After a full hearing at the assizes at Shrewsbury, the father and son were pronounced “Guilty of uttering and publishing the note, knowing it to be forged;” and William Thomas was found “Not Guilty.”
Though convicted on the fullest evidence, the unhappy men, until the morning of their execution, persisted in their innocence; but when about to leave the jail, young Phipps made the following confession: “It was I alone who committed the forgery: my father is entirely innocent, and was ignorant of the note being forged when he published it.”
They were taken in a mourning-coach to the place of execution, accompanied by a clergyman and a friend who attended them daily after their condemnation.
On their way to the fatal tree the father said to the son, “Tommy, thou hast brought me to this shameful end, but I freely forgive thee;” to which the son made no reply. It being remarkably wet weather, their devotions were chiefly performed in the coach. When the awful moment arrived, Mr. Phipps said to his son, “You have brought me hither; do you lead the way!” which the youth immediately did, and in the most composed manner ascended the ladder to a temporary scaffold erected for the purpose of their execution, followed by his father.
When their devotions were finished, and the halters tied to the gallows, this most wretched father and son embraced each other, and in a few moments the scaffold fell, and they were hand-in-hand launched into eternity, September the 5th 1789, amid a vast concourse of pitying spectators.
The father was forty-eight, and the son just twenty years of age.
RENWICK WILLIAMS, COMMONLY CALLED “THE MONSTER.”
IMPRISONED FOR A BRUTAL AND WANTON ASSAULT ON A FEMALE.
THE mind is utterly at a loss to conceive any reason which could urge this unnatural brute to the commission of the crimes which upon his trial were distinctly proved against him. The offence of which he was found guilty was that of making a most wanton and unmanly attack upon an unprotected female, upon whom he inflicted a very severe wound, no provocation whatever having been offered to him. For a considerable time before the apprehension of this offender, a report was very generally prevalent that many young and respectable females had been privately and suddenly wounded in various parts of their person while walking through the streets, in some cases in open day, by a villain, who invariably succeeded in making his escape. Sometimes it was reported that the wound was given at a time when the man approached the lady for the purpose of presenting a nosegay to her; and it was said that, holding the flowers to her nose, he would stab her in the face with a sharp instrument which was concealed among their stems; while at others it was said that the wound was given in the thigh, behind, or in private parts of the person, so that occasionally the most serious injury was inflicted; and an almost universal terror prevailed.
At length a man named Renwick Williams was apprehended, who was distinctly sworn to by a Miss Porter, upon whom he had inflicted a wound; and at the sessions held on the 18th of July 1790, he was put on his trial at the Old Bailey for the offence alleged against him.