things.

The Lives of WILLIAM RUSSELL, ROBERT CROUCH and WILLIAM HOLDEN,
Street-Robbers, Footpads

Although the insolency of those street-robbers to whose gang the
malefactors we are now speaking of belong be at present too recent a
fact to be questioned, yet possibly in future times 'twill be thought an
exaggeration of truth to say that even at noon-day, and in the most open
places in London, persons were stopped and robbed. The offenders for
many months escaped with impunity, until those crimes became so frequent
and the terrors of passengers so great that the Government interposed in
an extraordinary manner, a royal proclamation being issued offering one
hundred pounds reward for apprehending any offender, and also promising
pardon to any who submitted and revealed their accomplices. This brought
numbers of young rash youths who had engaged in this wicked course of
life to a violent and ignominious death.

William Russell was descended from persons of honourable family and
unblemished reputation. In his youth he had received a tolerable
education, which even in his misfortunes rendered him more civilized
than any of his companions. He was a young fellow of tolerable good
sense, ready wit, and great courage; he always spoke frankly of the
wickedness of his own life and acknowledged that sensual pleasures were
only what he aimed at in the course of life he led; yet he had never
been able to reap any satisfaction in them, but had been always
miserable in his own mind, from the time he pursued those base methods
of gaining money. His father being gone over to Ireland, and he left at
liberty to pursue what methods he thought best, evil women and bad
company soon prevailed with him to fall into those methods which
afterwards led him to the gallows.

Robert Crouch, the second of these criminals, was born at Dunstable, of
very honest parents who afforded him as good an education as it was in
their power to give; and then, upon his own inclination to follow the
business of a butcher, bound him to one in Newgate Market, with whom he
served his time. But as soon as he was out of it he addicted himself to
gaming, drinking and whoring, and all the other vices which are so
natural to abandoned young fellows in low life. Dalton, who was an
evidence against him, was one of the chief persons of his gang, and
specially persuaded Crouch to join with him, though he had very little
occasion to fall into such ways of getting m