hout any other
crime, to his shameful end. The manner of which, I shall next fully
relate.

Hamp, passing one night very drunk through the street, a woman, as is
usual enough for common street-walkers to do, took him by the sleeve,
and after some immodest discourse, asked him if he would not go into her
mother's and take a pot with her. To this motion Hamp readily agreed,
and had not been long in the house before he fell fast asleep in the
company of James Bird (who was hanged with him), the woman who brought
him into the house, and an old woman, whom she called her mother. By and
by certain persons came who apprehended him and James Bird for being in
a disorderly house; and having carried them to the watch house, they
were there both charged with robbing and beating, in a most cruel and
barbarous manner, a poor old woman near Rag Fair.[72]

At the next Old Bailey sessions they were both tried for the fact, and
the woman's evidence being positive against them, they were likewise
convicted. Hamp behaved himself with great serenity while under
sentence, declaring always that he had not the least knowledge of Bird
until the time they were taken up; that in all his life time he had
never acquired a halfpenny in a dishonest manner, and that although he
had so much abandoned himself to drinking and other debaucheries, yet he
constantly worked hard at his employment, in order to get money to
support them. As to the robbery, he knew no more of it than the child
unborn, that he readily believed all that the woman swore to be true,
except her mistake in the persons; and that as to Bird, he could not
take upon himself to say that he was concerned in it.

A divine of eminency in the Church, being so charitable as to visit him,
spoke to him very particularly on this head; he told him that a jury of
his countrymen on their oaths had unanimously found him guilty; that the
Law upon such a conviction had appointed him to death, and that there
appeared not the least hopes of his being anyways able to prevent it;
that the denying of his guilt therefore, could not possibly be of any
use to him here, but might probably ruin him for ever hereafter; that he
would act wisely in this unfortunate situation into which his vices had
brought him, if he would make an ample acknowledgment of the crime he
had committed, and own the justice of Providence in bringing him to
condemnation, instead of leaving the world in the assertion of a
falsehood, a