25 In December 1753 this crow bar was reported as having been found ‘a few Weeks since’: Bath Journal, 17 December 1753.
26 The theft was advertised as having taken place in the evening of 28 November, and a ten guinea reward was offered: Bath Journal, 4 December 1752; Public Advertiser, 5 December 1752.
27 This theft was advertised by a Mr Major of Marlborough: Bath Journal, 18 December 1752; Devon…The voluntary Information…of John Poulter.
28 Advertisements about this theft offering a reward of five guineas if the horse was stolen and a guinea if strayed were carried in the London Evening Post, 9–12 December 1752, 12–14 December 1752; Devon…The voluntary Information …of John Poulter.
29 London Evening Post, 9–12 December 1752, 12–14 December 1752.
30 The horses were said to have been sold at the Pack Horse, Bawtry, Yorkshire, and to a miller in Doncaster: Devon…The voluntary Information…of John Poulter.
31 According to Devon…The voluntary Information…of John Poulter, on the way from Yorkshire to Bath, Poulter and Allen sold the horses to William Barbridge of Hungerford.
32 See also Devon…The voluntary Information…of John Poulter.
33 ibid.
34 A misprint for ken, the slang term for a house.
35 The theft was reported as having been carried out on 16 January by people who had secreted themselves in the house and, while the family were in the back parlour, had gone upstairs and taken £50 worth of goods, but had missed a gold watch: London Daily Advertiser, 23 January 1753; Public Advertiser, 23 January 1753. Soon afterwards the Bristol magistrates promised a £50 reward for the conviction of anyone guilty of a capital crime in the city between 1 January and 1 April 1753: London Daily Advertiser, 30 January 1753.
36 See also Devon…The voluntary Information…of John Poulter.
37 The cloth was later sold to Stephen Gea: ibid.
38 The theft of a box with goods worth £33 from ‘the London Waggon Warehouse in St. Peter street’ was reported as having been committed by three people on 26 January at about midnight: Felix Farley’s Bristol Journal, 20–7 January 1753.
39 See also Devon…The voluntary Information…of John Poulter.
40 Burk was described as ‘an Irishman, much pitted with the Small-Pox, about Twenty five Years of Age, with an Irish Brogue’. When, later, he escaped from prison, after the Hancock robbery, he was said to be ‘about Five Feet Five Inches high; is by Trade a Taylor, and has a Wife in Prison at Worcester’: Devon… The voluntary Information…of John Poulter.
41 These horses were advertised by William Edwards of the Castle and Ball, Bath, as ‘STOLEN or Strayed’ from a field in ‘Walcot’, near Bath, between 11 and 12 March, and a reward of one guinea was offered: London Evening Post, 17–20 March 1753.
42 Bishop, a horse dealer, lived near Bath: Devon…The voluntary Information …of John Poulter.
43 ibid.
44 ibid.
45 Poulter and Burk were making their way towards Exeter: ibid.
46 ‘Claverton-Down is…a pleasant Place to take the Air, indeed, the Ascent up the Hill is pretty steep; but when you surmount it, you have a delightful View: Here you overlook the City of Bath, and have an agreeable Prospect of the Vale between Bath and Bristol’: The Bath and Bristol Guide: or, the Tradesman’s and Traveller’s Pocket-Companion, Bath, 3rd edn, [1755], p. 27.
47 The robbery was reported in both national and local newspapers: see London Evening Post, 24–7 March 1753; London Daily Advertiser, 27 March 1753; Public Advertiser, 27 March 1753; the fullest report was in the Bath Journal, 26 March 1753, indeed it seems likely that this was the report to which The Discoveries refers. The Bath Journal described the two robbers:
One was a lusty well-set Man, about five Feet ten Inches high, dress’d in a light-colour’d Great Coat, and a Scar on each Cheek; the other was a thin Man, not quite so tall, and dress’d in a light-colour’d Great Coat. They both rode on a little Brown bay Horse with a short Cut Tail, and often threaten’d to kill the Child to make the Doctor discover if he had any Bills, &c. with him; and curs’d and swore most bitterly during the whole Transaction, which lasted near a Quarter of an Hour. They were both thought to be Smugglers, and to have been about Bath some Time. From the descriptions we have of Burk, it seems likely that Poulter was the taller one with the scars. See also PRO, SP 36/123, Part 2, ff. 43–4.
48 See also Devon…The voluntary Information…of John Poulter.
49 They stayed at the Falcon Inn, without Northgate: ibid.
50 Although this came to mean a thief, at the time The Discoveries was published it was a term for a highly organized gang which operated the network of receivers and safe-houses used by Poulter: see the introduction, p. 144.
51 It was reported that Poulter was arrested with another person (presumably, Burk) at Exeter on 27 March; this other escaped soon after from Exeter Castle, where they had both been held: Bath Journal, 2 April 1753; Public Advertiser, 3 April 1753; London Daily Advertiser, 3 April 1753. As to ‘Mrs. Baxter’. one witness at his trial in 1746 had said of Elizabeth Bradbury, who was charged with him but acquitted, that she ‘goes for his Wife; but several Women have come and claimed him for their Husband besides her’: OBSP, 5–9 December 1746.
52 A capper was someone who assisted ‘the sailor’: see note 9.
53 Presumably, either Penton Grafton or Penton Mewsey.
54 William Knibs was acquitted at Gloucester Assizes in August 1753: Bath Journal, 3 September 1753. Roberts died after being taken ill on the road from Shepton Mallet Prison to Exeter, where he was to be tried. According to some reports he had been poisoned, although why is not explained, but the Bath Journal attributed his death to ‘excessive Grief’: London Evening Post, 17–19 April 1753; Bath Journal, 16 April 1753. Sparrow’s escape was advertised as having taken place on 6 November 1752; he was said to be ‘a Shropshire Man, of a brown Complexion, short black Hair, well set, about Five Feet Six Inches high, his Nose is pretty long, and stands awry by a Blow. He is about 30 Years old, and a noted Gambler; and ’tis suppos’d, when he made his Escape, he had on a white Fustian Frock’: London Evening Post, 23–5 November 1752.
Of the others listed here only the following can be traced with any confidence as having been transported: Mary Dawson or Brown, Robert Jones, James White, John Brown and Margaret Brown: P.W.Coldham, English Convicts in Colonial America, 2 volumes, New Orleans, 1974–6, vol. I, pp. 5, 75 and 286; P.W. Coldham, The Complete Book of Emigrants in Bondage, 1614–1775, Baltimore, 1988, pp. 220, 456 and 888. A woman called Mary Brown was said to be in the Coventry Gang of robbers in 1763, and both Smith and Ann Tobin were also members of that gang. Margaret Clark, or Long Peg (also called Sarah Jones, or Ferguson, or Wilson) was hanged near Coventry in 1763 for returning from transportation. At that time she was aged ‘near 60’. John Parry, the gaoler at Ruthin where Clark had been imprisoned in 1756, wrote: ‘I can distinguish her from amongst a great multitude of women, her person is very remarkable… she was a tall straight woman, swarthy complexion, long visage, much pitted with the small pox, together with some other marks or cuts upon several parts of her face’. Margaret Brown (also called Ogden, Peggy Richardson, and Anderson) was hanged at the same time as Clark, who was her aunt, for robbing with the Coventry Gang. On the Coventry Gang generally, see J.Hewitt, A Journal of the Proceedings of J.Hewitt, Coventry, London, [1779].
55 Poulter escaped on 16 February 1754 at about 11 p.m. with Charles Newman, a debtor. Both were recaptured on 19 February at the Ring of Bells, Wookey: Bath Journal, 25 February 1754.
56 A special messenger had come from the Secretary of State’s office with the order: Bath Journal, 4 March 1754. See also the introduction to this biography, p. 140–1.
57 The regular place of execution in Ilchester was at Gallows Five Acres on the west side of the Yeovil Road: R.W.Dunning (ed.), A History of the County of Somerset, London, 1977, vol.III, p. 186.
58 These last two paragraphs are ver
y close to the report carried in the Bath Journal, 4 March 1754, which adds:
He then went and looked into his Coffin, and afterwards gave Directions to tie the Rope shorter, it hanging down too long; then having spent a short Time in private Prayer, he let his Book drop, and calling aloud upon God to have Mercy on his Soul, the Cart was drawn away. It was observed, that he never struggled once after he was turned off, but hung quite motionless from the first Moment.
* Mary Brown has been tried six Times within four Years and Half: First was at the Apollo Inn Westmoreland, with her first Husband Peter Brown, and several others, but she was acquitted and her Husband executed; it was in the latter End of 1748. Next at Ruthen in Denbyshire, with John Brown, for picking Pockets. Next at Shrewsbury, by herself, for ditto. Next at Cambridge, with Jane Baily, on Suspicion of ditto. Next at Litchfield in Staffordshire, in 1752, for picking Farmer Booth’s Pocket of sixteen Pounds in the said Town of Litchfield, with Benjamin Shotton and Eleanor Cummins; the two last convicted, and she acquitted: She was tried by the Name of Mary Robertson. Next she was tried at Exon, at the Lammas Assizes 1752, with Mary Baxter, for picking a Farmer’s Pocket at Great Torrington; but she was acquitted, and Mary Baxter convicted: She was tried by the Name of Margaret Dawson, but now she goeth by her own name, Mary Brown.
* A Cant Word for Cheating. †A House that harbours Thieves.
* This was found lately in the River.
*The only Method that I know to prevent Horses being stolen, is to send to Birmingham for some of their Case-hardened Locks, which are made on Purpose; no Thief or other Person can get the said Lock off the Horse’s Fetlock without the Key. They must be lined with Leather to prevent their galling the Heel of the Horse, and not have any Chain to it, for that will fret the Horse if he has any Spirit. If any Thief steals him over Night, in the Morning when they see the Lock on him they will turn him up, for the said Lock cannot be filed off, nor broke; and the Expences of it will be but two Shillings each Lock. It must not be put on too tight, neither too big.
*She was forcibly rescued out of Liverpool Goal, the 15th of November last [1753], and is since retaken and committed to Newgate in London.
V THE LIFE, TRAVELS, EXPLOITS, FRAUDS AND ROBBERIES OF CHARLES SPECKMAN (1763)
9 INTRODUCTION
Charles Speckman was condemned at the Old Bailey under the name of Charles Brown and hanged at Tyburn in November 1763. The editor of this biography said he was ‘of genteel appearance, a likely person, thin narrow face, somewhat cloudy brow’d, 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’ (p. 211). Stephen Roe, the Ordinary of Newgate, had rather a different view of him as ‘thin, tall, and of a sallow complexion, so close and crafty that he never truly and particularly opened his family name or birth place’, adding that he had ‘an oily tongue, with an insinuating address’. The reason why Speckman was less than forthright and why Roe was so antagonistic towards him seems to have originated in a quarrel between the two over Speckman’s life story which gives some insight into the biographies. Roe complained that instead of ‘being open and sincere in his repentance, and the confession of his crimes and scheme of life’, Speckman ‘referred me to a written narrative of his life and actions, which he had promised on several occasions, to let me see, and now fixed to give me in the afternoon, but he did not: At the same time, he had amused others with the expectation of it, insisting on high terms, which were to provide for his funeral; boasting, as I was informed, that “he would be buried like a Lord”’.1 Roe gives the impression in his Account that Speckman could not be trusted, and indeed he recounts, in a passage which reveals as much about Roe as it does about Speckman, that on another occasion Speckman said he would not give Roe his life story because:
he had been informed, it would be of some advantage to me to get their confessions, (he mentioned a handsome thing, 25l. each sessions for that service, added to the benefit of the trials or proceedings, which he supposed, with equal truth, to be mine) and his meaning was that, in effect, he envied me these large emoluments, notwithstanding all the labour laid out on him and the convicts, and some particular kindnesses shown himself, and so by his witholding his confession he would disappoint me of them.
Roe told Speckman that he misunderstood Roe’s purpose since the account of an unrepentant prisoner ‘would probably sell better, as being more suited to the taste of the world, wherein blasphemy is at a higher price than piety’, and that, therefore, it was Speckman who would be the only loser if he failed to confess, since it would ruin his chances of divine forgiveness.2 Relations between the two worsened, with Roe accusing Speckman of having tried to incite other prisoners to attack him.3 The final blow came when, shortly before his death, Speckman told Roe that he had sold his life story. Interestingly, Roe did, however, note that Speckman had ‘owned he had put in some things, particularly about horses, that were not true, only to fill up; the rest he said was pretty right’.4
Chandler calls The Life…of Charles Speckman one of the ‘more entertaining pamphlets’. He argues that it reveals a shift from the purely picaresque story to the adventure story.5 But works such as The Life and Actions of James Dalton, in which Dalton engages in a series of foreign adventures, show the difficulty with the view that criminal biographies as a genre progressed in a linear fashion through a series of different styles. Yet, it may be that The Life…of Charles Speckman illustrates the development of a type of biography which, while not new, acquired a greater prominence in the second half of the eighteenth century without achieving overwhelming domination. Stripped of its rhetoric and its tales of travel in North America, Speckman’s biography is one of a petty thief and confidence trickster who did not fit into the mould of the criminal as seen in the biographies of Sheppard and Dalton. It may be that, with the expansion and greater sophistication of commercial activities such as shopping and banking, there was a shift in the biographical literature around the middle of the century away from the portrayal of crime as purely a violent, terrifying, confrontational and essentially working-class activity, to one which is perpetrated by people posing as members of the gentry and in which the victim’s co-operation and consent are essential. But, just like the street-robber biographies, the stories of confidence tricksters do not suggest the corruption of the middle classes, instead they present an image of shopkeepers and merchants as islands of morality in a sea of corruption; indeed one of the objectives of these biographies is the instruction of shopkeepers in the protection of their property. So that, whilst the biographies of Sheppard and Dalton depict the corruption of the labouring classes, the biographies of confidence tricksters, like Speckman, taint the gentry. Not that these offenders were necessarily actually members of the gentry, but the biographies did link into a critique focused on the moral corruption of the gentry which runs through eighteenth-century literature.
NOTES
1 Ordinary of Newgate, Account, 23 November 1763, p. 10.
2 ibid., p. 11.
3 ibid., p. 12.
4 ibid., p. 16.
5 F.W.Chandler, The Literature of Roguery, 2 volumes, Boston, 1907, vol. I, p. 165
10 THE Life, Travels, Exploits, Frauds and Robberies, OF Charles Speckman, alias Brown,
Who was Executed at TYBURN, on Wednesday the 23d of November, 1763.
By far the most dextrous of his Profession in this or any other Country.
CONTAINING, A genuine Recital of more than Five Hundred Thefts, Frauds, and Felonies, committed by him in England, Scotland, Ireland, North America, and the West Indies, during the Course of Fifteen Years.
WITH
Several Maxims, Hints, and Remarks, by Way of Caution to the Public, to prevent or detect the Designs of Sharpers and Thieves from being carried into Execution The whole NARRATIVE being wonderful and surprizing, and yet in all Respects strictly true.
Written by HIMSELF, Whilst under
Sentence of Death in Newgate.
LONDON:
Printed for J.FULLER, in Blowbladder-Street, near Cheapside. M.DCC.LXIII.
[Price ONE SHILLING.]
This Pamphlet written for the publick Good ONLY, is entered in the Hall book of the Company of Stationers, and at the Stamp-office, whoever pirates or prints any Part of it, will be prose cuted to the utmost Rigour of the Law.
[reverse of title-page]
I DO hereby empower Mr. John Fuller, of New-gate-street, to Print this only Genuine and True Account of My Life and Transactions for many Years. Containing the most astonishing Variety of Incidents, of any Person ever under the same Misfortunes with myself.
Press-Yard, Newgate,
22 Nov. 1763. Charles Speckman.
Witness,
Francis Caveac,
John Anstey.
THE LIFE AND WONDERFUL TRANSACTIONS OF Mr. CHARLES SPECKMAN, alias BROWNE, &c.1
THERE is not perhaps in the world a more agreeable study than that of Biography; nor any thing sought after and read with greater avidity, than the lives of unfortunate men, and those who suffer under the hands of the executioner more than any. In this narration will be seen, the early propensity to acts of robbery, preying upon, and living in an absolute state of war with all mankind, the long series of years Mr. Speckman escaped punish[p. 2]ment, in which time he committed more robberies than any person before him brought to publick shame; all of them related by the unhappy man himself, in the following plain and undisguised manner.
I think proper for the benefit of the public, and to make all possible attonement for the injuries I have done to my fellow creatures, in England, Scotland, Ireland, North America, and the West-Indies, in all which countries I have committed acts of hostility and depredation innumerable; I have no interest at all in this, only to warn the unwary, how they shall in general avoid the falling a prey to thieves and sharpers, and make those who tread in my wretched paths, be sensible and be warned in time to fly evil courses, as too truly will they find verified, that the wages of sin is death; besides that of undergoing in their wicked career, what is worse than death, the stings and daggers of a guilty mind: so that let their race be as long as it will, and their illicit practices attended with continual success, yet not one hour of true and solid happiness is the consequence.
Drunks, Whores and Idle Apprentices: Criminal Biographies of the Eighteenth Century Page 28
