Jewish murder mystery

Jonathan Edelstein has waded through the accounts of the minister assigned to preach to the condemned at Newgate Prison in the mid-18th century (newly online), and come up with the absolutely fascinating case of one Hosea Youell, who was convicted of stabbing a man to death during a mugging and was sentenced to hang on October 14, 1747.
Youell gave himself up to the authorities three days after the incident, explaining that he wanted

to clear himself, being ask'd of what, he began his Tale, told them he was a Jew, and that he was so often charg'd with being guilty of Robbing and Stabbing the Gentleman near Bishopsgate, that he could bear it no longer, and was come resolv'd to prove the Accusation false.

Bad decision. Unfortunately, the victim of the stabbing was at this point still alive. After a dramatic reconstruction of the crime, he identified Youell as the culprit and promptly died.
According to the minister's account of Youell's last days as he awaited execution,

He was very ignorant and illiterate, not being able to read English, nor the Jewish, or Hebrew Language, so as to understand it, nor yet to write. Religion of all Kinds, even the Jewish, he was an utter Stranger to, and had no more to say about it, but that he loved to hear the Name of God. When I offered to lay before him the happy and glorious Advantages of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, how many and how superior to all the Mosaic Dispensation, had Title to; he said he had heard of such Things, but having been a Jew by Birth, and bred that Way, he would live and die such.

"So it was that on November 16, 1747," writes Edelstein in his elegant retelling, "Youell was taken to Tyburn. Unlike the other three men hanged that day, who had "receiv'd the Sacrament in the Morning," Youell "was attended by a Person, who in the Jewish Manner and Language read Service to him for some Time." Still maintaining his innocence, and still holding fast to a faith he barely knew, Hosea Youell met his end."

Read the full crime story here.