ABSTRACT
The story of Thomas Savage is one of the better-known seventeenth-century English crime tales. It was originally published in 1668 in a lengthier treatment of 48 pages in which we also read about the execution of Savage’s confederate, Hannah Blay, for her part in this murder. The version presented here is an abridgement, dated approximately 1680, of eighteen pages, of which six comprise a ballad (not reproduced here) designed to be sung by the baser type of audience the abridgement was likely to attract. This tale is in many ways a model of the crime chapbook genre, which balances rich description of a heinous and senseless crime with strong statements of morality, repentance, and deterrence. Savage was an impressionable young man of only sixteen years, who was in service as an apprentice, precisely the type of training one might expect of any respectable youth. But he squandered away this opportunity for advancement through Sabbath-breaking, drinking, and whoring, a slippery slope that eventually led to theft and murder and to his own death by being hanged, twice. After he committed the murder, Savage almost immediately lamented his act and showed repentance during his time in Newgate and while standing on the ladder with the noose around his neck, awaiting his execution. This was, thus, a classic tale of sin and repentance, written, as the title page makes clear, “as an example for youth, to amend their lives, lest sin and Satan prove their overthrow”.
