This not having its effect, he wrote him a second letter by the penny post, demanding one hundred guineas, with grievous threatenings in case they were not sent.  This soon made a very great noise about town, and put Mr. Newman upon all methods possible for detecting the author of these villainous epistles, and as everybody almost looked upon it as a common case, to which any gentleman who is supposed to be rich might be liable, such indefatigable pains were taken that in a short time the whole mystery of iniquity was discovered and Bigg apprehended.

At the next sessions at the Old Bailey he was indicted capitally for this offence, and after the counsel for the prosecutor had fully opened the heinous nature of the crime, Peter Salter was the first witness called to prove it upon the prisoner.  He deposed that Jepthah Bigg came to him where he was at work in the Minories, and desired him to go with him, having something to say to him of consequence; whereupon the witness would have gone to the sign of the Ship where he used, but the prisoner would needs go to the Sieve in the Little Minories.  There he communicated to him his design, and then prevailed on Salter to go to the Shoulder of Mutton alehouse at Billingsgate, where Bigg directed him to call for drink, and to wait until a porter came to him with a parcel directed to John Harrison, when if he suspected anything, he should come to the prisoner at the King’s Head alehouse, on Fish Street Hill.  This the evidence performed punctually, whereupon Bigg sent him a second time to the Blackboy, in Goodman’s Fields, where a second parcel was left, though of no value.  Whereupon Bigg would have had the evidence Salter concerned in a third letter to the same purpose, but Salter declined it and dissuaded him as much as lay in his power, from continuing to venture on such hazardous things.  Upon which the prisoner replied, You need not fear.  Nothing can hurt you; my life is in your hands; but if ever you reveal the matter, you shall share the same fate.

John Long, servant to Mr. Newman, deposed that he delivered two penny post letters to his master on the 20th and 27th of March.  Other witnesses swore as to the sending of the parcels, and the jury on the whole, seeing the fact to be well proved against the prisoner, found him guilty.

Under sentence of death at first the poor man behaved himself like one stupid.  He pretended that he did not know the offence that he had committed was capital, and afterwards exclaimed against the hardness of the Law which made it so; but some little pains being taken with him in those points, he was soon brought over to acknowledge the justice of his sentence, and the reasonableness of that Statute which enacted it into a capital offence.