On the 29th of January 1720, four condemned felons were executed at Tyburn. One had waited until his final hours for a reprieve he still fancied within his grasp; another had squandered in a brief season his share of a prize taken upon the high seas; a third had twice cheated the gallows; the last had plundered his master’s house merely to cut a figure in the world above his station. The title of the contemporary chronicle records this common execution under the double date of 1719–1720. Yet the roads that brought them thither were widely divergent.
John Trippuck, commonly styled the Golden Tinman, had robbed both alone and in company over a long tract of time. The chronicle relates that, shortly before the affair that led to his destruction, he had secured a pardon through the power of his purse and the interest of his friends. Yet he soon fell again to his old courses. The injured party laid hold of him and pursued the prosecution with unyielding vigor; Trippuck was cast for death. He retained some substance still, and with it the hope of another intercession. So long as he believed a reprieve might be obtained, his confidence never deserted him.
The Ordinary of Newgate sought to recall him to the scrutiny of his conscience and his past misdeeds. Trippuck repeatedly broke in upon his prayers to inquire after the prospects of a pardon, entreating him to employ his interest with a certain counsellor. He bared likewise the scars of his ancient wounds, two of them of great breadth, recounting the torments he had suffered when the balls were cut out, in the vain hope that such bodily afflictions might plead in extenuation of his guilt. The divine answered that these evils were but the natural fruits of the wicked enterprises to which he had abandoned himself, and could in no wise atone for his transgressions against God and man.
When at length he perceived that no pardon would arrive, his stubbornness gave way. The chronicle states that he ceased to deny the felony for which he was to die, having at first protested that the charge was false, even as his companion, Constable, denied it to the very last. Another accusation had been bruited abroad: he was charged with the murder of one Mr. Hall upon Blackheath, toward the close of the preceding summer. Trippuck firmly repelled this rumour and persisted in his denial until shortly before the end, pointing to the halter that awaited him as the surest pledge of his sincerity. The text does not preserve the name of the prosecutor in his capital conviction; it records only that Trippuck met his death with outward tokens of penitence.
Richard Cane was about two-and-twenty years of age. In his youth, his kin had twice bound him apprentice, yet could never reconcile his roving humour to any steady trade. He took service aboard a man-of-war; after a desperate engagement of eight hours, the ship took a Spanish vessel laden, so the narrative runs, with immense treasure. Cane received his portion of the prize, but it proved his undoing. Upon his return, he made shift to waste it in a very short space. When the excesses in which he revelled had drained his pockets dry, his necessities and the appetite for continued riot drove him upon unlawful courses.
He then fixed his affections upon a modest young gentlewoman who lived with her mother, concealing from them his lawless manner of life. They meditated a private wedding, yet the nuptials were deferred because Cane lacked the means to purchase a licence. Cane’s own family, the record observes, would have frowned upon the match. Unwilling to lay the charge of the licence upon the young woman and her mother, he parted from their company one evening, came upon a man in the street who was in drink, knocked him down, and robbed him of his hat and coat. The man raised a hue and cry; the neighbours ran to his aid, and Cane was apprehended upon the spot. Thus the theft undertaken to furnish the price of his marriage proved the very instrument of his death.
The young woman visited him constantly in Newgate. She wept with him in his cell; her mother, broken by the shame of the mischance, fell sick and took to her bed. As the hour of execution drew nigh, Cane showed himself resigned to his sentence, acknowledged his misdeeds, and lamented the bitter sorrow he had brought upon these two women. He left behind him a paper to be delivered to the multitude at Tyburn, wherein he confessed the crime for which he died, and earnestly entreated that none would cast reproaches upon the young gentlewoman for his sake. The chronicler lays stress upon the tenderness with which he spoke of her whom he had designed to make his wife. He died in his twenty-second year.
Richard Shepherd was born at Oxford of parents whom the chronicler accounts honest and reputable. He was apprenticed to a butcher. Before his indentures were expired, he took to wife a young woman of the neighbourhood; his master, coming to the knowledge of the marriage, exacted of him forty shillings in ready money, together with a bond of eight-and-twenty pounds. The chronicle represents this burden as the ruin of the young man. His wife thereafter bore him a child every year, while Shepherd wrought as little as he could, leaning more and more upon the trade of thieving.
He began with petty housebreakings in Oxford, and took to flight when the clamour against him grew too loud. In Hertfordshire, upon his second or third venture, he was taken and condemned to die. His friends obtained first a reprieve and then a pardon, hoping this near brush with death would reclaim him from his courses. It availed nothing. Shepherd returned straightway to his thievery, and subsequently escaped Tyburn a second time by turning evidence against two of his companions, Allen and Chambers. Yet no sooner was he at large than he resumed his former traffic. The record thus exhibits him passing from sentence of death to royal mercy, and thence to fresh treachery, without any check being put to his career of crime.
Being apprehended anew, he was carried before Colonel Ellis and committed upon a capital charge. Shepherd once more offered to make discoveries if he might be admitted an evidence for the King. His petition was granted; several men, condemned at the Old Bailey upon his sole testimony, were carried to Tyburn and executed, whither he himself was not long in following them. At Newgate, when exhorted to make his peace with Heaven, he answered that his work was already done, and that he was well assured of entering Paradise. The chronicler contrasts this singular confidence with the enormity of his misdeeds, though he preserves no further words from his final moments.
Thomas Charnock had received what the chronicle describes as an excellent and pious education. His relations had placed him in the house of an eminent merchant. Burning with the desire to make a figure in the world, he robbed his master’s till to sustain his vain pretensions. He made himself conspicuous indeed, though in a manner clean contrary to his ambition. The relation affords no particulars of his apprehension or his trial; it notes only that he was executed alongside the other three, and remarks upon his religious notions, which he accounted reasonable. All four died with submission and signs of penitence, according to the chronicler’s closing testimony, which nevertheless assigns to Charnock a distinct place in that general judgment.
The same fatal cart thus brought together four men whose stories were of very different compass and character. Trippuck had leaned upon his protectors and denied an unproved blood-guiltiness before he bowed his head; Cane had seen the spoils of the sea vanish in a flash, and with them his hopes of an honest hearth; Shepherd had received pardons only to turn them into licences for theft; Charnock had bartered an honourable place in a merchant’s house for the vain shadow of worldly display. The chronicle binds them under a single date and scaffold, yet keeps their courses strictly separate. On the 29th of January 1719–1720, they suffered together at Tyburn.