Posted on 05/12/2023 5:44:20 PM PDT by CheshireTheCat
On this date in 1730, career criminal James Dalton was executed at Tyburn.
Crime ran in the family for young master Dalton; his father hanged upon the information of notorious (and himself eventual gallows-bird) Jonathan Wild. According to the Ordinary of Newgate’s report, our day’s principal “went between his Father’s Legs in the Cart, to his fatal Exit at Tyburn.”*
Who knows but what naughty urchins (or parents) in the throng were deterred by that affecting spectacle. For the Daltons, it was more like Take Your Child to Work Day.
While the elder Dalton’s skills ran towards card-sharping, young master James went in for the more conventional varieties of larceny — both those practiced by stealth, and those practiced by force.
These pursuits saw him twice transported to America, for which we have to thank the English judiciary on account of Dalton’s resultant biography at Early American Crime....
(Excerpt) Read more at executedtoday.com ...
The mills of the gods not only grind fine but occasionally they grind out some prime irony.
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