Jerry Abershawe

Jerry Abershawe
Born	Louis Jeremiah Abershawe 1773 Kingston-upon-Thames, England
Died	3 August 1795 (aged 21–22) Kennington Common, Borough of Lambeth, England
Nationality	English
Occupation	highwayman, murderer
Known for	He was the last, hanged highwayman to have his body put on public display, after execution, in England.

Louis Jeremiah Abershawe (1773 – 3 August 1795), better known as Jerry Abershawe, was an English notorious highwayman who terrorised travellers along the road between London and Portsmouth, England, in the late eighteenth century.

Born in Kingston upon Thames, then in Surrey, Abershawe started his life of crime at the age of seventeen, leading a gang based at the Bald-Faced Stag Inn, which was for many years the terror of the roads between London, Kingston and Wimbledon. When in hiding he frequented a house in Clerkenwell, near Saffron Hill, known as the "Old House in West Street", which was noted for its dark closets, trap-doors and sliding panels, and had often formed the asylum of Jonathan Wild and Jack Sheppard. All efforts to bring Abershaw to justice for a time proved futile, but in January 1795 he shot dead one of the constables sent to arrest him in Southwark, and attempted to shoot another. He was eventually arrested in London at a public house, The Three Brewers, in Southwark. For his crimes he was brought to trial at the Surrey assizes in July of the same year. Although a legal flaw in the indictment invalidated the case of murder against him, he was convicted and sentenced to death on the second charge of felonious shooting.

On Monday, 3 August 1795, Abershaw was hanged on Kennington Common; his body was afterwards set on a gallows on Putney Common — the last hanged highwayman's body to be so displayed.

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