he was convicted.
While he remained under sentence, he was often heard to mumble in
reproach and revengeful terms to himself. However, before his death he
learned the Lord's Prayer, and when it was demanded whether he would be
a Christian, he assented with great joy, which arose, it seems, from his
having heard the common foolish opinion that when christened Blacks are
to be set free. However, christened he was, and received at his baptism
the name of John.
The place in which he was confined being very damp, the boy having
nothing to lie on but a coat, caught so great a cold in his limbs that
he almost lost the use of them before his death, and continued in a
state of great pain and weakness; insomuch that when he was told he
must prepare for his execution, he determined with himself to forestall
it, and for that purpose desired one of the prisoners to lend him a
penknife, but the man, it seems, had more grace than to grant his
request, and he ended his life at Tyburn, according to his sentence.
The Life of ABRAHAM DEVAL, a Lottery Ticket Forger
Abraham Deval, who had been a clerk to the Lottery Office, at last took
it into his head to coin tickets for himself, and had such good luck
therein that he at one time counterfeited a certificate for L52 12s.
0d., for seven blank lottery tickets, in the year 1723. Two or three
other facts of the same nature he perpetrated with the like success, but
happening to counterfeit two blank tickets of the lottery in the year in
which he died, they were discovered, and he thereupon apprehended and
tried at the Old Bailey. On the first indictment, for want of evidence
he was acquitted, upon which he behaved himself with great insolence,
lolled out his tongue at the Court, and told them he did not value the
second indictment. But herein he happened to be mistaken, for the jury
found him guilty of that indictment and thereupon he received sentence
of death accordingly.
Notwithstanding that impudence with which he had treated the Court at
his trial, he complained very loudly of their not showing him favour;
nay, he even pretended that he had not justice done him. This he
grounded upon the score that the ticket he was indicted for was No. 39,
in the 651st course of payment. Now it seems that in searching of his
brother-in-law Parson's room, the original ticket was found, though very
much torn, from whence Deval would have had it taken to be no more than
a duplicate, and mu
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