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

by PHILIP RAWLINGS

  57 A large house of correction in London (a prison for petty offenders).

  58 One who provides violent support for another in pursuit of some criminal act.

  59 A pun on Chancery Lane.

  60 To thrash soundly.

  61 Mum was a beer originally brewed in Brunswick; geneva was another word for gin.

  62 A play on pell-mell and Pall Mall.

  63 This last phrase probably means the waterman promised not to give him away.

  64 Route.

  65 Sheppard was recaptured at about midnight on Saturday 31 October 1724, after having been seen drinking brandy in a shop (according to one report he was in a chandler’s shop owned by a Mrs Campbell, drinking with someone called Nicks, a Drury Lane butcher, although elsewhere it is said that he was seen in a butcher’s shop near Newtoner’s Lane (see note 37)—before he went into a brandy shop with a woman referred to as Frisky Moll) by a boy described as ‘belonging to Mr. Bradford, a Headborough in Drury Lane’. Sheppard was taken on 10 November 1724 to the Court of King’s Bench where he was formally identified and the sentence of death was confirmed. He was hanged on the following Monday, 16 November, ‘and died with much Difficulty’ (hanging, being by strangulation, sometimes took a long time). It was said that Applebee provided a hearse for the corpse, but the crowd, thinking that the employees of the surgeons were trying to take his body for anatomy lessons, rioted and it was only after the military intervened that he was buried. The advertised reward of twenty guineas for Sheppard’s recapture was paid on 14 November. Lyon was held in the Compter prison, from the time of her arrest in October, after Sheppard’s first escape from Newgate, until late December 1724 when she was released. She was eventually transported in 1726 to Maryland for housebreaking; the report of the trial referred to her as a ‘Relict of the memorable Jack Sheppard’. Page was convicted in December 1724 at the Old Bailey and transported to the Rappahannock River in Virginia in 1725 for his part in the thefts from Martin’s shop and for helping Sheppard after his escape. See Daily Journal, 21 October 1724, 2 November 1724, 9 November 1724, 11 November 1724, 12 November 1724, 13 November 1724, 17 November 1724, 18 November 1724, 10 December 1724; Daily Post, 2 November 1724, 9 November 1724, 11 November 1724, 16 November 1724, 17 November 1724, 18 November 1724; Evening Post, 3 November 1724, 10 November 1724, 12 November 1724, 17 November 1724, 19 November 1724; Weekly Journal, or British Gazetteer, 7 November 1724; British Journal, 7 November 1724, 14 November 1724, 21 November 1724; Parker’s London News, or the Impartial Intelligencer, 4 November 1724, 18 November 1724, 20 November 1724; London Journal, 7 November 1724, 21 November 1724; A Narrative…of John Sheppard; Authentic Memoirs of the Life and Surprising Adventures of John Sheppard; OBSP, 4–7 December 1724; OBSP, 2–7 March 1726; Coldham, English Convicts, vols I, p. 112, II, p. 239.

  II THE LIFE AND ACTIONS OF JAMES DALTON (1730)

  3 INTRODUCTION

  James Dalton was, according to this biography, born in 1700; he was hanged at Tyburn in 1730. The only physical description we have of him is that, during the last year of his life, he was said to have been ‘a little Man’.1 The lives of James Dalton and John Sheppard were connected through Jonathan Wild, the thief-taker and thief-organizer, and his ‘creatures’, most notably William Field, the petty criminal and informer, who survived Wild and who appears in both biographies. From 1720 to 1730 Dalton made perhaps as many as six appearances at the Old Bailey, either as a defendant or, to avoid prosecution, as a witness for the Crown. But it was in 1728 that he gained real notoriety when he escaped prosecution by informing against a large number of his comrades—some contemporaries said it was as many as twelve—and by appearing as the chief witness at the trials of six of them. This biography says that he went abroad soon afterwards in order to escape vengeance. In any event he was back in England by, probably, late 1729, and was soon in prison again, this time for an attempted robbery on the famous physician, Dr Mead. He was sentenced in 1730 to a prison-term for that offence, but shortly afterwards he was tried, condemned and hanged for robbing John Waller. However, there was some doubt as to whether this offence actually took place, and, indeed, Waller was later convicted of bringing false charges of robbery against others in order to obtain the large rewards offered. Waller may have worked on his own, but it is tempting to speculate that those who had seen Dalton escape in 1728 at the expense of their friends or relatives, approved of, and maybe even assisted in, the prosecution. Certainly, an unknown woman had thrown a bottle at him when he was on trial for attempting to rob Mead.

  The Life and Actions of James Dalton was published against the background of an apparent belief in the late 1720s that crime was rapidly increasing. Although there seem rarely to have been any periods in history when crime was not thought to be on the increase, there was at this time a more vivid expression of this fear than was normal in newspapers and pamphlets. Some, perhaps only partly in jest, linked this situation to the death of Jonathan Wild, who had been hanged in 1725:

  Then you’ll repent, too late then in vain Will you wish to have your Jonathan again!

  Wild had pleased those whose property had been stolen by restoring it to them through his connections with criminals. Moreover, through those same connections, he had provided the gallows with the steady flow of victims that was so important to a criminal justice system which had only a primitive police force and which, therefore, relied on the deterrent effects of a carefully stage-managed and public hanging.2 But, whatever the cause of the concern over crime, the situation led the government to issue a proclamation in 1728 offering a large reward for the conviction of London street robbers. It seems likely that the gang of which Dalton was a member was responsible for a series of robberies early in that year which, because their victims included leading figures such as the financier Sir Gilbert Heathcote, may have been the immediate trigger for the proclamation. The gang was quickly broken up, partly as a result of Dalton’s assistance to the authorities, and in May 1728 Dalton’s fame was assured when an ‘autobiography’ was published titled, A Genuine Narrative of all the Street Robberies Committed since October last, by James Dalton.

  So it was that when The Life and Actions of James Dalton appeared two years later in 1730, it built on the existing image of Dalton as a notorious robber. Not surprisingly, the events of 1728 are of central importance, but the impeachments, which gave Dalton his notoriety, are dealt with in an interesting way. Although the information he gave to the authorities and the trials in which he was the star witness were major events in his life, they are passed over fairly quickly. Even when they are mentioned their importance is played down and Dalton’s role in them is justified. So, the biography has Dalton declaring that, ‘for the Preservation of my own Life, [I] was obliged to turn Evidence’, adding that, although six were hanged as a result, ‘I protest that they were every one guilty of the Crimes they suffered for’. The biography then tries to turn Dalton into something of a hero by noting that, although he was pressured by thief-takers, he refused to give false evidence against Richard Nicholls. On the other hand, this mood is not allowed to dominate too much, for at the end of the same paragraph the biography has him complaining that although he should have received £840 in rewards for convicting six robbers, he got only £40.

  Like the Sheppard biography, The Life and Actions of James Dalton maintains some sense of time passing and of geographical location. The bulk of the action described in the biography takes place within a fairly restricted area just north of the Thames, around West Smithfield and High Holborn. However, interspersed with this sense of confinement are incidents in which the horizons become global as he travels—nerally following a criminal conviction—to Spain, Portugal, Holland, the West Indies and the North American colonies. These parts of the biography broaden the range of exciting incidents beyond crime and into adventures of travel, mutiny and escape. At the same time, they connect with contemporary concerns about transportation, which had become a common form of punishment aft
er the passing of the Transportation Act in 1718. It was devised as an alternative to hanging, which was thought to be too severe for petty offences, and whipping, which was thought to be too lenient.3 However, transportation was hidden from the public view, so that, like imprisonment, it fitted uneasily into a criminal justice system whose other main forms of punishment for serious crime— hanging, whipping and the pillory—relied heavily on their roles as public spectacles. The Life and Actions of James Dalton implicitly raises doubts about transportation: the lack of a punitive regime in the colonies; the apparent ease with which offenders returned from transportation before the term had expired; and the failure of the criminal justice system to identify those who returned.

  The biography also implicitly raises questions about the way in which the criminal justice system relied on criminals. Wild was dead, but nothing seemed to have changed. It appeared that people, like Dalton, could commit a series of robberies over a number of years with impunity, in spite of being known to the authorities and appearing in court on numerous occasions, because they were aware that their information was of great value to a system which lacked any formally organized police structure and could, therefore, be used as a bargaining counter if ever they were arrested. Similarly, the role of Field showed how the criminal justice system was dependent on the input of people who simultaneously worked on both sides of the criminal law and who could not only ensure their freedom from prosecution, but, like Wild, could also make money out of the rewards offered. All of this begged questions about the organization of a state in which a corrupt criminal justice system played such an important role. Moreover, a system which depended on such fundamentally uncertain methods of detection provided little protection for people as they travelled about London. This does not mean that any solutions are hinted at, or even that the problem is clearly enunciated. Paradoxical it may have been, but this state of affairs was, it seemed, the only option. Certainly, the idea of a more efficiently organized police force—if, indeed, that is any sort of solution to crime—was not on the agenda.

  As has been indicated in the introduction to The History Of the remarkable Life of John Sheppard (pp. 39–43), criminal biographies were not solely concerned with crime. The criminal incidents often provided the medium through which other issues were raised, such as the role of women and the relationship between different social classes. There are more women in Dalton’s biography than in that of Sheppard, but, at first sight, they seem to play a less important role. Some of the women are treated as luxury goods, on which, when it is available, money is spent in much the same way as it might be on drink. But, unlike the situation in The History Of the remarkable Life of John Sheppard, these women do not seem to have been the reason why Dalton turned to crime in the first place. Indeed it is only after he begins to steal as a child that he consorts with ‘Prostitutes’ or ‘Lewd Women’. However, having met such women he spends all his money on them: so, for instance, Dalton remarks that, after leaving home with money stolen from his father-in-law in his pocket, ‘[I] then falling in Company with two ill Women, I soon spent all the Money’; similarly, in A Genuine Narrative…James Dalton (1728) it was said that, ‘All the money they got by these practices [street robbery] was spent among the common women of the town’. The implication is that further crime is required to feed his carnal desires which are both too expensive and time-consuming to be supplied by ‘honest’ work. Moreover, this view of ‘lewd women’ as addictive fits in not only with the presentation in the Sheppard biography, but also with other biographies, causing one commentator to remark, some years later, that, ‘Every Robber, at least the most notorious [obtains money through crime] to spend it in Debauchery’.4 The Life and Actions of James Dalton also introduces another type of woman, who is, nevertheless, analogous to Lyon. Ann, or Hannah, Britton, the receiver of stolen goods, is independent and in control of her relationship with Dalton. For instance, Dalton and Speedman steal a barrel of anchovies and give them to Britton; they then go out to commit a robbery and on returning order some of the anchovies for supper. To Dalton’s disgust, she charges them a penny each, but they agree to pay. Later, it is on Britton’s instructions that they turn to housebreaking.

  In the eighteenth century the receiver was regarded as occupying a position of importance in the structure of criminal enterprise. It was commonplace to argue that without receivers there could be no crime,5 and Britton’s role supports this view. At the same time, people who acted as receivers in such biographies were typically those regarded as marginal, such as Jews and independent women. So, as in the biography of Sheppard, women acquire power by stepping outside what is taken to be the natural order, in which women are subordinate to, and dependent upon, men. As a result of its ‘unnatural’ origins, the power acquired by such women through their independence from men is depicted as producing evil results. In the Dalton biography a third type of woman appears, namely, those whom he marries. In his relationships with his wives he is very much in control, and, typically, the marriage is a means used by him to exploit the women for his own short-term gratification or gain. For instance, he agrees, in exchange for two guineas, to marry his first wife on the understanding that the arrangement is solely for the purpose of legitimating the baby she is carrying; he uses the situation to rape her and probably infect her with ‘the Foul Disease’. On another occasion, he marries a woman in America, but leaves her as soon as her fortune is spent. Yet, although his treatment of these women may have been regarded as unpleasant by some contemporary readers, it was also just an extension of what was the legally and socially acceptable relationship between husbands and wives.

  BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

  The publication date of The Life and Actions of James Dalton is uncertain. It may be the work advertised in the Daily Journal on 15 May 1730 as ‘The Letter that James Dalton delivered at Tyburn to Mr. Walker last Thursday, relating to the Informing Constables’, although if it is, then apart from some comments in the last paragraph, the biography fails to live up to its advertisement.

  Other biographies: A Genuine Narrative of all the Street Robberies Committed since October last, by James Dalton, And his Accomplices, Who are now in Newgate, to be try’d next Sessions, and against whom, Dalton (call’d their Captain) is admitted on an Evidence. Shewing I. The Manner of their snatching off Women’s Pockets; with Directions for the Sex in general how to wear them, so that they cannot be taken by any Robber whatsover. II. The Method they took to rob the Coaches, and the many diverting Scenes they met with while they follow’d those dangerous Enterprizes. III. Some merry Stories of Dalton’s biting the Women of the Town, his detecting and exposing the Mollies, and a Song which is sung at the Molly-Clubs: With other very pleasant and remarkable Adventures. To which is added, A key to the Canting Language, occasionally made Use of in this Narrative. Taken from the Mouth of James Dalton, London, J.Roberts, 1728. This was probably published in early May 1728 (Mist’s Weekly Journal, 4 May 1728; The Country Journal, or the Craftsman, 4 May 1728). It has nothing on Dalton’s early life; instead it goes straight into an attack on The Life of Martin Bellamy, alleging that Bellamy was not a member of the Dalton gang. Presumably, this criticism was provoked by the possibility of The Life of Martin Bellamy affecting sales. Many of the robberies it mentions are also in The Life and Actions of James Dalton, but since the descriptions given are often quite different, it seems unlikely that it was a source.

  The Life of Martin Bellamy; with an Account Of all the several Robberies, Burglaries, Forgeries, and other Crimes by him Committed, Also the Method practised by himself, and his Companions, in the Perpetration thereof. Necessary to be perus’d by all Persons, in order to prevent their being Robb’d for the future. Dictated by himself in Newgate, and Publish’d at his Request, for the Benefit of the Publick, London, J.Applebee, [1728]. Bellamy was hanged on 24 March 1728. He may well have tipped off the authorities as to the whereabouts of Dalton in 1728. This biography lists several robberies mentioned in the biograp
hies of Dalton. It alleges that Bellamy was induced into making a confession to a newspaper because he was led to believe that the journalist was actually a government official authorized to offer him immunity from prosecution in exchange for information. The result of making the confession, which then appeared in various newspapers, was that the authorities were under no necessity to make any deal with Bellamy, and he was tried and hanged (Daily Journal, 26 February 1728; Mist’s Weekly Journal, 2 March 1728; The Gloucester Journal, 5 March 1728).

  The Life and Infamous Actions Of that Perjur’d Villain John Waller, Who made his Exit in the Pillory, at the Seven-Dials, on Tuesday, the 13th Day of this Instant June: London, W.James, 1732. See p. 108 note 52.

  NOTES

  1 OBSP, 16–20 January 1730.

  2 On Wild see England’s Ingratitude: or Jonathan Wild’s Complaint, Dublin, 1725; generally, see Ordinary of Newgate’s Account, 24 May 1725; G.Howson, Thief-taker General: The Rise and Fall of Jonathan Wild, London, 1970. For an illuminating, if controversial view, of the eighteenth-century criminal justice system and its place within the structures of power: D.Hay, ‘Property, authority and the criminal law’ in D.Hay, E.P.Thompson and P.Linebaugh (eds), Albion’s Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Century England, Harmondsworth, 1977.

  3 J.M.Beattie, Crime and the Courts 1660–1800, Oxford, 1986, pp. 500–13.

  4 Philo-Patria, A Letter to Henry Fielding, Esq; Occasioned by his Enquiry into the Causes of the late Increase of Robbers, &c., London, [1751?], p. 7. See also Tyburn’s Worthies, or, the Robberies and Enterprizes of John Hawkins, and George Simpson, Lately Executed for Robbing the Bristol-Mail, London, [1722], p. 15; An authentick Account of the Life of Paul Wells, Gent, who was Executed at Oxford, Sept. 1, 1749, for Forgery, London, 2nd edn, 1749, pp. 8–9; Rev. L.Howard, A True and Impartial Account of the Behaviour, Confession, and Dying Words of the four Malefactors, Who were executed at Kennington-Common, on Friday, Sept. 6, 1751, London, [1751], p. 11.