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.

Then Elizabeth Jones being produced, swore that the same day she met Doyle and Wileman booted and spurred and very dirty in Bedford Row, and that they showed her the bank note, which when shown to her, she deposed to be the same.  Arabelle Manning deposed that on the night of the day the robbery was committed, the prisoner Wileman and Doyle gave her a dram at a gin-shop in Drury Lane, and that one of them let fall a paper, and taking it up again, said that the loss of it would have been the loss of twenty pounds.

The prisoner objected to the character of Doyle, Jones and Manning, and called some persons as to his own, but the jury thinking the fact sufficiently proved, found him guilty on both indictments.  Under sentence of death, his behaviour was very regular, professing a deep sorrow and repentance for a very loose life which he had led, and at the same time peremptorily denying that he had any hand in, or knew anything of either of those facts which had been sworn against him, and for which he was to die.

Notwithstanding that the most earnest entreaties were made use of to induce him to a plain and sincere confession, yet he continued always to assert his innocence as to thieving, letting fall sharp and invidious expressions against the evidence of Doyle whom he charged with swearing against him only to preserve another guilty person from punishment, whom Wileman intended to prosecute and had it is his power to convict.  The effects of his former good education were very serviceable to him in this his great and last misfortune, for he seemed to have very just notions of those duties which were incumbent upon him in his miserable state; therefore, especially towards the latter part of his time, he appeared gravely at chapel and prayed fervently in his cell until the boy James Grundy, whom we have mentioned before, put it in to his head to make his escape; for the attempting which they were all carried (as we have said before) into the old condemned hold and there stapled down to the ground.

As there is no courage so reasonable as that which is founded on Christian principles, so neither constitutional bravery nor that resolution which arises either from custom, from vanity, or from other false maxims preserves that steady firmness at the approach of death which gives true quiet and peace of mind in the last moments of life, taking away through the certainty of belief, those terrors which are otherwise too strong for the mind, and which human nature is unable to resist.  Wileman’s conduct under his misfortunes, fully verified this observation in its strongest sense; he only retained just notions of religion and this enabled him to support his affliction after a very different manner from that in which it affected his two companions; or as it had done himself before, from a just contemplation of the mercy of God, and the merits of his Saviour, he had brought himself to a right idea of the importance of his soul, and thereby took himself off from the superfluous consideration of this world and stifled those uneasy sensations with which men are naturally startled at the approach of death.  Yet he did not in all this time alter a jot in his confession, but asserted calmly that he was innocent, and that Doyle had perjured himself in order to take away his life.

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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.