She was (for a person of her age) as ignorant as can well be supposed, nay was scarce escaped from being an ideot, as unfit to have management of children, as to tame lions. However, when she could be brought to understand questions put to her, she always declared she had, no thought of murdering the boy; when she began to beat him, she did not think to hurt him, but believed she was hurried on by the devil and passion to the unmerciful deed, for which she was inclined to own the justice of her suffering. But as she was entirely illiterate, and had never been much used in any part of her many years to the hearing of instruction, of religion or its duties, time would not permitto give her much insight into these things; only that the hopes of such a heinious transgressor, both against God and nature, depended wholly on the mercy of God, and the merits of his Son, who came into the world to redeem the sinner, who confesses his unworthiness upon account of sin, and repents, that his sin may be blotted out; and she died in some sense of hope after death.

2. Samuel Dipple< no role > , was 30 years of age, being born at Ludlow in Shropshire , of a good family, and received in his youth a very genteel education, sufficient to qualify him for any profession. And, as he advanced to the usual years, his parents thought proper, with his own particular desire, to put him apprentice to an apothecary in the town where he was born. There he served his time faithfully, and as he, year after year, advanced in business, his improvement and knowledge gained him esteem among all the neighbourhood; for you might see the genteel, well-behaved man, was on his demeanour, even under this last unhappy circumstances, his behaviour after conviction was in a particular manner decent; with tears day and night he lamented his being thus unthinking, as to abuse, after so vile a sort, those talents natural, and acquired, which his parents, under God, had been the means of blessing him with for better purposes.

Having served several years as a journeyman at Ludlow , he was recommended to Shrewsbury , to a gentleman of the same profession, with whom also he served in the same capacity, about two years more, in the same credit, and esteem, and then came to London .

It was not altogether with his friends consent, that he left his own country, he acknowledged, but persuaded in his own mind, that London was a more likely place to afford him better advantages, both in respect to wages, and improvement in his business, he determined upon this resolution, to try the experiment.

Accordingly he put it in practice, and said, his expectations were answered; for that after he had been in London but a short space of time, he was recommended to two gentlemen, partners in the profession, at St. James's end of the town, with whom he lived about four years, as journeyman, and when he left them, set up in business for himself in Gray's-Inn-Lane .