Part 19

Coming up to London, he found employment in a livery-stable in Piccadilly, but presently his father died and he found himself the owner of his savings, amounting to £57. Alas! poor Robert. He had never before possessed at one time the half of what he had now, and he acted as though the sum of £57 was an endowment for life. He threw up the Piccadilly livery-stable, and came out upon the world as a "gentleman"; or in other words, ruffled it in fine clothes in fashionable places. He frequented theatres in this novel character, and seems to have impressed a number of perhaps not very critical people. Amongst these was a dissolute woman whom he met at Drury Lane. She believed him to be a man of wealth, and sought to obtain a share of it. Ferguson flung away all his money on her. It could not have been a difficult task, one would say, nor have occupied him long. And when all the money was gone, he went back, sadder possibly, but still not wiser, to his livery-stable situation in Piccadilly, as postilion. It was in this employment that he observed the debonair gentlemen who had been his rivals in the affections of this woman calling upon her, and received, where he had been thrust forth with contumely when his money was at an end, and when she discovered that he was no man about town, but only one who got his living in the stables. False, perfidious Nancy!

It was some time before the true character of those visitors was revealed to him; but one day, acting as a postilion on the Great North Road, the chaise he was driving was stopped by two highwaymen, duly masked. One stood by the horses, while his companion robbed the occupants of the chaise. It was a windy day, and a more than usually violent gust blew the first highwayman's mask off. Instantly Ferguson recognised the man who stood by the horses as one of his Nancy's visitors.

Seeing this, the unmasked robber perceived, clearly enough, that the situation was peculiarly dangerous, and, when he had galloped off with his companion, laid the facts before him. They agreed that there was nothing for it but to await Ferguson's return at a roadside inn, and to bribe him to silence. There, accordingly, they remained until the chaise on its return journey drew up at the door.

Two gentlemen, said the landlord, particularly desired to see the postilion. He entered and accepted a price for his silence; further agreeing to meet them that night at supper in the Borough. Meeting there, according to arrangement, Ferguson was persuaded to throw in his lot with the highway blades. His imagination took fire at the notion of riding a fine horse, and, dressed in handsome clothes, presenting a figure of romance; but his new-found friends were cool men of business, and had nothing of that kind in view for their fresh associate. To cut a fine figure was, no doubt, all very well, but the more important thing was to know which travellers were worth robbing, and which were not. If they could be reasonably well advised on that point, much useless effort, and a considerable deal of risk, would be avoided, in not stopping those whose pockets were so nearly next to empty as to be not worth "speaking to" on the road. Their idea was that Ferguson should continue in his employment of postilion, and, as a confederate, keep them well informed of the movements of his clients.

Ferguson was disappointed in not being allowed a spectacular part, but the profitable nature of the scheme appealed to him, and he agreed to this distinctly well-conceived plan. So a long series of unsuspecting travellers driven by him owed their extraordinary ill-luck on the road entirely to the agency of their innocent-looking postilion, who was so professionally interested in their movements, who was so obliging with the portmanteaus and valises, and who secretly kept a keen eye upon the contents of his customers' purses. Quite often it would happen that a trace would be broken in some lonely situation, and then, strange to say, while it was being mended, a couple of highwaymen would infallibly appear, and threatening the postilion with horrid oaths when he pretended to show fight, would at their leisure ransack all the luggage and coolly request all money and personal adornments to be handed over.

Wine, women, and cards were Ferguson's downfall. Success in his new line of life brought reckless conduct, and he grew so impossible that the livery-stable, without in the least suspecting his honesty, dismissed him for general unreliability. He then took to the road for a while as a highwayman, and thus indulged his natural liking for finery.

He was an excellent horseman, and daring to the verge—or beyond the verge—of recklessness. On one occasion, he and two companions "spoke to" and were robbing two gentlemen on the road to Edgeware, but were interrupted by the appearance of three other well-mounted travellers, who gave chase. Ferguson escaped, but his two companions were caught, brought to trial, and executed. It was this exploit that first procured him the name of "Galloping Dick," although his name was Robert. Complimented by admiring friends on his escape, he declared he would gallop a horse with any man in the kingdom.

The name of "Galloping Dick" soon became well known, and was a name of dread. No clattering horseman could come hurriedly along the road without stirring the pulses of nervous travellers, who immediately fancied "Galloping Dick" was upon them. Indeed, he soon became too well known for any reasonable degree of safety, and he would then for a while, for prudential reasons, find temporary employment as a postilion. Frequently in custody at Bow Street, on various charges, he was many times acquitted, on insufficient evidence; but was at last arrested, at the beginning of 1800, on a charge of highway robbery, sent for trial to the Lent Assizes at Aylesbury, convicted, and executed.

JERRY ABERSHAW

The southern suburbs of London were haunted during the last quarter of the eighteenth century by a youthful highwayman of a very desperate kind. He was as successful as reckless, and captained a gang that made Putney Heath and Wimbledon Common places to be dreaded as much as were Hounslow Heath on the west, and Finchley Common in the north, and brought the name of "Jerry Abershaw" into exceptional prominence.

The real name of this highwayman was Louis Jeremiah Avershaw, and he was born in 1773, of the usual "poor but honest" parents. Indeed, it would seem, in enquiring into the lives of the highwaymen, that they in general came of such stock, whose only crime was their poverty: although _that_, as we well know in this happy land of ours, is a very heinous offence, it being the duty of every English man and woman to pay rates and taxes to keep a constantly growing official class in well-paid and easy employment.

We so rarely hear of a highwayman deriving from dishonest parents that, it would seem, even in the more adventurous centuries, ill-led lives were as a rule so short and sordid as to impress the children of those who led them with the idea that honesty was not only really, in the long run, the best policy, but that for evil courses there was no long run at all. Otherwise, the life of the highwayman, if not by any means, as a general rule, so gay as usually it was represented to be, was sufficiently full of that spice of excitement which to the youthful makes amends for much danger and discomfort, and sons might often have succeeded fathers in the liberal profession of highway robbery.

The boyhood of Jerry Abershaw has never been dragged from the obscurity that enwraps it. No slowly-budding flower he, but one that in one brief day flung open its petals. Or rather, in less flowery language, we learn nothing of the first steps that led him to the highway, and find him at the very first mention of his doings already a cool and assured character, robbing with impunity, and making one place in especial a spot to be dreaded. This was the hollow of Putney Bottom, through which the Portsmouth Road runs on its way to Kingston. The little Beverley Brook trickles by, to this day, in the hollow; and Combe Wood, whose thickets formed so convenient a lair for Abershaw, and a rallying-place for his gang, is still very much what it was then.

Abershaw was not, of course, the first to see the strategic value of the heath, and of such woody tangles as these, bordering the road for quite three miles; for we read in Ogilby's great book on the roads, published in 1675, of Kingston Hill, hard by as "not rarely infested with robbers"; and a gibbet long stood near at hand, to remind those robbers, and others who succeeded them, of their own probable fate. But, if by no means the first, or even the last, who practised here, he is easily the most famous, even though it be merely a pervasive fame, not crystallised into many anecdotes.

[Illustration: JERRY ABERSHAW ON PUTNEY HEATH.]

The "Bald Faced Stag," that then stood, a lonely tavern, by the roadside near the Beverley Brook, was a favourite meeting-place of Abershaw and his fellows. It was afterwards rebuilt, as a superior hostelry, in the days when the growth of travel and of coaching had rendered the old roadside accommodation insufficient. This later house may still be seen, standing nowadays as a private residence, with imposing pillared portico, by the way.

Whether the landlord of the original "Bald Faced Stag," was in league with Abershaw and his gang, or not, is impossible to say. Very generally, the tavern-keepers of that age were suspected, and rightly suspected, of a guilty acquaintance with the highwaymen, but it would be too much to assume that they were all of that character; and indeed we find in the sad story of one John Poulter, otherwise Baxter, who was hanged in 1754 for highway robbery, that the frequenting by highwaymen against his wish of an inn he kept in Dublin first ruined his trade and compelled him in self-defence at last to seek a living on the road.

An innkeeper situated like him who kept the "Bald Faced Stag" in the days of Abershaw would have no choice but to harbour the gang whenever they felt inclined to confer their patronage upon him; but, to be quite just, it would certainly appear that he was a willing ally, for, in the most outstanding among the few stories told of Abershaw, it appears that once, when taken ill on the road, the highwayman was put to bed in the house and cared for while a doctor was procured. It was a Dr. William Roots who answered the call, from Putney. The ailing stranger, whose real name and occupation the doctor never for a moment suspected, was bled, after the medical practice of the time, and the doctor was about to leave for home, when his patient, with a great appearance of earnestness, said: "You had better, sir, have someone to go back with you, as it is a very dark and lonesome journey." This thoughtful offer the doctor declined, remarking that "he had not the least fear, even should he meet with Abershaw himself." The story was a favourite with Abershaw: it afforded him a reliable criterion of the respect in which the travelling public generally held him.

The notoriety Abershaw early attained led to his early end. The authorities made especial efforts to arrest him, and, learning that he frequented a public-house in Southwark, called the "Three Brewers," set a watch upon the place. One day the two officers detailed for this duty discovered him in the house, drinking with some of his friends, and entered to arrest him. But Abershaw was on the alert, and, as they stood in the doorway, arose with a pistol in either hand, and, with a curse, warned them to stand clear, or he would shoot them. Disregarding this threat, they rushed in, and Abershaw, firing both pistols at once, mortally wounded one officer and severely wounded the landlord in the head.

But he did not escape. He was tried at Croydon Assizes, on July 30th, 1795, before Mr. Baron Penryn, for murder; the wounded officer, David Price, having died in the interval. A second indictment charged him with having attempted to murder the other, by discharging a pistol at him.

Abershaw was taken by road from London to Croydon, and passing Kennington Common, then the principal place of execution in Surrey, he laughingly asked those in charge of him, if they did not share his own opinion that he would himself be "twisted" there on the following Saturday. That was the conventionally callous way in which the highwaymen approached their doom.

To prove the charge of killing Price was naturally the simplest of tasks, and the jury, returning from a three-minutes' deliberation, duly found him guilty. Prisoner's counsel, however, raising an objection on some legal quibble as to a flaw in the indictment, the point was argued for two hours—and not decided; the judge desiring to consult his learned brethren on the point. There is a certain grim humour about these proceedings; because, whatever the result of this was likely to be, there was yet the second indictment to be tried, and on that alone there could be no doubt of Abershaw being capitally convicted. It was then proceeded with, and Abershaw himself, seeing how he must inevitably be found guilty, and hanged, threw off all restraint. He insolently inquired of the judge, if he were to be murdered by perjured witnesses, and in violent language declared his contempt for the Court. Even at that solemn moment, when, having been found guilty on the second count, the judge, in passing sentence, assumed the black cap, he was not affected, except by rage and the spirit of mockery, and followed the action of the judge by putting on his own hat. The gaolers were at last compelled by his violence to handcuff him, and to tie his arms and legs. In that condition he was removed to gaol, to await execution.

There he must soon have realised the folly of resistance; for he became quiet and apparently resigned. In the short interval that remained between his sentence and that appearance on Kennington Common he had accurately foreseen, he occupied himself with drawing rough pictures on the whitewashed walls of his cell with the juice of black cherries that had formed part of the simple luxuries his purse and the custom of the prison permitted. These idle scribblings represented his own exploits on the road. In one he appeared in the act of stopping a post-chaise and threatening the driver: the words, "D—n your eyes! Stop!" appended. The remainder of this curious gallery pictured the other incidents common in a highwayman's life.

The time then allowed convicted criminals between their sentence and execution was very short. On August 3rd he was hanged on Kennington Common; game—or, rather, callous—to the last. Arrived there, he kicked off his boots among the great crowd assembled, and died unshod, to disprove an old saying of his mother's, that he was a bad lad, and would die in his shoes. He was but twenty-two years of age when he met this fate, not actually for highway robbery, but for murder. His body was afterwards hanged in chains in Putney Bottom, the scene of his chief exploits, and an old and nasty legend was long current in those parts of a sergeant in a regiment soon afterwards marching past firing at the distended body, by which (to make short of an offensive story) the neighbourhood was nearly poisoned. The sergeant was reduced to the ranks for this ill-judged choice of a target.

JOHN AND WILLIAM BEATSON

The very general idea that the highwayman ended with the close of the eighteenth century is an altogether erroneous one, and has already been abundantly disproved in these pages. They not only continued into the nineteenth century, but were very numerously executed for their crimes. Early among those who belong to that era were John Beatson and William Whalley. Theirs is a sad tale of business failure and of a desperate recourse to the road, rather than the story of professional highwaymen.

John Beatson was a Scotsman, who had in his youth been a sailor in the merchant service, and had made many voyages to India and other tropical countries. Tired at last of the sea, he settled at Edinburgh, where he established himself as an innkeeper at the "College Tavern." There he carried on a successful business for many years, and only relinquished it at last in favour of his adopted son, William Whalley Beatson, who for some time carried it on happily and profitably with his wife. Unhappily, his wife died, and when he was left alone it was soon seen, in the altered circumstances of the house, that it was she, rather than her husband, who had in the last few years kept the inn going. Left alone, and incapable of managing the domestic side of the house, he was taken advantage of by the servants, who robbed him at every opportunity; and, in short, in every respect the "College Tavern" declined and ceased to pay its way. He gave it up and went to London, with the idea of entering the wine and spirit trade there. Arrived in London, he took a business in Bedford Street, Covent Garden, and, finding it uncongenial, sold it to a man and accepted six months' bills in payment. The purchaser went bankrupt within three months, throwing Beatson himself into difficulties. At this juncture of affairs he consulted with his adopted father as to what was to be done, and the upshot of their long and anxious deliberations was that there was no help for it but to try and retrieve their fortunes by robbing upon the King's highway. Their first essay in this new business was begun on July 18th, 1801, when they travelled from London to the "Rose and Crown" at Godstone, Surrey, staying there the night. The next morning they set off on foot, and at midday were at the "Blue Anchor," on the road to East Grinstead. They dined there, and asked questions about the mail, and did not leave until six o'clock. Between eight and nine o'clock they were seen on East Grinstead Common. Half an hour after midnight, the postboy who drove the mail-cart was stopped by two men near Forest Row, south of East Grinstead. They produced a pistol and threatened him with it if he refused to give up the bags. Then, he unresisting, they led the horse into a meadow, where they took the bags and carried them off. It was afterwards found that they had walked no less a distance than six miles with them. They were afterwards found in a wheatfield near the village of Hartfield, the letters strewn about in the corn.

They had taken all the Bank of England notes, and notes issued by country banks, and had left drafts and bills of exchange worth upwards of £9,500.

The next morning the two Beatsons appeared at the "Chequers" at Westerham, in a very exhausted condition, and had breakfast. With the excuse that they were Deptford people, and under the necessity of reaching the dockyard there in a hurry, they hastily hired a horse and trap, paying for their refreshment with a £2 note, and for the hire with one for £5.

The people of the "Chequers" inn thought it strange, when their man returned, to hear that he had driven them, not to the dockyard at Deptford, but to a coach-office in the town, where they had at once taken places in a coach for London.

The fugitives did not hurry themselves when they reached town. On the evening of their arrival, it was afterwards discovered, the elder purchased a pair of shoes at a shop in Oxford Street, paying for them with a £10 Bank of England note. They employed their time in London in a shopping campaign, purchasing largely and always tendering bank-notes, with the object of accumulating a large sum of money in gold, by way of change.

At the end of this week they procured a horse and gig and left London, saying they intended to travel to Ireland. Meanwhile, the loss of so many bank-notes had been widely advertised and the good faith of persons who presented any of them for payment enquired into. The movements of the men who had stopped the driver of the mail-cart and robbed him were traced, and soon the Holyhead Road was lively with the pursuit of them.

They arrived at Knutsford, in Cheshire, only a short time before the coming of the mail-coach bringing particulars of the robbery. Before that, however, they had attracted a considerable deal of notice by their singular behaviour at the "George" inn, where they had put up. To draw attention by peculiarities of dress or demeanour is obviously the grossest folly in fugitive criminals, whose only chance of safety lies in unobtrusive manners and appearance. That would appear to be obvious to the veriest novices in crime. But the Beatsons were no doubt by this time agitated by the serious position in which they had irretrievably placed themselves, and in so nervous a state that they really had not full command of their actions. They adopted a hectoring manner at the inn, and on the road had attracted unfavourable notice by the shameful way in which they had treated their horse.

On the arrival of the mail containing the official notices of the robbery and descriptions of the two men concerned in it, the appearance of these two men with the gig seemed so remarkably like that of the robbers, that a Post Office surveyor was sent after them. They had already left Knutsford, and had to be followed to Liverpool, where they were discovered at an inn, and arrested.

The mere hasty preliminary inspection of their travelling valise was sufficient to prove that these were the men sought for. Bank-notes to the amount of £1,700 were discovered, wrapped round by one of the letters stolen; and the purchases of jewellery and other articles carried with them were valued at another £1,300.

Taken back to London, the prisoners were charged in the first instance at Bow Street, and then committed for trial at Horsham. An attempt they made to escape from Horsham gaol was unsuccessful, and they were found hiding in a sewer. Their trial took place before Mr. Baron Hotham on March 29th, 1802. No fewer than thirty witnesses were arrayed against them; chiefly London tradesmen, from whom they had made purchases and tendered notes in payment. There could hardly ever have been a clearer case, and the result of the trial was never for a moment in doubt.

The affectionate efforts of the elder man to shield his adopted son drew tears from many eyes, but the readiness of that "son" to take advantage of them and to throw the guilt upon him excited, naturally enough, much unfavourable comment. Two statements had been prepared and written by the prisoners, and both were read by the younger in court. The first was by John Beatson, who declared himself to be guilty, but his "son" innocent. Whalley's own statement, to the same effect, went into a detailed story of how his "father" had given him a large number of the notes, and had told him they were part of a large remittance he had lately received from India.