least, an excellent imitation of it—"have pity on thee, shall I? No,
sirrah, I know thee too well, and I would almost as soon be kind to a
bailiff or an informing constable, as to you. A tallyman and a rogue
are terms of similar import. Every Friday you set up a tenter in the
Marshalsea Court, upon which you rack and stretch poor prisoners like
English broadcloth, beyond the staple of the wool, till the threads
crack; which causes them, with the least wet, to shrink, and presently
to wear threadbare. I say that you, and all your calling, are worse
rogues than ever were hanged at Tyburn."
After this abominable abuse, Ogden went over his pockets, stripped
him naked, and bound him hand and foot, and left him in a ditch, "to
ruminate on his former villainies." By which it would seem quite
evident that tallymen shared the hatred felt for attorneys.
Ogden and Reynolds were the particular friends of Thomas Jones and John
Richardson, the one a butler and the other a footman, in the employ
of a gentleman living at Eltham. They instructed the footman and the
butler in their own business, and it was not long before they took to
robbing on Blackheath, whenever their master was away from home. On one
of these occasions, they plundered a gentleman, and left him bound on
the heath, and, their master coming home unexpectedly, found him there,
and after the manner of a Good Samaritan, took him to his own house,
and gave him a glass of wine, to recruit his spirits. The butler no
sooner appeared, than the ill-used traveller, much to the astonishment
of himself and his master, recognised him as one of the men who had
attacked and robbed him. The guilty pair were eventually hanged at
Rochester, on April 2nd, 1714.
Ogden and Reynolds ended at last at Kingston, on April 23rd, 1714;
Ogden himself dying with an air of complete indifference. He threw a
handful of small change among the crowd, with the remark: "Gentlemen,
here is a poor Will's farewell."
JACK OVET
Jack Ovet was born at Nottingham, and after serving his time as
apprentice to a shoemaker, took up that useful employment for a
livelihood. But he soon grew tired of his awl and his cobblers'-wax,
and disregarding the old saw which advises cobblers (and, no doubt,
also boot and shoe makers) to "stick to their last," deserted his last
and his bench, and took to the highway. A shoemaker newly emancipated
from his useful, but not romantic, trade does not impress us as a
figure of romance; but that is merely prejudice; and really he started
off at score, and at his first essay robbed a gentleman of twenty of
the best, without a moment's hesitation. The dispute as to whom the
guineas should belong took place on the road to London from his native
Nottingham, so you will perceive how quickly Ovet fell into his stride.
Ovet argued that the guineas were rightly his, "by the law of capture";
thus following the theory of the poet who put the law of ownership in
property so neatly in declaring it:
His to take who has the power,
And his to keep who can.
"Yours, you impudent scoundrel!" bellowed the traveller; "if I had not
been taken unawares, we would have seen about that."
Ovet, already prepared to take the ancient traditional line of
chivalric consideration, said he would fight fairly for the money.
"Here it is again, and whoever is best man, let him keep it." The
enraged traveller agreed to this proposal, and they fell to fighting
with swords, with the result that the gentleman was mortally wounded,
and Ovet went off with the purse.
Our ex-shoemaker was a quarrelsome fellow, and soon after this killed
another man in a heated dispute, but escaped capture. Skulking in
remote places, afraid of being taken at a disadvantage, he soon found
himself short of money, and waylaid a train of pack-horses. Cutting
open their packs, he discovered a number of guineas among the goods,
and finally went off with a hundred and eighty, and three dozen silver
knives, forks, and spoons.
One day Jack Ovet, drinking at a wayside inn, overheard a soapboiler
and a carrier consulting how the carrier could most securely carry a
hundred pounds to a friend in the country. It was finally decided to
convey the money in a barrel of soap. The carrier was highly pleased
with the notion, and laughingly remarked that if any rogue were to rob
his waggon, "the devil's cunning must be in him if he looks for any
money in the soap-barrel."
Jack Ovet, later in the day, overtook him upon the road and commanded
him to stop, else he would shoot both him and his horses.
"I must make bold to borrow a little money out of your waggon," he
said; "therefore, if you have any, direct me to it, that I may not lose
any time, which, you know, is always precious."
The carrier, quite unmoved in his fancied security, replied that he
had none, and if he did not believe him, he might, if he would, search
every box and bundle in his waggon.
Ovet then, simulating a violent passion, began to toss down every
box, parcel, and barrel in the waggon, until at last, coming to the
soap-barrel, he flung it down with all his force, so that it broke in
pieces, the money-bag appearing in midst of the soap scattered on the
road.
Then, jumping down, he exclaimed, "Is not he that sells this soap a
cheating villain, to put this bag of lead into it, to make the barrel
weigh heavier? However, that he may not succeed in his roguery, I'll
take it and sell it in the next house I come to, for it will wet my
whistle to the tune of two or three shillings."
So saying, he was making off, when the poor carrier cried out, "Hold,
hold, sir! that is not lead. It is a bag with a hundred pounds in it,
for which I must be accountable."
"No, no," returned Ovet, "this can't be money; but if it is, tell the
owner that I'll be answerable for it, if he'll come to me."
"To you! Where, then, sir, may one find you?"
"Why, truly," rejoined Ovet, with a chuckle, "that's a question soon
asked, but not so soon answered. The best answer I can give you is
that you'll probably find me in a gaol before night, and then perhaps
you may have what I have taken, and forty pounds more."
The highwaymen were generally susceptible creatures, and Ovet not less
so than his brethren. One day, robbing the Worcester stage-coach,
filled on that occasion with young women, he was violently smitten with
one in particular.
"Madam," he declared, "your charms have softened my temper. Cast not
your eyes down, nor cover your face with those modest blushes; and,
believe me, what I have taken from necessity is only borrowed, and
shall be honourably restored, if you will let me know where you may be
found."
The young woman gave him her address, and a week later, overcome by the
most violent passion, he wrote her a love-letter in which, in the most
bombastic and ridiculous style, he expressed his love. "Although I had
the cruelty to rob you of twenty guineas," he concluded, "you committed
at the same time a greater robbery, by taking my heart. Do, I implore
you, direct a favourable answer."
But this was the discouraging reply:
"SIR,—
"Yours I received with as great dissatisfaction as when you
robbed me. I admire your impudence in offering yourself to me as
a husband, when I am sensible it would 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 shall neither venture 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 at the dead sea of sin.
"Should you, therefore, dissolve your eyes into tears; were every
accent in your speech a sigh; had you all the spells and magic
charms of love, I should seal up my ears. 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
recollection, 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."
Soon after this harrowing dismissal, Jack Ovet was taken, tried, and
executed, ending in May 1708, in the thirty-second year of his age.
JOHN HALL, RICHARD LOW, AND STEPHEN BUNCE
John Hall, born in 1675 of poor parents in Bishop's Head Court, off
Gray's Inn Lane, was one of those late seventeenth and very early
eighteenth-century evil-doers, who anticipated the sordid career of
the modern thief, without any redeeming qualities. A chimney-sweep by
trade, he was, among other things, a highwayman, but he more often
padded the hoof upon the highway than rode along it, and he would
turn his hand, according to what he deemed the necessities of the
moment, to pocket-picking, shop-lifting, or ringing the changes, with
equal facility. At the same time, he was not altogether a fortunate
malefactor. As a pickpocket, he was frequently detected and, we learn,
"treated in the usual manner, by ducking in the horsepond," by those
who did not want the trouble of prosecuting him. Happening upon more
vindictive persons, he was arrested, time after time, and thrown into
Bridewell and often whipped. Which was the more desirable, to be
flung into a horsepond, or be whipped, it must be left to individual
tastes to decide. It depends largely, no doubt, upon the comparative
filthiness of the pond and the kind of lash in use by the brawny
warders of Bridewell.
He was eminently versatile, but the public has ever looked with
suspicion upon versatility; and perhaps for this, among other reasons,
his name is scarcely famous: only notorious in a small way as a
jack-of-all-trades, except honest ones, and a great master in no
particular one.
He was, it may be at once granted, industrious enough in his perverted
way, and was for always frequenting churches, fairs, markets, and
public assemblies: he had also generally a confederate at hand, to whom
he would swiftly pass on the swag, to be himself found empty-handed
when searched, and with nothing on him to prove his guilt; quite in the
modern style.
He had, as a shoplifter, the same painfully chequered fortunes that
studded his pocket-picking career with deplorable incidents. In January
1682 he was convicted at the Old Bailey of stealing a pair of shoes,
and was whipped at the cart's tail. A little later, still smarting from
that correction, he was back at the same trade, and in the long span
of eighteen years suffered a series of duckings, whippings, and the
distressing indignities that are the common rewards of clumsy rogues,
sufficient to have cured many an one. But Jack Hall was clearly an
"habitual." The delight of sport gilded his occupation, and salved his
moral and physical hurts; and, after all, although he was a more than
commonly blundering criminal, it was in itself no mean feat in those
severe times to follow the course he steered, and yet for so long to
keep his neck out of the noose.
After eighteen years of miscellaneous villainy, he was convicted of
breaking into the house of one Jonathan Bretail, and for this was
sentenced to be hanged. With so lengthy a record as this, he was
fortunate indeed in receiving a pardon conditional upon his being
transported within six months to the American colonies. Fortunate
colonies! But he escaped at the last moment from the convict ship, and
England therefore did not lose her Hall.
Having tried many kinds of petty robbery with no very great or
continued success, and being too well known as a pickpocket and
shoplifter, against whom every pocket was buttoned, all tills locked,
and goods carefully secured, he struck out a new line; robbing country
waggons and stealing portmanteaus off coaches. But even here, in this
arduous branch of a thief's varied business, ill-luck malevolently
pursued him; for he was caught in the act and convicted in 1702. This
brought him a period of two years' enforced seclusion in Bridewell, and
the painful and disfiguring sentence of branding in the cheek, by which
all men might know him on sight for a convicted felon, and be warned
accordingly. This inevitable carrying his own condemnation with him
wherever he went severely handicapped him when he was again at liberty;
and it was probably for this reason that he returned to burglary,
which, conducted at night-time, might reasonably offer inducements to a
man with a scarred face.
With Stephen Bunce, Dick Low, and others, he broke into the shop of
a baker named Clare, at Hackney, soon after midnight. They proceeded
at once to the bakehouse, where they surprised the journeyman and
apprentice at work, and, tying them neck and heels, threw them into the
kneading-trough. One stood guard over them with a drawn sword, while
the others went upstairs to rob the house.
[Illustration: THE ROBBERY AT THE HACKNEY BAKER'S.]
The elderly Mr. Clare was awakened from sleep and bidden disclose where
his money lay, but he stoutly refused, in spite of all their threats,
until Hall seized a little girl, the baker's granddaughter. "D——n me!"
he said, "if I won't bake the child in a pie and eat it, if the old
rogue won't be civil."
Mr. Clare seems to have been alarmed by this extravagant threat.
Perhaps the flaming "F" for felon, or "T" for thief, on Hall's cheek,
made him appear exceptionally terrible. At any rate, Mr. Clare then
revealed his hoard of gold, which amounted to between seventy and
eighty guineas; and with that, very satisfied, the midnight band
departed.
Although this daring raid was naturally the subject of much excited
comment, the robbers were not captured, and they were presently bold
enough to break into the house of a man named Saunders, a chairman in
the same locality. Saunders was informed that Hall was one of the
thieves, and, knowing him well by sight, he pursued him and his gang at
three o'clock in the morning, accompanied by a watchman. The gang fired
at their pursuers, and the watchman fell, wounded in the thigh. Hall
escaped altogether, and although some of his accomplices were captured,
they were acquitted, from lack of sufficient evidence.
In 1705 Hall was again in trouble, under the alias of "Price," but was
acquitted on the charge of housebreaking then brought against him. He
was similarly fortunate in October 1706, when he was charged in company
with Arthur Chambers with being concerned in stealing a handkerchief.
Such a trivial theft would seem hardly to need collaboration.
Later on, he was again in custody, but meanly obtained his liberty by
turning evidence against two accomplices.
Finally, in 1707 he was arrested with his old pals, Stephen Bunce and
Dick Low, for a burglary committed at the house of Captain Guyon, near
Stepney. All three were convicted, and suffered in company at Tyburn,
on December 7th, 1707.
Dick Low was a not very distinguished person, and indeed his name,
except in association with Hall and Bunce, is utterly unworthy of
record in these annals. He was more expert at stealing from shops and
emptying tills than in any other branch of the thieving profession, and
would have made an expert area-sneak had areas been then in existence.
Unfortunately they came in about a century later. But he was an expert
at the "running-smobble," which consisted in two or three confederates
planning to rob a shop after dark: one going in with an exaggerated
pretence of drunkenness and creating a disturbance; while the others
would enter on the excuse of seeing what the matter could be, and then,
turning out the lights, clearing out the till, and laying hands on any
light articles of value that might be within reach. One of them would
come provided with pepper, or handfuls of mud and throw it in the faces
of the shopkeeper and his assistants, when they began to cry "Stop,
thief!"
For the rest, Dick Low was a violent, sullen brute, often, like his two
allies, in Newgate, and when there generally in the bilboes for savage
assaults on his fellow-prisoners.
Stephen Bunce, or Bunch, began his iniquities as soon as he could
toddle, and, according to the Reverend Mr. Thomas Pureney, the Ordinary
of Newgate, was old in crime while he was yet an infant in years.
Another biographer picturesquely says he was "born a thief," which,
as his parents were the inevitably "poor but honest" folk of the
conventional type of biography, seems an extreme criticism.
The depravity of Stephen Bunce was, however, so precocious that, as a
child, he would go and play with the children of a charcoal-man, who
lived near his native London alley, for the express purpose of filling
his pockets with the charcoal, and then selling it, for hot codlins,
to a woman who kept an apple-stall. One day, when the codlins were more
than ever tempting and the charcoal not so easily to be stolen, he
asked the woman for some apples on trust, but she refused, and Stephen
resolved upon revenge.
On the next opportunity, pocketing a larger quantity of charcoal than
usual, he filled the holes in it with gunpowder and then stopping them
with black sealing-wax, sold the charcoal to the unsuspecting woman,
who presently replenished her fire with it, with the natural result
that her brazier was blown to pieces and herself almost frightened out
of her wits.
Graduating in crime as he grew up, Stephen naturally worked his way
through picking and stealing at the coffee-houses to practising on the
road. "Amongst others of his notorious pranks, he often played several
comical tricks, the most remarkable whereof is this, _viz._: One day
being upon some prospect in Essex, and destitute of money, as he was
coming along a footpath from Brentwood to London, he espied over the
hedges a gentleman mounted upon a very fine gelding, valued at above
forty pounds. Bunce presently gets the length of two or three fields
before the gentleman, and going over a stile at the turning of a lane,
he there lays himself down by a ditch-side, with his ear close to the
ground, till the gentleman was come up with him. Seeing him lie in that
posture, he asked him the meaning of it.
"Bunce, in a sort of admiration, holding up his hands, as much as
to say, 'Don't disturb me,' gave no answer for some time, and then,
rising, said, 'Sir, I have heard much talk of fairies, but could never
believe there were any till now; for, upon my word, under this spot of
ground there is such a fine harmony of melodious tunes playing, upon
all sorts of charming instruments, so ravishing to the ears, that a man
with the great transports thereof (providing they were continually to
play) could lie here for ever.'
"The gentleman, eager to hear these fine raptures, alights from his
gelding, and lays his ear to the ground, with his face towards Bunce,
but told him he could hear nothing.
"'Oh! sir,' replied Bunce, 'lay the other ear to it.' With that the
gentleman very attentively lays his other ear to the ground, to hear
these harmonious sounds, and his back being then towards Bunce, he
presently mounts the gelding, and rid as fast as he could away.
"When being come within a quarter of a mile of Romford, he alights and
turns the gelding loose, thinking if the gentleman used any inn in that
town, the gelding would make to it; and it did accordingly run into the
'Red Lion.' At the same time, the ostler happened to come out, and,
seeing the gelding running in without a rider, cried out, 'O! master,
master; here's Mr. What-d'ye-call-him's gelding come without him'
(calling him by his name).
"Bunce being just by, takes the advantage of hearing what the
gentleman's name was, and replied that he was engaged with some
gentleman at Brentwood, desiring the innkeeper to send him £10, and had
sent his gelding for pledge, as designing to be there himself in two or
three hours' time.
"'Ay, ay,' quoth the innkeeper, a hundred pounds was at his service, if
he had sent for it, and accordingly gave Bunch £10, with which he came
up to London.
"About four or five hours later, the gentleman came up to the inn,
puffing and blowing, in his jack-boots, asking the innkeeper if he had
seen any one with his gelding.
"The innkeeper bid him not fret, for his man had left his gelding
there, and he had given him £10, according to his desire.
"'Rat him for a dog,' quoth the gentleman, 'he's none of my man; but
I'm glad he's left my gelding here and raised no more money than that
upon him. However, it shall be a warning to me for ever, alighting from
my horse to hear fairies play upon musick.'"
"MR." AVERY AND DICK ADAMS
Then there was Avery, who appears in the chronicles as "Mr." Avery.
He had in his youth been apprenticed to a bricklayer, and followed
that trade when out of his indentures. He also followed that of a
highwayman, and it is recorded, in sub-acid manner, that he worked so
hard at it that it killed him at last, against his will: which is an
oblique way of saying that it finally brought him to Tyburn tree.
Questing one day up and down the road, like the ravens in search of
food, he met an honest tradesman. They rode together for some time,
when Avery asked him what trade he followed. The man replied that he
was a fishmonger, and, with a polite show of interest, asked Avery's
trade.
"Why," said the highwayman, "I am a limb of St. Peter also."
"What!" exclaimed the other, astonished, "are you a fishmonger too?
Indeed, I don't understand your meaning, sir."
Whereupon Avery, pulling out his pistol, coolly observed: "My meaning
may soon be comprehended, for there's not a finger upon my hand but
will catch gold or silver, without any bait at all." So, taking all
the unfortunate man possessed, and cutting the girth and bridle of his
horse, to delay any likelihood of pursuit, he rode off for London.
On another occasion he met an exciseman on Finchley Common. The
exciseman would not deliver his money until Avery had shot his horse
dead and threatened to do the like to him. Then, daunted by Avery's
terribly high words, and almost frightened out of his wits to hear what
dreadful volleys of oaths came out of his mouth, he stopped it as soon
as he could with twelve pounds, saying: "Here, take what I have, for if
there be a devil, certainly thou art one."
"It may be so," replied Avery, "but yet much of a devil though I am,
I see an exciseman is not so good a bait to catch him as some people
would make out."
"No, he is not," returned the exciseman; "the hangman is the only bait
to catch such devils as you."
It was ill work, as a rule, exchanging insults with a highway
gentleman, but Avery, content with the main thing, rode off unmoved. He
was hanged at last, at Tyburn, January 31st, 1713.
Dick Adams, who derived from Gloucestershire and at an early age was in
the service of a respectable Duchess (their Graces, you know, were not
all what they might have been, in the way of personal character, in the
seventeenth century), at last found his way into the Life Guards, but
as his pay did not suffice to support his extravagance, he sometimes
collected upon the highway. With some of his companions of the road,
he on one occasion robbed a gentleman of a gold watch and a purse of
a hundred and twenty guineas. Now observe how the greedy are made to
suffer for their greediness! Not content with their fine booty, he must
needs covet the gentleman's coat; and so cantered after him, saying:
"Sir, you have got a very fine coat on; I must make bold to exchange
with you;" and off the coat had to come, and the traveller went angry
away. Presently however, as he was riding along in that shabby misfit,
he thought he heard something jingling in a pocket; something that
sounded very differently from the jingling of his horse's bridle.
Thrusting in his hand, he, to his astonishment, found his watch and all
his money that Adams in his hurry had forgotten to remove out of the
pockets of his own coat when this exchange, which certainly proved,
after all, to be no robbery, was made.
We may dwell a moment upon the rage of Adams and his party, when they
came to the next hedgeside inn and sat down to examine their gains,
which had thus vanished away, like the early dews of morning.