prayers of the people in his last moments, and then applied
himself to some short private devotions. He resigned himself with much
calmness to his fate, on Wednesday, the 22nd of December, 1725, at
Tyburn, being then in the twenty-fifth year of his age. Bird confirmed,
as well as the craziness of his distempered head would give him leave,
the truth of what Hamp had said.

FOOTNOTES:

[72] This was in Rosemary Lane, Wellclose Square,
Whitechapel--"a place near the Tower of London where old clothes
and frippery are sold"--according to Pope.

The Lives of JOHN AUSTIN, a Footpad, JOHN FOSTER, a Housebreaker, and
RICHARD SCURRIER, a Shoplifter

Amongst the number of those extraordinary events which may be remarked
in the course of these melancholy memoirs of those who have fallen
martyrs to sin, and victims to justice, there is scarce anything more
remarkable than the finding a man who hath led an honest and reputable
life, till he hath attained the summit of life, and then, without
abandoning himself to any notorious vices that may be supposed to lead
him into rapine and stealth in order to support him, to take himself on
a sudden to robbing on the highway, and to finish a painful and
industrious life by a violent and shameful death. Yet this is exactly
the case before us.

The criminal of whom we are first to speak, viz., John Austin, was the
son of very honest people, having not only been bred up in good
principles, but seeming also to retain them. He was put out young to a
gardener, in which employment being brought up, he became afterwards a
master for himself, and lived, as all his neighbours report it, with as
fair character as any man thereabout. On a sudden he was taken up for
assaulting and knocking down a man in Stepney Fields, with a short,
round, heavy club, and taking from him his coat, in the beginning of
November, 1725, about seven o'clock in the morning. The evidence being
very clear and direct, the jury, notwithstanding the persons he called
to his character, found him guilty. He received sentence of death
accordingly, and after a report had been made to his Majesty he was
ordered for execution.

During the space he lay under conviction, he at first denied, then
endeavoured to extenuate his crime, by saying he did indeed knock the
man down, but that the man struck him first with an iron rod he had in
his hand; and in this story for some time he firmly persisted. But when
d