After which Catherine Hayes being brought to the stake, was chained thereto with an iron chain running round her waist and under her arms and a rope about her neck, which was drawn through a hole in the post; then the faggots, intermixed with light brush wood and straw, being piled all round her, the executioner put fire thereto in several places, which immediately blazing out, as soon as the same reached her, with her arms she pushed down those which were before her.  When she appeared in the middle of the flames as low as her waist, the executioner got hold of the end of the cord which was round her neck, and pulled tight, in order to strangle her, but the fire soon reached his hand and burnt it, so that he was obliged to let it go again.  More faggots were immediately thrown upon her, and in about three or four hours she was reduced to ashes.

In the meantime, Billings’s irons were put upon him as he was hanging on the gallows; after which being cut down, he was carried to the gibbet, about one hundred yards distance, and there hung up in chains.

FOOTNOTES: 

   [75] The old name for Oxford Street.

The Life of THOMAS BILLINGS, a Murderer.

We have said so much of this malefactor in the foregoing life, yet it was necessary, in order to preserve the connection of that barbarous story, to leave the particular consideration of these two assistants in the murder of Mr. Hayes to particular chapters, and therefore we will begin with Billings.  Mrs. Hayes, some time before her execution, confidently averred that he was the son both of Mr. Hayes and of herself, that his father not liking him, he was put out to relations of hers and took the name of Billings from his godfather.  But Mr. Hayes’s relations confidently denying all this, and he himself saying he knew nothing more than that he called his father a shoemaker in the country, who some time since was dead.  He was put apprentice to a tailor with whom he served his time, and then came up to London to work journey-work, which he did in Monmouth Street, lodging at Mr. Hayes’s and believed himself nearly related to his wife, who from the influence she always maintained over him, drew him to the commission of that horrid fact.

But the most certain opinion is that he was found in a basket upon the common, near the place where Mrs. Hayes lived before she married Mr. Hayes, that he was at that time of his death about twenty-two or twenty-three years old; whereas it evidently appeared by her own confession, that she had been married to Mr. Hayes but twenty years and eight months.  He was put out to nurse by the charge of the parish, to people whose names were Billings, and when he was big enough to go apprentice, was bound to one Mr. Wetherland, a tailor, to whom the parish gave forty shillings with him.  It is very probable he might be a natural son of Mrs. Hayes’s, born in her rambles (of which we have hinted) before her marriage, and dropped by her in the place where he was found.