Robert Haynes, the criminal whose history we are to give at present, was the son of persons in Ireland, of none of the best circumstances, who yet afforded him a very good education, causing him to be instructed not only in the Latin, but also in the Greek tongue, in both of which to the day of his death he attained a tolerable knowledge.  His father, it seems, though he had done everything for his son in breeding him a scholar, though when he grew up to man’s estate he had nothing to give him, and was forced to let him come over to England to list himself in the Foot Guards.  His officers gave him always the character of a quiet, inoffensive lad, who injured nobody, nor was himself addicted to those vices which are common to the men of his profession.  On the contrary, he retained yet strong notions of those religious principles in which he had been educated.  He addicted himself much to reading, and though his spirit was not a little broken by the consideration of that low life by which he was obliged to stoop, yet he preserved a becoming spirit and a very gentleman-like behaviour upon all occasions; so that the officers of his regiment very much regretted that misfortune which brought him to an untimely end.  Of the occasion of this we come next to speak, since his youth and the regularity of his life prevented any other of his adventures coming to our notice.

It happened one Sunday evening, as he was walking along St. James’s Park, with two other soldiers, they met two men and two women.  Haynes unluckily kissed one of the women, upon which one of the men turned and broke his head.  As was insisted even to the time of the death of this unfortunate person, the swords of both were drawn; however that were, he gave his antagonist a wound in the breast of which he died.  For this he was apprehended and committed prisoner to Newgate.  At the ensuing sessions of the Old Bailey he was indicted for wilfully murdering Edward Perry, by giving him a wound on the left part of the right breast near the short ribs, of the depth of twelve inches, and of the length of one.  He was also indicted a second time on the Statute of Stabbing, and a third time upon the coroner’s inquest for wilful murder.  On all three of which, notwithstanding his defence, and the witnesses he called, he was found guilty; and although some honourable persons took a great deal of pains to procure a pardon or reprieve for him, yet it proved of no purpose, but he and the afore-mentioned malefactor were put into the death warrant and ordered for execution.

For himself he had little hopes from the endeavours of his friends and therefore behaved himself as if he had had none, being not only constant and devout at the public exercises in the chapel, but also ardent in his devotions in private and by himself.  As the youth wanted not good sense, and had not forgot the education he had received in Ireland, so in every respect while under sentence of death he performed