Arrest
Meanwhile, Wild took against Blake, his former underling, probably due to his recent association with Sheppard. Blake was arrested by Wild, Arnold and Abraham Mendez Ceixes at his lodgings in St Giles on Friday 2 October 1724. Blueskin was tried on Thursday 15 October, with Field and Wild again due to give evidence. Outside the courtroom, Blake tried to persuade Wild to put in a good word for him, but Wild refused. Blake attacked Wild, slashing his throat with a pocket-knife. Wild was quickly attended by passing surgeons, and taken away. Blake's attack caused an uproar which spread to the adjacent prison, and the disturbance continued into the evening. Sheppard, having escaped from Newgate on 4 September and been recaptured five days later, used the distraction inside the prison to cover his fourth, and most audacious, escape.
Despite the altercation outside the court, Blake's trial went ahead in Wild's absence. Field's evidence was enough to ensure that Blake was convicted, although his account was not consistent with the evidence that he gave at Sheppard's trial. Blake was sentenced to be hanged, but showed no remorse for his crimes. He tried to escape from Newgate without success.
Meanwhile, Sheppard was recaptured for a final time on 1 November. On Wednesday 11 November 1724, the day after Sheppard's death sentence was confirmed, Blake was drawn to Tyburn along the traditional route, stopping at the Griffin tavern on Holborn for a stiff drink. In his drunkenness, he slurred his speech from the scaffold before he was hanged. His body was laid out for a few days, and he was buried in the churchyard at St Andrew, Holborn. Sheppard was hanged 5 days after Blake, on Monday 16 November.
Read more about this topic: Joseph Blake (criminal)
Famous quotes containing the word arrest:
“An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so.”
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869–1948)
“The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. Since man is mortal, the only immortality possible for him is to leave something behind him that is immortal since it will always move. This is the artist’s way of scribbling “Kilroy was here” on the wall of the final and irrevocable oblivion through which he must someday pass.”
—William Faulkner (1897–1962)
“Let me arrest thy thoughts; wonder with me,
Why plowing, building, ruling and the rest,
Or most of those arts, whence our lives are blest,
By cursed Cain’s race invented be,
And blest Seth vexed us with Astronomie.”
—John Donne (c. 1572–1631)