notice to Mr. Dalton of the affair in hand. During the space of time I
allotted myself for dinner, I again called on Mr. Gudgeon, and told him
that I would keep the watch, provided he should receive the payment by
instalments, as I could not afford to pay the whole price at once. I
therefore proposed to give him the ensuing Saturday one or two guineas,
as I should find most convenient, and to pay him half-a-guinea a week
afterwards, until the whole was liquidated. To this he readily agreed,
and, having fitted a key to the watch, he begged leave to show me some
chains and seals. Of the former he had none but gilt ones: I selected
one of the neatest, and a handsome gold seal. I then desired to have a
bill of parcels of the whole, observing that, whenever I paid a sum upon
account, Mr. Gudgeon could make a memorandum of it at the bottom by way
of receipt. Having obtained this, I departed, promising to be punctual
in paying my first instalment on the day appointed. This took place on
Tuesday, the portmanteau being now on its way to London; and the same
evening I quitted my lodgings privately, leaving nothing behind but a
trunk, containing brick-bats and stones, and walked by moonlight to a
village four miles distant, through which the stage-coach was to pass
next morning at seven o'clock. I procured some supper at a decent
public-house, and retired to rest, desiring to be called in time for the
coach. At the expected hour the stage made its appearance, in which I
seated myself, and about eight the same evening arrived at the Blue
Boar, just two hours after the waggon, which I perceived standing in the
yard."
He received the portmanteau with little difficulty, and having disposed
of its contents in various ways, lived upon the produce for five or six
weeks, at the termination of which he thought it right to look out for a
new situation. He found one in the office of Mr. Preston, solicitor; and
with the imprudence of dishonest persons, entered upon it, though the
office was next door to Dalton and Edwards, who had sent him down to
Bury St. Edmund's. He was soon recognised by a clerk of Messrs. Dalton
and Edwards, and, being called into the parlour by Mr. Preston one
morning, he was surprised at seeing his late master, who snatched the
watch out of his fob, and promised to restore it to the owner. Vaux was
then taken into custody; but a friend of his grandfather having come
forward, and indemnified Mr. Dalton for his loss, he was suffered to go
at large, on a promise that he would quit London, where he was likely to
come to disgrace and infamy, and endeavour to obtain employment in the
country.
The country had no charms for him, however, and he set about procuring a
situation in some retail shop in town, for the sole purpose of
embezzling the receipts. In consequence of an advertisement in a
newspaper, he applied to a Mr. Gifford, the keeper of a masquerade
warehouse, and there he obtained employment upon a forged representation
of his good character. He did not fail at this place in collecting a
good booty, and having at length, by means of stealing goods from the
shop, and embezzling money which he had received on his master's
account, secured about sixty pounds' worth of property, he suddenly
absconded and commenced a round of dissipation and gaiety. He had been
at large scarcely a fortnight, however, before he was taken into custody
at the instance of his late master, and upon his prosecution was
committed to the quarter sessions, but there his good fortune aided him,
and in consequence of some informality in the proceedings, he was
acquitted.
Upon a second appearance at the same bar he was not quite so successful;
and it appears that having been detected in the act of picking pockets
with a companion named Bromley, they were both secured, and having been
convicted, they were on the 23rd September, 1800, sentenced to seven
years' transportation. Vaux was sent to Port Jackson in the following
May, and there he was assigned to a Mr. Baker, a storekeeper at
Hawkesbury, about twenty-six miles from Paramatta, who appointed him his
clerk. In consequence of his good conduct during the ensuing three
years, he was promoted to a place in the secretary's office, in Sydney,
but there, conspiring with his fellows, in the commission of various
frauds, he was discovered and sentenced to be worked in a road-gang.
During two months he continued in Sydney in this degraded condition, but
then he was drafted to Castle Hill, a plantation twenty-four miles in
the interior, and there, after about ten months' service, he was
appointed clerk to the superintendant of the works. Having subsequently
served the office of clerk to the magistrates at Paramatta, he at
length, on the 10th February, 1807, returned to England. There he found
a woeful change had taken place, his father and his grandmother being
dead; and all served to remind him of the sinful course of life he had
led, and of his fallen condition. All his resolutions against returning
to a dishonest mode of living were however unavailing, and at length he
became a professed and a professional thief. In order the better to
carry on his new trade, he associated himself with some fellows of
dissolute habits, but at length meeting with his old friend Bromley, he
resolved to quit his new companions and to pursue his avocation with one
accomplice only.
In reference to his future proceedings he says, "Having withdrawn myself
from my late companions, I now became very circumspect in my
proceedings; and as Bromley had neither the appearance nor the manners
of a gentleman, I only made use of him occasionally in the course of my
practice, keeping him in the back-ground to receive and carry any
articles which I purloined, and never suffering him to converse with or
approach me, except in private. I generally spent the mornings, that is
from about one to five o'clock P.M. (which are the fashionable hours for
shopping) in visiting the shops of jewellers, watchmakers, pawnbrokers,
&c. Having conceived hopes that this species of robbery would turn to a
good account, and depending upon my own address and appearance, I
determined to make a circuit of the town, and not to omit a single shop
in either of those branches; and this scheme I actually executed so
fully, that I believe I did not leave ten shops untried in all London,
for I made a point of commencing every day in a certain street, and
going regularly through it on both sides of the way. My practice was to
enter a shop and request to look at gold seals, chains, brooches, rings,
or any other small articles of value; and, while examining them, and
looking the shopkeeper in the face, I contrived by sleight of hand to
conceal two or three (sometimes more) in the sleeve of my coat, which
was purposely made wide. On some occasions I purchased a trifling
article to save appearances; at other times I took a card of the shop,
promising to call again; and, as I generally saw the remaining goods
returned to the window, or place from whence they were taken, before I
left the shop, there was hardly a probability of my being suspected, or
of the property being missed. In the course of my career I was never
once detected in the fact, though, on two or three occasions so much
suspicion arose, that I was obliged to exert all my effrontery and to
use very high language, in order, as the cant phrase is, to _bounce_ the
tradesman _out of it_; and my fashionable appearance, and affected anger
at his insinuations, had always the effect of convincing him that he was
mistaken, and inducing him to apologise for the affront put upon me. I
have even sometimes carried away the spoil notwithstanding what had
passed; and I have often gone a second and third time to the same shop,
with as good success as at the first. To prevent accidents, however, I
made it a rule never to enter a second shop with any stolen property
about me; for, as soon as I quitted the first, I privately conveyed my
booty to Bromley, who was attending my motions in the street, and herein
I found him eminently useful. By this course of depredation I acquired
on the average about ten pounds a week, though I sometimes neglected
shopping for several days together. This was not, indeed, the only
pursuit I followed, but was my principal morning's occupation; though,
if a favourable opportunity offered of getting a guinea by any other
means, I never let it slip. In the evenings I generally attended one of
the theatres, where I mixed with the best company in the boxes, and, at
the same time that I enjoyed the amusements of the place, I frequently
conveyed pocket-books, snuff-boxes, and other portable articles, from
the pockets of their proprietors into my own. Here I found the
inconvenience of wanting a suitable companion, who might have received
the articles I made prize of, in the same manner as Bromley did in the
streets; but though I knew many of the light-fingered gentry, whose
appearance fitted them for my company, yet, their faces being well known
to the police-officers, who attended the theatres, they would not have
been suffered to enter the house: and herein I possessed an advantage
which many of these gentry envied me; for being just arrived in England,
and a new face upon the town, I carried on my depredations under the
very noses of the officers without suspicion. Having, therefore, at
first no associate, I was obliged to quit the theatre, and conceal my
first booty in some private spot, before I could make (with prudence) a
second attempt. Upon the whole, I was very successful in this pursuit
also, at least as to the _number_ of articles I filched; and had their
_value_ been reasonably proportionate to what I expected, I need not
long have followed so hazardous an employment. I have very frequently
obtained nine or ten pocket-books, besides other articles in an evening;
and, these being taken from gentlemen evidently of fortune and fashion,
I had reason to expect I should some time meet with a handsome sum in
bank-notes: but fortune did not favour me therein, for, during near
twelve months' almost nightly attendance at one or other of the public
places, I never found more than twenty pounds in a book, and that only
on one occasion. I several times got five, ten, or eleven pounds, but
commonly one, two, or three pounds; and most generally four books out of
five contained nothing but letters, memorandums, and other papers
useless to me. At the same time I knew frequent instances of the common
street pickpockets getting a booty of fifty, one hundred, and sometimes
three or four hundred pounds. However, I never failed to pay the
expenses of the night; and if I gained nothing, I enjoyed at least a
fund of amusement, which was to me the highest gratification. It
sometimes happened that the articles I got (particularly pocket-books)
were advertised by the losers, within a few days, as "Lost," and a
reward offered for their restoration: where this reward was worth
notice, I frequently restored the property by means of a third person
whom I could confide in, and whom I previously tutored for the purpose.
"In the mean time, the manner in which I spent my life, abstracted from
the disgraceful means by which I supported myself, was (as I have
formerly hinted) perfectly regular and inoffensive. Though I lived by
depredation, yet I did not, like the abandoned class of common thieves,
waste my money and leisure time in profligate debauchery, but applied
myself to the perusal of instructive and amusing books, my stock of
which I daily increased. I occupied genteel apartments in a creditable
house, the landlord of which understood me to hold a situation under
government; and every part of my conduct at home tended to confirm his
opinion of my respectability. I was scrupulously exact in paying my
rent, as well as the different tradesmen in the neighbourhood with whom
I had occasion to deal; nor did I ever suffer any person of loose
character to visit me, but studiously concealed from those of my
acquaintance my place of residence. I was sometimes, indeed, so
imprudent as to resort, for company's sake, to some of those
public-houses frequented by thieves and other dissolute characters, the
landlord of which is himself commonly an experienced thief, or returned
transport. When I had a mind to relax a little, or grew tired of
domestication, I disguised my appearance as much as I could, and
repaired to a house of this description, sometimes taking my Dulcinea
with me, whom I shall shortly introduce to the reader, and whose person
and dress I was not a little proud of exhibiting in public. This
fondness for flash-houses, as they are termed, is the rock on which most
persons who live by depredation unhappily split, and will be found in
the sequel to have brought me to my present deplorable condition; for
the police-officers, or traps, are in the daily habit of visiting these
houses, where they drink with the thieves, &c., in the most familiar
manner; and, I believe, often obtain secret information by various means
from some parties respecting the names, characters, pursuits, &c., of
others. By this imprudent conduct I also became personally known to many
of the officers, which was productive of great danger to me in the
exercise of my vocation; whereas, had I avoided such houses, I might
have remained unknown and unsuspected by them for a series of years."
The Dulcinea alluded to above was an unhappy girl of the town, whom he
took into keeping, and afterwards married. This poor creature behaved to
him in the most exemplary manner, and proved by her conduct that she was
worthy of a better fate.
Going one day to a public meeting at the Mermaid Tavern, Hackney, he
picked a gentleman's pocket of a silver snuff-box, which he handed to
the landlady. The box was missed by the owner, and on Vaux claiming it,
he was taken into custody; but such is the glorious uncertainty of the
law, that he was acquitted on his trial, contrary to his own
expectation.
"The next adventure," says Vaux, "I shall have occasion to relate, more
fully confirms the justice of the remark, that the connexions formed by
persons during temporary confinement in a gaol commonly lead to further
acts of wickedness, and frequently entail on the parties a more severe
[Illustration: _The Flash Ken._
_P. 486_]
punishment than that which they have just escaped. This was exactly my
unhappy case, and I now come to the most fatal era of my eventful life.