Drunks, Whores and Idle Apprentices: Criminal Biographies of the Eighteenth Century

by PHILIP RAWLINGS

  Highwaymen are also very easily detected, by the method made use of by Justice Fielding, for stable-keepers to send an account to him of the suspected robber’s horse, and a necessary description of his person, especially if it answers that of the described robber.25 But the method of thief-taking rather increase than diminish the number of robbers. And large rewards for taking highwaymen, &c. is certainly wrong, as old robbers are left unpunished, or taken, and young raw thieves hanged in their stead. The former are thief-makers, and who furnish business for the thief-takers.26

  C.S.

  The preceding narrative, with the hints and remarks, are the work of the unhappy sufferer himself. The Editor has been very faithful in adhering to the letter of the narration; and cannot help looking on it as the most extraordinary history of the kind, and of the greatest service to the public of any thing similar to it in the whole world. Unhappy for me, I knew nothing of the prisoner’s intentions till Tuesday morning the 22d of November, the day before he suffered, by one of Mr. Ackerman’s 27 servants; with some difficulty I got a sight of the manuscript, the reading of which filled me with amazement; and instantly determined as it would be for the public benefit for it to be printed, and resolved to see the prisoner, and agree with him directly; the time was short, the copy to be read over betwixt us, and many questions to be asked. I went into the Press-yard to him, where I found a man of genteel appearance, a likely person, thin narrow face, somewhat cloudy brow’d, [p. 49] about five feet nine inches high, of a spare slender make, his demeanour courteous and affable, and his countenance, though pale, carried the vestigia not only of serenity but innocence. On apprizing him of my business, he said, “Sir, I know you not; but trust and hope you are an honest man: my intentions in the publication, is much against the inclination of my relations; I do it to make all the satisfaction in my power, for the numberless injuries I have done to mankind, and to pay my funeral expenses, the executioner, the servants,28 and others, to whom I am indebted. It is worth a good deal of money, but I will leave it to your generosity what I am to have for it: the Ordinary has hitherto refused me the Sacrament, under pretence of not being prepared, but in reality, to get from me an account of my life and transactions, for which he would not have given me one farthing, or his charity extended so far towards me, as to furnish me with a little food to keep soul and body together till the time of my death. That is no part of his business. I have been supported by a gentlewoman through my imprisonment in Newgate, in a most kind and christian manner; for which I trust God will bless and reward her a thousand-fold. What is farther wanted concerning me, the undertaker will inform you of himself, or let you know where the gentlewoman is to be found; who has got some other papers concerning me, and will deliver them to you.”

  We had just finished our business, when Mr. Cruden, famous for being the author of a Concordance of the Sacred Scriptures, the best ever yet seen in the Christian world, and well known in the republic of letters,29 came into the prison, to pray with and comfort the five unfortunate men; who [p. 50] very cordially, and with great fervency, joined with him in prayer: Mr. Cruden adapted his whole prayer, which was delivered extempore, to their present deplorable condition, with great propriety and simplicity, to move them to a sense of their guilt, to a firm trust and affiance in God’s mercy, and the certain hope and expectation, on their sincere repentance, of enjoying a state of eternal bliss in the world to come, through the blood, merits, and intercession of Jesus Christ, the redeemer of all mankind: that their state of probation here, was intended to qualify them, for a much more high and happy state; and would be their own fault if they did not attain it. To die, was natural to all men; but the time when, or place where, not worthy a wise man or a Christian’s notice. Then most heartily recommending them to God, and the word of his grace, admonishing them to be chearful and resigned, he left them.

  He had not been departed long, till Mr. Ordinary himself appeared; but alas! what a falling off was here! Instead of his presence being agreeable to them, as a Christian pastor should be, they looked upon him as come for nothing but his own advantage; and rather to disturb them with insignificant and impertinent questions, than to take care of their poor souls; besides being honoured with execrations from some of the bye-standers, for none but the Protestant prisoners were suffered to be in Mr. Ordinary’s room: Mr. Cruden, on the contrary, desired all present to join with him, and left the door open all the time of prayer. Speckman and Broughton had the better of master Ordinary, who was obliged to leave them without accomplishing the only end he visited them for; who on coming out of the room, and perhaps smelling a rat, came up to the Editor of this narrative, with an [p. 51] assurance and countenance, that carried the true Shannon dip,30 asked what he came there for; and whether he wanted any thing with them there men; in which being answered in the negative, he vouchsafed to stalk away, blown up with his own sufficiency and consequence.

  Mr. Akerman, the keeper, to his eternal honour be it said, all this time was busily employed in procuring food, at his own expence, for the poor naked and starving prisoners, who many of them were at the point of death with the gaol distemper;31 but the Christian reader will not be frightened at this, when he is told this distemper was only hunger. On parting with Mr. Speckman, he solemnly declared, as he trusted in God’s mercies, that every part of his copy was strictly true; and now being satisfied of its publication, he should die without fear, and with perfect resignation. The Editor, on recollecting his person, and having seen him under sentence of death in the beginning of the year 1751, made enquiry of the authenticity of many robberies, &c. here related, and has found them all true in every respect.

  The prisoner requested some person might come to him from me in the morning. I requested a worthy friend to do so; who went into the Press-Yard, and the prisoner speedily came down; who, on putting his leg up to have his fetters taken off,32 lifted his hands and eyes up towards the heaven, and said in a kind of extasy, This is the finest Morn, that ever I have seen. As soon as this was performed, he was taken on one side to be haltered and pinioned, which he suffered to be done with patience and resignation; praying with uncommon fervency all the time. And then going with this friend to the upper end of the Press-Yard, they read and prayed together for some time, and was [p. 52] then asked if he had any thing farther to say concerning his life; replied, It is all truth, but if Mr. S. finds anything therein, which may be thought not for the public good, that may be left out if he pleases. At the conclusion of this he addressed himself to the people, requesting their prayers, for his happy entrance into eternity; declaring that he deserved to die, but had great consolation in his last moments; that he never had beat, ill treated, or murdered any one, save in one instance of the post-boy.

  The friend was then desired to take some money out of his left breeches pocket, which proved to be eight-pennyworth of half-pence, and to give them to one of the servants who attended on him, desiring his acceptance of that and his wig, which he had ordered to be sent to him: Then wishing farewell to his friend, Mr. Melville a prisoner, and the persons about him; was led by the officer to the cart: which for the first time was hung in mourning, this added much to the solemnity of the occasion. On the way to, and at the place of execution, he was perfectly resigned to his irrevocable doom; and to the last carried himself with the greatest decency and devotion, in full expectation and hope of enjoying the life to come, in the blessed regions of eternal day.

  His body was taken care of by his friends, put into a coach and carried to an Undertaker’s in Moorfields, where on searching his pockets, there was found a prayer copied by him from a printed one, two farthings, half a walnut-shell, into which was thrust a long narrow slip of paper, on which he had wrote, “I beg of you to let your trust he in God, for there is your trust, and in no man living;” intending it for the young woman before mentioned. His body was decently interred on [p. 53] Sunday evening the 27th of November, in Tindall’s Burying-ground, Bunhill-fields; aged 29 years: and the servi
ce of the church of England, at his own request when living, was there performed.

  Since writing the above, I have seen the Ordinary’s Account of Speckman and the other criminals, and that he hath given what he calls the Life of Speckman; which if the reader will give himself the trouble of perusing, he will find nothing but absurdity and contradiction; and that the unhappy man, at the instant of his being turned off, told him was nothing but deceit, asked Master Ordinary forgiveness, whose truly Christian disposition was on this imminent occasion pleased to comply, and pray for the sufferer. This undoubtedly is a laudable act, though the Ordinary did no more than his duty, which I hope he’ll not think too much for him, to make his only rule and guide for the time to come: as a pastor of such a flock he hath much to do, and his constant presence and residence as near the scene of action as the keeper; the necessity and obligation of taking care of the souls of the prisoners, should go hand in hand with the care of their bodies.

  Such a wretched paper as the public is drenched with every execution, it is hoped they will be no more bothered with, but if that should be the case, it is confounded hard to pay six-pence for two sheets of whited brown paper rubbed over in a very slovenly manner, but the writing itself is truly inimitable, none but himself can be his parallel; finally, should it ever fall in Mr. Ordinary’s way, to find any of his brother pastors neglecting their duty, he will recommend to them the following spirited admonition of a famous poet on occasion of the corrupted state of our ra[p. 54]tional clergy, and under the similitude of a shepherd; which cannot fail of bringing them back to the original prurity and usefulness.

  ‘Of other care they little reckoning make,

  ‘Than how to scramble at the shearers feast,

  ‘And shove away the worthy bidden guest;

  ‘Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold

  ‘A sheep-hook, or have learn’d aught else the least

  ‘That to the faithful herdmanback to the original prurity and

  usefulness.s art belongs!

  ‘What recks it them? what need they? they are sped;

  ‘And when they list their lean and flashy songs,

  ‘Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw;

  ‘The hungry sheep look up, but are not fed,

  ‘But swol’n with wind, and the rank mist they draw,

  ‘Rot inwardly and foul contagion spread:

  ‘But that two handed engine at the door,

  ‘Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.’33

  FINIS

  NOTES

  1 Speckman said that he adopted aliases ‘to avoid exposing his family’. Other names he used were Woodward, Evans, Saunders, Tafrail and Dougan: Ordinary of Newgate, Account, 23 November 1763.

  2 Speckman told the Ordinary (ibid.) he was born in Antigua, but to someone else he said he was born in Barbados. He also told the Ordinary that he had been educated in Boston and had then gone to Philadelphia, only moving to London in 1763—this seems a little unlikely since he was on trial at the Old Bailey in 1750. The Ordinary reported that a friend of Speckman’s in London had said that he was about 35 years old but according to the text he was 29 years old at his death (p. 213).

  3 According to Speckman’s evidence at the trials of Abraham Crabb and Campbel Hamilton in 1750, this method was used in the theft of a watch from Jonathan Scriven in 1749 with which the two were charged: OBSP, 28 February to 7 March 1750.

  4 Presumably, Crabb and Hamilton.

  5 The bills of mortality were the records of burials and baptisms kept by parish clerks in the central area of London based on the town as it was in the seventeenth century. The term was also used—here—describe the area itself.

  6 To cheapen is to bargain for an item.

  7 The offence took place on 18 November. According to the report in OBSP, 28 February to 7 March 1750, ‘Abraham Cribb’ was charged with stealing a peruke and John Beaumont with receiving, but the only evidence was provided by Speckman, a self-confessed accomplice aged about 15 years, and ‘not being back’d by evidence of credit, the prisoners were acquitted’ (editor’s note). This requirement of corroboration for those who impeached their criminal comrades led to bitter criticisms from Henry Fielding, the Bow Street magistrate, who argued that it made the task of breaking gangs very difficult: H.Fielding, An Enquiry into the Late Increase of Robbers, &c., London, 1751.

  8 Speckman said at the trial that he, Cribb and Benjamin Hamilton lodged with Hall, Hamilton’s mother, in Drury Lane: OBSP, 28 February to 7 March 1750; Whitehall Evening Post, 10–12 May 1750.

  9 Whitehall Evening Post, 6–8 November 1750; Penny London Post, 7–9 November 1750.

  10 Whitehall Evening Post, 8–11 December 1750.

  11 OBSP, 5–11 December 1750.

  12 This is the Potomac river. See also P.W.Coldham, The Complete Book of Emigrants in Bondage, 1614–1775, Baltimore, 1988, p. 104.

  13 Theophilus Cibber (1703–58), son of actor-playwright Colley Cibber, was drowned in October 1758 when on his way in the Dublin Trader out of Park Gate to the Theatre Royal, Dublin. He had been engaged to play there by Sheridan as part of a strategy to oppose the newly opened theatre in Crow Street: Dictionary of National Biography; Gentleman’s Magazine, 1758, vol. 28, p. 555.

  14 Spranger Barry (1719–77), a silversmith-turned-actor, built the theatre in 1758: Dictionary of National Biography.

  15 Henry Mossop (c. 1729 to c. 1774) acted with Barry at Crow Street, but then opened the rival Smock Alley Theatre: ibid.

  16 West Digges (1720–86).

  17 Tolbooth Gaol.

  18 Portsmouth coach.

  19 A medical treatment involving the use of mercury.

  20 Pawnbrokers were under constant attack for their alleged role as receivers of stolen goods. Sir John Fielding (died 1780), the Bow Street magistrate and half-brother of Henry Fielding, devised a plan by which the theft of goods would be reported to Bow Street and then advertised in the Public Advertiser (in which Sir John had a share) to which pawnbrokers would subscribe: J.Fielding, A Plan for preventing Robberies within Twenty Miles of London, London, 1755; J. Styles, ‘Sir John Fielding and the problem of crime investigation in eighteenth-century England’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 1983, 5th series, vol. 33, pp. 127–49. On John Fielding generally see R.Leslie-Melville, The Life and Work of Sir John Fielding, London, [1935].

  21 The allegation that stolen goods were sent to Holland (particularly, Amsterdam) was not uncommon: A Full, True and Impartial Account Of all the Robberies Committed in City, Town, and Country, For several Years past By William Hawkins, In Company with Wilson, Wright, Butler Fox, and others not yet Taken, London, 1722, pp. 5–6.

  22 Richard Fuller was involved in the arrest of some of the Coventry Gang (see The Discoveries of John Poulter), although it seems that this was as a result of his having been arrested and pressed to impeach his comrades: [J.Hewitt], A Journal of the Proceedings of J. Hewitt, Coventry, London, [1779], pp. 117–220 passim.

  23 On Fielding see note 20.

  24 John Duplex, alias John Phillips, and William Pallester or Palliser, alias William Ogden or Ugden, led the Coventry Gang. They were tried in June 1763 and both hanged in the following August. At their trial the judge and counsel declared they never tried two such ‘dangerous villains’. Pallister was said to have been born in Ireland and was 29 years old when he died; he was 5 feet 10 inches tall and ‘of a genteel make’. Duplex was about 28 years old, 5 feet 8 inches and ‘a strong well built man’. For a fascinating account of their arrest see [J.Hewitt], A Journal of the Proceedings of J.Hewitt, pp. 117–220 passim; see The Discoveries of John Poulter in this volume.

  25 On the plan and Fielding see note 20.

  26 This was a common complaint, especially after the conviction of the M’daniel Gang in 1756 for setting up young men on charges of robbery: R.Paley, ‘Thief-takers in London in the age of the MacDaniel Gang, c. 1745–1754’ in D.Hay and F.Snyder (eds.), Policing and Oxf
ord, 1989, pp. 301–42.

  27 Akerman was the Keeper of Newgate Prison.

  28 The custom was for the hangman and his servants to claim the hanged person’s clothes, so prisoners often gave money to avoid having their bodies stripped after death.

  29 Alexander Cruden (1701–70).

  30 Those who take the ‘Shannon dip’ (a reference to the Irish river) are supposedly cured of bashfulness.

  31 See C.Harding, W.Hines, R.Ireland, and P.Rawlings, Imprisonment in England and Wales: A Concise History, London, 1985.

  32 The chains were removed by the prison authorities before the prisoner was formally handed over to the sheriff’s officers.

  33 This is from J.Milton, ‘Lycidas’, lines 116–31 in B.A.Wright (ed.), Milton’s Poems, London, 1956 (many thanks to Allen Rawlings for pointing this out).

  * Warehouses or shops for the sale of European goods, are so called in America.

  * The Editor has been looking over some papers, shortly to be published, in which an account is given of a woman, that in all respects far out-strips Mrs. Pembruge. This creature, it seems, whose preceding life has been far from good, was met with in the fields by a person who was vastly taken with the plausableness of her demeanour, an intimacy began; she being in the utmost distress, was furnished with money, wearing apparel, and lodging; was supported in a plentiful manner for five years, and with a house the three last years, for which she received all the rent, amounting to thirty pounds a year, besides an allowance of seven shillings per week in money; but the ingratitude, baseness and corruption of manners of the wretch, can never be parallelled: sloath, sluttishness, whoredom, drunkenness, and gluttony, marked all her days; one of the most merciful and compassionate of men, and the kindest benefactor to her, was treated with every mark of ingratitude, and loaded with every kind of reproach; deprived of his peace, happiness, content, property, reputation, and even an attempt made to take away his life. What will be the end of this woman, cannot be ascertained; though it is far from being improbable her days will be either finished on a dunghill, or at the gallows.