The prosecutrix and other witnesses swore positively that the prisoner committed the robbery on the 17th of June then last past.
The court consequently supposed conviction would follow; but being called on for his defence, he said he was innocent, and that the books of the court would prove where he was on the day of the robbery.
Reference was immediately made to the records; and strange yet true to relate, that, on the very day and hour sworn to, Male was actually on his trial at the bar where he then stood, for another robbery, when he was unfortunate enough to have been mistaken for another person. He was consequently acquitted; but the force of example did not deter him from the commission of crime, and although he was discharged from prison without reproach, he came out a determined thief.
His career of villany was soon ended; for in six months afterwards we find him expiating his crimes at the gallows. He was charged with a real robbery, committed by him on the person of Mrs. Grignion, and being unable again to prove an alibi, as he had hitherto done, he was found guilty, and was executed at Tyburn on the 25th of March, 1773.
WILLIAM FARMERY.
EXECUTED FOR THE MURDER OF HIS MOTHER.
WHILE we sketch the shocking crime of this monster, we have some consolation in observing that, in our long researches into the baseness of mankind, he is the first we have met with, who, with long-lurking malice, shed the blood of his mother.
A subject so strangely horrid and unnatural we shall dismiss by a bare recital of the shocking circumstance.
It appears that among other undutiful acts, he had one morning given offence to his parent, for which he was justly reproached, whereupon he went out of her house, took the knife from his pocket, and deliberately whetted it till quite sharp. Then returning with the murderous instrument in his hand, he found his unfortunate mother in the act of making his own bed.
Without uttering a word, he threw her down, and as a butcher kills a sheep, he stuck her in the throat, and left her weltering in her blood, of which wound she died.