About six of the clock in the evening of Shrove Tuesday, Kate Leonard and her sister and Burnworth being all together (it not being late enough for him to go out upon his nightly enterprises) Kate Leonard proposed they should fry some pancakes for supper, which the other two approved of, accordingly her sister set about them. Burnworth took off his surtout coat, in the pocket of the lining whereof he had several pistols. There was a little back door to the house, which Burnworth usually kept upon the latch, in order to make his escape if he should be surprised or discovered to be in that house. Unperceived by Burnworth, and whilst her sister was frying the pancakes, Kate went to the alehouse for a pot of drink, when having given the men who were there waiting for him the signal, she returned, and closed the door after her, but designedly missed the staple. The door being thus upon the jar only, as she gave the drink to Burnworth, the six persons rushed into the room. Burnworth hearing the noise and fearing the surprise, jumped up, thinking to have made his escape at the back door, not knowing it to be bolted; but they were upon him before he could get it open, and holding his hands behind him, one of them tied them, whilst another, to intimidate him, fired a pistol over his head. Having thus secured him, they immediately carried him before a Justice of the Peace, who after a long examination committed him to Newgate.
Notwithstanding his confinement in that place, he was still director of such of his companions as remained at liberty, and communicating to them the suspicions he had of Kate Leonard's betraying him, and the dangers there were of her detecting some of the rest, they were easily induced to treat her as they had done Ball. One of them fired a pistol at her, just as she was entering her own house, but that missing, they made two or three other attempts of the same nature, until the Justice of the Peace placed a guard thereabouts, in order to secure her from being killed, and if possible to seize those who should attempt it, after which they heard no more of these sorts of attacks. In Newgate they confined Burnworth to the Condemned Hold, and took what other necessary precautions they thought proper in order to secure so dangerous a person, and who they were well enough aware meditated nothing but how to escape.
He was in this condition when the malefactors before-mentioned, viz., Barton, Swift, etc., were under sentence, and it was shrewdly suspected that he put them upon that attempt of breaking out, of which we have given an account before. There were two things which more immediately contributed to the defeating their design; the one was, that though five of them were to die the next day, yet four of them were so drunk that they were not able to work; the other was that they were so negligent in providing candles that two hours after they were locked up they were forced to lie-by for want of light.
As we have already related the particulars of this story, we shall not take up our reader's time in mentioning them again, but go on with the story of Burnworth. Upon suspicion of his being the projector of that enterprise the keepers removed him into the Bilbow Room, and there loaded him with irons, leaving him by himself to lament the miseries of his misspent life in the solitude of his wretched confinement; yet nothing could break the wicked stubbornness of his temper, which, as it had led him to those practices justly punished with so strait a confinement, so it now urged him continually to force his way through all opposition, and thereby regain his liberty, in order to practice more villainies of the same sort, with those in which he had hitherto spent his time.
It is impossible to say how, but by some method or other he had procured saws, files, and other instruments for this purpose; with these he first released himself from his irons, then broke through the wall of the room in which he was lodged, and thereby got into the women's apartment, the window of which was fortified with three tier of iron bars. Upon these he went immediately to work, and in a little time forced one of them; while he was filing the next, one of the women, to ingratiate herself with the keepers, gave notice, whereupon they came immediately and dragged him back to the Condemned Hold and there stapled him down to the ground.
The course of our memoirs leads us now to say something of the rest of his companions, who in a very short space came most of them to be collected to share that punishment which the Law had so justly appointed for their crimes. We will begin, then, with William Blewit, who, next to Frazier, was the chief person in the gang. He was one of St. Giles's breed, his father a porter, and his mother, at the time of his execution selling greens in the same parish. They were both of them unable to give their son education or otherwise provide for him, which occasioned his being put out by the parish to a perfumer of gloves; but his temper from his childhood inclining him to wicked practices, he soon got himself into a gang of young pickpockets, with whom he practised several years with impunity. But being at last apprehended in the very act, he was committed to Newgate, and on plain proof convicted the next sessions, and ordered for transportation. Being shipped on board the vessel with other wretches in the same condition, he was quickly let into the secret of their having provided for an escape by procuring saws, files, and other implements, put up in a little barrel, which they pretended contained gingerbread, and such other little presents which were given them by relations. Blewitt immediately foresaw abundance of difficulties in their design, and therefore resolved to make a sure use of it for his own advantage. This he did by communicating all he knew to the captain, who thereupon immediately seized their tools, and thereby prevented the loss of his ship, which otherwise in all probability would have been effected by the conspirators.
In return for this service, Blewit obtained his freedom, which did not serve him for any better purpose than his return to London as soon as be was able. Whether he went again upon his old practices before he was apprehended, we cannot determine, but before he had continued two months in town, somebody seized him, and committed him to Newgate. At the next sessions he was tried and convicted for returning from transportation, but pleading, when he received sentence of death, the service he had done in preventing the attempt of the other malefactors, execution was respited until the return of the captain, and on his report the sentence was changed into a new transportation, and leave given him also to go to what foreign port he would. But he no sooner regained his liberty than he put it to the same use as before, and took up the trade of snatching hats, wigs, etc., until he got into acquaintance with Burnworth and his gang, who taught him other methods of robbing than he had hitherto practised. Like most of the unhappy people of his sort, he had to his other crimes added the marriage of several wives, of which the first was reputed a very honest and modest woman, and it seems had so great a love for him, notwithstanding the wickedness of his behaviour, that upon her visiting him at Newgate, the day before they set out for Kingston, she was oppressed with so violent a grief as to fall down dead in the lodge. Another of his wives married Emanuel Dickenson and survived them both.
His meeting Burnworth that afternoon before Ball's murder was accidental, but the savageness of his temper led him to a quick compliance with that wicked proposition; but after the commission of that fact, he with his companions before mentioned went over in the packet boat to Holland. Guilt is a companion which never suffers rest to enter any bosom where it inhabits; they were so uneasy after their arrival there, lest an application should be made from the Government at home, that they were constantly perusing the English newspapers as they came over to the coffee houses in Rotterdam, that they might gain intelligence of what advertisements, rewards, or other methods had been taken to apprehend the persons concerned in Ball's murder; resolving on the first news of a proclamation, or other interposition of the State on that occasion, immediately to quit the Dominions of the Republic. But as Burnworth had been betrayed by the only persons from whom he could reasonably hope assistance; Higgs seized on board a ship where he fancied himself secure from all searches; so Blewit and his associates, though they daily endeavoured to acquaint themselves with the transactions at London relating to them, fell also into the hands of Justice, when they least expected it. So equal are the decrees of providence, and so inevitable the strokes of Divine vengeance.
The proclamation for apprehending them came no sooner to the hands of Mr. Finch, the British resident at the Hague, but he immediately caused an enquiry to be made, whether any such persons as were therein described had been seen at Rotterdam. Being assured that there had, and that they were lodged at the Hamburgh's Arms on the Boom Keys in that City, he sent away a special messenger to enquire the truth thereof; of which he was no sooner satisfied, than he procured an order from the States General for apprehending them anywhere within the Province. By virtue of this order the messenger, with the assistance of the proper officers for that purpose in Holland, apprehended Blewit at the house whither they had been directed; his two companions Dickenson and Berry, had left him and were gone aboard a ship, not caring to remain any longer in Holland. They conducted their prisoner to the Stadt House Prison in Rotterdam, and then went to the Brill, where the ship on board which his companions were, not being cleared out, they surprised them also, and having handcuffed them, sent them under a strong guard to Rotterdam, where they put them in the same place with their old associate Blewit. We shall now therefore take an opportunity of speaking of each of them, and acquainting the reader with those steps by which they arose to that unparalleled pitch of wickedness which rendered them alike the wonder and detestation of all the sober part of mankind.