"WHO GOES HOME?" IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS—FOOTMEN TURN HIGHWAYMEN—SIR
SIMON CLARKE—A MERRY FREAK AND ITS TRAGICAL CONSEQUENCES—AMAZING
POLTROONERY OF TRAVELLERS—ADVERTISEMENTS OF THE PERIOD—HIGHWAY ROBBERY
IN PICCADILLY
An old-world survival, heard every night in the lobbies of the House
of Commons during session, is that of the cry, "Who goes Home?" When
the House rises, and the legislators, who have left their brains
outside and have voted "as their leaders tell 'em to" are dispersing,
the stentorian shout of "Who goes Home?" passes from policeman to
policeman, along corridors and down staircases, until at last it
reaches the coachmen and the cabmen waiting in Palace Yard. The cry
means nothing now, except that the sitting is over, but it originated
in the ill-guarded condition of the streets and of the suburbs some
hundreds of years ago, when even members of Parliament were not safe
from highwaymen and footpads, and when at that call they assembled in
little bands, often under the protection of the linkmen, to journey
together for mutual protection to their several destinations.
[Illustration: "WHO GOES HOME?"]
Those were the times when Londoners, travelling at night westward
from Hyde Park Corner, where the last outpost of civilisation, in the
shape of the ultimate watchman's box, was situated, assembled there in
parties, armed with bludgeons and blunderbusses, and, so fortified,
came thankfully to their destinations in one or other of those solitary
country mansions, whose high-walled gardens and heavy doors arouse
the astonishment of those modern observers who do not realise the old
necessity that existed for residences so situated being planned very
much after the style of block-houses in a hostile country.
Nor was it only by night that the fringes of London were made dangerous
by highwaymen and footpads. Hyde Park was a fashionable resort, even
under the Commonwealth, but even in the early years of the succeeding
century it was a dangerous place, as we learn from the following item
in Narcissus Luttrell's diary, only one among many such, under date of
1704:
1704. "A Gentleman going from St. James's to Kensington was met and
attacked in Hide Park by two Foot Pads, who took from him his Sword,
Watch, Perriwig, and Rings, in all to the value of £130, and left him
in a deplorable condition."
The highwaymen who terrorised travellers from about 1720 and onwards
were still recruited from the ranks of younger sons, from broken
gamesters, and from the army; but about this time they were very
largely reinforced by a class of men now extinct. The noblemen and
the wealthy of the eighteenth century kept up establishments that
have long since become things of the past. The "running footmen," for
example, who were a feature in every peer's household, trotting in
advance of my lord's carriage, are only to be found in books on bygone
usages. The Duke of Queensberry, "Old Q," kept the last of them, and
he died in 1810. From the footmen, "running" or other, the coachmen,
and the other servants of nobility in that age, the roads were very
largely peopled with highwaymen. These men had learned in service to
imitate all the vices and none of the virtues (although they were
few enough) of their masters. Their imitation chiefly led them into
gambling, and when they lost their places through their failure to do
their duty, and sometimes the robbery of plate and money, that commonly
resulted from their devotion to cards and drink, there was nothing
easier than to take to the road. They had learned, in their association
with the great, something of deportment, they could generally ride a
horse, and a cast-off suit of my lord's fully furnished them, in the
bad light of a winter's day, with the appearance of gentlemen. Such at
that period were many of the "Knights of the Road"; and thus, in spite
of the glowing accounts commonly given of the mid-eighteenth century
highwaymen, it is not surprising to find that they were, as a general
rule, merely sordid fellows, whose idea of repartee was the cold muzzle
of a pistol and a "Deliver instantly": embellished with a volley of
oaths.
But now and again we happen upon some pleasing play of fancy; as, for
instance, when Harry Simms, a really dashing highwayman who was well
known as "Gentleman Harry," came upon a gentleman in a postchaise.
Harry rode furiously always. "Don't ride your horse so hard, sir," said
the gentleman, "or you'll soon ride away all your estate."
"Indeed I shall not," returned Gentleman Harry, "for it lies in several
counties."
He then bade the traveller deliver what he had about him, which proved
to be over a hundred guineas, and having realised so much of his widely
distributed estate, he made off in search of fresh adventure. He found
plenty, before he was finally captured at Dunstable and hanged in June
1747.
"Gentleman Harry" was but a gentleman by the popular recognition
accorded his dashing ways; but a real, officially recognised gentleman
was at the same time upon the road; no less a personage than Sir Simon
Clarke, Bart., who, in company with a certain Lieutenant Arnott,
scoured the roads of Hampshire for a brief space. The Baronet was
brought to trial at Winchester and convicted, but so impressed were the
High Sheriff and the grand jury by the threatened scandal of a Baronet,
even though merely a bad one, being hanged, that they petitioned the
King on the subject, and Sir Simon Clarke was reprieved _sine die_,
"which," says the contemporary chronicler of these things, "implies for
ever."
There was, however, a certain blind fury about the ways of Justice at
that time, which in general boded ill for evil-doers. The abstract
theory of Justice eliminates the idea of revenge, and capital
punishment for all manner of trivial offences was inflicted, less from
any real sense of the enormity of the crimes, than with the object of
protecting Society. Society could not adequately be protected in those
days by the primitive forerunners of our police, and so, when by chance
any criminal was captured—and the capturing of them generally was a
chance affair—Justice usually made a terrible example of them, by way
of warning. It was only as times grew gradually more secure that it was
imagined justice could really afford to dispense with these examples,
which were fondly thought to be deterrents. Capital punishment was then
the best conceivable warning to others _not_ to go and do likewise,
and the subsequent exhibition of the criminals' bodies dangling from
gibbets was the next best; but the very frequency of these loathsome
exhibits rendered men callous and by familiarity blunted the edge of
all these practical warnings Society thought itself bound to give, for
its own protection.
Private influence and class interests might now and then be powerful
enough to procure the reprieve of a highwayman in the mid-eighteenth
century, but a due sense of what was owing to the middle classes
generally forbade lenient treatment. A pretty face, however, and
persistent pleading could produce wonderful results.
There was no sense of humour in justice at that period, as may be
clearly seen in the case narrated by Silas Told, the earnest Wesleyan
who in 1744 began to thrust himself into the fearful prison atmosphere
of Newgate, and to wrestle there with condemned prisoners for their
souls, in surroundings of the utmost brutal indifference.
It seems that during the riotous proceedings accompanying the election
of a member of Parliament for Chelmsford, four young men of good family
had grown so merry with drink that they went out upon the country road
and played the dangerous game of highwaymen. In the course of this
drunken freak they robbed a farmer, and were recognised and arrested,
being afterwards sent to Newgate, tried, and capitally convicted.
Their names were Brett, Whalley, Dupree, and Morgan. The last-named
happened at the time to be engaged to Lady Elizabeth Hamilton, daughter
of the Duke of Hamilton. The young lady was stricken with grief, and
frequently visited her unlucky sweetheart in prison, and "Like the
importunate widow set forth in the Gospel," says the good Told, "she
went daily to His Majesty, as also did others at her request, and
pleaded with His Majesty for the life of Mr. Morgan; but at first, His
Majesty, considering it a point of injustice as well as partiality,
would by no means attend to her plaintive petitions. Another
consideration was that they were all persons of dignity and fortune,
and could not plead necessity to palliate the enormity of the robbery,
as many unhappy sufferers could; therefore His Majesty said his
subjects were not to be put in bodily fear and suffer the loss of their
property merely through a capricious, wanton whim. However, the morning
before the execution, Lady Betty Hamilton appeared before His Majesty
and fell upon her knees (I suppose in tears too). 'My lady,' said His
Majesty, 'there is no end of your importunity; I will spare his life,
upon condition that he be not acquainted therewith till he arrives at
the place of execution.'"
In the result, the unfortunate Brett, Whalley, and Dupree, who had
not high-born sweethearts to plead for their lives with Royalty, were
hanged. Morgan followed in the cart, and the sheriff did not produce
the order for respite until it was at the foot of the gallows.
Silas Told describes the actual scene. "'Tis hard," he says, "to
express the sudden alarm this made among the multitude; and when I
turned round, and saw one of the prisoners out of the cart, with his
halter loose, falling to the ground, he having fainted away at the
sudden news, I was instantly seized with a great terror, as I thought
it was a rescue, rather than a reprieve; but when I beheld Mr. Morgan
put into a coach, and perceiving that Lady Betty Hamilton was seated
therein, in order to receive him, my fear was at an end, and, truly, I
was very well pleased on the occasion."
But no one seems to have been very greatly scandalised at the
exceedingly hard measure meted out to the others, who had no charming
sweethearts to plead for them, but who, nevertheless, certainly ought
to have been reprieved with Morgan, who by no means deserved his good
fortune; for he entered upon a wild life, and was observed, six months
later, gambling with a fraudulent bankrupt, who himself was presently
hanged.
Some thirty years earlier, in 1722, to be precise, a man named John
Hartley, who had been convicted and condemned to death for robbing
upon the highway as a footpad, had his life begged by an extraordinary
deputation of six young women, who went, dressed in white, to plead
with the King at St. James's Palace, for a reprieve. Hartley's crime
would in our own day be considered severely punished with the award of
six months' hard-labour, for he had merely felled a poor journeyman
tailor, gone over his pockets, and, in a furious rage, because he found
no greater sum than twopence, stripped him of every stitch of his
clothing, tied him to a tree, and made off with this singular booty.
It was, no doubt, an assault, aggravated by exposing the unfortunate
tailor to the bitter blast; but that a man should die for twopence, and
a bundle of not very desirable clothes, seems a punishment altogether
beyond the bounds of reason. Yet, at a period when a man might be
hanged for merely stealing a handkerchief, without any aggravated
assault, this was not considered unreasonable. "Society must be
protected," in effect, said the law; and if Society could not police
the streets and the roads with living police, and so prevent crime, it
took care that gallows and gibbet should display unmistakable evidence
of its readiness to avenge it.
There must have been some extraordinary attraction about John Hartley,
in spite of his mean and paltry occupation of a footpad, for the young
women who went in white to beg for a reprieve were eager, if their
prayer were granted, to cast lots among themselves for the honour of
being his wife. But it was not to be. The reprieve was refused by
the King in person, who told the hopeful young women that he thought
hanging would be better for him than marriage.
Their hazardous calling begat in the gentlemen of the high-toby a
ghastly kind of humour. Thus, when that unholy trio, Christopher
Dickson, John Gibson, and Charles Weymouth, united in the not very
desperate job of robbing a poor old man, who proved to have nothing on
him but the suit of clothes he stood up in, and a pair of spectacles;
and when Dickson would have taken even these from him, Gibson
intervened. "Give the old fellow his spectacles back," he said; "for,
if we follow this trade, we may assure ourselves we shall never reach
his years, to make use of them." True enough: they were hanged soon
afterwards, and never required any aids to eyesight.
The impudence of the highwaymen is sometimes so unconsciously
extravagant, that it is on that account alone extremely amusing. They
felt it an intolerable grievance when they happened upon purses not
particularly well lined, and resented it hotly. An instance of this may
be found, not in any irresponsible novel, or other work of imagination,
but in the sober pages of the _Worcester Journal_ of September 29th,
1738, where we learn that in the early morning of September 21st,
between the hours of four and five, the "Flying Bath Coach" was stopped
by two footpads, about a mile on the London side of Newbury. There were
five passengers in the coach, all of whom these daring adventurers
robbed, without being resisted in the least. While one of them held the
horses' heads, the other interviewed the passengers.
From a Sardinian gentleman he took a purse of guineas and a rich
scimetar that might have been profitably employed by the Sardinian
gentleman, one would have thought, about the robber's head and body;
from Captain Willoughby of Abchurch Lane, twenty-six shillings
and—oh! degrading—his coat and periwig; from Mr. Grubb, a distiller,
of Bishopsgate Street, twenty-five shillings; from Mr. Rawlinson,
High Constable of Westminster, three half-crowns, together with his
periwig and silver stock-buckle; and from Mr. Pratt, proprietor and
coachman of the "Flying Coach," four guineas, and his silver watch. He
threatened every minute to blow out their brains with a horse-pistol
he flourished, and although he had succeeded, without any trouble, in
securing a not inconsiderable booty, cursed them violently, saying,
"gentlemen were not obliged to be at the expense of powder and ball,
and likewise a long attendance on the road, to lose their time for so
slender a profit."
To frighten travellers by these outrageous methods was a duly
calculated part of the business. We have, in the pages of Borrow's
_Romany Rye_, the theory of violent language and violent behaviour
on the part of the highwaymen duly expounded by the ostler of the
unnamed inn mentioned in chapter xxiv. This ostler, a Yorkshireman by
birth, had seen a great deal of life in the vicinity of London, to
which he had gone at a very early age. "Amongst other places where he
had served as ostler was a small inn at Hounslow, much frequented by
highwaymen, whose exploits he was fond of narrating, especially those
of Jerry Abershaw, who, he said, was a capital rider." Abershaw, he
would frequently add, however, was decidedly inferior to Galloping
Dick, who was a pal of Abershaw's. I learned from him that both were
capital customers at the Hounslow inn, and that he had frequently drunk
with them in the corn-room. He said no man could desire more jolly
or entertaining companions over a glass of "summat"; but that upon
the road it was anything but desirable to meet them: there they were
terrible, cursing and swearing, and thrusting the muzzles of their
pistols into people's mouths; and at this part of his locution the old
man winked and said, in a somewhat lower voice, that upon the whole
they were right in doing so, and that when a person had once made up
his mind to become a highwayman, his best policy was to go the whole
hog, fearing nothing, but making everybody afraid of him; that people
never thought of resisting a savage-faced, foul-mouthed highwayman,
and if he were taken, they were afraid to bear witness against him,
lest he should get off and then cut their throats some time or other,
upon the roads; whereas people would resist being robbed by a sneaking,
pale-visaged rascal, and would swear boldly against him on the first
opportunity: adding, that Ferguson and Abershaw, two most awful
fellows, had enjoyed a long career; whereas, two disbanded officers
of the army, who wished to rob a coach like gentlemen, had begged the
passengers' pardon, and talked of hard necessity, had been set upon by
the passengers themselves, amongst whom were three women, pulled from
their horses, conducted to Maidstone, and hanged with as little pity as
such contemptible fellows deserved. "There is nothing like going the
whole hog," he repeated, "and if ever I had been a highwayman, I should
have thought myself all the more safe; and, moreover, shouldn't have
despised myself. To curry favour with those you are robbing, sometimes
at the expense of your own comrades, as I have known fellows do, why,
it is the greatest——"
"So it is," interposed the postilion.
The newspapers of those times afford deeply interesting reading. Very
few of them but contain some startling item of highway robbery, or
news of the capture or trial of the highwaymen who dared even to ply
their trade within sight of the streets. It seems so very long ago, and
it all has an extraordinary air of unreality. Even although you turn
over the small quarto and foolscap pages of those daily and evening,
or weekly or bi-weekly sheets, these things seem the stuff that dreams
are made of; but if the items of news give that effect, certainly
when you turn to the advertising columns, you feel once more that
you are in touch with actualities. The same quacks, or rather their
great-great-grandfathers, are puffing the same kinds of goods, and even
the blackguard fellows who figure, with their own "brainy" or impudent
faces, in the advertising pages of twentieth-century popular magazines,
and successfully gull hundreds of thousands of simpletons, have their
ancestors posturing in these yellowing sheets. They are not so boldly
"displayed," for the mechanical possibilities of the age did not
permit of it, and they of necessity appealed only to hundreds, instead
of the hundred thousand; but they are at one, in all essentials,
with the creatures who nowadays make "this unparalleled offer to
YOU," and rudely point a finger at you out of the page. In the _Grub
Street Journal_ for 1737 and succeeding years, and in its numerous
contemporaries are to be found advertised the "greatest Restorative
in the world," cures for consumption, marvellous literary works,
without which life would be a blank, and a certain Dr. Newman's vile
electuaries. Dr. Newman advertised largely and long, and he generally
included a quaint little woodcut of himself, seated at a table, and
with a box of his beastly pills (comparatively the size of a saucepan)
on the table beside him, with a bottle of his medicine, apparently
supplied in two-gallon carboys, keeping it company. He is the ancestor,
you perceive, as you observe him staring out of the page, of all those
modern pushful persons, who seem to think that by picturing themselves
in their advertisements of how to add to your stature, to add to your
purse, or turn your nose down, your ears in, to grow stouter or leaner,
or what not, their statements are by some mysterious means fortified
and endorsed.
[Illustration: DR. NEWMAN AND HIS PILLS.]
The quaintest things are advertised in these old journals. A coachman
in Long-Acre has devised a bullet-proof postchaise, or chariot, in
which "any Gentleman may travel with Safety and not less Expedition
than heretofore." It is claimed to be proof against any weapons carried
by highwaymen.
Mr. Lott, of Maidstone, who, in several of his advertisements, "Begs
leave to acquaint all Gentlemen and others (others!) that he has taken
a large House in Beer-Cart Lane," advertises sporting and other guns,
and has a very choice assortment of pistols "for Gentlemen travelling,"
perhaps also—who knows?—purchased by highwaymen on the look-out for
those travelling gentlemen. His advertisement is embellished most
remarkably with a somebody, whether gentleman or highwayman, it would
be difficult to say—but it looks not altogether unlike a conventional
representation of the devil. On due reconsideration, however, it would
appear to be a sportsman, for he is accompanied by what may be taken
for a dog. What kind of sport he expects to get with the gun he holds
in his left hand, with the remarkable kink in the barrel, it would be
impossible to say; but the pistol he flourishes in his right looks
lethal enough to do the business of any highwayman that ever patrolled
the roads and spoke with the coaches.
[Illustration: EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ADVERTISEMENT.]
Even in those times, there were people who strove to abolish capital
punishment; and the advertisement columns of these old journals bear
witness to the fact, in the announcement of a pamphlet, priced at
only sixpence, displaying arguments in favour of discontinuing the
death-penalty. On one occasion it is printed next to a paragraph
which records briefly how a highwayman, disappointed at not getting
sufficient plunder, shot a poor traveller on the road near Staines. "We
hear," says the journal, "that the man has since dy'd of his Wounds."
This curious juxtaposition looks uncommonly like a sly example of
editorial sarcasm at the expense of the excellent advertiser: a hint
after the style of the sardonic French philosopher's comment upon the
similar proposal to remit the death penalty upon murderers: "_que
messieurs les assassins commencent_."
The newspapers and the magazines alike contain the most startling
commentaries upon life as lived in London during the eighteenth
century. Thus we read, in an obscure paragraph, how the French mail
was robbed in Piccadilly, by the valise containing the bags being cut
off the postchaise. The occasion was not so exceptional that it would
demand more than a few lines. But in those days newspapers had not
discovered the way of exploiting news for all it was worth, and more,
by the twin arts of the artful headline and the redundant adjective.
Again, it was late in September 1750, Horace Walpole tells us, and he
was sitting in his dining-room in Arlington Street, close upon eleven
o'clock one Sunday night, when he heard a loud cry of "Stop thief!" A
highwayman had attacked a postchaise in Piccadilly, at the corner of
Arlington Street, and, being pursued, rode over a watchman and almost
killed him. He escaped, of course.
Across the way, on the west side of Berkeley Street, the curious sunk
thoroughfare, known as Lansdowne Passage, (the name as painted up is
spelled wrongly, without the concluding "e") dividing the gardens of
Lansdowne House and the Duke of Devonshire's mansion, is connected with
a highwayman story of some eighteen years later. The entrance to this
passage-way for pedestrians is divided by an iron bar, which renders
it impossible for anything more bulky than a man to squeeze through,
and there are even some particularly stout persons who might find it
difficult to pass. The passage conducts to Curzon Street, and is at
such a low level that a flight of steps leads down to it, through the
narrow opening.
[Illustration: LANSDOWNE PASSAGE.]
The iron bar dates from about 1768, and was placed there immediately
after the sensation caused by a mounted highwayman, who, having
committed a robbery in Piccadilly, evaded his pursuers by riding up
Berkeley Street and down the steps of Lansdowne Passage, and so through
it and into Bolton Street, at a gallop.
When such things as those just narrated were possible, it is only a
little more surprising to read how Sir John Fielding, the Bow Street
magistrate, could raid a masquerade ball, on March 6th, 1753, in
search of highwaymen. He had received information that some of the
profession would be present, and went with his men and entered the
gaming-room, and obliged all the company to unmask and give an account
of themselves. "It is supposed," says the _Gentleman's Magazine_,
"those fellows had notice of his coming before he could get upstairs,
and so made off in the crowd, for none of them were taken." There had
been deep gaming that night, and a plentiful circulation of bad guineas.
It is amazing to modern readers who read of the notoriety in which the
highwaymen often lived, that they should have been suffered to appear
in public so frequently, and yet their profession to be so well known.
At Ranelagh, at Vauxhall, at the fashionable coffee-houses they were
found, enjoying the gaieties of the town, and reading, no doubt, in
the newspapers of the day, accounts of their own enterprises of a day
or two earlier. There was a certain or an uncertain period of grace
allowed most of these fine fellows, whose careers, long or short, were
very largely lengthened or shortened by the amount of the rewards that
presently began to be offered for their apprehension. The convenience
or safety of the long-suffering public was never consulted. It never
is. Then and now, the public existed, and still exists, for the support
of officials and functionaries. That is what we of the unofficial
classes are here for. This system, carried to its logical conclusion,
may be best studied in France and Germany, but we in England are fast
advancing on the same lines.
In the days of the highwaymen, the system worked, in respect of them,
in this way: they were not worth catching until a reward was offered,
and it even then remained a nice point whether it were not better to
wait until a still larger reward was advertised, before closing in
upon the fellows and haling them before the magistrates. You had
simply to watch the "public form," so to speak, of your man, just as
people accustomed to bet upon horse-races watch the performances of the
animal they favour. If your highwayman were a dashing and enterprising
fellow, likely to make much of a stir in his line, it was obviously
not worth the while to collar him for the sake of a mere £40 reward
offered for the apprehension of a highwayman. You just waited until he
became a notorious person, with some great deeds to his credit—a big
haul of guineas or jewellery, or perhaps even a murder. Then he would
be worth £100, or, in extreme cases, even more; and then only would he
be taken, unless, indeed, some foolish competitive busybody officiously
intervened, and got him before he had quite ripened.