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Benjamin Wileman, of whom we are now to speak, was the son of honest parents in the city of Dublin. They gave him a very good education at school, and when he was fit to go out apprentice, his father bred him to his own trade, which was that of a tailor.
Bridges gave evidence that he was robbed on the highway and lost a sword, a hat, a pocket-book and a bank-note for twenty pounds. Doyle gave evidence in this, as in the former case, declaring that Wileman and he committed the fact together.
In the midst of this terrible course of folly and wickedness he was apprehended for a highwayman, committed to Newgate, and at the ensuing sessions capitally indicted for two robberies, the one committed on William Hucks, Esq., and the other on William Bridges, Esq. On the first indictment it was deposed by the prosecutor that he believed Wileman to be the person who attacked him.
John Doyle, who owned himself to have been an accomplice in the robbery, swore that Wileman and he committed it together, and that he paid Wileman five guineas and a half for his share of the gold watch and other things which were taken from the gentleman. As to the second fact, Mr.
Notwithstanding that the most earnest entreaties were made use of to induce him to a plain and sincere confession, yet he continued always to assert his innocence as to thieving, letting fall sharp and invidious expressions against the evidence of Doyle whom he charged with swearing against him only to preserve another guilty person from punishment, whom Wileman intended to prosecute and had it is his power to convict.
Good people, pray for me, that God may receive me through his mercies, which I trust he will. Newgate, August 22nd, 1729. Joseph Kemp The Life of BENJAMIN WILEMAN, a Highwayman
Arabelle Manning deposed that on the night of the day the robbery was committed, the prisoner Wileman and Doyle gave her a dram at a gin-shop in Drury Lane, and that one of them let fall a paper, and taking it up again, said that the loss of it would have been the loss of twenty pounds.
Then Elizabeth Jones being produced, swore that the same day she met Doyle and Wileman booted and spurred and very dirty in Bedford Row, and that they showed her the bank note, which when shown to her, she deposed to be the same.
Following his old course of life, he happened into several broils, with which a little money and a few friends he got over. In a short space of time he became acquainted with Benjamin Wileman. They two, with another person concerned with them, committed several robberies. At length they were discovered, apprehended and committed to Newgate.
Wileman, it seems, had an itching to become an evidence against Doyle and W. G. But Doyle made himself an evidence, being really, as he said, for his own preservation and not for the sake of any reward. Doyle's wife being for a second time transported, he went with her in the same ship, and having arrived in Virginia, slaved there some time, until he began to grow weary of the place.
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