THOMAS GORDON, THE YOUNGER. EXECUTED FOR MURDER.

MR. GORDON, the father of this wretched youth, was a surgeon and apothecary in London, from whence he removed his family into Northamptonshire not long before the fatal circumstance, which is about to be described, happened.

Mr. Gordon continued to practise in the country, and soon became envied and disliked from his being a stranger; and the consequence was, that frequent quarrels took place. At length a justice’s warrant was obtained against the father on a pretended charge of assault, and the constable went to Mr. Gordon’s house in order to apprehend him; but the wife and son told the officer he was not at home. The constable, however, knew that he was in the house and went away, but soon returned with some neighbours, and with them was about to make a forcible entry, when the mother and son opposed them, the latter being armed with a gun. The populace threw stones at the windows, when the mother, in an unlucky moment, bade her son fire: he did so, and killed the constable on the spot.

Both mother and son were tried, and found guilty of the murder; but Baron Thompson, who presided on the bench, observing that the mother was indicted as an accessory before the fact, and that the evidence proved that she was a principal, he had doubts whether she was properly convicted, and therefore reserved the case for the opinion of the twelve judges, who, upon solemn argument, confirmed the sentence against the son, but at the same time adjudged the indictment against the mother to be bad; and the poor youth received sentence of death. He was three times reprieved; from which he hoped, and the world flattered him with an opinion, that his pardon would ultimately follow; but an order at length came for his execution, and although he was in a state of insanity at the time, brought on by the cruel suspense in which he had been kept as to his fate, he was executed at Northampton on the 17th of August, 1789, aged only nineteen years.