John Poulter was born, according to The Discoveries, in 1715 and hanged at Ivelchester (Ilchester) in March 1754. He had been condemned at the Somerset Assizes held at Wells in August 1753 after pleading guilty to involvement in the robbery, in February 1753, of Dr Hancock, a well-known physician, and his daughter on Claverton Down, just outside Bath. During the eighteenth century a guilty plea in a trial for a capital offence, while not unknown, was fairly unusual.4It seems, generally, to have been discouraged on the ground that since not all of the large number who were capitally convicted could be hanged, a selection process was necessary,5 and this required a report made by the judge on the basis of, amongst other things, the evidence presented at the trial; indeed, when asked for his comments on Poulter, the trial judge, Baron Smythe, wrote, ‘on His arraignment, [he] pleaded Guilty: therefore, as No Evidence was given, I cannot inform your Lord[ship] of any Circumstances of the Robbery.’ So, why did Poulter plead guilty? In his petition to the King for a pardon, Poulter wrote that he did so because he knew he was guilty and was ‘unwilling to trouble the Court’. More likely, he was duped by the authorities, as The Discoveries suggests, into believing that he would be admitted as a witness for the prosecution against his comrades, and, perhaps, the guilty plea was part of that deal. Certainly, the title-pages of some early editions of The Discoveries have Poulter as having been admitted as ‘King’s Evidence’, and in his petition to the King he referred to his being admitted ‘an Evidence’ against his comrades, ‘agreable to the Promise made by the Justice before whom he made his Information’.6
After the trial he was immediately respited by Smythe until 1 November. This was not an uncommon procedure in capital cases where the judge believed there to be a good chance that a petition to the King would succeed in securing some lesser punishment. In his report to the Earl of Holderness, the Secretary of State, on 28 September, Smythe said he was in favour of a full pardon or a pardon conditional on transportation; he said the former should be used if some of Poulter’s comrades were taken and Poulter’s evidence was needed (a convicted felon could not testify, so a full pardon would have been necessary), or if none was taken then Poulter should be transported. Presumably as a result of this, Poulter was respited until 1 January 1754 and instructions were sent to Bath for the authorities there ‘to employ a proper Person to examine the said Poulter touching all such Discoveries as he may be able to make’, and to report back to the Secretary of State. It was, perhaps, this that led to the endorsement by Richard ‘Beau’ Nash, by the High Sheriff of Somerset and by various other dignitaries of Poulter’s petition for mercy to the King on 16 October. Along with the petition Nash also sent a letter to the Duke of Newcastle in which, writing on behalf ‘of the Gentlemen of [Bath] Corporation and others’, he stated that ‘every one here wishes he may not be Executed’. The petition and accompanying letter may not, however, have been the consequence of Holderness’s request for a report on Poulter, since Nash adds a postscript asking for the matter to be dealt with urgently because ‘the Man is reprieved only to the 1st of next Month’—that is, 1 November, so he was unaware that Poulter had already been respited until 1 January. Another letter, sent at the same time, suggests a different explanation, namely, that the matter having been ‘put into Mr. Nashes hands…he had forgot it.’ In any event, on 8 December the High Sheriff of Somerset was told that, ‘Some farther favourable Circumstances having been humbly represented to the King’, the respite was extended until 1 March 1754.
Then, on 14th December, the matter was referred to the Attorney-General and the Solicitor-General for their view as to whether Poulter ‘will, probably, become a material & sufficient Evidence, towards detecting & convicting the several Delinquents therein mentioned, & whether He is an Object deserving His Majesty’s gracious & free pardon for that Purpose’.
Presumably their answer was not favourable because on 19 February a letter was prepared instructing the High Sheriff of Somerset that the hanging was to be carried out.
Before that letter could be sent, news of Poulter’s escape on 16 February and recapture arrived at the Secretary of State’s office. A new letter was sent revoking the respite until 1 March and bringing forward the date for the hanging to 25 February. The High Sheriff was commanded, ‘that you do cause the proper Steps to be taken, that no Endeavours whatever, that may be used, by himself, or his Accomplices, shall frustrate the same’.7Perhaps he was the victim of people anxious to prevent him from adding to his confessions, although this seems unlikely since he had been in custody for almost a year. More probably, the authorities felt that in spite of his confessions his usefulness as an informer was limited, and, indeed, it is difficult to discover anyone who was convicted as a result of his evidence—something which may cast a degree of doubt over The Discoveries. At a time when even useful informers were viewed with contempt, so much worse was the position of a useless one. After his recapture, the Bath Journal sympathized with his reasons for escaping, but added, ‘his Proceedings have been really very wrong, with Regard to his Impeachments, &c.—PROVIDENCE will never suffer such a Villain to escape Justice!’8
The success of this biography was doubtless related partly to its revelations of organized crime and partly to the period during which it was published. It appeared in the midst of a lengthy panic over crime that began as far back as 1748 with the ending of the War of the Austrian Succession. This led to the rapid demobilization of large numbers of soldiers and sailors, and with this came the belief that crime was on the increase: as one London writer put it, ‘this P– – –e [Peace] has stocked the Town so full of gay young Fellows’. In 1748 and for the next year or so, during the most active period of demobilization, the newspapers were filled with reports of robberies allegedly committed by sailors and soldiers; sailors demolished bawdy houses in The Strand and in Goodman’s Fields in 1749, terrifying the authorities; and at Tyburn more than half of the forty-four people hanged in 1749 were described as sailors, including fourteen out of the sixteen hanged on one day in October 1749. Although the link between the panic and sailors and soldiers gradually diminished, the panic itself remained.
In October 1750 a bored Horace Walpole, himself the victim of a robbery, wrote to a friend, that, ‘Robbery is the only thing that goes on with any vivacity.’ Pamphleteers, such as Henry Fielding, the novelist and Bow Street magistrate, were urging the authorities to take action, and following a speech on the subject by George II, the House of Commons set up a committee of inquiry in 1751. But the following year Walpole clearly felt that things were no better, writing that, ‘One is forced to travel even at noon as if one was going to battle.’ In May 1753 a correspondent in the London Evening Post commented that, ‘it is a Certainty that the Gaols of this Kingdom were never so crouded as at present’, and on 21 February 1754—the day before the instructions were sent to bring the date for Poulter’s execution forward—the Archbishop of Canterbury delivered to the Duke of Newcastle a letter from the Bishops expressing their continued worries over the crime problem.9
It was against this background that The Discoveries was first published. Contemporary readers must have regarded it as confirming their worst fears. The pamphlet tells of the existence of gangs of professional criminals moving about the south of England with relative ease and speed, and supported by a network of public houses (‘flash houses’) where they are made welcome, plan robberies and dispose of their goods. They haunt the markets and fairs which were so important to commerical life at that time. According to The Discoveries, they operated, generally, out of a limited number of bases which were, nevertheless, spread over a wide geographical area. They used flash houses spread throughout the southern half of England: John Roberts’s in Bath (The Pack Horse Inn), William Trinder’s in Faringdon, Stephen and Mary Gea’s (The Bell) in Chapel Plaster, Box, Wiltshire, and Edward and Margaret Lines’s (The Rock Tavern) near Stourbridge, Staffordshire. These were not the only outlets for their booty; indeed where it was disposed of by the gangs seem
s, according to The Discoveries, to have depended on what it was. Cheap items, such as ordinary clothes, were often sold to the owners of the flash houses, female partners of gang members, or to receivers in provincial towns such as Salisbury and Stockbridge. More expensive items containing precious metals were typically passed on to John Ford, a silversmith at Bath; however, he only dealt with relatively small amounts, and anything really valuable went to London. So, for instance, out of the large haul of goods from a portmanteau stolen in Blandford on 30 June 1752 (The Discoveries has the date as 2 July): a pair of sheets and a fly petticoat were sold to John Roberts, and a silk petticoat and a lace cap were bought by Mary Gea; various small metallic items were converted into a small ingot of gold by John Ford; and the more valuable goods, a gold watch and some jewels, were sold in London. It must have seemed to contemporary readers that crime was both organized and easy.
The existence of a network of receivers also appeared to confirm the contemporary maxim—repeated in the biography—that without receivers there could be no thieves. Many held the view that the criminal justice system failed to deal sufficiently harshly with receivers when they were caught, and this too seemed confirmed by the Poulter case. His evidence was reported to have led to the arrest, presumably on charges of receiving, of John Ford, Mary Dawson, Frances Allen, Stephen and Mary Gea, and John Roberts.10Roberts died after being taken ill on the way from Shepton Mallet Prison to Exeter, where he was to have been tried.11Dawson and Allen were discharged for want of prosecution, as was Ford,12who apparently attended Poulter’s hanging. The fates of Stephen and Mary Gea are unclear.
For the trading classes the book probably had a special appeal—or terror, which often amounts to the same thing—in its revelations about the frauds, committed with apparently little risk, at fairs and on merchants. More generally, the ease with which vulnerable but valuable property, such as horses, could be stolen and then disposed of must have disturbed all property owners. Referring to ‘the late encrease of public Robberies’ and, in particular, to the evidence of The Discoveries of John Poulter, one writer commented in 1754 from Bath, where Poulter had been centred: ‘should these Practices continue much longer, our social Intercourse of Business or Diversion will be render’d more and more hazardous every Year: For indeed, if Credit is to be given to a Pamphlet lately published, (and I have Reason to believe much is to be given to it) what an extensive Scene of Combinations in Villainy, have we before our Eyes?’13
This is not to say that people felt themselves to be completely helpless. In London, thief-takers were very active, and at Bow Street from 1748 the magistrates, Henry and John Fielding, set about putting some system into thief-taking. Nor were the authorities in the provinces entirely impotent. The spread of newspapers opened up the possibility of crime advertising. John Styles has recently argued that this technique enjoyed some measure of success,14and The Discoveries seems to support the view that people at least believed crime advertising to be of value. As the notes to the text show (p. 173–7), a large number of the offences mentioned in The Discoveries were advertised in the newspapers, and the text itself indicates how the gang were, generally, careful to move stolen horses— a common subject for the advertisements—a long way before disposing of them.
The Discoveries was not the first criminal biography to make references to geographical location, times and people, but it went into far more detail than others had done. Many of the crimes mentioned can be traced in newspaper reports or advertisements, but, of course, this does not mean Poulter actually committed them.Indeed, the detail in The Discoveries might seem to suggest that Poulter was not the source. It seems odd that he would be able to recall, with, so far as can be judged, reasonable accuracy, such a large number of incidents. One possibility is that he was prompted by those who questioned him. Poulter’s concern to be admitted as a witness for the Crown might well have made him anxious to assist, but it may also have made him careful to ensure that his evidence was correct and that the accusations he was making would hold up in court. He does omit to mention his criminal life before 1749, which included being sentenced to transportation at the Old Bailey in 1746; perhaps his hope was that no one else would recall it, since he had returned before the expiration of his fourteen-year term, a capital offence, or, maybe, it was omitted with the connivance of the authorities so as not to detract from the confessions.15
It is possible that Poulter was able to recall with such detail because he kept a diary in the hope, if he were caught, that he might be able to escape death by turning evidence for the Crown. Since it seems to have been important that such people were both forthright in their confessions and successful in obtaining convictions, then the keeping of careful records might have been regarded as important by some criminals. In 1723 Humphrey Anger, a highway robber, told the court at the Old Bailey that he kept a journal, in which,
he had entred down a particular Account of all the Robberies he had committed: Being ask’d by the Court what was his Design for keeping a Journal, whether it was upon the Perusal of his Robberies, he might the more particularly repent of them? he reply’d, no, but it was for his own Safety, that he might be the more exact when he should have the Opportunity to save himself, by becoming an Evidence.16
So, as one historian has suggested, there were ‘some very good reasons for keeping such journals’.17The fact that none has been discovered is, perhaps, not surprising in view of the nature of these documents.18On the other hand, if they were in general use it might have been expected that some would have survived, and also it is curious that the judges in Anger’s case seem to have been unfamiliar with the practice of keeping such journals. Nevertheless, the possibility remains that Poulter was one of the exceptional ones who was able to write, had the foresight to expect to be captured and had the intention that if captured he would impeach his comrades in order to save himself.
For the historian The Discoveries provides some important lessons in the use of criminal biographies. The detail with which Poulter describes his activities can lull the reader into believing that, even though this is by no means a life-history, it is, nevertheless, a full and reliable account of a criminal gang. However, as Ruth Paley points out, ‘Unless…one is aware of John Poulter’s motives for avoiding London [his having returned from transportation before the expiration of his sentence] and for concealing an important part of his life-history, it is very easy to conclude, falsely, that there was a thriving provincial network that functioned independent of the metropolis.’19 The Discoveries makes no mention of how the Poulter gang identified the extensive network of safe houses and receivers which they used. Paley argues that the gang was, in fact, one of a number which were collectively known as the ‘Royal Family’ or simply ‘the Family’. The nucleus of its membership had been sailors in the ‘Royal Family’ squadron of privateers which was disbanded in 1748. She believes that the ‘Royal Family’ took over an existing network of safe houses, and she shows that, in the parasitic manner of the criminal justice system, there were links between some of the London thief-takers and the ‘Royal Family’. So, even if we accept that what The Discoveries tells us is accurate, the picture is distorted by what is omitted.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
The publishing history of The Discoveries of John Poulter is rather obscure. It seems to have reached its seventh edition by the end of 1753 and its seventeenth in 1779. The title-pages and texts of these editions vary, although in substance and in expression they are very similar and all appear to come from a common root, the variations being due to a desire to edit down the size of the work. Broadsheets appeared which broadly confirm certain of the events described more fully in The Discoveries:
The further Information, Examination, and Confession of John Poulter, otherwise Baxter [no place of publication or date].
Devon, (To wit) The voluntary Information, Examination, and Confession, of John Poulter, otherwise Baxter [no place of publication or date].
Note: the text
printed here includes the addition in square brackets of names of people and places where these can be identified with a reasonable degree of certainty. As will be seen, the part of this biography which provide descriptions of methods of committing the various crimes and swindles referred to in the main body of the text and also the cant dictionary, which was regarded by Partridge as an important source for his various slang and underworld dictionaries, have, unfortunately, had to be omitted because of the constraints of space.
NOTES
1 London Evening Post, 31 March to 3 April 1753.
2 PRO, SP 36/123, Part 2, ff. 11–12; Bath Journal, 2 April 1753, 9 April 1753; see bibliographical note above for the broadsheets.
Drunks, Whores and Idle Apprentices: Criminal Biographies of the Eighteenth Century Page 22
