The McGruff of an Earlier Age

The always excellent Early American Crime just wrapped up a multi-part series on Levi Ames, a Massachusetts burglar who was hanged in 1773. Ames' story survives in large part because of his last words, delivered on the gallows and commemorated in an illustrated pamphlet bearing the ridiculously non-concise name An address to the inhabitants of Boston, (particularly to the thoughtless youth) occasioned by the execution of Levi Ames, who so early in life, as not 22 years of age, must quit the...