It is impossible to say how, but by some method or other he had procured saws, files, and other instruments for this purpose; with these he first released himself from his irons, then broke through the wall of the room in which he was lodged, and thereby got into the women’s apartment, the window of which was fortified with three tier of iron bars.  Upon these he went immediately to work, and in a little time forced one of them; while he was filing the next, one of the women, to ingratiate herself with the keepers, gave notice, whereupon they came immediately and dragged him back to the Condemned Hold and there stapled him down to the ground.

The course of our memoirs leads us now to say something of the rest of his companions, who in a very short space came most of them to be collected to share that punishment which the Law had so justly appointed for their crimes.  We will begin, then, with William Blewit, who, next to Frazier, was the chief person in the gang.  He was one of St. Giles’s breed, his father a porter, and his mother, at the time of his execution selling greens in the same parish.  They were both of them unable to give their son education or otherwise provide for him, which occasioned his being put out by the parish to a perfumer of gloves; but his temper from his childhood inclining him to wicked practices, he soon got himself into a gang of young pickpockets, with whom he practised several years with impunity.  But being at last apprehended in the very act, he was committed to Newgate, and on plain proof convicted the next sessions, and ordered for transportation.  Being shipped on board the vessel with other wretches in the same condition, he was quickly let into the secret of their having provided for an escape by procuring saws, files, and other implements, put up in a little barrel, which they pretended contained gingerbread, and such other little presents which were given them by relations.  Blewitt immediately foresaw abundance of difficulties in their design, and therefore resolved to make a sure use of it for his own advantage.  This he did by communicating all he knew to the captain, who thereupon immediately seized their tools, and thereby prevented the loss of his ship, which otherwise in all probability would have been effected by the conspirators.

In return for this service, Blewit obtained his freedom, which did not serve him for any better purpose than his return to London as soon as be was able.  Whether he went again upon his old practices before he was apprehended, we cannot determine, but before he had continued two months in town, somebody seized him, and committed him to Newgate.  At the next sessions he was tried and convicted for returning from transportation, but pleading, when he received sentence of death, the service he had done in preventing the attempt of the other malefactors, execution was respited until the return of the captain, and on his report the sentence was changed into a new transportation,