I was reading an account of an 1822 trial and execution here and it included a poem that it referred to as the the "groans and lamentations" of the condemned. Was this common and who would have wrote this? (It seems unlikely that the prisoners did)

Oh pitying reader lend an ear,

Unto our lament:

It will make tears of sorrow fast

From every eye to vent

In Edinburgh Jail's dismal cell,

In heavy irons we lie,

The awful thoughts that we do feel,

Make us afraid to die.

Unhappy men, been well for us

That we had ne'er been born,

We might have 'sca'd a shameful death,

Nor from our families torn.

We took our captain's life away,

The poor steerman's likewise.

Their bloody forms are for ever

Straight before our eyes.

Their corpses we did heave o'erboard

Before life was extinct;

Hark! is not that the dying groan

That made our flesh to shrink.

O why did we to Satan listen,

Why not our minds control

What good can dollars do to us,

Alas! we've lost our souls.

Our wives and children we must leave

On the wide world to roam;

And every stranger passing by

Will say there is a murderer's son

May God on high our prayers receive,

And take mercy on our souls:

And when we on the Gallows hang,

May you take warning all.