ays engaged in a continual
circle of drunkenness, violence and whoredom; while their minds were
continually agitated with the fear of being apprehended, so that they
never enjoyed peace or quiet from the time of their betaking themselves
to this course of life unto the day of their apprehension and coming to
the gallows.

Thomas Medline was born more meanly than either of his companions, and
had so little care taken of him in his youth, that he could neither read
nor write. However, he applied himself to working hard as a labourer to
the bricklayers, and got thereby for some time sufficient wherewith to
maintain himself and his family. At last, giving himself over to drink,
he minded little of what became of his wife and children, and falling
unhappily about the same time into the acquaintance of the
before-mentioned malefactor Harris, he was easily seduced by him to
become a partner in his crimes and addicted himself to the highway.

It was but a very short space that they continued to exercise this their
illegal and infamous calling, for venturing to attack one Mr. Barker, on
the Ware Road, and not long after Dr. Edward Hulse,[81] they were
quickly apprehended for those facts, and after remaining some time in
Newgate, were brought to their trials at the Old Bailey.

There it was sworn by Mr. Barker, that he observed them drinking at an
alehouse at Tottenham, the very evening in which he was robbed; and that
apprehending them to be loose and disorderly persons he took more than
ordinary notice of their faces; that about a mile from Edmonton church
they came up with him, and notwithstanding he told them he knew them,
they pulled him off his horse and robbed him of five pounds and
sixpence; that returning the next day to the place where he was robbed,
he found sevenpence, which he supposed they had dropped in their hurry.

On the second indictment it was desposed by one Mr. Hyatt that he
suspected the prisoners, from the description given by Mr. Barker and
Doctor Hulse, to be the persons who had robbed them; he thereupon
apprehended them upon suspicion, and that Mr. Barker, as soon as he saw
them, swore to their faces.

Doctor Hulse deposed that they were the persons who robbed him of his
watch and money, and that he had particularly remarked Owen as having a
scar on his face. Thomas Bennett, the doctor's coachman, swore that Owen
was the man who got upon the coach-box and beat him, and afterwards
robbed his master;