In London, four thefts of silks and precious wares brought Jane Holmes before the judges in 1726. She denied the deeds to the very end. Yet the same account that records her denials also relates her confessions of a prolonged traffic in stolen goods, and the contentious division of what she had amassed.
The memorial opens upon the setting of heightened repression. During the summer of 1726, London shopkeepers solicited the aid of the Government against the widespread robberies committed in their places of trade. They promised a reward and a pardon to any person who would impeach an accomplice. According to the author, these prosecutions led to the conviction of six or seven individuals across several sessions. He judged that these arrests put an end to that manner of thievery; yet his conclusion must be read as the commentator's own gloss, rather than an independent reckoning.
The woman brought to the bar claimed to have been born in the north of the realm, the daughter of a gentleman. The chronicler does not confirm this gentle birth: he merely observes that she had received a decent education, and that neither her carriage nor her mien suggested a common extraction. Yet the persons she claimed as her nearest kin refused to acknowledge her or to solicit a reprieve on her behalf. Throughout her imprisonment, she continued to assert these ties of blood, despite the denials of those she called her own.
According to the chronicler, she had come to London around the age of fifteen or sixteen to live with an aunt, contrary to the wishes of her kindred. A young man of the neighborhood soon paid his addresses to her. He hoped that the family she claimed to possess in the North would bestow upon her the means to establish his trade. The account affirms that they were wed in secret, though the expected fortune never appeared. Her husband thereafter began to treat her with great severity, the author asserts. She then entered into the clandestine trade of ill-gotten goods: the text depicts her as an intermediary capable of disposing of stolen property at a fair price and with little peril.
The exact date of her acquaintance with Jonathan Wild is not recorded. The narrator surmises that she may have received counsel from him on how to vent her plunder, but sets forth this connection as a mere possibility rather than an established fact. About a year later, she was apprehended, tried, and cast for transportation. She remained beyond the seas for two years or more. When she returned, the chronicler imputes her homecoming to the affection she bore her children; this interpretation is his alone. She renewed acquaintance with former associates whom the chronicle describes as less dexterous than herself in the art of shoplifting. Within this narrative, it remains impossible to separate the share of the clandestine trade from that of the actual thefts in which she may have taken part.
She nevertheless amassed a considerable store of money and precious articles. Toward the Christmas preceding her death, an Irish adventurer married her, according to the author, solely to lay hands upon her estate. Upon her final arrest, he disposed of it without delay. The chronicle takes particular note of a large purse of old gold coins that she had gathered together, as she said, against evil days. The text details neither the ceremonies of this marriage nor the precise manner in which the man possessed himself of her effects. The fortune Holmes had gathered in the shadows thus afforded her none of the security that such a store of gold appeared to promise.
The four indictments rested upon distinct larcenies. On May 1, 1726, forty yards of rose-coloured mantua silk were said to have vanished from the shop of Mathew Herbert; their value was set at ten pounds. On June 1, twenty yards of straw-coloured brocaded silk, estimated at the same sum, were laid to Holmes's charge to the prejudice of John Moon and Richard Stone. The text does not link these two affairs to a single place or method: it distinguishes them by their victims, their wares, and their dates.
Two further indictments concerned goods taken in company with Mary Robinson. On January 7, Holmes was alleged to have stolen a silver cup belonging to Elizabeth Dobbinson, valued at five pounds. On December 24, eighty yards of cherry-coloured mantua silk, likewise valued at five pounds, were charged against her to the prejudice of Joseph Bourn and Mary Harper. For these latter two dates, the memorial does not restate the year; they must not, therefore, be ascribed without reserve to 1726. Nor does it state whether Mary Robinson was prosecuted in these matters.
A woman gave testimony against Holmes on the several indictments. The chronicler states that her depositions were corroborated by diverse circumstances, and that the jury found the prisoner guilty on all four counts. He does not name this witness. The distinction is material: Mary Robinson is cited in two instances as a supposed confederate, but the text nowhere says that she was the informer. Nor does anything warrant confounding the robberies themselves with the commerce in stolen goods that Holmes admitted she had practiced.
Under sentence of death, she denied all the thefts of which she had just been convicted, maintaining that she had never committed a larceny in her life. At the same time, she confessed to having known Jonathan Wild, and to having bought stolen goods and resold them to great advantage. These admissions do not amount to a confession of the four acts laid to her charge. They outline rather a boundary she maintained between the buying and selling, which she acknowledged, and the particular thefts for which she disclaimed all responsibility.
She endeavored to obtain a respite by urging her supposed ties to a family of consequence. Diverse ministers visiting the condemned had warned her that her pretensions of kinship were disputed. The Ordinary of Newgate at length informed her that the gentleman she called her father had died the previous week. The memorial records that she thereupon dissolved into tears and gently reproached those she took to be her kinsfolk for abandoning her thus. The narrative affords no evidence to establish her pedigree; it merely illustrates how fiercely she clung to it so long as a pardon might yet depend upon the intercession of her family.
Her children were brought to Newgate to take leave of her. She wept over them, lamenting that she had spared nothing to provide for their wants. When she lost all hope of escaping the halter, her temper grew more turbulent. She gave way to fury, reviled those confined with her, and troubled the other condemned prisoners. The keepers reprimanded her; the prison minister exhorted her to amend her carriage. According to the account, she grew more composed during her last two or three days, expressing regret for the errors of her life.
She declared that she forgave the woman who had sworn against her, though she held her to be more guilty than herself, charging her with having perverted the truth. This accusation belongs to Holmes and is not a judicial finding reported by the chronicler. At Tyburn, she displayed a greater composure than had been looked for, and prayed, according to the observer, that her end might serve as a warning. She died at about thirty-four years of age, on the same day as the other convicts mentioned immediately before her in the collection. The extract does not record the date of this execution.
The chronicle thus leaves standing side by side a verdict that Holmes contested to the scaffold and a traffic in stolen wares that she herself acknowledged. Her refusal to answer for the four larcenies neither effaces the judgments pronounced upon her nor removes the uncertainties that veil her life.