Peter Levee was descended from honest and reputable parents, who gave him a very good education, and afterwards bound him out apprentice to a silk weaver; but such as the perverse disposition of this unfortunate Lad, such his love of gaming, and such his continual inclination to debauched company, that nothing better could be expected from him than what afterwards befell him.  Yet his understanding was very tolerable, he did not want a sufficient share of wit, and in a word his capacity altogether might have enabled him to have lived very well, if his prodigious vices had not prevented it by hurrying him into misfortunes.  It was remarkable in this criminal that his long habit of carrying in the detestable trade of stealing, to which he had incurred himself in every shape as much as possible, had given so odd a cast to his visage that it was impossible for a man to look him in the face without immediately guessing him to be a rogue.

While yet a boy, he had been so accustomed to confinement in the Compter, especially in Wood Street, that he had contracted a friendship with all the under-officers in that prison, who treated him with great leniency as often as he came there.  Picking pockets, sneaking goods out of shops, snatching them through windows, and such other petty facts, were the employments of his junior years.  As he grew bigger, he grew riper in all sorts of villainy, though never a fellow had worse luck in dishonest attempts, for he was always detected, and very frequently had gone through the lesser punishments of the Law, such as whipping and hard labour.  At one time he lay four years in Newgate for a fine, and this finished the course of his villainous education, for from the time he got out, he never ceased to practice robbing in the streets, and on the roads to the villages near London, until he and his companions fell into the hands of Justice, and went altogether to their last adventure at Tyburn.

John Featherby, the second of these criminals, had received a greater share of education than any of the rest.  His father had been a man of tolerable circumstances, and with great care provided that this young fellow should not be ignorant of anything that might be necessary or convenient for him to know in that business for which he designed him, viz., a coach-painter.  But he did not live to see him put apprentice to it, which his mother afterwards took care to do, and consequently he had not the misfortune of seeing him live so scandalous a life, and die so shameful a death.

His understanding was tolerable, but his behaviour so rude, boisterous and shocking that he left no room even for that compassion to which all men are naturally prone when they see persons under sentence of death.  The desire of appearing brave and making the figure of a hero in low life was in all probability the occasion of his acting so odd a part, and as he was generally looked upon as their chief by those unfortunate creatures who were of his gang, possibly he put on this ferocity in his manner in order to support his authority, and preserve that respect and superiority of which these wretches are observed to be inexpressibly fond.