of dread. No clattering horseman could come hurriedly along the road
without stirring the pulses of nervous travellers, who immediately
fancied "Galloping Dick" was upon them. Indeed, he soon became too
well known for any reasonable degree of safety, and he would then
for a while, for prudential reasons, find temporary employment as a
postilion. Frequently in custody at Bow Street, on various charges, he
was many times acquitted, on insufficient evidence; but was at last
arrested, at the beginning of 1800, on a charge of highway robbery,
sent for trial to the Lent Assizes at Aylesbury, convicted, and
executed.
JERRY ABERSHAW
The southern suburbs of London were haunted during the last quarter of
the eighteenth century by a youthful highwayman of a very desperate
kind. He was as successful as reckless, and captained a gang that made
Putney Heath and Wimbledon Common places to be dreaded as much as were
Hounslow Heath on the west, and Finchley Common in the north, and
brought the name of "Jerry Abershaw" into exceptional prominence.
The real name of this highwayman was Louis Jeremiah Avershaw, and he
was born in 1773, of the usual "poor but honest" parents. Indeed, it
would seem, in enquiring into the lives of the highwaymen, that they
in general came of such stock, whose only crime was their poverty:
although _that_, as we well know in this happy land of ours, is a very
heinous offence, it being the duty of every English man and woman to
pay rates and taxes to keep a constantly growing official class in
well-paid and easy employment.
We so rarely hear of a highwayman deriving from dishonest parents
that, it would seem, even in the more adventurous centuries, ill-led
lives were as a rule so short and sordid as to impress the children of
those who led them with the idea that honesty was not only really, in
the long run, the best policy, but that for evil courses there was no
long run at all. Otherwise, the life of the highwayman, if not by any
means, as a general rule, so gay as usually it was represented to be,
was sufficiently full of that spice of excitement which to the youthful
makes amends for much danger and discomfort, and sons might often have
succeeded fathers in the liberal profession of highway robbery.
The boyhood of Jerry Abershaw has never been dragged from the obscurity
that enwraps it. No slowly-budding flower he, but one that in one brief
day flung open its petals. Or rather, in less flowery language, we
learn nothing of the first steps that led him to the highway, and find
him at the very first mention of his doings already a cool and assured
character, robbing with impunity, and making one place in especial a
spot to be dreaded. This was the hollow of Putney Bottom, through which
the Portsmouth Road runs on its way to Kingston. The little Beverley
Brook trickles by, to this day, in the hollow; and Combe Wood, whose
thickets formed so convenient a lair for Abershaw, and a rallying-place
for his gang, is still very much what it was then.
Abershaw was not, of course, the first to see the strategic value of
the heath, and of such woody tangles as these, bordering the road for
quite three miles; for we read in Ogilby's great book on the roads,
published in 1675, of Kingston Hill, hard by as "not rarely infested
with robbers"; and a gibbet long stood near at hand, to remind those
robbers, and others who succeeded them, of their own probable fate.
But, if by no means the first, or even the last, who practised here, he
is easily the most famous, even though it be merely a pervasive fame,
not crystallised into many anecdotes.
[Illustration: JERRY ABERSHAW ON PUTNEY HEATH.]
The "Bald Faced Stag," that then stood, a lonely tavern, by the
roadside near the Beverley Brook, was a favourite meeting-place of
Abershaw and his fellows. It was afterwards rebuilt, as a superior
hostelry, in the days when the growth of travel and of coaching had
rendered the old roadside accommodation insufficient. This later house
may still be seen, standing nowadays as a private residence, with
imposing pillared portico, by the way.
Whether the landlord of the original "Bald Faced Stag," was in league
with Abershaw and his gang, or not, is impossible to say. Very
generally, the tavern-keepers of that age were suspected, and rightly
suspected, of a guilty acquaintance with the highwaymen, but it would
be too much to assume that they were all of that character; and indeed
we find in the sad story of one John Poulter, otherwise Baxter, who was
hanged in 1754 for highway robbery, that the frequenting by highwaymen
against his wish of an inn he kept in Dublin first ruined his trade
and compelled him in self-defence at last to seek a living on the road.
An innkeeper situated like him who kept the "Bald Faced Stag" in the
days of Abershaw would have no choice but to harbour the gang whenever
they felt inclined to confer their patronage upon him; but, to be quite
just, it would certainly appear that he was a willing ally, for, in the
most outstanding among the few stories told of Abershaw, it appears
that once, when taken ill on the road, the highwayman was put to bed
in the house and cared for while a doctor was procured. It was a Dr.
William Roots who answered the call, from Putney. The ailing stranger,
whose real name and occupation the doctor never for a moment suspected,
was bled, after the medical practice of the time, and the doctor was
about to leave for home, when his patient, with a great appearance of
earnestness, said: "You had better, sir, have someone to go back with
you, as it is a very dark and lonesome journey." This thoughtful offer
the doctor declined, remarking that "he had not the least fear, even
should he meet with Abershaw himself." The story was a favourite with
Abershaw: it afforded him a reliable criterion of the respect in which
the travelling public generally held him.
The notoriety Abershaw early attained led to his early end. The
authorities made especial efforts to arrest him, and, learning that he
frequented a public-house in Southwark, called the "Three Brewers,"
set a watch upon the place. One day the two officers detailed for this
duty discovered him in the house, drinking with some of his friends,
and entered to arrest him. But Abershaw was on the alert, and, as they
stood in the doorway, arose with a pistol in either hand, and, with a
curse, warned them to stand clear, or he would shoot them. Disregarding
this threat, they rushed in, and Abershaw, firing both pistols at once,
mortally wounded one officer and severely wounded the landlord in the
head.
But he did not escape. He was tried at Croydon Assizes, on July 30th,
1795, before Mr. Baron Penryn, for murder; the wounded officer, David
Price, having died in the interval. A second indictment charged him
with having attempted to murder the other, by discharging a pistol at
him.
Abershaw was taken by road from London to Croydon, and passing
Kennington Common, then the principal place of execution in Surrey,
he laughingly asked those in charge of him, if they did not share his
own opinion that he would himself be "twisted" there on the following
Saturday. That was the conventionally callous way in which the
highwaymen approached their doom.
To prove the charge of killing Price was naturally the simplest of
tasks, and the jury, returning from a three-minutes' deliberation, duly
found him guilty. Prisoner's counsel, however, raising an objection
on some legal quibble as to a flaw in the indictment, the point was
argued for two hours—and not decided; the judge desiring to consult his
learned brethren on the point. There is a certain grim humour about
these proceedings; because, whatever the result of this was likely
to be, there was yet the second indictment to be tried, and on that
alone there could be no doubt of Abershaw being capitally convicted.
It was then proceeded with, and Abershaw himself, seeing how he must
inevitably be found guilty, and hanged, threw off all restraint. He
insolently inquired of the judge, if he were to be murdered by perjured
witnesses, and in violent language declared his contempt for the Court.
Even at that solemn moment, when, having been found guilty on the
second count, the judge, in passing sentence, assumed the black cap,
he was not affected, except by rage and the spirit of mockery, and
followed the action of the judge by putting on his own hat. The gaolers
were at last compelled by his violence to handcuff him, and to tie
his arms and legs. In that condition he was removed to gaol, to await
execution.
There he must soon have realised the folly of resistance; for he became
quiet and apparently resigned. In the short interval that remained
between his sentence and that appearance on Kennington Common he had
accurately foreseen, he occupied himself with drawing rough pictures on
the whitewashed walls of his cell with the juice of black cherries that
had formed part of the simple luxuries his purse and the custom of the
prison permitted. These idle scribblings represented his own exploits
on the road. In one he appeared in the act of stopping a post-chaise
and threatening the driver: the words, "D—n your eyes! Stop!" appended.
The remainder of this curious gallery pictured the other incidents
common in a highwayman's life.
The time then allowed convicted criminals between their sentence and
execution was very short. On August 3rd he was hanged on Kennington
Common; game—or, rather, callous—to the last. Arrived there, he kicked
off his boots among the great crowd assembled, and died unshod, to
disprove an old saying of his mother's, that he was a bad lad, and
would die in his shoes. He was but twenty-two years of age when he met
this fate, not actually for highway robbery, but for murder. His body
was afterwards hanged in chains in Putney Bottom, the scene of his
chief exploits, and an old and nasty legend was long current in those
parts of a sergeant in a regiment soon afterwards marching past firing
at the distended body, by which (to make short of an offensive story)
the neighbourhood was nearly poisoned. The sergeant was reduced to the
ranks for this ill-judged choice of a target.
JOHN AND WILLIAM BEATSON
The very general idea that the highwayman ended with the close of the
eighteenth century is an altogether erroneous one, and has already been
abundantly disproved in these pages. They not only continued into the
nineteenth century, but were very numerously executed for their crimes.
Early among those who belong to that era were John Beatson and William
Whalley. Theirs is a sad tale of business failure and of a desperate
recourse to the road, rather than the story of professional highwaymen.
John Beatson was a Scotsman, who had in his youth been a sailor in
the merchant service, and had made many voyages to India and other
tropical countries. Tired at last of the sea, he settled at Edinburgh,
where he established himself as an innkeeper at the "College Tavern."
There he carried on a successful business for many years, and only
relinquished it at last in favour of his adopted son, William Whalley
Beatson, who for some time carried it on happily and profitably with
his wife. Unhappily, his wife died, and when he was left alone it was
soon seen, in the altered circumstances of the house, that it was
she, rather than her husband, who had in the last few years kept the
inn going. Left alone, and incapable of managing the domestic side of
the house, he was taken advantage of by the servants, who robbed him
at every opportunity; and, in short, in every respect the "College
Tavern" declined and ceased to pay its way. He gave it up and went to
London, with the idea of entering the wine and spirit trade there.
Arrived in London, he took a business in Bedford Street, Covent Garden,
and, finding it uncongenial, sold it to a man and accepted six months'
bills in payment. The purchaser went bankrupt within three months,
throwing Beatson himself into difficulties. At this juncture of affairs
he consulted with his adopted father as to what was to be done, and
the upshot of their long and anxious deliberations was that there was
no help for it but to try and retrieve their fortunes by robbing upon
the King's highway. Their first essay in this new business was begun
on July 18th, 1801, when they travelled from London to the "Rose and
Crown" at Godstone, Surrey, staying there the night. The next morning
they set off on foot, and at midday were at the "Blue Anchor," on the
road to East Grinstead. They dined there, and asked questions about
the mail, and did not leave until six o'clock. Between eight and nine
o'clock they were seen on East Grinstead Common. Half an hour after
midnight, the postboy who drove the mail-cart was stopped by two men
near Forest Row, south of East Grinstead. They produced a pistol and
threatened him with it if he refused to give up the bags. Then, he
unresisting, they led the horse into a meadow, where they took the bags
and carried them off. It was afterwards found that they had walked no
less a distance than six miles with them. They were afterwards found in
a wheatfield near the village of Hartfield, the letters strewn about in
the corn.
They had taken all the Bank of England notes, and notes issued by
country banks, and had left drafts and bills of exchange worth upwards
of £9,500.
The next morning the two Beatsons appeared at the "Chequers" at
Westerham, in a very exhausted condition, and had breakfast. With the
excuse that they were Deptford people, and under the necessity of
reaching the dockyard there in a hurry, they hastily hired a horse and
trap, paying for their refreshment with a £2 note, and for the hire
with one for £5.
The people of the "Chequers" inn thought it strange, when their man
returned, to hear that he had driven them, not to the dockyard at
Deptford, but to a coach-office in the town, where they had at once
taken places in a coach for London.
The fugitives did not hurry themselves when they reached town. On the
evening of their arrival, it was afterwards discovered, the elder
purchased a pair of shoes at a shop in Oxford Street, paying for them
with a £10 Bank of England note. They employed their time in London
in a shopping campaign, purchasing largely and always tendering
bank-notes, with the object of accumulating a large sum of money in
gold, by way of change.
At the end of this week they procured a horse and gig and left London,
saying they intended to travel to Ireland. Meanwhile, the loss of
so many bank-notes had been widely advertised and the good faith of
persons who presented any of them for payment enquired into. The
movements of the men who had stopped the driver of the mail-cart and
robbed him were traced, and soon the Holyhead Road was lively with the
pursuit of them.
They arrived at Knutsford, in Cheshire, only a short time before the
coming of the mail-coach bringing particulars of the robbery. Before
that, however, they had attracted a considerable deal of notice by
their singular behaviour at the "George" inn, where they had put up. To
draw attention by peculiarities of dress or demeanour is obviously the
grossest folly in fugitive criminals, whose only chance of safety lies
in unobtrusive manners and appearance. That would appear to be obvious
to the veriest novices in crime. But the Beatsons were no doubt by this
time agitated by the serious position in which they had irretrievably
placed themselves, and in so nervous a state that they really had not
full command of their actions. They adopted a hectoring manner at the
inn, and on the road had attracted unfavourable notice by the shameful
way in which they had treated their horse.
On the arrival of the mail containing the official notices of the
robbery and descriptions of the two men concerned in it, the appearance
of these two men with the gig seemed so remarkably like that of the
robbers, that a Post Office surveyor was sent after them. They had
already left Knutsford, and had to be followed to Liverpool, where they
were discovered at an inn, and arrested.
The mere hasty preliminary inspection of their travelling valise was
sufficient to prove that these were the men sought for. Bank-notes
to the amount of £1,700 were discovered, wrapped round by one of the
letters stolen; and the purchases of jewellery and other articles
carried with them were valued at another £1,300.
Taken back to London, the prisoners were charged in the first instance
at Bow Street, and then committed for trial at Horsham. An attempt they
made to escape from Horsham gaol was unsuccessful, and they were found
hiding in a sewer. Their trial took place before Mr. Baron Hotham on
March 29th, 1802. No fewer than thirty witnesses were arrayed against
them; chiefly London tradesmen, from whom they had made purchases and
tendered notes in payment. There could hardly ever have been a clearer
case, and the result of the trial was never for a moment in doubt.
The affectionate efforts of the elder man to shield his adopted son
drew tears from many eyes, but the readiness of that "son" to take
advantage of them and to throw the guilt upon him excited, naturally
enough, much unfavourable comment. Two statements had been prepared and
written by the prisoners, and both were read by the younger in court.
The first was by John Beatson, who declared himself to be guilty, but
his "son" innocent. Whalley's own statement, to the same effect, went
into a detailed story of how his "father" had given him a large number
of the notes, and had told him they were part of a large remittance he
had lately received from India.
The story was so clumsy and unconvincing, and the story told by the
prosecution so complete in every detail, that both prisoners were
speedily found guilty. They were condemned to death, and were hanged on
Saturday, April 7th, 1802, at Horsham, before a crowd of three thousand
people. The elder Beatson was seventy years of age and the younger but
twenty-seven.
ROBERT SNOOKS
The careers of the highwaymen were, in the vast majority of cases,
remarkably short, and they were, for the most part, cut off in the
full vigour of their manly strength and beauty. The accursed shears
of Fate—or, to be more exact, a rope dangling from a beam—ended them
before experience had come to revise their methods and fit them out
with the artistry of the expert.
But few were so summarily ended as the unfortunate Robert Snooks.
This person, a native of Hungerford, was in the year 1800 living at
Hemel Hempstead, in Hertfordshire, in the immediate neighbourhood of
Boxmoor. He had often observed the postboy carrying the well-filled
mail-bags across the lonely flat of Boxmoor, and (he is described as
having been of remarkably fine physical proportions) thought how easy a
thing it would be to frighten him into giving them up. Accordingly, on
one sufficiently dark night, he waited upon the moor for the postboy,
stopped him, and, adopting a threatening demeanour, instructed him to
carry the bags to a solitary spot and then go about his business. The
frightened official immediately hurried off to the postmaster of the
district: one Mr. Page, of the "King's Arms," Berkhamstead, and told
his tale; leaving Snooks to ransack the bags and take what he thought
valuable.
The bags, turned inside out, were found, the next morning, with a heap
of letters, torn open and fluttering in all directions across the
fields. It subsequently appeared that the highwayman had secured a very
considerable booty, one letter alone having contained £5 in notes.
The postboy did not know the man who had terrorised him: only that he
was a "big man"; but the simultaneous disappearance of Snooks left no
reasonable doubt as to who it was.
This was Snooks's first essay in the dangerous art, and it proved also
his last. Hurrying to London, he took up his abode in Southwark, and
presently had the dubious satisfaction of reading the reward-bills
issued, offering £300 for his capture. After a while he thought
himself comparatively safe, and was emboldened to make an effort at
negotiating one of the notes he still held. Afraid to do this in
person, he thought he might see what would happen if he tried to pass
one of the notes through the intermediary of the servant of the house
where he was lodging, and accordingly sent her to purchase a piece
of cloth for a coat, handing her a five-pound note. The tradesman
evidently found something suspicious about the note thus tendered,
and returned it, with the message that "there must be some mistake."
Whether the tradesman would have followed this up by communicating any
suspicions he may have had to the authorities does not appear; but "the
wicked flee when no man pursueth," and Snooks hurried off to what was
undoubtedly the most dangerous place for him. He fled to Hungerford,
his birthplace; yet, strange to say, he long evaded capture, and it was
not until 1802 that he was arrested, on the information of a postboy
who had been to school with him. He was in due course brought to trial
at Hertford Assizes, found guilty, and sentenced to death. It was
judged expedient, as a warning to others, that he should be executed on
the scene of his crime, the selection of the spot falling to Mr. Page,
who, besides being postmaster of Berkhamstead, was High Constable of
the Hundred of Dacorum. As a further warning, and one likely to be of
some permanence, it was originally proposed to gibbet the body of the
defunct Snooks on the same spot; so that, swinging there in chains on
the moor, it might hint to others the folly of doing likewise. But the
time was growing full late for such exhibitions; the inhabitants of the
district protested, and this further project was abandoned.
Journeying from Hertford gaol on the morning of the fatal March 11th,
1802, Snooks, according to a surviving tradition, was given a final
glass of ale at the "Swan" inn, at the corner of Box Lane, and is said
to have remarked to the rustics hastening to the scene of execution:
"Don't hurry; there'll be no fun till I get there."
The usual large and unruly crowd, that could always be reckoned upon
on such melancholy occasions, was present, and seemed to regard the
event as no more serious than a fair. To those thus assembled, Robert
Snooks, standing in the cart under the gallows, held forth in a moral
address:
"Good people, I beg your particular attention to my fate. I hope this
lesson will be of more service to you than the gratification of the
curiosity which brought you here. I beg to caution you against evil
doing, and most earnestly entreat you to avoid two evils, namely,
'Disobedience to parents'—to you youths I particularly give this
caution—and 'The breaking of the Sabbath.' These misdeeds lead to the
worst of crimes: robbery, plunder, bad women, and every evil course.
It may by some be thought a happy state to be in possession of fine
clothes and plenty of money, but I assure you no one can be happy with
ill-gotten treasure. I have often been riding on my horse and passed
a cottager's door, whom I have seen dressing his greens, and perhaps
had hardly a morsel to eat with them. He has very likely envied me in
my station, who, though at that time in possession of abundance, was
miserable and unhappy. I envied him, and with most reason, for his
happiness and contentment. I can assure you there is no happiness but
in doing good. I justly suffer for my offences, and hope it will be a
warning to others. I die in peace with God and all the world."
[Illustration: SNOOKS ADDRESSING THE CROWD AT HIS EXECUTION.]
The horse was then whipped up, the cart drawn away from beneath the
gallows-tree, and Robert Snooks had presently paid the harsh penalty
of his crime. He had behaved with remarkable courage, and, espying an
acquaintance in the crowd, offered him his watch if he would promise
to see that his body received Christian burial. But the man, unwilling
to be recognised as a friend of the criminal, made no response, and
Snooks's body was buried at the foot of the gallows. A hole was dug
there, and a truss of straw divided. Half was flung in first; the body
upon that, and the second half on top. The hangman had half-stripped
the body, declaring the clothes to be his perquisite, and would have
entirely stripped it, had not the High Constable interfered, insisting
that some regard should be had to decency.