On this date in 1777, crying out “Stand clear! Look to yourselves! I am the first hypocrite in Sion!”, a clerical schoolmaster was hanged at Tyburn for raping one of his charges.
Ann (or Anne) Mayne testified that the reverend had raped her when she was 9 and 10 years old (the girl was only 10 at the time of the trial). Russen ducked similar charges leveled by three other girls. Rachael Davis, for instance,
said, he lay upon her; but she did not declare, that he entered her body: I told the parties, that no one need be bound over, for it did not appear capital, as she did not say her body was entered.
Result: acquittal. (I’m sure you’ll feel good about entrusting your Bethnal-Green charity school child to Rev. Russen after that.)
Three acquittals out of four ain’t bad.
But it only took one conviction to hang him.
The Old Bailey Online record of Russen’s trial is full of dickering over penetration degrees, and of course, hymen breakage (or lack thereof).
According to thisTreatise of the Pleas of the Crown,* the judge in the Mayne case
left it to the jury whether any penetration were proved; for if there were any, however small, the rape was complete in law. The jury found him guilty, and he received judgment of death. But before the time of execution, the matter being much discussed, the learned Judge reported the case to the other judges for their opinions, whether his direction were proper. And upon a conference it was unanimously agreed … that the direction of the Judge was perfectly right. They held, that in such cases the least degree of penetration is sufficient, though it may not be attended with the deprivation of the marks of virginity. It was therefore properly left to the jury by the Judge, and accordingly the prisoner was executed.
* Part of Edward Hyde East’s project in this Treatise is to argue against a standard still used in some jurisdictions that ejaculation was required to constitute a rape. See Passion and Power: Sexuality in History.
On this date in 1812, Daniel Dawson “suffered the awful sentence of the law, at the top of Cambridge Castle, amidst a surrounding assemblage of at least twelve thousand spectators, it being market-day.”
The crowd was an appropriate ornament to the condign punishment of the most famous horse-poisoner in English history — and perhaps the most severely-punished sports cheat in all of modernity.
A tout scrabbling his living about the storied Newmarket tracks of Cambridge, Dawson killed the favorite for a high-profile race (and three other horses besides) by poisoning their trough, intending only to hamper the beasts enough to make good a variety of bookies’ bets against the fair Pirouette.
Although acquitted for that crime, Dawson was promptly returned to the dock for a previous, and previously unsolved, horse-poisoning, and convicted under a “black act” statute to punish livestock-killing.
According to the inevitable trial pamphlet, freely available from Google Books,
DAWSON behaved with a sullen and impudent levity during the trial, and he frequently abused the witnesses whilst giving their testimony, loud enough to be heard throughout the court … with horrid imprecations, ill becoming his unhappy situation, and at other times he was nodding at and saluting with his hand different persons in court. The verdict of GUILTY had not the slightest effect on him, and his general conduct was altogether depraved. On his return to the castle, his conduct, at times, bordered on insanity, and he appears too illiterate to feel a consciousness of wrong, although he has confessed his guilt to the full extent.
(Katherine Watson adds that although Pirouette’s owner sought a reprieve for the poisoner, Dawson “spoke bitterly of the hypocrisy of the Jockey Club, few of the members of which were above cheating.”)
On this date in 1725, John Gow and seven comrade raiders hanged for piracy.
Having mutinied to commandeer a merchant vessel in November 1724, Gow managed merely a three-month career of seaboard outlawry* in European waters before an ill-fated landward raid in his native Scotland saw the ship run aground.
Captured, Gow and confederates were hailed to London to stand trial, the captain delaying matters by refusing to plead before the threat of being pressed forced his hand. The inevitable sentence came off a little … unevenly. During the hanging,
[Gow’s] friends, anxious to put him out of his pain, pulled his legs so forcibly that the rope broke and he dropped down; on which he was again taken up to the gibbet, and when he was dead was hanged in chains on the banks of the Thames.
Apprenticed a shoemaker, Jack Ovet had a mind to be a gentleman and the enterprise to seek his fortune among the unguarded coaches of Stuart England’s highways. And he affected full rehearsal for his future social role with an arch mien of chivalry. When one of his victims cited him for cowardice, Ovet laid down his pistols and fought a duel with swords, slaying the burgher.
… there clearly were ‘Robin Hoods’ among the highwaymen, as well as individuals of refined sensibility and exquisite courtesy … The courtesy of highwaymen was shown in various ways: politeness to women, avoidance of pointing guns directly at victims, lack of thorough searches of passengers, even the return of favourite items of sentimental value.
Ovet went so far as to become genuinely besotten with a pretty young thing whose purse he relieved, rarely a wise move for a fellow living on his guile. He made bold to seduce his victim in a pseudonymous letter, thus:
MADAM,-These few lines are to acquaint you that though I lately had the cruelty to rob you of twenty guineas, yet you committed a greater robbery at the same time in robbing me of my heart; on which you may behold yourself enthroned, and all my faculties paying their homage to your unparalleled beauty. Therefore be pleased to propose but the method how I may win your belief, and were the way to it as deep as from hence to the centre, I will search it out. For by all my hopes, by all those rites that crown a happy union, by the rosy tincture of your checks, and by your all-subduing eyes, I prize you above all the world. Oh, then, my fair Venus, can you be afraid of Love? His brow is smooth, and his face beset with banks full of delight; about his neck hangs a chain of golden smiles. Let us taste the pleasures which Cupid commands, and for that unmerited favour I shall become another man, to make you happy. So requesting the small boon of a favourable answer to be sent me to Mr Walker’s, who keeps an ale-house at the sign of the Bell in Thornbury, in Gloucestershire, give me leave to subscribe myself your most humble servant to command for ever,
JOHN BURTON.
The lady remained resolutely unsmitten — and had a significantly more accurate forecast of her suitor’s future prospects than all that golden-smiles stuff:
SIR,-Yours I received with as great dissatisfaction as when you robbed me, and admire at your impudence of offering me yourself for a husband, when I am sensible ‘twould not be long ere you made me a hempen widow. Perhaps some foolish girl or another may be so bewitched as to go in white to beg the favour of marrying you under the gallows; but indeed I should venture neither there nor in a church to marry one of your profession, whose vows are treacherous, and whose smiles, words and actions, like small rivulets through a thousand turnings of loose passions, at last arrive to the dead sea of sin. Should you therefore dissolve your eyes into tears, was every accent a sigh in your speech, had you all the spells and magic charms of love, I should seal up my ears that I might not hear your dissimulation. You have already broken your word in not sending what you villainously took from me; but not valuing that, let me tell you, for fear you should have too great a conceit of yourself, that you are the first, to my remembrance, whom I ever hated; and sealing my hatred with the hopes of quickly reading your dying speech, in case you die in London, I presume to subscribe myself yours never to command,
D. C.
(Longtime readers may remember this piece briefly published last year on this date — a small snafu of the pre-publishing art.)
On this date in 1740, a “horrid parricide” was hanged for murdering his father.
No known connection to Polish metal band Parricide.
The neglected son of an attorney, Charles Drew needed no better provocation for shooting the old dog than his paramour’s remark, “I wish somebody would shoot the old dog.”
The specific provocation for the wish, and the deed, was the likelihood of being disinherited by dad should he make an honest woman of Miss Elizabeth Boyer.
Chas attempted to deflect attention by posting a reward for information, finding to his consternation that said reward quickly triggered the arrest of a man to whom he had actually confided about the crime.
This gave Drew great uneasiness; he took the utmost pains to suppress all farther informations, and even to destroy the credibility of those already made. He publicly declared that Humphreys was not the man who shot his father, and threatened to prosecute the officer who apprehended him.
Their correspondence eventually (by way of a nosy attorney) betrayed young Charles, who upon exposure “seemed not to have a proper sense of the enormity of the crime of which he had been guilty, and would have attributed it to his father’s ill treatment of him.”
Lacking therefore the connivance of the criminal himself in explicating the moral lesson (“don’t kill dad”), the Newgate Calendar clears its editorial voice to expand upon the indignity of Drew’s hanging* this date in 1740.
The crime of murder is in itself so horrid, that it requires no aggravation; but that of parricide is of the worst species of murder. The destruction of those from whom, under God, we have immediately derived our being, has something in it so shocking to humanity, that one would think it impossible it should ever be committed.
By the Lex Pompeia of the Romans parricides were ordained to be put into a sack, with a dog, a cock, a viper, and an ape, and thrown into the sea, thus to perish by the most cruel of all tortures. The Egyptians also put such delinquents to death in the most horrible manner. They gradually mangled their body and limbs, and, when almost every limb was dislocated or broken, they placed the criminal, writhing and screeching with pain, upon thorns, where he was burnt alive! In China impiety to parents was considered a crime similar in atrocity to treason and rebellion, for which criminals were sentenced to be cut in ten thousand pieces! By the ancient Jewish law it was also death for children to curse or strike their parents: in fine, every nation punished the parricide in the most exemplary manner.
* Drew “seemed to part with life with evident signs of reluctance.”
On this date in 1739, famed desperado Richard “Dick” Turpin rode through York on an open cart, saluting his admirers, then sat upon his gallows at the York raceway for half an hour, chatting with spectators and executioners, until he “with undaunted courage looked about him, and after speaking a few words to the topsman, he threw himself off the ladder and expired in about five minutes.”
Turpin was the ultimus Romanorum, the last of a race, which (we were almost about to say, we regret) is now altogether extinct. Several successors he had, it is true, but no name worthy to be recorded after his own. With him expired the chivalrous spirit which animated successively the bosoms of so many knights of the road; with him died away that passionate love of enterprise, that high spirit of devotion to the fair sex, which was first breathed upon the highway by the gay, gallant Claude Du-Val, the Bayard of the road — le filou sans peur et sans reproche — but which was extinguished at last by the cord that tied the heroic Turpin to the remorseless tree…
Turpin, like the setting sun, threw up some parting rays of glory, and tinged the far highways with a lustre that may yet be traced like a cloud of dust raised by his horse’s retreating heels.
The “knight of the road”, one understands, is an artifice — a romantic construct. One name to bear its lustre to the present may be as good as another. Even so, in Dick Turpin, it has an exponent who boreveryscant resemblance to the archetype … save for celebrity.
Turpin washed out of his apprenticed career as a butcher and took to the road, where he joined the “Essex Gang”. Far from dashing post-road stickups, this troupe specialized in invading domiciles where they would torture women into revealing the household stashes of valuables.
The Newgate Calendar captions this image, “Dick Turpin placing an old woman on the fire, to compel the discovry [sic] of her treasure”
Turpin’s highwayman career commenced when the gang was busted — our principal leaping out a window to evade capture — and he had a profitable couple of years plundering the traffic around Epping Forest.
Many are the colorful tales of Turpin’s career; the one of most moment for his legacy may be this chance encounter with a fellow outlaw, as related in the Newgate Calendar.
On a journey towards Cambridge, he met a man genteelly dressed, and well mounted: and expecting a good booty, he presented a pistol to the supposed gentleman, and demanded his money. The party thus stopped happened to be one King, a famous highwayman, who knew Turpin; and when the latter threatened destruction if he did not deliver his money, King burst into a fit of laughter, and said, “What, dog eat dog? — Come, come, brother Turpin; if you don’t know me, I know you, and shall be glad of your company.”
The well-mannered Tom King — “the gentleman highwayman” — seems to have had his courteous mien conjoined in legend with his much more villainous partner’s prolific career.
Nor is King the only fellow-outlaw whose exploits Turpin has absorbed.
Our anti-hero’s days pillaging the environs of London came to an end in an escapade that saw Turpin shoot his accomplice while trying to rescue him — a klutzy critical miss not usually associated with the swashbuckling rogue character kit. The dying King is supposed to have repaid this bit of friendly fire by revealing to the authorities the pair’s Epping Forest hideouts.
Escaping capture once again, Turpin changed his address, and it is said that the highwayman shed his pursuers with a marvelous 200-mile ride north to Yorkshire in 15 hours.
This feat was not Turpin’s originally, but ascribed to the 17th-century robber John “Swift Nick” Nevison, although even that might be folklore.
Ainsworth, bless his heart, fabricated (pdf) the Turpin ride in the interest of his yarn — “they were distancing Time’s swift chariot in its whirling passage o’er the earth … [Turpin] rode like one insane, and his courser partook of his frenzy. She bounded; she leaped; she tore up the ground beneath her; while Dick gave vent to his exultation in one wild prolonged halloo.” (Picturesquely, he rides his famous steed Black Bess to death on the trip.)
The story has been fixed ever since in the firmament, and licenses every pub along the route to claim Turpin’s patronage.
His end, if not heroic, was certainly attention-grabbing. Turpin settled in Yorkshire under the alias “John Palmer” and passed as a gentleman farmer … with a larcenous side business rustling stock.
His career, in a sense, had come full circle: ’twas a youthful cost-cutting practice of abducting animals that had put the kibosh on his legitimate butcher’s business.
His cover was blown most ingloriously, when he was detained as a possible horse thief and sent a pseudonymous letter to his brother in London asking for help. The brother was too cheap to pay the postage due, so the letter returned to the post office where Turpin’s schoolmaster chanced to see writing in a hand he recognized, and journeyed to York to identify the wanted man and pocket the reward.
So it was not housebreaking, highway heists, or his homicide that hung Turpin, but horse-rustling … although Turpin’s celebrity career attracted curiosity-seekers from far and wide when word of his capture got out. Whatever Ainsworth may have made of Turpin, he did not fabricate the man’s fame; Dick Turpin earned his own ballad sheets and made his own legend possible playing the man at his death.
This man lived in the most gay and thoughtless manner after conviction, regardless of all considerations of futurity, and affecting to make a jest of the dreadful fate that awaited him.
Not many days before his execution, he purchased a new fustian frock and a pair of pumps, in order to wear them at the time of his death: and, on the day before, he hired five poor men, at ten shillings each, to follow the cart as mourners: and he gave hatbands and gloves to several other persons: and he also left a ring, and some other articles, to a married woman in Lincolnshire, with whom he had been acquainted.
On the morning of his death he was put into a cart, and being followed by his mourners, as above-mentioned, he was drawn to the place of execution, in his way to which he bowed to the spectators with an air of the most astonishing indifference and intrepidity.
When he came to the fatal tree, he ascended the ladder; when his right leg trembling, he stamped it down with an air of assumed courage, as if he was ashamed of discovering any signs of fear, Having conversed with the executioner about half an hour, he threw himself off the ladder, and expired in a few minutes.
The spectators of the execution were affected at his fate, as he was distinguished by the comeliness of his appearance … The grave was dug remarkably deep, but notwithstanding the people who acted as mourners took such measures as they thought would secure the body: it was carried off about three o’clock on the following morning; the populace, however, got intimation whither it was conveyed, and found it in a garden belonging to one of the surgeons of the city.
Having got possession of it they laid it on a board, and carried it through the streets in a kind of triumphal manner, they then filled the coffin with unslacked lime, and buried it in the grave where it had been before deposited.
On this date in 1722, Arundel Cooke and John Woodburne were hanged at Bury St. Edmunds, curiously becoming the first victims [edit: or maybe not] of a law of unintended consequences.
This duo’s path to the gallows begins years before their births, when Stuart Restoration parliamentarian John Coventry trod on the royal toes and was in consequence beaten up by some of Monmouth‘s goons.
By this statute it is enacted that if any person shall of malice aforethought, and by laying in wait, unlawfully cut or disable the tongue, put out an eye, slit the nose, cut off the nose or lip, or cut off or disable any limb or member of any other person, with intent to maim or disfigure him, such person, his counsellors, aiders and abettors, shall be guilty of felony, without benefit of clergy.
“Previous to the passing,” claims The Newgate Calendar, “it was customary for revengeful men to waylay another and cut and maim him, so that though he did not die of such wounds he might remain a cripple during the remainder of life, and such case was not then a capital offence. It was also a dangerous practice resorted to by thieves, who would often cut the sinews of men’s legs, called ham-stringing, in order to prevent their escape from being robbed.”
Sounds like an interesting time. One may well wonder how very customary this practice was, with the half-century lapse before the law found its first prey.
Cooke and Woodburne, for that matter, did not commit the sort of crime that long-ago parliament had had in mind.
Cooke, a well-off barrister, desired to secure for himself the sizable estate to which he was married, and hired working stiff John Woodburne to bump off his brother-in-law, on Christmas evening no less. The would-be assassin jumped him in a churchyard and
knocked down the unhappy man, and cut and maimed him in a terrible manner, in which he was abetted by the counsellor [Cooke].
Imagining they had dispatched him, Mr Cooke rewarded Woodburne with a few shillings and instantly went home; but he had not arrived more than a quarter of an hour before [the victim] knocked at the door, and entered, covered with wounds, and almost dead through loss of blood. He was unable to speak, but by his looks seemed to accuse Cooke with the intended murder, and was then put to bed and his wounds dressed by a surgeon. At the end of about a week he was so much mended that he was removed to his own house.
The perps were easily discovered, and having maimed the intended victim, appeared to fall within the compass of the Coventry Act.
But had they really committed a hanging offense? The defendant put his professional legal training to use.
[Cooke] urged that judgment could not pass on the verdict, because the Act of Parliament simply mentions an intention to maim or deface, whereas he was firmly resolved to have committed murder.
That’s a defense you don’t hear every day. Evidently, the court wanted to keep it that way.
Lord Chief Justice King, who presided on this occasion, declared he could not admit the force of Mr Cooke’s plea, consistent with his own oath as a judge — “For,” said he, “it would establish a principle in the law inconsistent with the first dictates of natural reason, as the greatest villain might, when convicted of a smaller offence, plead that the judgment must be arrested because he intended to commit a greater. In the present instance judgment cannot be arrested, as the intention is naturally implied when the crime is actually committed.”
Cooke’s university education and oleaginous lawyering did, however, enable him to make a successful request to be hanged before dawn on his scheduled day of execution, so as not to be exposed to the rude opprobrium of the commoners. John Woodburne (whether due to class position or the value he put on his last hours of life, the text does not inform us) was not extended the same courtesy, and swung later that day in full public view.
On this date in 1761, Swiss-born portrait miniaturist Theodore Gardelle was hanged for murdering his landlady.
“We have to lament,” begins our guide, “that the woman might not have met her death at his hands, had she allotted some discretion to the limits of her tongue — a weapon, we may call it, often goading a man to a frenzy of the mind, ending in horror.”
[Gardelle] was born at Geneva, a city which is famed for giving birth to great men, in both the arts and sciences. He chose the miniature style of painting, and having acquired its first rudiments, went to Paris, where he made great proficiency in the art. He then returned to his native place, and practised his profession for some years, with credit and emolument; but, being unhappy in his domestic concerns, he repaired to London, and took lodgings at Mrs. King’s, in Leicester-fields, in the year 1760.
Gardelle’s version of the crime — long story short — is that he got into a tiff with said landlady, who stumbled when he shoved her and thereby fatally struck her head on the bedstead.
Panicked, Gardelle hid the body and began disposing of it in pieces over the succeeding week, until the ongoing dismemberment was quite accidentally discovered by the almost terminally incurious servants.
One reflection, upon reading this dreadful narrative, will probably rise in the mind of the attentive reader; the advantages of virtue with respect to our social connections, and the interest that others take in what befalls us. It does not appear that, during all the time Mrs. King was missing, she was enquired after by one relation or friend; the murder was discovered by strangers, almost without solicitude or enquiry; the murderer was secured by strangers, and by strangers the prosecution against him was carried on.
But who is there of honest reputation, however poor, that could be missing a day, without becoming the subject of many interesting enquiries, without exciting solicitude and fears, that would have no rest till the truth was discovered, and the crime punished?
Theodore Gardelle didn’t have the luxury of being so philosophical about it — but “was executed amidst the shouts and hisses of an indignant populace, in the Haymarket, near Panton Street, to which he was led by Mrs. King’s house, where the cart made a stop, and at which he just gave a look. His body was hanged in chains upon Hounslow-heath.”
THIS fellow was the youngest of five brothers, who were all born at Blandford, in Dorsetshire. The other four were all hanged in the country, but Jack had the good fortune to be reserved for Tyburn, and by that means to have his name transmitted to posterity. He was bound to a tanner in Shaftesbury, a town in his native county, with whom he served about three years. Then he entered into the Earl of Oxford’s Regiment of Horse, in which, when Monmouth‘s rebellion was suppressed in the West of England, he came up to London, where he soon met with opportunities of discovering his valour to the world. These occasions were two quarrels in which he was engaged: the first with a man famous for fighting, against whom he behaved with so much bravery and skill that it won him a vast reputation; the second with a person of great estate, but a noted coward, when he showed himself a gentleman by his adherence to the point of honour and good breeding. By these duels he won abundance of applause, so as thereby to contract a familiarity with all the greatest fighting men of the time, especially those in his own regiment. Withrington however carried his manhood so far as to get himself turned out of the regiment within a year after, for challenging his captain. He then became a perfect bully and gamester; and, being fortunate, in a little time by these means saw himself master of a considerable sum of money. Notwithstanding all this good luck at first, he found himself afterwards subject to the fate of gamesters —- viz. to be frequently without money in spite of his large winnings. This brought him at last to consider the uncertainty of Fortune and endeavour to make himself master of her, by supplying with fraud what he might want in plain open skill. But this also did not continue long; for everyone began to be aware of him as a common sharper, and none who knew him would venture to play with him.
In the common scale of knavery the next step above a sharper is a downright thief. Withrington made bold to ascend this degree, and was resolved to take the most honourable station thereon, that of a highwayman. He had money enough to buy him a good horse and accoutrements, so that the resolution and the real attempt were not long asunder. His first adventure was with a farmer, from whom he took forty pounds, giving him in return only an impudent harangue, occasioned by the countryman’s reproaching him with the robbery.
The next that fell in Withrington’s way was Mr Edward Clark, gentleman usher to the Duchess of Mazarin. They met in Devonshire, on the road between Chudleigh and Ashburton. Mr Clark made some resistance, so that in the scuffle Withrington’s mask fell off and discovered his face, which Mr Clark knowing, he called him by his name, and said he hoped he would not rob an old acquaintance. “Indeed I shall, sir,” quoth Withrington, “for you get your money much easier than I do, who am forced to venture my life for a maintenance; you have so much a year for eating, drinking and entertaining your lady with scandal and nonsense. What I shall take from you will do you little harm; it is only putting a higher price upon half-a-score reputations, which you know how to do as well as any coxcomb in England. Ladies never let such faithful servants go unrewarded, nor will yours suffer your loss to fall on yourself.” He got about eight guineas out of this gentleman’s pocket, and for old acquaintance sake bade him “Good-b’w’ye” very heartily.
Withrington’s robberies in less than a year and a half were talked of almost all over the kingdom. But alas! he met with a diversion, common to mankind, that draws even the most stupid into the rank of polite persons. The poor man was in love; and with whom but a rich widow inn-keeper in Bristol! Farewell to the highway: Withrington has another scent to pursue. No more robberies to be thought of from a man who was himself robbed of his heart! He employed an old bawd in the affair, who was intimately acquainted with our hostess, and by this flesh-broker’s mediation things had like to have come to an issue, and Jack to have been master of the Swan Inn. In short, there was nothing prevented it but the accidental coming of a certain gentleman, who knew our highwayman, and informed his mistress what he was. The effects of this discovery were Jack’s being kicked out of doors by the ostler and chamberlain, and the commitment of madam the negotiatress to Bridewell, in order to mill Dolly.
After his return to the highway he and one of his companions met with Mr Thompson, a noted tailor, in a part of Hertfordshire that was convenient for robbing. They took from him about thirty pounds in silver, and then, dismounting him, they ordered him to stay where he was till they brought him more company. As soon as they were gone from him he remounted his horse and attempted to ride off as fast as he could; but our highwaymen perceiving what he was at, and having the best horses, they fetched him back, and mistrusting he had more money, by his being in so much haste, they searched him afresh, he protesting all the while that he had not so much as a farthing left if it were to save his soul. In a literal sense he might be right; but they made a shift to find forty guineas, which they thought better than farthings. Withrington upon this exclaimed that it was a sad thing that one Christian could not believe another! They then shot his horse, to put a stop to his speed, and so rode away and left him.
[T]ravelling the road, he met a rich farmer, from whom he took £40. Quoth he, Is not this a downright robbery? Roberry? replied Withrington; So let it be; who is there now-a-days does not rob? The tailor steals before his customer’s face; the weaver steals by eking out the length of a piece of cloth with the remainder of broken ends; the surgeon steals by prolonging a cure; the apothecary steals with a quid pro quo, using one drug for another for cheapness, without any regard to the age and constitution of the patient; the merchant steals by putting his money into the Bank of England; the scrivener steals by selling the soul of a poor man for the money that he can take of a forfeit; the grocer steals by using false weights; the vintner steals by adulterating his wine; the butcher steals by blowing up his meat; the victualler steals by drawing in short measures; the cook steals by roasting his meat twice over; the baker steals by raising his bread when there’s no occasion; and the shoe-maker steals by stretching his leather as much as he does his conscience. Thus, as there is cheating and cozening in all trades but mine, you cannot blame me for borrowing this small trifle; which I shall honestly pay you when we meet again; so till then, farewell.
And a bit of, er, gallantry.
Another time Jack Withrington meeting a gentleman and his wife on the road betwixt St. Albans and Dunstable, he very submissively craved their benevolence; but they not instantly granting his request, he shot the horse on which they both rode, and swore that as he denied him his money, he would take his wife. So forcing her into an adjacent copse, and acting a man’s part by her, he restored her to her husband again, from whom taking eleven or twelve guineas he said, This is no more than my due for I am not obliged to do your drudgery for nothing.
Rape and repartee! Dreamy.
But we know where this is heading.
The last robbery Withrington committed was alone. He stopped a nobleman on Hounslow Heath attended by two footmen. There was a short dispute, but Withrington having the best of it, he took a portmanteau in which were two hundred and eighty guineas, sixty pounds in silver, and a parcel of fine linen. A hue and cry was soon issued out after him, and he was apprehended by means of it at Malmesbury, in Wiltshire, from whence he was removed to London, where he was condemned for this fact.
The sentence of death seemed to have no effect on his temper, for he was as gay and humorous under that circumstance as ever he had been before. When he was riding up Holborn Hill he ordered the cart to stop, and calling up the Sheriff’s deputy, “Sir,” said he, “I owe a small matter at the Three Cups, a little farther on, for which I am afraid of being arrested as I go by the door; therefore I shall be much obliged to you if you will be pleased to carry me down Shoe Lane and bring me up Drury Lane again into the road by which I am to travel this devilish long journey.” The deputy informed him that if such a mischance should happen he should come to no damage. “For,” says he, “I’ll be bail for you myself, rather than you shall go back to prison again.” “Thank you heartily, sir,” quoth Jack; “I protest I could not have thought that I had a friend in the world who would have stood by me so in such a time of need.” After this he rode very contentedly to the place of execution, where he was tucked up with as little ceremony as usual. This fatal day was Wednesday, the 1st of April, in the year 1691.
Though far less concerned with journalistic precision than with sermonizing — and, in their totality, largely repetitive templates of lurid voyeurism and moralistic hypocrisy — the stories can make colorful reads on their own.
Here is a harvest of halter-bound harlots, highwaymen, and housebreakers — another age’s criminal element, now long forgotten. (Only one of this series’ entrants would be recognizable today to one Englishman or -woman in a thousand.)
But the exploits of these petty criminals, scrabbling in a small corner of a world being violently reshaped by conquest, extermination and slavery — and the occasional catastrophic economic bubble — have a familiar feel. Ever is it thus.
Little Villains must submit to Fate,
That great Ones may enjoy the World in State.
And given a little latitude for time and place, even the particulars ring true.
This vichyssois of underclass bawd, middle-class anxiety, clerical flimflammery, popular legend, human foible and yellow journalism hustle could as well have been ripped from any evening’s cable news outrage du jour or any supermarket tabloid’s shrieking banner. The annals of Newgate compellingly meet this blog’s search for the scaffold’s part in the timeless human tragicomedy.
Gardelle’s version of the crime —