It was not long before, in that city of splendour, he succeeded in disposing of his ill-gotten spoil, and then he went to Ancona, where he became acquainted with Captain Benjamin Hartley, for whose murder he was eventually executed. Capt. Hartley, it appears, had sailed to that place with a cargo of pilchards, and having discharged his lading, he was about to proceed to Turkey upon a new trip. Being in want of a carpenter, he prevailed upon Richardson to accompany him in that capacity. On board the vessel, Coyle, the fellow-sufferer with Richardson, was employed as mate. The vessel proceeded in one course to Turkey, where having taken in a cargo of corn, she sailed to Leghorn. She had not advanced many leagues upon her voyage, however, before a plot for the murder of the captain and the seizure of the vessel was put into execution. Coyle, it appears, was the instigator of this foul conspiracy, and having obtained the assistance of Richardson and a man named Larson, they all three proceeded to the performance of their horrid project. On the first night of the voyage, they went to the captain’s cabin at about midnight, determined to despatch him as he lay in his hammock; but Hartley being alarmed at their presence, sprang upon deck and ran up the shrouds. His pursuers were not far behind him, and he was rapidly followed by Richardson and Larson; but, driven to desperation by the dreadful situation in which he was placed, he flung himself from a fearful height upon the deck. Here Coyle was in waiting to receive him, and raising a blunderbuss to his shoulder, he attempted to shoot him. The captain, however, avoided the discharge, and, rushing to his antagonist, he wrested the blunderbuss from him, and threw it overboard. By this time the crew had gained intelligence of what was passing on deck, and, rushing through the hatchway, Capt. Hartley perceived from their looks that they were too little disposed to assist him in opposition to the attack which had been made upon him. He at once gave himself up for lost; and, being stunned by a blow which he received from Coyle, he was directly hove overboard.
Coyle and Richardson now assumed the respective offices of master and mate of the vessel; and, after a long consultation, it was determined that they should bear up for the island of Foviniano, where it was hoped they would be able to procure supplies. Here, however, their piratical proceedings were communicated to the authorities of the place by two boys, who escaped from the vessel during the night; and the crew, discovering the dangerous position in which they were placed, immediately set sail in the long-boat for Tunis. On their arrival at that place, they were carried before the English consul, to whom they represented themselves to be the crew of a vessel which had been lost off Sardinia, but having been supplied with money, Coyle, while in a state of intoxication, spoke so freely of their adventures, that he was immediately placed under arrest. Richardson, however, escaped to Tripoli, and from thence to Malta and Sicily; but on his going to Messina, he was taken into custody on the representations of a friend of the deceased Capt. Hartley. Having remained in prison during a period of nine months, he procured his liberation by representing to the king of Naples that he had been a servant to his father; and he then travelled to Rome and Civita Vecchia, where he was finally apprehended and sent to England. Coyle had only just before reached London, and they were immediately both indicted for the murder of their commander. The evidence against them consisted of the declarations made by the two boys, to whom we have already alluded; and having been found guilty, they received sentence of death. The wretched man Coyle, who was respectably connected in Devonshire, appeared sensible of the enormity of the crime of which he had been guilty, and professed the greatest penitence; while Richardson, on the other hand, exhibited an extraordinary degree of recklessness. They were hanged at Execution Dock on the 25th of January, 1738.
GEORGE PRICE.
CONVICTED OF MURDER.
THE case of this malefactor gives us an opportunity of bringing under the notice of the reader the occurrence of a calamity which has always attracted considerable attention—namely, the breaking out of the jail fever.
The offence of the prisoner was that of the murder of his wife, a crime which he perpetrated on Hounslow Heath, in a gig, within view of the gibbets which formerly stood there, by strangling her with the thong of his whip. He was apprehended upon suspicion of the crime, and was found guilty, and sentenced to death, but before the law could be executed upon him he died in Newgate, of the jail fever, on the 22d October, 1738. The following account of this malignant fever, shows the peculiar circumstances under which it first exhibited itself. It appears that it was always attended with a degree of malignity, in proportion to the closeness and stench of the place.
The assize held at Oxford in the year 1577, called the “Black Assize,” was a dreadful instance of the deadly effects of the jail fever. The judges, jury, witnesses, and in fact nearly every person except the prisoners, women, and children, in court, were killed by a foul air, which at first was thought to have arisen out of the bowels of the earth; but that great philosopher, Lord Bacon, proved it to have come from the prisoners, taken out of a noisome jail, and brought into court to take their trials; and they alone, being subject to the inhaling foul air, were not injured by it.
“Baker’s Chronicle,” a work of the highest authenticity, thus speaks of the Black Assize:—“The Court were surprised with a pestilent savour, whether arising from the noisome smell of the prisoners, or from the damp of the ground, is uncertain; but all that were present within forty hours died, except the prisoners, and the women and children; and the contagion went no farther. There died Robert Bell, Lord Chief Baron, Robert de Olie, Sir William Babington, the high sheriff of Oxfordshire, some of the most eminent lawyers, the jurors, and three hundred others, more or less.”
Some attributed the cause of the sudden mortality at Oxford to witchcraft, the people in those times being very superstitious. In “Webster’s Display of Witchcraft,” a work of some authenticity as to the relation of circumstances as they occurred, we find the following account of the Black Assize, which we insert as a matter of curiosity:—
“The 4th and 5th days of July, 1559, were holden the assizes at Oxford, where was arraigned and condemned one Rowland Jenkes, for his seditious tongue, at which time there arose such a damp, that almost all were smothered. Very few escaped that were not taken at that instant. The jurors died presently; shortly after died Sir Robert Bell, Lord Chief Baron, Sir Robert De Olie, Sir Wm. Babington, Mr. Weneman, Mr. De Olie, high sheriff, Mr. Davers, Mr. Harcourt, Mr. Kirle, Mr. Pheteplace, Mr. Greenwood, Mr. Foster, Sergeant Baram, Mr. Stevens, &c. There died in Oxford three hundred persons; and sickened there, but died in other places, two hundred and odd, from the 6th of July to the 12th of August, after which day died not one of that sickness, for one of them infected not another, nor any one woman or child died thereof. This is the punctual relation according to our English annals, which relate nothing of what should be the cause of the arising of such a damp just at the conjuncture of time when Jenkes was condemned, there being none before, and so it could not be a prison infection; for that would have manifested itself by smell, or operating sooner. But to take away all scruple, and to assign the true cause, it was thus: It fortuned that a manuscript fell into my hands, collected by an ancient gentleman of York, who was a great observer and gatherer of strange things and facts, who lived about the time of this accident happening at Oxford, wherein it is related thus:—
“That Rowland Jenkes, being imprisoned for treasonable words spoken against the queen, and being a popish recusant, had, notwithstanding, during the time of his restraint, liberty some time to walk abroad with the keeper; and that one day he came to an apothecary, and showed him a receipt which he desired him to make up; but the apothecary, upon viewing of it, told him that it was a strong and dangerous receipt, and required some time to prepare it; also asking to what use he would apply it. He answered, ‘To kill the rats, that since his imprisonment spoiled his books;’ so being satisfied, he promised to make it ready. After a certain time he cometh