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 was born of honest and mean parents at Salisbury, who took care, however, to bestow on him a very tolerable education, and when he grew up, put him out apprentice to a shoemaker, where he soon made a beginning in those pernicious practices to which he so assiduously afterwards addicted himself.  The first thing he did, was robbing a chandler’s chop at Collinburn, in the county of Wilts, of the money box, in which was thirty shillings, and got clear off.  Some time after, his master sending him on a Sunday to a village just by, to get twelve pennyworth of halfpence at a chandler’s shop, Dyer finding nobody at home, cut the bar of the window, got in thereat, and rifled the house.  The booty he found did not amount to above three half-crowns, but he added to that the taking away what currants and raisins there were in the shop, which piece of covetousness had well-nigh cost him his life, for being suspected and charged with the fact, he had only time to hide the money.  Having searched him in vain, they turned some of the plums out of his coat pocket, but he readily averring that he bought them at Andover Market, there being nobody who could falsify it, he escaped for that time.

His matter shortly after sending him with five pounds to buy leather, Dyer picking up a companion, as wicked as himself, he persuaded him to join in a story of his being robbed of the aforesaid sum of money, which, upon his return, he told his master, and the boy vouching it firmly, they were believed.  Some small space from this, being sent amongst his master’s customers to receive some money, he picked up about three pounds, and then went off immediately for Salisbury, where he became acquainted with an idle young woman; which bringing him once more into necessity, he went one day into the market to see what he might be able to lay hands on.  There he observed a young woman to receive money, and watching her out of town, he took an opportunity to knock her down, robbing her, and dragging her into a wood, where he lay with her, and then bound her fast to a tree.

From thence he went to a village in Hampshire, where he wrought journey-work at his trade; and getting acquainted with a young woman, he lodged at her mother’s house, where he soon got the daughter with child, and persuaded her to rob the old woman, and go with him to Bristol.  There they lived together profusely until all the money was spent, and then she and her child went back to her mother, who received them very gladly.  Dyer did not think fit to return, but went to make his mother a visit at Salisbury, where he continued not long before he took an opportunity of robbing her of fifty pounds, and thence marched off to Bristol, where he gamed most of the money away.  Then he retired to a town in Wiltshire, where cohabiting with a widow women, they found means to get so good credit as to take the town in (as Mr. Dyer expressed it) for thirty pounds.  Then packing up they marched off to a place at a considerable distance, where Dyer entered into partnership with a collier, being to advance fifty pounds, thirty of which he paid down and the rest was to pay monthly; but before the first payment became due the collier broke, and his partner, Dyer, thereupon thought it convenient to remove to some other place.

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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.