We resort to a footnote in a Newgate Calendar edition for today’s interesting anecdote:

John Clarke was a watch-case maker, of good repute, in London. He had long been in the habit of occasionally working by himself in a closet; and his apprentice, jealous of the master’s being there employed on some work in which he would not instruct him, secretly bored a hole in the wainscot, through which he saw him filling guineas. He gave information, convicted, and brought his master to the gallows.

Clarke, for this offence, suffered at Tyburn, along with James Felton, an apprentice, on the 26th of November, 1766, who was the first offender convicted on the act which makes stealing bank-notes, &c. out of letters, a felony. It was proved that he stole a bank post-bill out of a letter at Mr. Eaton’s receiving-house, in Chancery Lane.

(There is no Ordinary’s Account for this date: installments of this venerable series were very sparse during the term of Joseph Moore, in the late 1760s. -ed.)

On this day..

• 1954: Jonas Žemaitis, Lithuanian Forest Brother
• 1736: James Matthews and Elizabeth Greenley
• 1936: Vladimir Mutnykh, Bolshoi director
• 2009: Hu Minghua and Su Binde, child abductors
• 1948: Hans Karl Möser, for rocketry
• 1933: Thomas Thurmond and John Holmes lynched in St. James Park
• 1678: William Staley, "the prologue to the bloody tragedy"
• 1937: Peljidiin Genden, former Mongolia Prime Minister
• Daily Double: Stalinism east to west
• 1940: Jilava Massacre
• 1600: Hansel Pappenheimer, following his family
• 1849: Sheikh Bouzian, defending Zaatcha
• 1919: Felipe Angeles