Roy Palmer, in his 'Folk Songs collected by Ralph Vaughan Williams ' of 1983 says, in the notes to The Captain's Apprentice, collected from Mr James Carter of King's Lynn Norfolk that a broadside had been recently discovered by Mike Yates in the St Bride Institute. This broadside dates from about 1800 and is entitled: A New Copy of Verses, Made on Captain Mills, now under confinement at Newgate, at Bristol, for the murder of Thomas Brown, his apprentice boy.
Mr Carter's version of the song is 7 verses long.RVW used the tune in several of his orchestral works.