Death By Velvet

Death By Velvet

Capital punishment was freely administered in eighteenth-century England.

SARAH PETERS, a friend of John Wesley’s who shared his commitment to evangelism, felt a burden for the prisoners in London’s Newgate Prison—especially those on death row. On October 9, 1748, she and a Christian friend went to see a prisoner named John Lancaster, who had requested a visit from them. They met that day in Lancaster’s cell along with six or seven others also sentenced to death. As they sang a hymn together, read some Scripture, and prayed, the prisoners were in tears, convicted of their need for God. Lancaster told her how at one time he had attended church daily but then had drifted away. He became friends with a young man who was a thief, and they had become partners in crime. Now he was in prison, sentenced to death for breaking into a home and stealing nineteen yards of velvet.

This experience made Sarah Peters determined to do whatever she could for these men in their final days. Sometimes alone and sometimes with one or two others, Sarah visited these men almost daily as their execution dates approached. Deciding that it would be helpful to meet with each condemned prisoner individually to inquire about his spiritual condition, Sarah and her companions met first with John Lancaster. He lifted his eyes and his hands and after a moment said, “I thank God I do feel that he has forgiven me my sins. I do know it.” They asked him how and when he first knew. He answered, “I was in great fear and heaviness till the very first morning you came hither first. That morning I was in earnest prayer, and just as St. Paul’s clock struck five, the Lord poured into my soul such peace as I had never felt, so that I was scarce able to bear it. From that hour I have never been afraid to die. For I know, and am sure, as soon as my soul departs from the body, the Lord Jesus will stand ready to carry it into glory.”

Six others told similar stories of how in the last days they had put their faith in Christ through the ministry of Sarah Peters.

The night before their execution they wanted to pray with Sarah one more time. She went to the prison at 10:00 P.M. but was not allowed to enter. The jailer did, however, allow six of the condemned men to spend their last night together in prayer in one cell.

At 6:00 A.M. the next morning Sarah Peters was admitted to the prison. As the cell was opened, the six men were rejoicing about their happy night of fellowship. John Lancaster was the first to be called out to have his leg irons removed. As the guard pounded off the irons, Lancaster exclaimed, “Blessed be the day I came into this place! O what a glorious work hath the Lord carried on in my soul since I came hither!”

When the guards led the prisoners into the prison yard to go to the execution site, Lancaster saw faithful Sarah, kissed her, and said, “I am going to paradise today. And you will follow me soon.”

As the men were getting into the cart that would carry them to their execution, Lancaster said to his fellow prisoners, “Come, my dear friends, let us go joyfully, for the Lord is making ready to receive us into everlasting habitations.”

John Lancaster and his friends were executed on October 28, 1748. Two days later Sarah fell ill with a fever. Her work with the prisoners completed, she contentedly praised God from her sickbed. Less than three weeks later Sarah Peters followed the prisoners to the “everlasting habitations.”

Reflection

God used Sarah’s compassion in ways she might never have imagined. Do you think that God can use you in ways you have never imagined? Always be open to the opportunities God places before you, and allow him to use you in new ways—his ways.

Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For . . . I was in prison, and you visited me.

Matthew 25:34-36