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.

During the space he lay in the condemned hold he expressed a very hearty sorrow for all his offences and particularly regretted his having addicted himself so much to the company of women, which, as it at first led him into expenses, naturally brought him into narrow circumstances; and his necessities unfortunately put him upon taking the fatal method of supplying himself.  Yet in the midst of these tokens of penitence and contrition several women came still about him, so he resolved to send the child he had by the second down to his friends in the country, not doubting, as he said, but that they would take care of it.  And for the last of those who went for his wife, he really looked upon her as such, and therefore treated her with more kindness and affection than he did any of the rest.  However, doubtless they were no great help to him in his preparations for death.  And amongst the other miseries produced, to our view, this is not a small one, that they continue to pursue us even to the last, and fasten so strongly about our thoughts and inclinations that as at first, they defeated all consideration, so in the end they are in danger of preventing a hearty and sincere repentance.

As to the particular fact for which he was to die, he acknowledged himself guilty thereof, but for all that objected to the several circumstances that were sworn against him at his trial; nor could all the arguments that were used towards him persuade him that those trifling variations (for as he himself represented them they were no more) were not now at all material to him, but that as he justly deserved to die according to his own confession, it signified little to him whether the particular steps taken in his apprehension were exactly stated by the Court or not.  As the day of his execution drew near, he receded a little from these objections, and began to set himself in earnest to acquire that calmness with which every reasonable man would desire to meet death.  The women he forbid visiting him, refused to eat or drink anything but what was absolutely necessary to support Nature, plied himself regularly and constantly to his devotions, and seemed to have nothing at heart but to reconcile himself to that Divine Being, who by the multitude of his crimes he had so much offended.  To say truth, it was not a little wonderful that a person after continuing for such a length of time in the practice of wickedness and debauchery, should at last be capable of applying himself with such zeal and attention to the duties of a dying man.  He yielded up his life the 13th of February, 1727, at Tyburn, being then twenty-six years of age.

The Life of ROBERT HAYNES, a Murderer, etc.

As from a multitude of instances in the course of these memoirs it has been shown how great a misfortune it is to be destitute of education, so from the following life it will appear that an improper education is as dangerous as none at all.

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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.