AN ACCOUNT
OF
THE DEATH
OF
PHILIP JOLIN,
WHO WAS EXECUTED
FOR THE
MURDER OF HIS FATHER, IN THE ISLAND OF JERSEY,
OCTOBER 3, 1829.

BY
FRANCIS CUNNINGHAM, A. M.
RECTOR OF PAKEFIELD.

LONDON: HATCHARD AND SON, PICCADILLY;
SEELEY AND SONS, FLEET STREET; AND J. NESBITT,
BERNERS STREET.

1830.

LONDON:
IBOTSON AND PALMER, PRINTERS, SAVOY STREET, STRAND.

ADVERTISEMENT.

To determine the real state of mind in a criminal manifesting, for the first time, when under sentence of death, signs of repentance, is plainly a work of much difficulty.  If ever dissimulation may be expected, it must be in the case of a person probably long habituated, and, in his present circumstances, additionally excited to it by the fear of death: and the experience of every minister of religion conversant in such cases, must teach him that professions of religion, under such circumstances, are far oftener the language of alarm, than of real conversion.  Every one, therefore, would earnestly covet, with Mr. Newton, to know rather how the man lived, than how he had died.  But here the life and the death may offer the most conflicting evidence.  How difficult it is then so to decide as not, on the one hand, to make “the heart of the righteous sad, whom God has not made sad;” upon the other, to say “peace” to the soul, “when there is no peace.”

Most of the cases of religious communication with dying criminals, recorded in the public prints, are in the highest degree painful.  The chaplain goes through the forms of instruction, the sermon is preached, and then, without one proof being assigned of the fitness of the criminal for that solemn ordinance of religion, the sacrament is administered.  All the requisitions of our church, as to “those who come to the Lord’s supper,” are passed by.  The deep workings of repentance, and longing for amendment, the exercise of a lively faith in Christ, the thankful remembrance of his death, the feeling of universal charity so difficult in such circumstances; in short, every evidence of an awakened and converted heart is neglected, and the man forced upon a hypocritical avowal of truth, to which he is in reality utterly a stranger.  He dies, in fact, with “a lie in his right hand”—a lie, the guilt of which is surely divided between himself and the minister who urges him to the rash reception of the sacrament.

It is under the deepest conviction of the difficulty of such cases, that the present tract, recording the events of the last eleven days in the life of a criminal is presented to the public.  His crimes had been great, but hypocrisy was not amongst their number.  His faculties were not such as to give him any peculiar facility in adopting the truths presented to him.  He had received no previous religious instruction.  He had no uncommon power of utterance.  Let the reader judge whether the words and conduct, both before and after conviction, as recorded in these pages, do not supply an evidence of the power of God to reclaim the wanderer even in the eleventh hour; and are not calculated, in the highest degree, to encourage the often disconsolate visitor of the sick, the dying, and the criminal.  The facts here recorded have been collected partly by personal communication, partly from letters to the writer from the Rev. W. C. Hall, and partly from a printed account of the Rev. E. Durell.  The substance of the statement was first inserted in the Christian Observer, and it is now submitted, with some alteration, to the public, and with an earnest desire that its perusal may, through the Divine blessing, tend to the glory of that compassionate Saviour, to whose service it is dedicated.

THE
LAST DAYS OF PHILIP JOLIN,
LATELY EXECUTED AT ST. HELENS,
FOR
THE MURDER OF HIS FATHER.

The particulars of the crime of this unfortunate young man may be stated in a few words.  He had long been known in the neighbourhood where he lived, as an object of disgrace, and the cause of perpetual disturbance.  Not indeed that he was more profligate in character than those with whom he was immediately connected.  His father, as well as his mother-in-law, lived in habits of drunkenness.  She died eight months before the son committed the crime for which he suffered.  Jolin was, with his father, by trade a blacksmith.  His business brought with it some temptation to drinking; and, in Jersey, where spirits are cheaper even than in England, this disposition was most easily gratified.  So that, with the example of his parents, and his own circumstances, it is not a matter of astonishment that he fell into the course of sin which led to his ruin.  The progress of vice was, it is to be presumed, in his case, like that of other drunkards.  The liquor, at first taken as a bodily relief, unguarded by any restraint, was soon resorted to as an indulgence; till at last he was enlisted in the number of those of whom the prophet speaks, “who rise up in the morning that they may follow their drink, and continue till night, till wine inflames them.”  But the abominable tendency of this particular sin is illustrated almost equally by the conduct of the father and son.

It appeared on the trial of Jolin, that he had been exposed to the greatest cruelties on the part of his father.  One person deposed, that he had often seen him beat his son with a hammer, or any thing else, which might happen to come under his hand, and almost always about the head; and the scars from these wounds were seen on his head when he was committed to prison.  Another, that she had once heard the prisoner’s mother cry out for help.  She went in, and saw the son down, and the father striking him with an iron bar, saying at the same time, that he was going to kill him.  Very often he would not give him any food.  Another witness testified, that, going into the house of the father, he saw him put down a flat iron bar, with which he had just been striking his son on the head, and his head was covered with blood.  He was laid on his bed, but his father refused to allow any assistance to be tendered to him.  This witness had seen the father kick his son about several parts of the body.  What a contrast is all this to that scene which the psalmist describes of a household where the Spirit of God dwells—“Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity, for there the Lord commandeth his blessing.”  These facts are introduced, not only in explanation of the subject, but that some light may be thrown on the appeal which Jolin afterwards made to his judge on his own behalf.

On the morning on which the last crime was committed, as Jolin confessed to one who attended upon him in prison, he had drank to excess, and become completely intoxicated.  In this state he returned to his own home—a home of which, he added, “no one knew the wretchedness.”  It was dinner