oney, since his father was a
man in very good circumstances, who designed to set his son in his trade
in a short time, having not the least suspicion that this melancholy
accident would intervene.

William Holden, the third of these unhappy persons, was born of very
mean parents, had little education, and had followed no particular
trade, but had sometimes gone to sea, and at other times driven a
hackney coach; so that throughout the whole course of his life he had
been continually plunged in the grossest debaucheries, whereby he became
ripe for such practices as he and his associates afterwards went upon.

It does not appear, from the papers that I have, that any of these
criminals had followed that infamous course of life for above a year,
when Dalton, to save his own life, surrendered and made a confession by
which these and the rest of ms associates were quickly apprehended and
committed dose prisoners to Newgate. At the ensuing sessions at the Old
Bailey they were all indicted for assaulting one Martha Hide on the
highway, and taking from her a broad-cloth coat, value forty shillings;
a looking-glass, value thirty shillings; a woman's nightgown; and other
goods, to the value of thirty shillings more. To prove this charge James
Dalton was produced, who swore that about nine o'clock at night himself
and the prisoners overtook the prosecutor, Martha Hide, in Fleet Street;
and observing that she had a bundle they resolved to take it from her.
In order to accomplish their design they followed her into Lincoln's Inn
Fields, where Robert Crouch, _alias_ Bob the Butcher, knocked her down
and Russell took up the bundle and ran away with it. Upon their opening
thereof the looking-glass fell out and was broke all to pieces. The rest
of the things they sold to one Sarah Watts, who made it her business to
buy stolen goods and kept what in their cant is called a 'lock', that is
a place for the receipt of such things. Dalton swore, moreover, that not
having carefully examined the things, they were extremely mortified to
hear afterwards that there was forty shillings in specie wrapped up in a
rag, which the woman that bought them got into the bargain.

Martha Hide, herself, deposed that crossing Lincoln's Inn Fields she was
knocked down and the bundle taken from her as Dalton had before related.
One Solomon Nicholas deposed that not long after, Russell and Crouch
quarrelling between themselves at a brandy-shop, Russell said to hi