Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences - Arthur L. Hayward

"If there be a haunted spot in London it must surely be a few squareyards that lie a little west of the Marble Arch, for in the long courseof some six centuries over fifty thousand felons, traitors and martyrstook there a last farewell of a world they were too bad or too good tolive in. From remote antiquity, when the seditious were taken _ad furcasTyburnam_, until that November day in 1783 when John Austin closed thelong list, the gallows were kept ever busy, and during the first half ofthe eighteenth century, with which this book deals, every Newgatesessions sent thither its thieves, highwaymen and coiners by the score." We have a strange fascination with crime and criminals; and with their punishment... just or otherwise. Here, we have a collection of papers regarding the most infamous criminals of the early eighteenth century selected from the original and authentic memoirs originally published in 1735. - Summary by Lynne Thompson