable space; the news of which reaching his wife in the country, affected her so much that she had very nigh fallen into a fit of sickness.  Thereupon her friends demonstrated to her, in vain, how unreasonable a thing it was for her to give herself so much pain about a man who treated her at once with unkindness and injustice; in spite of their remonstrances she came up to London, in hopes that her presence might reclaim him.  But herein she was utterly mistaken, for he absolutely denied her to be his wife, and even persuaded his son to deny her also for his mother, which the boy with much fear and confusion did; and the poor woman was forced to go down into the country again, overwhelmed with sorrow at the ingratitude of the one and the undutifulness of the other.  However, Murrel still went on in the same way with the woman he had chosen for his companion.

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Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.