The numerous frauds she had committed had exasperated many people against her, who as soon as it was rumoured that she was come back again, never left searching for her until they found her out, and got her committed to Newgate; and on the record of her conviction being produced the next sessions, and the prosecutor swearing positively that she was the same person, the jury, after a short consultation, brought her in guilty, and she received sentence of death, from which, as she had no friends, she could not hope to escape.  When she found death was inevitable, she fell into excessive agonies and well-nigh into despair.  The reflection on the many people she had injured gave her so great grief and anxiety of mind that she could scarce be persuaded to get down a sufficient quantity of food to preserve her life until the time of her execution.  But the minister at Newgate having demonstrated to her the wickedness and the folly of such a course, she by degrees came to have a better sense of things; her mind grew calmer, and though her repentance was accompanied with sighs and tears, yet she did not burst out into those lamentable outcries by which she before disturbed both herself and those poor creatures who were under sentence with her.  In this disposition of mind she continued until the day of her death, which was on the 12th of September, 1726, being between twenty-seven-and-eight years of age, in the company of the before-mentioned malefactors, Cartwright, Blacket, Holmes, Fitzpatrick, Robinson, and William Allison, a poor country lad of about twenty-five, apparently of an easy gentle temper who had been induced into the fact, partly through covetousness, and partly through want.

The Life of TIMOTHY BENSON, a Highwayman

Amongst the number of those unfortunate persons whose memory we have preserved to the world in order that their punishments may become lasting warnings unto all who are in any danger of following their footsteps, none is more capable of affording useful reflections than the incidents that are to be found in the life of this robber are likely to create.  He was the son of a serjeant’s wife, in the regiment of the Earl of Derby, but who his father was it would be hard to say.  His mother having had a long intrigue with one Captain Benson and the serjeant dying soon after this child was born, she thought fit to give him the captain’s name, declaring publicly enough, that if it was in her power to distinguish, the captain must be his father.  Certain it is that the woman acted cunningly, at least, for Benson, who had never had a child, was so pleased with the boy’s ingenuity that he sent him to a grammar school in Yorkshire, where he caused him to be educated as well as if he had been his legitimate son.