The Life of JOHN WINSHIP, Highwayman and Footpad

That idleness in which youths are suffered to live in this kingdom till they are grown to that size at which they are usually put apprentice (a space of time in which they are much better employed, in many other countries of Europe) too often creates an inaptitude to work and allows them opportunity of entering into paths which have a fatal termination.

John Winship, of whom we are now to treat, was born of parents in tolerable circumstances in the parish of St. Paul’s, Covent Garden.  They gave him an education rather superior to his condition, and treated him with an indulgence by which his future life became unhappy.  At about fourteen, they placed him as an apprentice with a carpenter, to which trade he himself had a liking.  His master used him as well as he could have expected or wished, yet that inclination to idleness and loitering which he had contracted while a boy, made him incapable of pursuing his business with tolerable application.  The particular accident by which he was determined to leave it shall be the next point in our relation.

It happened that returning one day from work, he took notice of a young woman standing at a door in a street not far distant from that in which his master lived.  He was then about seventeen, and imagining love to be a very fine thing, thought fit, without further enquiry, to make this young woman the object of his affection.  The next evening he took occasion to speak to her, and this acquaintance soon improving into frequent appointments, naturally led Winship into much greater expenses than he was able to support.  This had two consequences equally fatal to this unhappy young man, for in the first place he left his master and his trade, and took to driving of coaches and like methods, to get his bread; but all the ways he could think of, proving unable to supply his expenses, he went next upon the road, and raised daily contributions in as illegal a manner as they were spent at night, in all the excesses of vice.

It is impossible to give either a particular or exact account of the robberies he committed, because he was always very reserved, even after conviction, in speaking as to these points.

However, he is said to have been concerned in robbing a Frenchman of quality in the road to Hampstead, who in a two-horsed chaise, with the coachman on his box, was attacked in the dusk of the evening by three highwaymen.  They exchanged several pistols and continued the fight, till, the ammunition on both sides being exhausted, the foreigner prepared to defend himself with his sword.  The rogues were almost out of all hopes of obtaining their booty, when one of them getting behind the chaise secretly cut a square hole in its back, and putting in both his arms, seized the gentleman so strongly about the shoulders that his companions had an opportunity of closing in with him, disarming him of his sword, rifling and taking a hundred and twenty pistoles.  Not content with this they ripped the lace off his clothes, and took from the coachmen all the money he had about him.