Very cool criminal broadside....

Five people, four men and a woman, were executed at Newgate in the mid-1600s (well, many more than that...but here we are only interested in those described in this broadside). One of them was a man of some importance, the entire back sheet was given to his story and contrition (he insured and then burned his offices). The other four were convicted together of the same crime.

The three men and one woman apparently worked together to "make a coin appear to be silver" That is, they counterfeited a single coin. For this crime, the three men were sentenced to hang and the woman, for the same crime, was sentence to be burned at the stake.

The broadside is a lovely piece...but it is the woodcuts that make it wonderful. There are only two, the publisher chose not to illustrate the single hanging. The three men take up about half the front page, the woman at the stake is about 1/3 the third page. Apparently the crowd begged for mercy as she cried out on the stake...