In Marylebone Fields, William Marple and Timothy Cotton fell upon a market-woman carrying meat to the houses of gentlemen. They rummaged her basket and took thence a fine leg of mutton, which they reserved for their dinner on the morrow, before rifling her pocket. She having declared that she was without money, Marple, upon discovering seven shillings in her pocket, struck her with reproaches for her lie.
The chronicler presents this incident among Marple’s earliest misdeeds, though his early years had seemed directed to very different ends. Born of reputable and affluent parents, he received a liberal education in grammar schools both in the town and the country. Arriving at an age to learn a trade, he made trial of several, changing his mind thrice before binding himself apprentice to a carpenter. Ere his term was expired, he fell in love with a young woman and married her; his master, coming to the knowledge of this union and of other particulars omitted by the record, fell out with him, and their articles were cancelled.
Marple was tenderly attached to this first wife, whom the narrator describes as virtuous and industrious. According to the chronicle, her influence wrought a reformation in the young man: he applied himself steadily to his business, provided for their needs, and kept his own home with her. Then she died. The narrative places the resumption of his disorderly courses after the first transports of grief had abated; no date or circumstance of her death is afforded. Marple then quitted the town for a neighbouring village, where he formed an attachment with a woman whom the source represents as consumed by a desire for money and fine clothes. It is to this juncture that the chronicler traces his first recourse to unlawful methods of raising money.
The identity of his first associates remained uncertain. A man named Rouden was commonly reputed to have drawn him into thieving, yet this Marple steadfastly denied. The author confesses himself unable to determine who first introduced him to the road, leaving two explanations open: the persuasion of bad company, or Marple’s own inclinations and necessities. This circumspection stands in marked contrast to the moral certitude displayed in other passages of the narrative. The memorial thereafter depicts him as one of the most daring robbers of the gang, plundering the poor and the rich without distinction.
Another design was set on foot by a young man whose uncle was a person of substantial means. The relation was ever willing to advance his nephew’s genuine welfare, but obstinately refused to supply his extravagances. The nephew, together with another associate, laid before Marple a scheme to rob this kinsman. Marple and the nephew entered the dwelling and accomplished the theft, while their companion kept watch at the door. They carried off some six-and-thirty guineas, which were divided into three equal portions. Marple was soon apprehended and committed to Newgate for the fact; yet the uncle declined to prosecute, unwilling to expose his own flesh and blood. The chronicle therefore records no judicial verdict in this matter, noting merely that the prosecutor desisted. This family indulgence failed to check the robberies imputed to Marple by the source, which affirms that he perpetrated thirty or forty attacks within a very narrow compass of time.
The chronicler states that he held drunkenness in abhorrence, but attributes his crimes to the expenses incurred through the women whose company he frequented. Chief among these was Elizabeth Lion, reputed the mistress of Jack Sheppard; Marple found her, says the chronicle, so brazen and impudent that he could no longer endure her conversation. When misfortunes overtook him, he declared her the vilest of creatures. He avoided such women thereafter, until he took a second wife, whose person and reputation the chronicler speaks well of; Marple affirmed that she was utterly unacquainted with the means whereby he obtained his livelihood. The account suppresses the names of both his wives.
Timothy Cotton had likewise been bred to a regular calling. His parents, though poor, were honest, and gave him a tolerable education, apprenticing him to a poulterer. He applied himself diligently to his business, earning sufficient to maintain his family without grasping at greater fortune, and had hitherto lived in good credit. He then fell into the company of women to whom the chronicler lays the consumption of both his time and his substance. In this manner does the writer account for his turning to readier expedients to procure money. Cotton and Marple had been schoolfellows in their youth. The former is said to have committed no more than five robberies before his capture, three of them in Marple’s company.
The robbery on the Hampstead road was the second of their joint exploits recorded in the memorial. Having stopped a chariot and rifled the passengers, three gentlemen on horseback chanced to ride up. Marple presented a pistol and commanded them to make haste and ride on. They, through the apprehension of fear, mistook his words for a demand of their money and instantly clapped their hands to their pockets. Marple, ignorant of their mistake, repeated with greater vehemence that they must be gone; and as soon as they apprehended his meaning, the three gentlemen galloped off at full speed. The chronicle does not state that they were robbed, preserving only this singular confusion between a command to fly and the expectation of being plundered.
Not long thereafter, the two companions attacked Stout, a servant to Captain Trevor. They stripped him of his hat, two pounds of butter, his shoe-buckles, five shillings and sixpence in money, and sundry other trifles. For this robbery Marple and Cotton were taken and brought to trial at the ensuing sessions of the Old Bailey. The evidence, in the chronicler’s view, was singularly clear; both were found guilty and received sentence of death. It was this single prosecution that brought them to the scaffold, the remaining offences forming merely the background of their unlawful career.
Under condemnation, Marple appeared less concerned than persons under such unhappy circumstances usually are, according to the observer. He acknowledged many robberies for which he had never been arraigned, over and above that committed upon Stout. He confessed to having struck several of his victims, though never, as he protested, to the hazard of their lives, and entreated their forgiveness and prayers. He expressed a particular grief for having been undutiful to his mother and slighted the good counsel she had bestowed upon him. These confessions specify neither the names of the other sufferers nor the dates of the occurrences.
Cotton, for his part, exhibited a tenderer sense of his condition and a deeper penitence in his final days. Both men were vehement upon one point: their wives had been in no wise privy to their wicked courses, had never counselled them, and were entirely ignorant of their robberies. They thus distinguished their wives from those other women to whom the chronicler imputes their ruin. This stands recorded as their dying declaration, without presuming to determine what each wife may in truth have known.
Marple and Cotton were executed on March 24, 1729. The former was about thirty years of age, the latter near five-and-twenty. The catalogue of robberies detailed by the source ranges from the basket of a poor market-woman to the belongings of travellers and a gentleman’s servant; yet their formal condemnation rested solely upon the robbery of Stout. The chronicle charges them with various other crimes and late confessions, but their recorded judicial fate remains circumscribed by that single trial.