It seems the scheme was to murder the two persons who attended them in the gaol, together with Mr. Eliot, the turnkey; after they had got out they intended to have fired a slack of bavins [firewood] adjoining to the prison, and thereby amused the inhabitants while they got clear off. Burnworth's mother was confined for this attempt in his favour, and some lesser implements that were sewed up in the waistband of their breeches being ripped out, all hopes whatsoever of escape were now taken away. Yet Burnworth affected to keep up the same spirit with which he had hitherto behaved, and talked in a rhodomantade to one of his guard, of coming in the night in a dark entry, and pulling him by the nose, if he did not see him decently buried.
About ten of the clock, on Wednesday morning, together with one Blackburn, who was condemned for robbing on the highway, a fellow grossly ignorant and stupid, they were carried out in a cart to their execution, being attended by a company of foot to the gallows. In their passage thither, that audacious carriage in which they had so long persisted totally forsook them, and they all appeared with all that seriousness and devotion which might be looked for from persons in their condition. Blewit perceiving one Mr. Warwick among the spectators desired that he might stop to speak to him; which being granted, he threw himself upon his knees, and earnestly intreated his pardon for having once attempted his life by presenting a pistol at him, upon suspicion that Mr. Warwick knowing what his profession was had given information against him.
When at the place of execution and tied up, Blewit and Dickenson, especially, prayed with great fervour and with a becoming earnestness, exhorted all the young persons they saw near them to take warning by them, and not follow such courses as might in time bring them to so terrible an end. Blewit acknowledged that for sixteen years last past he had lived by stealing and pilfering only. He had given all the clothes he had to his mother, but being informed that he was to be hung in chains, he desired his mother might return them to prevent his being put up in his shirt. He then desired the executioner to tie him up so that he might be as soon out of his pain as possible; then he said the Penitential Psalm, and repeated the words of it to the other criminals. Then they all kissed one another, and after some private devotions the cart drew away and they were turned off. Dickenson died very hard, kicking off one of his shoes, and loosing the other.
Their bodies were carried back under the same guard which attended them to their execution. Burnworth and Blewit were afterwards hung in chains over against the sign of the Fighting Cocks, in St. George's Fields, Dickenson and Berry were hung up on Kennington Common, but the sheriff of Surrey had orders at the same time to suffer his relations to take down the body of Dickenson in order to be interred, after its hanging up one day, which favour was granted on account of his father's service in the army, who was killed at his post in the late war. Levee and Higgs were hung up on Putney Common, beyond Wandsworth, which is all we have to add concerning these hardened malefactors who so long defied the justice of their country, and are now, to the joy of all honest people, placed as spectacles for the warning of their companions who frequent the places where they are hung in chains.
Falcon Stairs were just east of where Blackfriars Bridge now stands.
Trig Lane ran from Thames Street to the water's edge, near Lambeth Hill.