Harry Simms -- The Official Life

[Joel S. Berson]

ESTC has the following:

Author - personal       Simms, Henry, 1716-1747.
Title           The life of Henry Simms, alias young gentleman Harry. 
 From his birth, to his death at Tyburn, on Wednesday June 17, 1747. 
... All wrote by himself while under sentence of death in Newgate.
Publisher/year          London : printed for Tho. Parker, and C. 
Corbett; the only authorised printers of the dying-speeches, 1747.
Physical descr.         [2],38p. ;  8^(0).
Copies - Brit.Isles     British Library
         British Library
         Cambridge University Library (includes Sir Geoffrey Keynes 
Collection, British & Foreign Bible Society, & Peterborough Cathedral)
         Hull Central Library
Copies - N.America      Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery
         John Carter Brown Library, Brown University
         The Lilly Library, University of Indiana
         University of California, Los Angeles, Department of Special 
Collections
         University of Chicago
         University of Minnesota
         University of Victoria
         Yale University, Seeley G. Mudd Library

Someone ought to be able to find it -- perhaps at the last library 
listed above ... Larry and Fred?  Oh, I forgot -- they're not at the 
same university.  :-)

Is it in ECCO?  I don't have access from home.

At 9/15/2014 03:19 AM, Robin Hamilton wrote:
>While the 1747 _Life_ of Henry Simms isn't accessible online, it is 
>substantially available in a reprinting in Charles Whitehead, _Lives 
>and Exploits of the Most Noted Highwaymen, Robbers, and Murderers, 
>of All Nations_ (1835, and later editions):
>
>        1867 edition, pp. 225 ff: 
> https://archive.org/details/livesmostnotori00whitgoog
>
>Whereas in the Narrative as identified by Garson, Simms is sent by 
>his grandmother to be educated at an Academy run by a Dissenting 
>minister, in the Official Life (as rendered by John Taylor, Ordinary 
>of Newgate), he is (for a short space, before being expelled), 
>"permitted to go to Eton school with the two sons of the noble lord."
>
>Go figure ...

Not too surprising, I think.  Narratives of criminal lives were often 
embellished in that period, either by the miscreants themselves or by 
their publishers.  Perhaps the most wel-known is that of 
Bampfylde-Moore Carew, published in two volumes in 1745 and 
1749.  While Carew's reporting can be verified at several points from 
historical records, he did glamorize himself.  And the second volume 
was augmented by its printer, Robert Goadby.  The best source is The 
King of the Beggars: Bampfylde-Moore Carew, ed. C. H. Wilkinson 
(London, 1931).

Joel

>Hardly surprising that there's no reference to Flash Language in the 
>Official Life.
>
>Robin
= 

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