The character of this criminal is already so infamous, and his crimes so
notorious that I may spare myself any introductory observation which I
have made use of as to most of the rest with respect to his birth. He
was so unfortunate as to have the gallows hereditary to his family, his
father, who was by birth an Irishman, and in the late Wars in Flanders a
sergeant, coming over here was indicted and hanged for a street robbery.
After his death, Dalton's mother married a butcher, who, not long before
Dalton's death, was transported, and she herself for a like crime shared
in the same punishment.
This unhappy young man himself went between his father's legs in the
cart when he made his fatal exit at Tyburn. It has, indeed, remained a
doubt whether Dalton the father were a downright thief or not; his own
friends say that he was only a cheat, and one of the most dexterous
sharpers at cards in England. It seems he fell in with some people of
his own profession, who thought he got their money too much easily, and
therefore made bold to fix him with a downright robbery.
As for James Dalton the younger, from his infancy he was a thief and
deserved the gallows almost as soon as he wore breeches. He began his
pranks with robbing the maid where he went to school. By eleven years
old he got himself into the company of Fulsom and Field, who were
evidences against Jonathan Wild and Blueskin, and in their company
committed villainies of every denomination, such as picking pockets,
snatching hats and wigs, breaking open shops, filching bundles at dusk
of the evening. All the money they got by these practices was spent
among the common women of the town, whose company they frequented. Then
the Old Bailey and Smithfield Cloisters became the place of their
resort, from whence they carried away goods to a considerable quantity,
sold them at under-rates, and squandered away the money upon strumpets.
Towards Smithfield and the narrow lanes and allies about it, are the
chief houses of entertainment for such people, where they are
promiscuously admitted, men or women, and have places every way fitted
for both concealing and entertainment. The man and woman of the house
frequently take their commodities off their hand at low prices, and the
women who frequent these sort of places help them off with what trifling
sums of money they receive; for though they are utterly devoid of
education, yet dinning and flattery are so perfectly practised by them,
that these bewitched young robbers make no scruple of venturing soul and
body to acquire wherewith to purchase their favours, which are
frequently attended with circumstances that would send them rotten to
their graves, if the gallows did not intercept and take them before they
are got half way. But it happened that Field was apprehended, and to
save himself immediately made an information against his companions,
named Dalton and Fulsom, whereupon they were obliged to be very cautious
and durst venture out only in the night. It happened that in Broad
Street, St. Giles's they met about twelve o'clock at night a captain in
the Foot-Guards. Dalton commanded the gentleman to surrender, but
persons of his cloth seldom parting with their money so peaceably, there
happened a skirmish, in which Fulsom knocked him down, and afterwards
they rifled him, taking some silver and a leaden shilling out of his
pocket, together with a pocket book, which had some bank notes in it,
and therefore was burnt by them for fear it should betray them. But in
this fact, Dalton, who had not even honesty enough for a thief, cheated
his companion of seven guineas and a watch.
The woman to whom they sold their stolen goods was one Hannah Britton,
who, upon Lambert's being committed to New Prison, was named in his
information, taken up and committed to Newgate. At the sessions after
she was convicted for that offence, and thereupon whipped from Holborn
Bars to St. Giles's Pound; which proceeding so affrighted Dalton that he
resolved for a time to retire out of London.
Thereupon he and one of his companions went down to Bristol, to see what
they could make at the Fair. But they were not over-lucky in their
country expedition, for they were apprehended for breaking a shop open,
and tried at the assizes; but the witness not being able to swear
directly to their persons, they were acquitted through the defect of
evidence. As soon as they were out of prison, Dalton returned to London
as speedily as he was able, where joining himself with the remainder of
the old gang, shortly after his arrival they broke open a toy-shop near
Holborn Bars, and carried off eight hundred pounds worth of goods, with
a pretty large sum in ready money. Of the goods they did not make above
two hundred and fifty pounds, and for the ready money, which was about
twenty pounds, they shared it amongst them.
Dalton about that time frequenting a house near Golden Lane, found
doxies there to help him off with it, and reduced him to the necessity
of making t'other large stride in the way to Tyburn. Not long after,
therefore, he committed a robbery in the road to Islington, for which
being taken up he brought three who personated a doctor, apothecary and
surgeon at his trial, who swore that the time the robbery was said to
have been committed he was sick and even at the point of death, upon
which he was acquitted.
But as this was a narrow escape, so his liberty was of no long
continuance, for his companion Fulsom, being apprehended for a felony,
to save himself, made an information against his comrades, and amongst
the rest named Dalton, and gave so exact an account of his haunts that h
e was quickly after apprehended, and at the ensuing sessions convicted
and ordered for transportation.
At sea a great storm arising, they were glad to call up such of the
criminals as they thought might be of use towards managing the ship,
amongst whom was James Dalton, who no sooner was upon deck but he was
contriving to make the crew mutiny and seize the ship. In a very little
time he brought enough of them to be of his mind in order to execute
their intent, and accordingly got the fire-arms and made themselves
masters of the ship, and obliged the men to navigate her to a little
port near Cape Finisterre, in Spain, where they robbed the ship of about
a hundred pounds, and then went on shore and travelled by land to Vigo.
They were scarce got thither before the ship arrived, and the captain
charged them with the piracy they had committed; but from the lenity of
the Spanish Government, they quickly got released, without giving the
captain any satisfaction. The Governor, when they were discharged from
their confinement, gave them a pass in which, after reciting their
names, he styled them all English thieves, which putting them in no
small fright, they resolved to prevent its doing them a mischief,
committed it to the flames, and then ran the hazard of travelling the
country without one. This, accordingly, they did, until they met with a
Dutch ship, the master of which readily gave them a passage to
Amsterdam, from whence Dalton and two or three more, found means to get
over again to England, and came up to London.
On their arrival here they fell to robbing with such fury that the
streets were hardly safe when the sun was set; but Dalton apprehending
that this trade would not lost long, resolved to make a country
expedition, in order to get out of the way. Thereupon down he went again
to his old city of refuge, Bristol. There he did not continue long
before he was apprehended for breaking open a linen-draper's shop but
the burglary not being clearly proved, the jury found him guilty of the
felony only, whereupon he was once more transported to Virginia.
He did not continue long in that plantation before growing weary of
labour, he thought fit to threaten his master, so that the man was glad
to discharge him, and thought himself happy of getting rid of such a
servant. Upon which Dalton soon found out one Whalebone, a fellow of a
like disposition with himself; and they went about stealing boats and
negroes, running away with them and selling them in other colonies. At
last Dalton met with a ship which carried him for England. By the way he
was pressed on board the _Hampshire_ man-of-war, in which he was a
spectator of the last siege of Gibraltar.[95]
On his return he received his wages and lived on it for a little time.
Then he with Benjamin Branch and William Field, took to snatching of
pockets. At last they took Christopher Rawlins into their society and in
a few months' time they three snatched five hundred pockets. Amongst the
rest Dalton cut off one from a woman's side at St. Andrew's, Holborn,
for which Branch being in company was taken and executed, although
Dalton and Rawlins did all they could to have made up the affair with
the prosecutor but in vain. This trade therefore being at an end, he and
his companion Rawlins fell next to robbing coaches in the streets, and
being once more apprehended, he found himself under a necessity of
making an information against his companions, six or seven of whom were
executed upon his evidence. He also received ten guineas to swear
against Nichols the peruke-maker, but after he received the money, his
conscience checked him, and though he did not return it, yet he
absolutely refused to give any evidence against him. But Neeves, who had
been taken into the same plot, went through with it, and as has been
said before, hanged him for a fact which he never committed.[96]
A multitude of wives Dalton married during his life, and many of them
were alive at the time of his decease, four of them coming at once to
see him in Newgate when under his last misfortune, and appearing at
that time to be very friendly together. He had not been long out of
Newgate before be fell to his old practices, and a few sessions after
was apprehended, and tried for stopping the coach of an eminent
physician with an intent to rob it. For this he was sentenced to a fine
and imprisonment, which upon insulting the court was ordered to be in
one of the condemned cells in Newgate. But he did not remain long there,
being the very next sessions brought to his trial on an indictment for
robbing John Waller in a certain field or open place near the highway,
putting him in fear of his life, and taking from him twenty-five
handkerchiefs, value four pounds, five ducats value forty-eight
shillings, two guineas, a three guilder piece, a French pistol, and five
shillings in silver, on the 22nd of November, 1729. The prosecutor
deposed, that being a Holland trader, the prisoner met with him as he
was drinking at the Adam and Eve at Pancras, in his return from
Hampstead, where he had sold some goods, and received a little money;
that Dalton perceiving it grow dark, desired to walk to town with him,
and that they had a link with them, which Dalton put out in the fields,
and then knocked him down, beat him and abused him, and then robbed him
of the things mentioned in the indictment; and that he threatened to
blow his brains out if he made any noise or called for help. He swore
also to a pistol which had been produced against Dalton on a former
trial.
In his defence the prisoner insisted peremptorily upon his innocence,
charged the prosecutor with being a common affidavit man, and a fellow
of as bad if not worse character than himself. However, in order to
falsify some circumstances which he had deposed against him, Dalton
called three witnesses, Charles North, Edward Brumfield, and John
Mitchell, who were all prisoners in Newgate, but were permitted by the
Court to come down. Some of them contradicted the prosecutor as to a
gingham waistcoat which he had swore Dalton wore in Newgate. They swore
also to the prosecutor's visiting Dalton there, and owing that he never
damaged him a farthing in his life. But the jury on the whole found him
guilty, and he received sentence of death.
As he had little reason to hope for pardon, so he never deluded himself
with false expectations about it, but applied himself, as diligently as
he was able, to repent of those manifold sins and offences which he had
committed. He confessed very frankly the manifold crimes and horrid
enormities in which he had involved himself. He seemed to be very
sensible of that dreadful state into which his own wickedness had
plunged him. He behaved himself gravely when at public prayers at the
chapel, and applied himself with great diligence to praying and singing
of Psalms when in his cell; but as to the particular crime of which he
was convicted, that he absolutely denied from first to last, with the
strongest asseverations that not one word of all the prosecutor's
evidence was true, and indeed there has since appeared great likelihood
that he spoke nothing but the truth.
For this Waller going on in the same fact after the death of Dalton,
became an evidence against many others, sometimes in one country by one
name, by and by in another country by another name. In Cambridgeshire,
particularly, he convicted two men for a robbery whose lives were saved
by means of the Clerk of the Peace entertaining some suspicion of this
Mr. Waller's veracity. But as practices of this sort, though they may
continue undiscovered for some time, rarely escape for good and all, so
Waller's fate came home to him at last; for a worthy magistrate
suspecting the truth of an information which he gave before him by
another name, and he coming afterwards and owning his true name to be
Waller, he was apprehended for the perjury contained in the said
examination, and committed to Newgate, and at the next sessions at the
Old Bailey received sentence for this offence to stand in the pillory
near the Seven Dials. He had scarce been exalted above five minutes,
before the mob knocked him on the head, for which fact Andrew Dalton,
who did it to revenge the death of his brother, the criminal of whom we
are now speaking, together with one Richard Griffith, at the time I am
now writing, are under sentence of death.
But to return to James Dalton, he continued to behave uniformly and
penitently all the time he lay under conviction, and as the friends and
relations of Nichols applied themselves to him about clearing the
innocence of their deceased friend, he said that Neeves himself actually
committed the fact, which he swore upon the person they mentioned, and
that he was entirely innocent of whatever was laid to his charge.
When the bellman came to repeat the verses, which he always does the
night before the malefactors are to die, Dalton illuminated his cell
with six candles. In his passage to the place of execution he appeared
very cheerful. When he arrived there, having once more denied in the
most solemn manner the fact for which he was to suffer, he yielded up
his breath at Tyburn, the 13th of May, 1730, being then somewhat above
thirty years of age.
[Illustration: HIGHWAY ROBBERY OF HIS MAJESTY'S MAIL
Two waylaid postboys are being bound back to back, while one of the
highwaymen carries off the mail-bag
(_From the Annals of Newgate_)]