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

by PHILIP RAWLINGS

  Defoe’s assaults on Lorrain may have been motivated by personal dislike. Although Lorrain had been writing about the repentance of prisoners for three years, it was only after Defoe’s release from Newgate prison in 1703, following a short period of imprisonment, that his attacks began, and, also, there seems a distinctly personal element in both his attacks and Lorrain’s reply. So, it may be wise to treat Defoe’s remarks with caution. Yet, in spite of that, others did take up the cudgels against Lorrain, and he was regularly driven to defend himself in the Accounts.24Moreover, later Ordinaries and their Accounts came under fire. Different Ordinaries were variously described as ‘the great B – – – – p of the Cells’, ‘the careful Retailer of Dying Speeches’ and ‘a pragmatical Coxcomb, that could not write common English gramatically’; the Account was ‘an incoherent Magazine of Trash and Scandal’, written in ‘that incomprehensible stile, by which the chaplain so wisely distinguishes himself from all other writers’, based on forged dying speeches, containing ‘nothing but absurdity and contradiction’, and providing an example that people would emulate rather than despise.25In some of the criticism there was a strong religious element, emanating from, in particular, the Methodists, who had very active missions to the prisons and, as a result, came into conflict with the Ordinaries.26 Most significant of all was the criticism which came from rivals within the book trade. The Account became a market leader by emphasizing the unique access which the Ordinary had to the prisoner.27The marketing strategies of rivals sought to counter this advantage. They tried to get their work out first, leading the Ordinaries to rush the Accounts into print the day after the hanging and, in the meantime, to advertise their imminent publication. Rivals also published biographies before the hanging day, as was the case with The History Of the remarkable Life of John Sheppard (1724), which is reprinted in this book (p. 47). They tried to demonstrate a superior connection to the condemned than that which the Ordinary had: for instance, in A Compleat and True Account Of…James Carrick (1722), Carrick, who is alleged to have written the work, claims he was a Roman Catholic and, therefore, did not confess to the Ordinary, ‘so that I must request Readers not to give credit to what he shall publish concerning me, if it shall be in contradiction to what I have here related’.28So, although the contemporary criticism of the biographical literature cannot be ignored, much of it was directed at the Ordinary of Newgate’s Account and seems to have been the result of personal, religious or commercial rivalry, and as such cannot be assumed to have been entirely objective.

  Yet, leaving aside the rivalries within the book trade, there is other evidence which suggests that the biographies did not live up to their claims of authenticity. In 1774, after James Boswell had unsuccessfully defended John Reid on a capital charge of stealing sheep and then failed to obtain a pardon for him, he went dejectedly to see his friend Michael Nasmith. Together they drank a bottle of port, after which Boswell’s mood brightened and, as he wrote in his journal, ‘a curious thought struck me that I would write the case of John Reid as if dictated by himself on this the day fixed for his execution’. He did so and had it published as The Mournful Case of Poor Misfortunate and Unhappy John Reid. According to the subtitle, this account was ‘taken from his own mouth’. After the hanging another publication appeared, The Last Speech, Confession, and Dying Words of John Reid, which, according to the text, had been ‘given to Richard Lock, inner turnkey of the Tollbooth, Edinburgh, by…John Reid’. However, as Boswell noted in his journal, this had been composed by Alexander Ritchie, an Independent lay preacher.29Such a revealing account of the background to other ‘autobiographies’ is rarely available, but suspicions are aroused about both their accuracy and their authenticity by the wealth of detail and the highly literate, often flowery, style which many display.

  Against all this there is other evidence which suggests that the condemned prisoners may have been involved in writing the biographies. Certainly, claims about their participation seem to have been regarded as an important selling point. As has been mentioned, the Ordinary’s Account was built around the close link between the Ordinary and the condemned prisoner, and the title-pages of other biographies made great play of any connection with the prisoner. Of course, such claims were easily made, although not all title-pages made them. Eighteenth-century readers seem to have been sceptical about such assertions since publishers apparently went to great lengths to back them up. It was common for the publisher to include an invitation to readers to inspect the original documents upon which the text was based; and, although this would not have precluded the forging of such documents, it is interesting that publishers like John Applebee, who employed this technique on several occasions, did not use it with all their publications.30Other methods of authentication were also employed. Newspapers often noted that a condemned person had handed over an account at the gallows.31Of course, the mere fact of delivery does not guarantee the authenticity of the publication, and, in addition, it was not uncommon for such reports to appear only in newspapers which had a connection with the publishers of the particular biography.32William Cannicott was said to have read out a statement in court to the effect that he had delivered an account of his life to the publisher, Judith Walker.33Clergymen, sheriffs, constables and gaolers were variously reported to have been the recipients of holograph autobiographies. In 1732 Sarah Malcom is said to have spent a day writing her confession; this was then placed in an envelope, which was sealed by Rev. Dr Middleton and Richard Ingram, the keeper of Newgate, and handed to Dr Piddington. After she had been hanged, the envelope was opened before an assembly which consisted of Middleton, Ingram, the sheriffs of London and Middlesex and two other people. It was read, resealed and then taken to the benchers of the Inner and Middle Temples who also read it and returned it to Piddington. Only then did he publish it.34Incidental evidence of the authorship of a biography occasionally appears in other, rival biographies. In 1719 Paul Lorrain, the Ordinary of Newgate, noted that Edward Bird had shown him the draft of a paper he intended to have published and which, Bird hoped, would clear his name; this attribution seems the more trustworthy because Lorrain felt it was inappropriate, and, therefore, a source of criticism, for Bird to be so concerned with the world’s opinion of him when he was about to leave it.35

  This leads to the obvious question, why might prisoners have decided to co-operate in the writing of biographies? There are several possible explanations. The power of clergymen, like the Ordinaries of Newgate, and, indeed, anyone who appeared to have some degree of influence, should not be underestimated. Religious belief, fear of the unknown and the promise of life after death were, doubtless, powerful weapons in bringing many ‘a poor shivering Malefactor’36to confession. The Ordinary’s report in 1709 that John Long had ‘cry’d very bitterly, wishing he had liv’d a better Life’37does not seem far-fetched and is often repeated. It does not take much imagination to believe that Long’s mental state—and, in view of the prevalence of disease in prison, perhaps also his physical state—would have made him willing to confess, although, of course, in this condition he would have been vulnerable to suggestions about the content of the confession. Another influence on prisoners was the offer of money to maintain them in gaol, or the promise of a proper burial and protection of the corpse from the servants of the anatomy schools, who saw the hanged as a useful source of raw material.38Some may have confessed in the hope of obtaining a pardon: in 1690 Nicholas Carter was said to have told the Ordinary, ‘if he might be spared he resolved to amend his evil Life’.39 John Crafts was reported to have told the Ordinary in 1708 that he would not give him a detailed confession ‘unless he were sure to be reprieved’, and, later in the century, the highwayman William Hawke was said to have been less forthcoming in his confessions once the final decision had been taken that he should hang.40 Gang members were well aware of the way in which the criminal justice system depended on the information supplied by criminals and some used this bargaining tool. The biographical literature is
replete with works like The Discoveries of John Poulter (1753), reprinted in this book (p. 147), which appear to have originated in confessions made by prisoners in the hope of escaping prosecution. Some prisoners seem to have been motivated by a sense of injustice at being wrongly accused, or by a desire not so much to deny the charge as to complain about a misrepresentation of some of the facts.41

  Finally, to return to Boswell and Reid, and to the question, what is an autobiography? Boswell had interviewed Reid on many occasions, was in possession of a statement by Reid himself and later showed the finished publication to Reid; similarly, Ritchie had regularly visited, and spoken to, Reid, and he too had shown Reid the finished work. So, although the publications were not actually written by Reid, they may well have been a summary of his case based on the interviews each writer had with him and packaged for the reading classes. Of course, this element of ‘packaging’ causes serious difficulties for those wishing to use the biographies. The involvement of some sort of editor was apparently not regarded as incompatible with the pamphlet being advertised as an autobiography. The title page of A Full and Faithful Account of the Life of James Bather (1754) notes that it was ‘Published from the Author’s Manuscripts; Revised and Corrected by an Impartial Hand’.42The publisher Cabe readily acknowledged that the manuscript provided by Thomas Daniels as the basis for The Affecting Case of the Unfortunate Thomas Daniels (1761) had been edited, but he claimed that this had been done not ‘to give any undue colouring to facts, but simply to supply the deficiencies of the writer; whose laborious situation in life has denied him those literary advantages indispensable to the writing his story with tolerable propriety’, and added that such editing had been confined to ‘spelling, style, and disposition’ so as to make it ‘clear and fit for perusal’.43 Of course, this repackaging for a particular audience is not simply a problem which arises when an editor is involved. Even if the involvement of the biography’s subject could be demonstrated, it is still necessary to consider the relationship between the biography and the life.

  THE CRIMINAL BIOGRAPHY AS LITERATURE

  That a work of literature is popular when it is first published does not ensure it will be accorded any recognition by subsequent generations of scholars; indeed, the term ‘popular literature’ has tended to be regarded by literary critics as an oxymoron.44 F.R.Leavis, for example, argued that the study of English literature should be restricted to a narrow range of texts on the ground that

  in the field of fiction some challenging discriminations are very much called for: the field is so large and offers such insidious temptations to complacent confusions of judgement and to critical indolence…

  He made these ‘discriminations’ on the basis of his view of what was, or was not, within ‘the great tradition of the English novel’,45 and criminal biographies, along with much else, were not within that ‘tradition’. It is an approach which is still strongly influential in the English Departments of many universities, particularly since it was endorsed, not just by conservative critics like Leavis, but also by many on the Left who believed that popular literature was bourgeois propaganda designed to distract the masses from the true nature of their oppression and that only ‘High Art’ was able to stand at a critical distance from the ideas and values of the ruling class.46 The tendency of the Leavis approach is not only to ignore the vast bulk of literature, but also to divorce from its historical context that which is studied: ‘Most students of literature are taught…[that] the greatest art is that which timelessly transcends its historical conditions.’47 In other words, the view is taken that an understanding of history is irrelevant to the study of literature. Texts are organized around individual writers or groups of writers, and the act of writing is presented as the result of a largely unfathomable flash of individual genius.

  Although it is true that scholars extended the circle of study beyond the few texts specified by Leavis, they typically did so merely on the basis of a widened definition of what amounted to ‘great literature’: so, for example, where Leavis excluded the novels of Henry Fielding, others argued for their inclusion. Even those few who went further in their researches and studied texts that they did not believe to be ‘great literature’ did so only in order to discover ‘the origin of the novel’, which was regarded as the pinnacle of literary achievement. It was argued that the biographies facilitated an understanding of the genesis of certain literary techniques, such as realism, which were regarded as influential in the formation of the novel.48 In this way criminal biographies were regarded as having value only because of their supposed relationship to the novel. As might be supposed, this has led to some fairly superficial research. For instance, the assumption that the biography was a proto-novel led to the conclusion that it must have faded away fairly rapidly with the appearance of the first novels in the early eighteenth century; yet, in fact, not only did the criminal biography not vanish at that time,49 it continued throughout the century and, indeed, on to the present day. The discussion of the biography which sees it simply as part of a progression from picaresque literature to the novel is clearly a distortion. The important relationship which undoubtedly existed between the biography and the novel can only be studied properly within a perspective which recognizes the differences between them.

  The rigidity of the Leavis approach has, however, softened, although its influence has by no means disappeared. Popular literature (the continued use of the term confirming the survival of divisions within literature) has been accorded an importance in its own right, for, as one writer recently remarked, if ‘one begins to examine literature as a “communicative practice” with social and historical roots, then one cannot afford to ignore those fictional worlds which command the widest public’.50

  The fullest treatment of the criminal biographies appears in Lincoln Faller’s Turned to Account, although his argument draws heavily on mid-seventeenth-century texts as well as the rather different eighteenth-century ones. In a lengthy and complex discussion, he argues that there are two modes of narrative:

  The one, highly structured and univocal, seeks to reintegrate the criminal into the social and moral order, to smooth over the disruptive effects of his behavior, to digest whatever cruelties he may have committed; the other, disjunctive and ambivalent, heightens his disruptiveness, invents and amplifies cruelties, presenting a fractured, etiolated, absurd, and often frankly fictitious version of his life and character.51

  The first mode of narrative is that of the ‘familial murderer ’, the second is the thief. With the murderer or murderess, the biographies seek to personalize the story and to place their subjects firmly within the real world. By showing the condemned as, in the end, reaching a recognition of their sinfulness and an acceptance of their fate, the biographies supported the religious and moral status quo, thereby restoring the connection between the criminal and the rest of society ‘so viciously broken’ by the act of murder.

  The biographies of thieves had a rather different purpose. Faller dismisses the idea that they were simply a means by which readers could vicariously vent their frustrations at the social constraints surrounding them by pointing out that the biographies often portray the thieves as either buffoons or brutes, neither of which traits would, presumably, have held much attraction for the readers. He does claim that there was a moral point to such biographies in that they were designed not to encourage emulation, but to deter, and he adds that they sought to distance the reader from difficult questions about the lack of comparability between crime and punishment in the eighteenth century. Through the depiction of the condemned’s treatment of the gallows as a stage, the hanging becomes a matter of theatre, not morals. The heroic highway robber whose story, he argues, typically involves some attack on dishonest politicians and traders seems, at first, an attack on at least some of those who are the biography’s readers. And yet Faller asserts that the texts are ambiguous in their messages, so that what a particular reader read into the text depended on her or his viewpo
int: it could be seen as anti- or pro-Whig, or anti-or pro-economic individualism. Even if an attack on the reader’s own values was recognized as such, it could be taken by that reader as an opportunity to defend them, especially in view of the nature of the critic: ‘Such a fellow is no small gift to a guilty conscience, for he provides a golden opportunity (though you be ever so dishonest) to rise, laughing, to your own defense.’52

  Finally, Faller enters into the discussion of the relationship between the criminal biography and the novel, claiming that the biography provided an opportunity for novelists to write extended narratives about ‘problematic’ lives. The doubts raised in readers’ minds about the authenticity of criminal biographies would, he argues, have meant that a novelist such as Defoe ‘had a fairly sophisticated audience waiting for him’,53 one that would have been critical in its reading of anything which, like Moll Flanders, purported to be a criminal biography, and this enabled the novelist to develop complex plot constructions. So, although Faller’s discussion of Defoe’s novels is not a part of the main text of the book, he does take some important steps towards establishing criminal biographies and novels as parts of the broad range of eighteenth-century literature in a way which restores the original breadth of meaning to the term ‘literature’ and which avoids subordinating one part to another on the basis of a misplaced argument about their relative importance as works of art.