About the time that he knew his brother was to come home from the Exchange to dinner, he went to his house equipped in a sailor’s pea-jacket, his hair cropped short to his ears, his eyebrows coloured black, and a handkerchief about his neck.  As soon as he saw him in the counting-house, his brother started back, and cried, Bless me!  Jeddediah, how came you in this pickle? With all signs of grief and confusion, he threw himself at his brother’s feet, and told him with a flood of tears that two coiners who had accidentally seen him in Bridewell had sworn against him and three others on their apprehension, in order on the merit thereof to be admitted evidences to get off themselves. So that, dear brother, he continued, I have been obliged to take a passage in a vessel that does down next tide to Gravesend, for I have ran the hazard of my life to come and beg your charitable assistance.

The poor honest man was so much amazed and concerned at this melancholy tale, that bursting out into tears, and hanging about his brother’s neck, he begged him to take a coach and begone to Billingsgate, giving him ten guineas in hand and telling him that his bills should not be protested if he drew within the compass of a hundred pounds from Dieppe, whither he said the ship was bound.  West was no sooner out of the street where his brother lived, but he ordered the coach to drive to a certain place where he had appointed Dykes to meet him, and there they expressed a great deal of mutual satisfaction at the trick West had played his brother.  However, the latter was no great gainer in the end, for Mr. West, senior, soon finding out the contrivance, forever renounced him, and Jeddediah being soon after arrested for twelve pounds due to his tailor, was carried to prison and remained there without the least assistance from his brother, till after his friend Dykes was hanged.

The last mentioned malefactor, unmoved by all the tender entreaties of his friends, and the glaring prospect before him of his own ruin, went still on at the old rate, and whenever gaming had brought him low in cash, took up with the road, or some such like dishonest method to recruit it.  At last he had the ill-luck to commit a robbery in Stepney parish, in the road between Mile End and Bow, upon one Charles Wright, to whose bosom clapping a pistol, he commanded him to deliver peacefully, or he would shoot him through the body.  The booty he took was very inconsiderable, being only a penknife, an ordinary seal, and five shillings and eightpence in money.  A poor price for life, since two days after he was apprehended for this robbery, committed to Newgate and condemned the next sessions.