He suffered on the 27th of March, 1728, being then about eight-and-twenty years of age.
Trinkets and such trifles, not children's playthings.
The Lives of WILLIAM RUSSELL, ROBERT CROUCH and WILLIAM HOLDEN, Street-Robbers, Footpads
Although the insolency of those street-robbers to whose gang the malefactors we are now speaking of belong be at present too recent a fact to be questioned, yet possibly in future times 'twill be thought an exaggeration of truth to say that even at noon-day, and in the most open places in London, persons were stopped and robbed. The offenders for many months escaped with impunity, until those crimes became so frequent and the terrors of passengers so great that the Government interposed in an extraordinary manner, a royal proclamation being issued offering one hundred pounds reward for apprehending any offender, and also promising pardon to any who submitted and revealed their accomplices. This brought numbers of young rash youths who had engaged in this wicked course of life to a violent and ignominious death.
William Russell was descended from persons of honourable family and unblemished reputation. In his youth he had received a tolerable education, which even in his misfortunes rendered him more civilized than any of his companions. He was a young fellow of tolerable good sense, ready wit, and great courage; he always spoke frankly of the wickedness of his own life and acknowledged that sensual pleasures were only what he aimed at in the course of life he led; yet he had never been able to reap any satisfaction in them, but had been always miserable in his own mind, from the time he pursued those base methods of gaining money. His father being gone over to Ireland, and he left at liberty to pursue what methods he thought best, evil women and bad company soon prevailed with him to fall into those methods which afterwards led him to the gallows.
Robert Crouch, the second of these criminals, was born at Dunstable, of very honest parents who afforded him as good an education as it was in their power to give; and then, upon his own inclination to follow the business of a butcher, bound him to one in Newgate Market, with whom he served his time. But as soon as he was out of it he addicted himself to gaming, drinking and whoring, and all the other vices which are so natural to abandoned young fellows in low life. Dalton, who was an evidence against him, was one of the chief persons of his gang, and specially persuaded Crouch to join with him, though he had very little occasion to fall into such ways of getting money, since his father was a man in very good circumstances, who designed to set his son in his trade in a short time, having not the least suspicion that this melancholy accident would intervene.