[Illustration:  A CONDEMNED MAN DRAWN ON A SLEDGE TO TYBURN

(From the Newgate Calendar)]

The day on which the three last-mentioned persons, together with Yates or Gates, alias Vulcan, a deer-stealer, and Benjamin Jones (for house breaking) were to have been executed, these miserable persons framed to themselves the most absurd project of preserving their lives that could possibly have entered into the heads of men; for getting, by some means or other, an iron crow into the hold, they therewith dug out a prodigious quantity of rubbish and some stones, which it is hardly credible could have been removed with so small assistance as they had.  With these they blocked up the door of the condemned hold so effectually that there was no possibility of getting it open by any force whatsoever on the outside.  The keepers endeavoured to make them sensible of the folly of their undertaking, in hopes they would thereby be induced to prevent any firing upon them; which was all that those who had the custody of them were now capable of doing, to bring them to submission.  The Ordinary also joined in dissuading them from thus misspending the last moments of their lives, which were through the mercy of the Law extended to them for a better purpose.  But they were inexorable, and as they knew their surrender would bring them immediately to a shameful death, so they declared positively they were determined to kill or to be killed in the position in which they were.

Sir Jeremiah Murden, one of the sheriffs for the time being, was so good as to go down upon this occasion to Newgate.  The keepers had opened a sort of trap-door in the room over the hold, and from thence discharged several pistols loaded with small shot, but to no purpose, the criminals retiring to the farther end of the room, continuing there safe and out of reach; though Barton and Yates received each of them a slight wound in crowding backwards.  Sir Jeremy went himself to this place, and talked to them for a considerable space, and one of the fellows insisting to see his gold chain, that they might be sure they were treating with the sheriffs themselves, his condescension was so great as to put down part of it through the hole, upon which they consulted together, and at last agreed to surrender.  Whereupon they began immediately to remove the stones, and as soon as the door was at liberty, one of the keepers entered.  Just as he was within it, Barton snapped a steel tobacco-box in his face, the noise of which resembling a pistol, made him start back, upon which Barton said, D——­n you, you was afraid.

When they were brought out, Sir Jeremy ordered the Ordinary to be sent for, and prayers to be said in the chapel, where he attended himself.  But whether the hurry of this affair, or that stench which is natural to so filthy a place as the condemned hold, affected the sheriff’s constitution, is hard to say, but upon his return home, he was seized with a violent fever, which in a very short space took away his life.