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.

For a fact of this kind it was that Shaw came to his death, for one Philip Pots, being robbed on horseback by several footpads and knocked off his horse near the tile kilns by Pancras, and wounded in several places of his body with his own sword, which one of the villains had taken from him, some persons who passed by soon after took him up, and carried him to the Pinder of Wakefield.[17] There, on the Monday following (this accident happening on Saturday night) he in great agonies expired.  For this murder and another robbery between Highgate and Kentish Town, Shaw was taken up and soon after convicted.  At first he denied all knowledge of the murder, but when his death grew near, he did acknowledge being privy to it, though he persisted in saying he had no hand in its commission.

At the time he was under condemnation, the afore-mentioned John Smith, William Colthouse, and Jonah Burgess were in the same condition.  They formed a conspiracy for breaking out of the place where they were confined and to force an escape against all those who should oppose them.  For this purpose they had procured pistols, but their plot being discovered, Burgess in great rage, cut his own throat and pretended that Shaw designed to have dispatched himself with one of the pistols.  But Shaw, himself, absolutely denied this, and affirmed on the contrary that when Burgess said his enemies should never have the satisfaction (as they had bragged they would have) of placing themselves upon Holborn Bridge, to see him go by Tyburn, he (Shaw) exhorted him never to think of self-murder, and by that means give his enemies a double revenge in destroying both body and soul.

As Shaw had formerly declared his wife’s ill-conduct had been the first occasion of his falling into those courses which had proved so fatal to him, he still retained so great an antipathy to her on that account, as not to be able to pardon her, even in the last moments of his life, in which he would neither confess, nor positively deny the murder for which he died.  He was then about twenty-eight years of age, and died the same day with the last-mentioned malefactor, Smith.

FOOTNOTES: 

   [16] This discourse between the magistrates is obscure.  I have
        been unable to clear it.

   [17] This was the public-house at the Battle Bridge (King’s
        Cross) end of Gray’s Inn Road.

The Life of WILLIAM COLTHOUSE, a Thief and Highwayman

William Colthouse was born in Yorkshire, had a very good education for a person of his rank and especially with regard to religious principles, of which he retained a knowledge seldom to be met with among the lower class of people; but he was so unhappy as to imbibe in his youth strange notions in regard to civil government, hereditary rights having been much magnified in the latter end of the late Queen’s reign.  William amongst others was violent attached thereto, and fancied

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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.