His behaviour under sentence was very penitent and modest, nor did he suffer the continual hopes his friends gave him of a reprieve ever to make him neglect his devotions. At the place of execution he said he was more particularly concerned for a robbery he had committed on a woman in Cornhill, not only because he took from her a good many guineas which were in her pocket, but that at the same time also he had taken a will which he burnt, and which he feared would be more to her prejudice than the loss of her money.
Oakey was about twenty-five years old at the time of his death, and Matthew Flood somewhat younger. They suffered on the same day with Weaver and the last-mentioned malefactor Levee, at Tyburn.
The Clink Prison was, until 1745, at the corner of Maid Lane, Southwark. It was originally used as a house of detention for heretics and offenders against the bishop of Winchester, whose palace stood nearby.
The Life of WILLIAM BURK, a Footpad and Highwayman
As indulgence is a very common parent of wickedness and disobedience, so immoderate correction and treating children as if they were Stocks is as likely a method as the other to make them stubborn and obstinate, and perhaps even force upon them taking ill methods to avoid usage which they cannot bear.