In London, street robberies had grown so daring, according to the chronicler, that passers-by were stopped and despoiled in broad daylight. The Crown answered with a royal proclamation: a reward of one hundred pounds sterling was offered for the apprehension of any such malefactor, together with the promise of a royal pardon to those who surrendered and impeached their accomplices. James Dalton delivered himself up and spoke. Out of the depositions arising from his submission emerged the capital case of William Russell, Robert Crouch, and William Holden.
Russell sprang from a family described by the chronicler as reputable; he had received a competent education, which, in the author's estimation, set him apart from the companions with whom he was taken. The chronicle attributes to him a general confession: he acknowledged the lawlessness of his life and confessed that he had pursued pleasures that yielded him no true satisfaction. Yet this interior reflection is recounted merely by the chronicler and does not survive as an official examination. The writer adds that Russell’s father had departed for Ireland, leaving the young man master of his own conduct, whereupon he fell into dissolute company.
Robert Crouch was a native of Dunstable. His parents, whom the notice characterizes as honest people of decent means, saw him schooled and bound him apprentice to a butcher at Newgate Market. His term completed, he abandoned himself to gaming and strong drink. Dalton—a man of influence within the gang, according to the source, and soon to become the Crown's chief witness—was said to have urged him into the confederacy. The chronicle observes that Crouch’s father had intended to establish him in trade and had foreseen nothing of the ruin that followed, though it provides neither dates nor particulars of this design.
Holden’s early years had run another course. Born of impoverished parentage, he enjoyed little schooling and learned no settled calling. At intervals he had gone to sea, and he had likewise earned his bread as a hackney coachman. The chronicler estimated that these men had plied this trade for less than a twelvemonth when Dalton, to save his own neck, surrendered and gave information. The accused were forthwith apprehended and committed to Newgate.
At the ensuing sessions of the Old Bailey, all three stood indicted for the highway robbery of Martha Hide and the theft of her bundle. The goods enumerated in the indictment comprised a cloth coat, valued at forty shillings; a looking glass, valued at thirty shillings; a nightgown; and other apparel appraised together at thirty shillings. James Dalton deposed that at nine of the clock in the evening, he was walking in company with the prisoners when they overtook Hide in Fleet Street. Espying the bundle she carried, they resolved to take it and dogging her steps into Lincoln’s Inn Fields, Crouch threw her down whilst Russell seized the bundle and fled.
When the men opened the parcel, the looking glass fell to the ground and was shattered. The remainder of the effects were carried to Sarah Watts, described as a receiver of stolen goods who kept a "lock"—a repository where such plundered wares were taken in and concealed. Dalton declared that they had examined the bundle so carelessly that they knew not that forty shillings in money lay wrapped within a rag; Watts, he affirmed, had secured the coin along with the clothing. The source remains silent as to whether this money ever formed the subject of a separate prosecution.
Martha Hide herself testified that as she was crossing Lincoln’s Inn Fields, she was thrown to the earth and her bundle snatched from her. Dalton’s oath did not stand unsupported. Solomon Nicholas deposed that subsequent to the robbery, whilst Russell and Crouch were brawling in a brandy shop, Russell had openly claimed his share of the stolen coat. Another witness affirmed that Crouch had pawned an old coat to pay for altering Hide’s garment: he had caused the cloth cape to be ripped from the stolen coat and replaced with one of velvet. Thus the subsequent history of the coat, set against the testimony of Hide, afforded a material point of comparison that corroborated both Russell’s reported words and Dalton’s narrative.
Constable Willis was the last witness produced for the Crown. He testified that upon taking Russell, the prisoner confessed that the goods had been stolen and sold for the sum of one pound and two shillings. Russell was reported to have added that he made little account of the matter, seeing he was to die in the company of such brave fellows. The jury, having heard the evidence, withdrew; returning shortly after into court, they pronounced all three prisoners guilty as charged. Sentence of death was passed during a heavily burdened session: twenty-two men and seven women received capital condemnation at that gaol delivery, according to the chronicle.
As the hour of their execution drew on, the demeanor of the three convicts presented striking contrasts. The account states that Russell, initially affecting an air of careless unconcern, jested with Holden about securing a coach to carry off their corpses after the hanging, that their remains might elude the surgeons. He discoursed freely upon the current state of street robberies, maintaining that the royal proclamation had by no means crushed their fraternity; on the contrary, he averred that the survivors would only be spurred to greater insolence. He named Benjamin Branch and Isaac Ashley among the consummate pickpockets who had recently died or stood under sentence of death, extolling their extraordinary dexterity in sorting through filched purses.
Upon the arrival of the death warrant, the chronicler continues, Russell assumed a graver disposition and displayed greater contrition during divine service. Crouch preserved an even temper, at times appearing cheerful, an attitude he attributed to his natural humor. He acknowledged the heinousness of his course of life and stated that following the royal proclamation he had designed to take ship for a four-year voyage, a purpose frustrated by Dalton’s timely impeachment. The precise chronology of this scheme is not recorded.
Holden, for his part, had at first strenuously denied having any share in the robbery for which he was to die. But when Russell confessed his own guilt and implicated him in the deed, Holden withdrew his denial, admitting his participation in this and several other crimes. Russell declared, a day or two before his end, that Dalton had offered to make him a partner in turning King's evidence against their former comrades, but that he had spurned the thought of purchasing his life by betraying those who had harbored him.
On Monday, May 20, 1728, the three men were executed. Russell was about five-and-twenty years of age, Crouch about twenty, and Holden upwards of eight-and-twenty. The narrative depicts their conduct at the gallows as resolute, free alike from sullen defiance and disorderly terror, and marks in their final moments a visible gravity. The joint verdict, the capital sentence, and the day of execution may be received as established by this source; its moralizing reflections upon the convicts' inward contrition must be weighed as the commentary of an eighteenth-century chronicler.
At the center of this prosecution, Martha Hide’s bundle formed the link connecting the narrative sworn by Dalton, the testimony of a despoiled victim, an altered velvet-collared coat, and a purse of money the thieves claimed never to have suspected. The Crown’s proclamation had held out the lure of blood money and pardon to the informer; it had likewise placed Dalton upon the witness stand as the engine of their destruction. The corroborating witnesses, and the victim herself, were heard in their turn. It was upon the weight of this accumulated testimony that the jury convicted Russell, Crouch, and Holden—three men whose distinct paths across eighteenth-century London converged upon a single fatal indictment.