as so unaccountably stupid and wicked that though he made a large and
particular confession of his guilt, yet it was done in such a manner as
plainly showed his crimes made no just impression upon his heart; all he
said, being in the language of the Kingston Ordinary, the sleepy
apprehensions of unawakened ignorance, in which condition he continued
to the last.

William Frost, a cripple, was the son of a pin-maker in Christ Church
parish, Southwark, and as to his education, my account says it was in
hereditary ignorance. He had wrought, it seems, while a boy at his
father's trade of pin-making, but since he was thirteen or fourteen had
addicted himself to that preparative trade to the gallows,
shoeblacking. While he continued in this most honourable profession,
abundance of opportunities offered for robbing in the night season, and
we must do him the justice to say that they were not offered in vain.
Thus by degrees he came on to robbing on the road and in the streets
until he was apprehended, and upon the evidence of his companion was
convicted.

The Sunday after this, he with the rest of the malefactors was brought
to the parish church, which was the first time, as he declared, he had
ever entered one, at least with an intention to hear and observe what
was said. There he made a blundering sort of confession, and would
perhaps have been more penitent if he had known well what penitence was;
but he was a poor stupid, doltish wretch, scarce sensible even of the
misfortune of being hanged. He was, however, very attentive in the cart
to the prayer of those who were a little better instructed than himself,
and finished a wretched life with an ignominious death at twenty-one
years of age.

Richard Woodman was born at Newington, in Surrey. He got his bread some
years by selling milk about, but thinking labour too great a price for
victuals, he addicted himself to getting an easier livelihood by
thieving. In this course he soon got in with a gang who let him want no
instructions that were necessary to bring him to the gallows. Amongst
them the above-mentioned lame man was his principal tutor. The last
robbery but one that they ever committed was upon a poor man who had
laid out his money in the purchase of a shoulder of mutton to feast his
family, but they disappointed him by taking it away, and with it a
bundle of clothes and other necessaries, by which the unfortunate person
who lost them, though their value was not much