killing the sailor, and an inscription as follows:—
In Memory of
A generous, but unfortunate Sailor,
Who was barbarously murder'd on Hindhead,
On September 24th, 1786,
By three Villains,
After he had liberally treated them,
And promised them his further Assistance,
On the Road to Portsmouth.
When pitying Eyes to see my Grave shall come,
And with a generous Tear bedew my tomb;
Here shall they read my melancholy fate—
With Murder and Barbarity complete.
In perfect Health, and in the Flower of Age,
I fell a Victim to three Ruffians' Rage;
On bended Knees, I mercy strove t'obtain Their Thirst of Blood made all Entreaties Vain, No dear Relations, or still dearer Friend, Weeps my hard lot or miserable End. Yet o'er my sad remains (my name unknown) A generous public have inscribed this Stone.
On February 2nd, 1787, two dissolute young men named Abraham Tull and William Hawkins, aged respectively nineteen and seventeen, waylaid and murdered William Billimore, an aged labourer. They stole his silver watch, but were too frightened to continue their search for money which they expected to find, and made a hasty retreat; but they were soon overtaken, and were subsequently, at Reading Assizes, tried and condemned to be gibbeted on Ufton Common within sight of their homes. For many years their ghastly remains were suspended to gibbet posts, much to the terror and annoyance of the people in the district. No attempt was made to remove the bodies, on account of it being regarded as unlawful, until Mrs. Brocas, of Beaurepaire, then residing at Wokefield Park, gave private orders for them to be taken down in the night and buried, which was accordingly done. During her daily drives she passed the gibbeted men and the sight greatly distressed her, and caused her to have them taken down.[13] The ironwork of the gibbets are in the Reading Museum.
William Lewin, in 1788, robbed the post-boy carrying the letters from Warrington to Northwich, between Stretton and Whitley. He managed to elude the agents of the law for three years, but was eventually captured, tried at Chester, and found guilty of committing the then capital offence of robbing the mail. He was hanged at Chester. Says a contemporary account:—"His body is hung in chains on the most elevated part of Helsby Tor, about eight miles from Chester; from whence it may be conspicuously seen, and, by means of glasses, is visible to the whole county, most parts of Lancashire, Flintshire, Denbighshire, Shropshire, Derbyshire, etc., etc."[14] About this period there were three gibbets along the road between Warrington and Chester.[15]
Only five months after William Lewin had been gibbeted for robbing the mails, almost in the same locality Edward Miles robbed and murdered the post-boy carrying the Liverpool mail-bag to Manchester on September 15th, 1791. For this crime he was hanged, and suspended in chains on the Manchester Road, near "The Twysters," where the murder had been committed. In 1845 the irons in which the body had been encased were dug up near the site of the gibbet, and may now be seen in the Warrington Museum. Our illustration is reproduced from a drawing in Mr. Madeley's work, "Some Obsolete Modes of Punishment." It will be observed the irons which enclosed the head are wanting.
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