Hamp, passing one night very drunk through the street, a woman, as is usual enough for common street-walkers to do, took him by the sleeve, and after some immodest discourse, asked him if he would not go into her mother’s and take a pot with her.  To this motion Hamp readily agreed, and had not been long in the house before he fell fast asleep in the company of James Bird (who was hanged with him), the woman who brought him into the house, and an old woman, whom she called her mother.  By and by certain persons came who apprehended him and James Bird for being in a disorderly house; and having carried them to the watch house, they were there both charged with robbing and beating, in a most cruel and barbarous manner, a poor old woman near Rag Fair.[72]

At the next Old Bailey sessions they were both tried for the fact, and the woman’s evidence being positive against them, they were likewise convicted.  Hamp behaved himself with great serenity while under sentence, declaring always that he had not the least knowledge of Bird until the time they were taken up; that in all his life time he had never acquired a halfpenny in a dishonest manner, and that although he had so much abandoned himself to drinking and other debaucheries, yet he constantly worked hard at his employment, in order to get money to support them.  As to the robbery, he knew no more of it than the child unborn, that he readily believed all that the woman swore to be true, except her mistake in the persons; and that as to Bird, he could not take upon himself to say that he was concerned in it.

A divine of eminency in the Church, being so charitable as to visit him, spoke to him very particularly on this head; he told him that a jury of his countrymen on their oaths had unanimously found him guilty; that the Law upon such a conviction had appointed him to death, and that there appeared not the least hopes of his being anyways able to prevent it; that the denying of his guilt therefore, could not possibly be of any use to him here, but might probably ruin him for ever hereafter; that he would act wisely in this unfortunate situation into which his vices had brought him, if he would make an ample acknowledgment of the crime he had committed, and own the justice of Providence in bringing him to condemnation, instead of leaving the world in the assertion of a falsehood, and rushing into the presence of Almighty God with a lie in his mouth.

This exhortation was made publicly, and Hamp after having heard it with great attention, answered it in the following terms. I am very sensible, sir, of your goodness in affording me this visit and am no less obliged to you for your pressing instances to induce me confession.  But as I know the matter of fact, so I am sure, you would not press me to own it if it be not true; I aver that the charge against me is utterly false in every particular.  I freely acknowledge that I have led a most dissolute life, and abandoned myself in working all kind of wickedness;