Part 6

"You must stop, my lord!" exclaimed Bird, threatening him with one pistol, and the coachman with the other.

"The devil I must!" said his lordship; "who the——"—here the chaplain gave a loud cough, and the word was lost in the throaty rasp he produced—"what the——" ("ahem!" from the chaplain) "are you then, fellow, that you bid me pull up on the roadway for you, you——?"

"An honest collector of tolls, your lordship," said Bird: "your purse this instant!"

"So! that is the way of it?" replied his lordship. "I am very little anxious about the small sum I have about me, but I intend you shall fight for it."

Bird then flew into a passion, and swore terribly, after the low fashion then proverbially prevalent among our soldiers in the Low Countries. He waved his pistols excitedly.

"Don't lose your temper," said my lord. "When I said 'fight,' I meant boxing, and not shooting, and I will fight you fairly for all the money I have, against nothing."

"That is an honourable challenge, my lord," replied Bird, "provided none of your servants be near us."

His lordship then commanded them to withdraw to a distance. The chaplain, however, could not endure the thought of the Earl fighting while he was but an idle spectator, and requested the honour of being his patron's champion.

Matters were arranged: the divine stripped off his gown, and in another half a minute the scene resounded with the thuds and grunts of the combatants, as they planted blows home on each other's faces and bodies. In less than a quarter of an hour the chaplain was knocked out of time, with only breath enough remaining to exclaim, "I'll fight no more!" Bird was unquestioned victor. "Now, my lord," said he, turning to the carriage, "if it please your lordship, I will take a turn with you."

"Not I!" earnestly replied the Earl, "for if you can beat my chaplain, you will surely beat me, for we have tried it out before." So saying, he handed the highwayman the sum of twenty guineas he was carrying.

[Illustration: JACK BIRD FIGHTS THE CHAPLAIN.]

Bird's career was closed by a foolish act. He, in company with a woman, knocked down and robbed a man in Drury Lane. The woman was seized on the spot, but Bird escaped. Going, however, to visit her in prison, he himself was arrested; and, being found guilty, he was executed at Tyburn, March 12th, 1690, aged forty-two.

WILL OGDEN, JACK BRADSHAW, AND TOM REYNOLDS

Will Ogden, who was born in Walnut Tree Alley, Tooley Street, Southwark, now claims our attention. He was a waterman by trade and a highwayman by inclination, so that he presently exchanged the river for the road. But he did not blossom out all at once as a fully-equipped highwayman. He passed a kind of transition period of about two years in the plundering of ships lying in the Pool, between Southwark and Billingsgate, and in the rifling of waterside shops. In these activities he was associated with one Tom Reynolds, a native of Cross Key Alley, Barnaby Street, and admiral of a sludge-barge. Being apprehended in the burglary of a watch-maker's shop, they were lodged in Newgate, and tried and convicted at the Old Bailey; but received a pardon, on what grounds does not appear.

This ended their burgling experiences, and they then agreed to go upon the road, in the humbler, padding form of the highwayman's trade.

Early in their experiences, Ogden one evening met a parson walking home by the light of the moon, and approached him in the character of a distressed seaman walking the highway to the nearest port, where he might chance to get a ship. His dismal story excited the compassion of the parson, who gave him sixpence and passed on.

He had not proceeded far when Ogden, who had hurried round in advance of him by a side lane, approached him again, and renewed his story.

"You are the most impudent beggar I ever met," exclaimed the parson; but Ogden told him he was in very great want, and that the sixpence he had received would not carry him very far. The parson then gave him half-a-crown, which Ogden gratefully accepted, adding: "These are very sad times, and there's horrid robbing abroad; so, if you have any more money about you, you may as well let me have it, as another who don't deserve it so much, and may perhaps even ill-use you, and, binding you hand and foot, make you lie in the cold all night. If you'll give me your money, I'll take care of you, and conduct you safely home."

An offer of this kind, so delicately and yet so significantly framed, had only to be made to be accepted by any prudent man, who did not feel himself equal to knocking that impudent humorist on the head; and so the parson made a virtue of necessity, and, as cheerfully as he could, handed him all his money; about forty shillings.

Ogden then remarked, "I see you have a watch, sir; you may as well let me have that too." Whereupon the watch also changed hands.

As they were thus plodding along two or three men, accomplices of the ingenious Ogden, came out of the wayside bushes; but Ogden calling out their pass-words, "The moon shines bright," they let them proceed. A little further on, the same incident was repeated, by which the parson could clearly see that, had he not met with the gentle and persuasive Ogden, he might in all likelihood have fallen into far worse hands, and have been ill-used and tied up, even as he had been warned.

The clergyman was at last brought safely to his own door, and so greatly appreciated this safe-conduct—though at the loss of some forty shillings and a watch—that he invited Ogden in; but that person was as cautious as ingenious, and declined. He thought the clergyman was laying a trap for him; but he said he had no objection to taking a drink outside. The good parson then brought a bottle of wine, and, drinking to Ogden, gave him the bottle and the glass to help himself, upon which he ran off with both.

A little later, Ogden met a well-known dandy of that time, Beau Medlicott by name. He commanded the Beau to stand and empty his pockets, but instead of doing so, he drew his sword and made some half-hearted passes with it. Ogden thereupon drew his pistols, and the Beau was obliged to yield to superior armament. But Ogden might have left that fashionable person alone, for he had little about him. Like the more or less famous music-hall character, "La-di-da," of whom he must surely have been the ancestor, he was scarcely worth robbing. Of what was that music-hall celebrity possessed?

He'd a penny papah collah round his throat, la-di-da; A penny papah flowah in his coat, la-di-da; In his mouth a penny pick, in his hand a penny stick, And a penny in his pocket, la-di-da, la-di-da, And a penny in his pocket, la-di-da!

The contents of Beau Medlicott's pockets were pitiful enough to draw tears of rage from any self-respecting highwayman: consisting only of two half-crowns; and one of them was a brass counterfeit!

Ogden very rightly gave that cheap toff a good thrashing.

Reynolds does not appear in the stories just narrated; but in addition to another ally, Bradshaw by name, said to have been a grandson of that Serjeant Bradshaw who was one of the regicides, he now appears lurking in the woods on Shooter's Hill, one night in 1714, for whatever fortune might be pleased to send them. It was poor sport that evening, for only a servant-girl, one Cecilia Fowley, came along the road, carrying her box; but these low-down footpads despised nothing, and were ready to rob any one.

It was not worth the while of the three, they thought, to rush out of their lurking-place for the sake of one servant-girl, and so they deputed Bradshaw for the job. He accordingly sprang into the road, seized the box, and broke it into fragments. It contained the girl's clothes, "and fifteen shillings, being all her wages for three months' service." (Servants were cheap then, it seems.)

Turning over these things, Bradshaw turned out a hammer, which the girl seized, and suddenly dealt him a blow with it upon the temple, followed by another with the claw of the hammer upon his neck, which tore his throat open. He fell down in the road, and died there.

At that moment, up came a gentleman, to whom the girl narrated the circumstances. He searched the dead man's pockets, and found in them a large sum of money and a whistle. Putting the whistle to his mouth, he blew upon it—a rash enough thing to do—and thereupon Ogden and Reynolds leapt out from the wayside coverts. Finding, however, that something disastrous had happened, and that it was a stranger who had whistled them, they fled.

Odgen and Reynolds at a later date met a tallyman, who was a well-known trader in St. Giles, and demanded his money. "Money!" he exclaimed; he was merely a poor man, who had the greatest difficulty in earning his daily bread.

"Thou spawn of h—ll!" exclaimed Ogden, in a violent passion—or, at least, an excellent imitation of it—"have pity on thee, shall I? No, sirrah, I know thee too well, and I would almost as soon be kind to a bailiff or an informing constable, as to you. A tallyman and a rogue are terms of similar import. Every Friday you set up a tenter in the Marshalsea Court, upon which you rack and stretch poor prisoners like English broadcloth, beyond the staple of the wool, till the threads crack; which causes them, with the least wet, to shrink, and presently to wear threadbare. I say that you, and all your calling, are worse rogues than ever were hanged at Tyburn."

After this abominable abuse, Ogden went over his pockets, stripped him naked, and bound him hand and foot, and left him in a ditch, "to ruminate on his former villainies." By which it would seem quite evident that tallymen shared the hatred felt for attorneys.

Ogden and Reynolds were the particular friends of Thomas Jones and John Richardson, the one a butler and the other a footman, in the employ of a gentleman living at Eltham. They instructed the footman and the butler in their own business, and it was not long before they took to robbing on Blackheath, whenever their master was away from home. On one of these occasions, they plundered a gentleman, and left him bound on the heath, and, their master coming home unexpectedly, found him there, and after the manner of a Good Samaritan, took him to his own house, and gave him a glass of wine, to recruit his spirits. The butler no sooner appeared, than the ill-used traveller, much to the astonishment of himself and his master, recognised him as one of the men who had attacked and robbed him. The guilty pair were eventually hanged at Rochester, on April 2nd, 1714.

Ogden and Reynolds ended at last at Kingston, on April 23rd, 1714; Ogden himself dying with an air of complete indifference. He threw a handful of small change among the crowd, with the remark: "Gentlemen, here is a poor Will's farewell."

JACK OVET

Jack Ovet was born at Nottingham, and after serving his time as apprentice to a shoemaker, took up that useful employment for a livelihood. But he soon grew tired of his awl and his cobblers'-wax, and disregarding the old saw which advises cobblers (and, no doubt, also boot and shoe makers) to "stick to their last," deserted his last and his bench, and took to the highway. A shoemaker newly emancipated from his useful, but not romantic, trade does not impress us as a figure of romance; but that is merely prejudice; and really he started off at score, and at his first essay robbed a gentleman of twenty of the best, without a moment's hesitation. The dispute as to whom the guineas should belong took place on the road to London from his native Nottingham, so you will perceive how quickly Ovet fell into his stride. Ovet argued that the guineas were rightly his, "by the law of capture"; thus following the theory of the poet who put the law of ownership in property so neatly in declaring it:

His to take who has the power, And his to keep who can.

"Yours, you impudent scoundrel!" bellowed the traveller; "if I had not been taken unawares, we would have seen about that."

Ovet, already prepared to take the ancient traditional line of chivalric consideration, said he would fight fairly for the money. "Here it is again, and whoever is best man, let him keep it." The enraged traveller agreed to this proposal, and they fell to fighting with swords, with the result that the gentleman was mortally wounded, and Ovet went off with the purse.

Our ex-shoemaker was a quarrelsome fellow, and soon after this killed another man in a heated dispute, but escaped capture. Skulking in remote places, afraid of being taken at a disadvantage, he soon found himself short of money, and waylaid a train of pack-horses. Cutting open their packs, he discovered a number of guineas among the goods, and finally went off with a hundred and eighty, and three dozen silver knives, forks, and spoons.

One day Jack Ovet, drinking at a wayside inn, overheard a soapboiler and a carrier consulting how the carrier could most securely carry a hundred pounds to a friend in the country. It was finally decided to convey the money in a barrel of soap. The carrier was highly pleased with the notion, and laughingly remarked that if any rogue were to rob his waggon, "the devil's cunning must be in him if he looks for any money in the soap-barrel."

Jack Ovet, later in the day, overtook him upon the road and commanded him to stop, else he would shoot both him and his horses.

"I must make bold to borrow a little money out of your waggon," he said; "therefore, if you have any, direct me to it, that I may not lose any time, which, you know, is always precious."

The carrier, quite unmoved in his fancied security, replied that he had none, and if he did not believe him, he might, if he would, search every box and bundle in his waggon.

Ovet then, simulating a violent passion, began to toss down every box, parcel, and barrel in the waggon, until at last, coming to the soap-barrel, he flung it down with all his force, so that it broke in pieces, the money-bag appearing in midst of the soap scattered on the road.

Then, jumping down, he exclaimed, "Is not he that sells this soap a cheating villain, to put this bag of lead into it, to make the barrel weigh heavier? However, that he may not succeed in his roguery, I'll take it and sell it in the next house I come to, for it will wet my whistle to the tune of two or three shillings."

So saying, he was making off, when the poor carrier cried out, "Hold, hold, sir! that is not lead. It is a bag with a hundred pounds in it, for which I must be accountable."

"No, no," returned Ovet, "this can't be money; but if it is, tell the owner that I'll be answerable for it, if he'll come to me."

"To you! Where, then, sir, may one find you?"

"Why, truly," rejoined Ovet, with a chuckle, "that's a question soon asked, but not so soon answered. The best answer I can give you is that you'll probably find me in a gaol before night, and then perhaps you may have what I have taken, and forty pounds more."

The highwaymen were generally susceptible creatures, and Ovet not less so than his brethren. One day, robbing the Worcester stage-coach, filled on that occasion with young women, he was violently smitten with one in particular.

"Madam," he declared, "your charms have softened my temper. Cast not your eyes down, nor cover your face with those modest blushes; and, believe me, what I have taken from necessity is only borrowed, and shall be honourably restored, if you will let me know where you may be found."

The young woman gave him her address, and a week later, overcome by the most violent passion, he wrote her a love-letter in which, in the most bombastic and ridiculous style, he expressed his love. "Although I had the cruelty to rob you of twenty guineas," he concluded, "you committed at the same time a greater robbery, by taking my heart. Do, I implore you, direct a favourable answer."

But this was the discouraging reply:

"SIR,—

"Yours I received with as great dissatisfaction as when you robbed me. I admire your impudence in offering yourself to me as a husband, when I am sensible it would not be long ere you made me a hempen widow. Perhaps some foolish girl or another may be so bewitched as to go in white, to beg the favour of marrying you under the gallows; but, indeed, I shall neither venture there, nor in a church, to marry one of your profession, whose vows are treacherous, and whose smiles, words, and actions, like small rivulets, through a thousand turnings of loose passions, at last arrive at the dead sea of sin.

"Should you, therefore, dissolve your eyes into tears; were every accent in your speech a sigh; had you all the spells and magic charms of love, I should seal up my ears. You have already broken your word, in not sending what you villainously took from me; but, not valuing that, let me tell you, for fear you should have too great a conceit of yourself, that you are the first, to my recollection, whom I ever hated; and, sealing my hatred with the hopes of quickly reading your dying speech, in case you die in London, I presume to subscribe myself."

"Yours, never to command."

Soon after this harrowing dismissal, Jack Ovet was taken, tried, and executed, ending in May 1708, in the thirty-second year of his age.

JOHN HALL, RICHARD LOW, AND STEPHEN BUNCE

John Hall, born in 1675 of poor parents in Bishop's Head Court, off Gray's Inn Lane, was one of those late seventeenth and very early eighteenth-century evil-doers, who anticipated the sordid career of the modern thief, without any redeeming qualities. A chimney-sweep by trade, he was, among other things, a highwayman, but he more often padded the hoof upon the highway than rode along it, and he would turn his hand, according to what he deemed the necessities of the moment, to pocket-picking, shop-lifting, or ringing the changes, with equal facility. At the same time, he was not altogether a fortunate malefactor. As a pickpocket, he was frequently detected and, we learn, "treated in the usual manner, by ducking in the horsepond," by those who did not want the trouble of prosecuting him. Happening upon more vindictive persons, he was arrested, time after time, and thrown into Bridewell and often whipped. Which was the more desirable, to be flung into a horsepond, or be whipped, it must be left to individual tastes to decide. It depends largely, no doubt, upon the comparative filthiness of the pond and the kind of lash in use by the brawny warders of Bridewell.

He was eminently versatile, but the public has ever looked with suspicion upon versatility; and perhaps for this, among other reasons, his name is scarcely famous: only notorious in a small way as a jack-of-all-trades, except honest ones, and a great master in no

## particular one.

He was, it may be at once granted, industrious enough in his perverted way, and was for always frequenting churches, fairs, markets, and public assemblies: he had also generally a confederate at hand, to whom he would swiftly pass on the swag, to be himself found empty-handed when searched, and with nothing on him to prove his guilt; quite in the modern style.

He had, as a shoplifter, the same painfully chequered fortunes that studded his pocket-picking career with deplorable incidents. In January 1682 he was convicted at the Old Bailey of stealing a pair of shoes, and was whipped at the cart's tail. A little later, still smarting from that correction, he was back at the same trade, and in the long span of eighteen years suffered a series of duckings, whippings, and the distressing indignities that are the common rewards of clumsy rogues, sufficient to have cured many an one. But Jack Hall was clearly an "habitual." The delight of sport gilded his occupation, and salved his moral and physical hurts; and, after all, although he was a more than commonly blundering criminal, it was in itself no mean feat in those severe times to follow the course he steered, and yet for so long to keep his neck out of the noose.

After eighteen years of miscellaneous villainy, he was convicted of breaking into the house of one Jonathan Bretail, and for this was sentenced to be hanged. With so lengthy a record as this, he was fortunate indeed in receiving a pardon conditional upon his being transported within six months to the American colonies. Fortunate colonies! But he escaped at the last moment from the convict ship, and England therefore did not lose her Hall.

Having tried many kinds of petty robbery with no very great or continued success, and being too well known as a pickpocket and shoplifter, against whom every pocket was buttoned, all tills locked, and goods carefully secured, he struck out a new line; robbing country waggons and stealing portmanteaus off coaches. But even here, in this arduous branch of a thief's varied business, ill-luck malevolently pursued him; for he was caught in the act and convicted in 1702. This brought him a period of two years' enforced seclusion in Bridewell, and the painful and disfiguring sentence of branding in the cheek, by which all men might know him on sight for a convicted felon, and be warned accordingly. This inevitable carrying his own condemnation with him wherever he went severely handicapped him when he was again at liberty; and it was probably for this reason that he returned to burglary, which, conducted at night-time, might reasonably offer inducements to a man with a scarred face.

With Stephen Bunce, Dick Low, and others, he broke into the shop of a baker named Clare, at Hackney, soon after midnight. They proceeded at once to the bakehouse, where they surprised the journeyman and apprentice at work, and, tying them neck and heels, threw them into the kneading-trough. One stood guard over them with a drawn sword, while the others went upstairs to rob the house.

[Illustration: THE ROBBERY AT THE HACKNEY BAKER'S.]

The elderly Mr. Clare was awakened from sleep and bidden disclose where his money lay, but he stoutly refused, in spite of all their threats, until Hall seized a little girl, the baker's granddaughter. "D——n me!" he said, "if I won't bake the child in a pie and eat it, if the old rogue won't be civil."

Mr. Clare seems to have been alarmed by this extravagant threat. Perhaps the flaming "F" for felon, or "T" for thief, on Hall's cheek, made him appear exceptionally terrible. At any rate, Mr. Clare then revealed his hoard of gold, which amounted to between seventy and eighty guineas; and with that, very satisfied, the midnight band departed.