JOHN HAMBLETON
A Soldier of the Guards, executed at Tyburn, 10th of December, 1753, for the Murder of Mr Crouch
MR CROUCH, the murdered man, was head cook to the Earl of Harrington.
On the 17th of August, 1753, he went upon the business of his employer to Chelsea, and in returning through King's Road, about nine o'clock in the evening, he was met by Hambleton and his associate, named Lattie, who, with horrid imprecations, demanded his money.
Mr Crouch was a resolute man and refused to be robbed; thereupon they fired two pistols at him, without effect. Being himself unarmed, he had recourse to a pocket-knife, which he opened and told them to keep off; but they closed on him, in doing which he wounded Lattie in three places. The villains overpowering him, they threw him to the ground and rifled his pockets of his money and his watch; they then, not content with their booty, with which they might have escaped, wrested the knife from his hand, ripped open his belly, then stamped upon his mangled body, beat him on the head with the butt-ends of their pistols, and left him weltering in his blood. Early next morning some labourers going to their work discovered him still alive and able to describe the robbers, with his place of residence, which was a small house in Green Street, Grosvenor Square, near his noble employer's mansion. Thither he was carried, where he languished in excruciating torments three days, and then died, leaving a widow and three children.
The murderers, from his description, were soon apprehended. Lattie had the wounds about him given by the deceased, who was able to identify them the day before his death.
Hambleton was brought to his trial at the Old Bailey, and sentenced to die; but Lattie died of the wounds given him by the murdered man before the time of his being arraigned, thus robbing the gallows of its just due.
The surviving murderer was executed at Tyburn, professing himself a Roman Catholic, and his body was given to the surgeons for dissection.