with Sanders and Minsham, they had
all gone together upon the road for about six weeks before they were
taken.

Francis Sanders was a young fellow of very tolerable arts and education.
He had been put out apprentice to a stay-maker, attained to a great
proficiency in his trade; and by the help of his friends, who were very
willing to lend him their assistance, he might have done very well in
the world if it had not been for that unfortunate inclination to roving,
which continually possessed him. His acquaintance with a certain bad
woman was in all probability the first cause of his addicting himself to
ill-courses, and as in the papers I have before me relating to him, her
history is also contained, I thought it would not be unentertaining to
my readers if I ventured to insert it. This woman's true name was Mary
Smith. She was brought up, while young, from her native country of
Yorkshire to London, where getting into the service of an eminent
shopkeeper, she might, had she been honest and industrious, have lived
easily and with credit; but unfortunately both for herself and her
master's apprentice, the young man took a liking to her, and one night,
having first taken care to make himself master of the key of her door,
he came out of his chamber into hers, where after a faint resistance,
he got to bed to her. Their correspondence was carried on for a good
while without suspicion, but the young man having one night stole a
bottle of rum with a design that it should make his mistress and he
merry together before they went to bed, they inconsiderately drank so
heartily of it that the next morning they slept so sound that their
master and mistress came upstairs at ten o'clock, and found them in bed
together. Upon this, the wench, without more ado, was turned out of
doors, and was forced to live at an alehouse of ill-repute, where
Sanders used to come of an evening, and so got acquainted with her.

John Minsham was an unfortunate wretch, born of mean parents, and
equally destitute of capacity or education. From the time he had been
able to crawl alone, he had known scarce any other home than the street.
Shoe-blacks and such like vagabonds were his constant companions, and
the only honest employment he ever pretended to was that of a
hackney-coachman, which the brethren of the whip had taught him out of
charity.

Thus furnished with bad principles, and every way fitted for those
detestable practices into which they precipit