onth. In his _Celebrated Trials_ Borrow tells the
story of the execution with wonderful vividness, and supplies effective
quotations from 'an eyewitness.' Borrow no doubt exaggerated his
acquaintance with Thurtell, as in his _Robinson Crusoe_ romance he was
fully entitled to do for effect. He was too young at the time to have
been much noticed by a man so much his senior. The writer who accepts
Borrow's own statement that he really gave him 'some lessons in the
noble art' is too credulous,[75] and the statement that Thurtell's house
'on the Ipswich Road was a favourite rendezvous for the Fancy' is
unsupported by evidence. Old Alderman Thurtell owned the house in
question, and we find no evidence that he encouraged his son's
predilection for prize-fighting. In _The Romany Rye_ he gives his friend
the jockey as his authority for the following apologia:

The night before the day he was hanged at H----, I harnessed a
Suffolk Punch to my light gig, the same Punch which I had
offered to him, which I have ever since kept, and which brought
me and this short young man to Horncastle, and in eleven hours
I drove that Punch one hundred and ten miles. I arrived at
H---- just in the nick of time. There was the ugly jail--the
scaffold--and there upon it stood the only friend I ever had in
the world. Driving my Punch, which was all in a foam, into the
midst of the crowd, which made way for me as if it knew what I
came for, I stood up in my gig, took off my hat, and shouted,
'God Almighty bless you, Jack!' The dying man turned his pale
grim face towards me--for his face was always somewhat grim, do
you see--nodded and said, or I thought I heard him say, 'All
right, old chap.' The next moment--my eyes water. He had a high
heart, got into a scrape whilst in the marines, lost his
half-pay, took to the turf, ring, gambling, and at last cut the
throat of a villain who had robbed him of nearly all he had.
But he had good qualities, and I know for certain that he never
did half the bad things laid to his charge.

FOOTNOTES:

[65] _Celebrated Trials and Remarkable Cases of Criminal Jurisprudence
from the Earliest Records to the Year 1825_. In six volumes. London:
Printed for Geo. Knight & Lacey, Paternoster Row, 1825. Price L3, 12s.
in boards.

[66] _The New and Complete Newgate Calendar or Malefactors Recording
Register_. By William Jackson.