Part 8

In other instances Wild would advise his clients to advertise their loss and to offer a reward payable to any person who should deliver the lost property to Mr. Jonathan Wild, or at his office; and no questions asked. Perhaps the most marvellous thing in these negotiations was the assumed disinterestedness of Mr. Jonathan Wild himself, who, although the most notorious evil-doer in London, posed delightfully as the instrument of good, restoring the lost valuables of utter strangers entirely without fee or reward, from the Christian love he bore the human race. Fielding truly styled him "the Great Man."

Wild's impudence increased with his success, and he is found petitioning the Corporation for the freedom of the City to be conferred upon him, in recognition of his great services in bringing criminals to justice. It does not appear that the City responded.

Wild's career first became seriously threatened early in 1724, when, greatly alarmed for his own safety, he is found imploring the Earl of Dartmouth to shield him from what he styles the "persecution" of the magistrates, who, he declares, had procured thieves and other bad characters to swear false evidence against him. The scandal of Wild's continued existence had at last become too gross for even that age. But his time was not yet come, and he continued as before; mindful perhaps of the old adage, "threatened men live long." He nearly ended, however, by a more summary process than any known to the law; and entirely through his own bloodthirsty treatment of "Blueskin," one of his own associates.

Joseph Blake, better known in all the stories of the highwaymen as "Blueskin," who was hanged at Tyburn on November 11th, 1724, was an expert highwayman, thief, and pickpocket—or, to speak in the professional terms then in use among these fraternities, a "bridle-cull," a "boman," and a "diver." He had long been a busy servant of Jonathan, and frequently worked in company with Jack Sheppard, but he would perhaps be little known in these later times were it not for his having come very near sending the Great Man out of the world, and thus cheating the gallows, already growing ripe for him.

"Blueskin," rebelling, it may be presumed, against Wild on some question of money, was promptly arrested by that astute Director-General of Thieves, in his character of thief-taker, and committed to Newgate on a charge of house-breaking. It was almost invariably fatal to quarrel, or even to have a mere difference of opinion, with that powerful and revengeful man. Wild was in court at the Old Bailey, to give evidence, when "Blueskin" beckoned him over to the dock. Inclining his ear to gather what the prisoner was pretending to whisper, Wild instantly found himself seized in "Blueskin's" frenzied grasp, and the court with horror saw his throat cut from ear to ear. The deed was done with a penknife, and the wound was severe and dangerous, but Wild eventually recovered, much to the surprise of those who saw the ferocity of the attack, and greatly to the sorrow of the criminal classes of London, who knew right well that they were suffered to live only as long as they were useful and profitable to Wild, and careful to exercise a due subservience to him.

[Illustration: JONATHAN WILD IN THE CONDEMNED CELL.

_From an old Print._]

Indeed, it was at first thought that Wild must certainly die, and Swift at that moment wrote the famous _Blueskin's Ballad_, of which here are two verses:

Then, hopeless of life, He drew his penknife, And made a sad widow of Jonathan's wife. But forty pounds paid her, her grief shall appease, And ev'ry man round me may rob, if he please.

Some rob in the customs, some cheat in the 'xcise, But he who robs both is esteemèd most wise. Churchwardens, who always have dreaded the halter, As yet only venture to steal from the altar. But now to get gold They may be more bold And rob on the highway, since honest Wild's cold; For Blueskin's sharp penknife has set you at ease, And ev'ry man round me may rob, if he please.

Swift, however, was in too great a hurry: Jonathan Wild did not die then, and the thieves were not yet released from his iniquitous bondage. His wife was not then made a "sad widow," although she was soon to become one; and thus earned the remarkable distinction of having been twice a "hempen widow."

In January of the following year, 1725, the captain of Wild's sloop, a man named Roger Johnson, who had been arrested on a charge of contraband trading with Holland, sent hurriedly to him. Wild, never at a moment's loss, assembled a mob, and provoked a riot, by which the prisoner was rescued.

Himself arrested at his own house in the Old Bailey, on February 15th, 1725, on a charge of being concerned in the theft of fifty yards of lace from the shop of Catherine Stetham, in Holborn, on January 22nd, he was, after considerable delay, put upon his trial at the Old Bailey on May 15th. The lace stolen was valued at £50.

He was further charged with feloniously receiving of Catherine Stetham "ten guineas on account, and under colour of helping the said Catherine Stetham to the said lace again; and that he did not then, nor at any time since, discover or apprehend, or cause to be apprehended and brought to Justice, the persons that committed the said felony."

The evidence adduced at the trial is first-hand information of Wild's method in organising a robbery. Henry Kelly, one of the chief witnesses against him, told how he went on that day to see a Mrs. Johnson who then lived at the prisoner's house. He found her at home, and with her the great Jonathan and his Molly, and they drank a quartern of gin together. By-and-by, in came a certain woman named Peg Murphy with a pair of brocaded clogs, which she presented to Mrs. Wild. After two or three more quarterns of gin had passed round, Murphy and Henry Kelly rose to leave.

"Which way are you going?" asked Wild.

"To my lodging in 'Seven Dials,'" replied Kelly.

"I suppose," remarked Wild, "you go along Holborn?"

Both Kelly and Murphy answered that they did.

"Why, then," he said, "I'll tell you what: there's an old blind bitch that keeps a shop within twenty yards of Holborn Bridge and sells fine Flanders lace, and her daughter is as blind as herself. Now, if you'll take the trouble of calling upon her, you may speak with a box of lace. I'll go along with you, and show you the door."

The Judge at this moment intervened with the question, "What do you understand by 'speaking with a box of lace'?"

Even in our own day judges are commonly found enquiring the meaning of phrases whose significance is common knowledge which one might reasonably suppose to be shared even on the Olympian heights of the King's Bench and other exalted divisions of the High Court. Every one in Jonathan Wild's day understood perfectly well that to "speak with" a thing was to steal it, and this was duly expounded to his lordship.

Then Kelly went on to explain how Wild, himself, and Murphy went along Holborn Hill until they came within sight of the lace-shop, which Wild pointed out to them.

"You go," he said, "and I'll wait here and bring you off, in case of any disturbance."

[Illustration:

_To all the Thieves, Whores, Pick-pockets, Family Fellons &c. in Great Brittain & Ireland, Gentlemen & Ladies You are hereby desir'd to accompany y^r worthy friend y^e Pious Mr. I——W—d from his Seat at Whittingtons Colledge to y^e Tripple Tree, where he's to make his last Exit on, and his Corps to be Carry'd from thence to be decently Interr'd amongst his Ancestors._

_Pray bring this Ticket with you_

SATIRICAL INVITATION-CARD TO EXECUTION OF JONATHAN WILD.]

Murphy and Kelly accordingly entered, in the character of purchasers, and turned over several kinds of lace, pretending to be very difficult to please. This piece was too broad, that too narrow, and t'other not fine enough. At last the old woman went upstairs to fetch a finer piece, when Kelly took a tin box of lace and gave it to Murphy, who hid it under her cloak. Then the old woman came down with another box and showed them several more pieces, but the confederates made as if they could not agree about the price, and so left the shop and joined Wild, where they had parted from him. They told him they had "spoke"; whereupon they all returned to his house and opened the box, in which they found eleven pieces of lace. "Would they have ready money?" asked Wild, "or would they wait until the advertisement for the stolen lace came out?"

Funds were very low at the time with Murphy and Kelly, and they asked for ready money, Wild then giving them about four guineas.

"I can't afford to give any more," he said, "for she's a hard-mouthed old bitch, and I shall never get above ten guineas out of her."

Kelly took the lion's share of the money—three guineas—and Murphy had the remainder.

Wild was acquitted on the first charge, of being concerned in the actual theft, but for feloniously receiving the ten guineas the trial was continued.

Catherine Stetham the elder said that on January 22nd she had a box of lace, valued at £50, stolen out of her shop. She went, that same night, to the prisoner's house to enquire after it; but, not finding him at home, she advertised the stolen goods, offering a reward of fifteen guineas, and no questions to be asked. There was no reply to her advertisement, and she went again to the prisoner's house, and saw him there. He asked her to give a description of the persons she suspected, which she did, as nearly as she could, and he promised to make enquiries, and suggested she should call again in three days.

She did so, when he said he had heard something of her lace, and expected to hear more in a little time. Even as they were talking a man came in and said that, by what he had learned, he believed a man named Kelly, who had already stood his trial for passing gilded shillings, had been concerned in stealing the lace.

She then went away, and returned on the day the prisoner was apprehended. She had told him that, although she had advertised a reward of only fifteen guineas for the lace, she would be prepared to give twenty, or even five-and-twenty, rather than lose it.

"Don't be in such a hurry, good woman," he rejoined; "perhaps I may help ye to it for less, and if I can, I will. The persons that have got your lace are gone out of town; I shall set them quarrelling about it, and then I shall get it the cheaper."

On March 10th he sent her word that if she would go to him at Newgate, with ten guineas in her pocket, he would he able to help her to her lace. She went. He asked her to call a porter, but she told him she did not know where to find one, so he sent out and obtained a ticket-porter. The porter was given ten guineas, to call upon the person who was said to have the lace, and he returned in a little while with a box which was said to contain all the lace, with the exception of one piece.

"Now, Mr. Wild," said she, "what must I give you for your trouble?"

"Not a farthing, madam," said he. "I don't do these things for worldly interest, but for the benefit of poor people who have met with misfortunes. As for the piece of lace that is missing, I would not have ye be uneasy, for I hope to get it for you ere long; nay, and I don't know but in a little time I may not only help ye to your ten guineas again, but to the thief too. And if I can, much good may it do you; and as you are a widow and a good Christian, I desire nothing of ye but your prayers; and for them I shall be thankful. I have a great many enemies, and God knows what may be the consequences of this imprisonment."

The consequences were the most serious known to the law. Wild was sentenced to death. No sentence in that court had ever been so popular. When asked if he had anything to say why this judgment should not be passed upon him, he handed a paper to the Judge, setting forth the numbers of criminals he had been instrumental in bringing to Justice, and in a very feeble voice said: "My lord, I hope I may, even in the sad condition in which I stand, pretend to some little merit, in respect of the services I have done my country, in delivering it from some of the greatest pests with which it was ever troubled. My lord, I have brought many a bold and daring malefactor to just punishment, even at the hazard of my own life, my body being covered with scars received in these undertakings. I presume, my lord, to say I have some merit, because, at the time these things were done, they were esteemed meritorious by the Government; and therefore I beg, my lord, some compassion may be shown, upon the score of these services. I submit myself wholly to His Majesty's mercy, and humbly beg a favourable report of my case."

But the law had too long been waiting for him, and his enormities were too great, for any mercy to be hoped for; and he was left to die. He did not afford an edifying spectacle in that condemned hold to which he had consigned so many, reflecting that, as "his Time was but short in this World," it was necessary to improve it to the best advantage "in Eating, Drinking, Swearing, Cursing, and talking to his Visitants." His old crony, the Reverend Thomas Pureney, the Ordinary, he flouted; and, for the little spiritual consolation he at the last moment required, he called in an outsider. But this did not prevent Pureney from concocting a lying account and offering it for sale after his execution. Therein we read, as though in Wild's own words:

"Finding that there was no room for mercy (and how could I expect Mercy, who never show'd any?), as soon as I came into the condemned Hole, I began to think of making a preparation for my Soul; and the better to bring my stubborn Heart to Repentance, I thought it more proper to have the advice and the Council and Directions of a Man of Learning, a Man of sound Judgment in Divinity, and therefore Application being made to the reverend Mr. _Nicholson_, he very Christian-like gave me his Assistance: And I hope that my Repentance has been such as will be accepted in Heaven, into which Place, I trust in God, my Soul will quickly be received. To part with my Wife, my dear _Molly_, is so great an Affliction to me, that it touches me to the Quick, and is like Daggers entering into my Heart. As she is innocent, and I am the Guilty Man, let her not suffer in her Charracter and Reputation for my Crimes: Consider that she is a Woman, and how ungenerous it would be to reflect upon one whose weakness will not permit her to defend herself so well as her Innocence will carry her.

"And now, good People, you see to what a shameful End my Wickedness has brought me; take warning therefore by my Example, and let my unhappy Fate deterr you from following wicked Courses, and cause such of you to forsake your Crimes, who are now fallen into them. Remember that though Justice has leaden feet, yet she has Iron hands, and sooner or later will overtake the unwary Criminal. I am now upon the point of departing out of this World; joyn with me, therefore, in Prayer while I have life, and pray to God to receive my poor Soul into his blessed Arms, and to make us all happy with our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen."

All the foregoing was the sheer invention of the egregious Pureney, and Wild really went unrepentant to his end at Tyburn, May 24th, 1725. He sought, by taking laudanum, to cheat the gallows of its due, but failed in the attempt. The day of his execution was one of great rejoicings in London, and huge crowds lined the way, pelting Wild, as he rode in the cart, with stones and dirt.

[Illustration: JONATHAN WILD ON THE WAY TO EXECUTION.]

NICHOLAS HORNER

Nicholas Horner was a younger son of the vicar of Honiton, in Devonshire, and was born in 1687. He was wild and unmanageable almost from infancy, and showed little promise of remaining in the humble post of attorney's clerk, in which his father placed him, in London, when he was seventeen or eighteen years of age. He remained, however, with the attorney for three years, learning more in the way of drinking and dicing at the "Devil" and the "Apollo" taverns in the Strand, than of law in Clement's Inn. He then ran away, and remarked when he exchanged his quill-pen, his parchments, and his stool in the lawyer's office, for the pistols, the crape mask, and the mettlesome horse of the highwayman, that he was only exchanging one branch of the profession to which he had been articled for another and a higher—becoming a "highway lawyer," a "conveyancer" and a "collector." Unfortunately for him, he began to practise in this new branch before he had properly made himself acquainted with the rudiments of its procedure, and was in consequence taken in an interview with his first client, and lodged in Winchester gaol, where he remained for three months before his trial came on. In the meanwhile, the friends of his family, seeing how scandalous a thing it would be if a clergyman's son were convicted of highway robbery, and sentenced to die by the rope of the hangman, strongly endeavoured to persuade the gentleman whom he had robbed to fail in identifying him. But their efforts were fruitless, for he was determined to prosecute, and the trial in due course was held, and the prisoner found guilty and formally sentenced to death.

His friends were more successful in the petitions they forwarded to the Queen, herself an excellent Churchwoman, and disposed to stretch a point that its ministers might be saved from unmerited reproach. Horner was pardoned on condition that his friends undertook that he should be sent out of the kingdom within three months, and that they should undertake to keep him in exile for seven years. It was an excellent offer, and they accepted, shipping him to India, where he remained for the stipulated time, passing through many adventures which, although detailed by Smith, are not concerned with the highway portion of his career, and are not even remotely credible.

Returning to his native shores, he found both his father and mother dead, and received from the executors of his father's will the amount of £500, all his father had to leave him. That sum did not last him long. What are described as "the pleasures of town" soon brought him again to his last guinea; and he, of course, once more took to the road.

"Well overtaken, friend," he said to a farmer he came up with on the road. "Methinks you look melancholy; pray what ails you, sir? If you are under any afflictions and crosses in the world, perhaps I may help to relieve them."

"Ah! my dear sir," replied the farmer, "were I to say I had any losses, I should lie, for I have been a thriving man all my life, and want for nothing; but indeed I have crosses enough, for I have a d—d scolding wife at home, who, though I am the best of husbands to her, and daily do my best to make her and my children happy, is always raving and scolding about the house like a madwoman. I am daily almost nagged out of my life. If there be such a thing as perpetual motion, as some scientific men say, I'm sure it is in my wife's tongue, for it never lies still, from morning to night. Scolding is so habitual to her that she even scolds in her sleep. If any man could tell me how to remedy it, I have a hundred pounds in gold and silver about me which I would give him with all my heart, for so great a benefit which I should receive by the taming of this confounded shrew."

Horner, listening to this most pleasant tune of a hundred pounds, said: "Sir, I'll just tell the ingredients with which nature first formed a scold, and thus, the cause of the distemper being known, it will be easier to effect a cure. You must understand, then, that nature, in making a scold, first took of the tongues and galls of bulls, bears, wolves, magpies, parrots, cuckoos, and nightingales, of each a like number; the tongues and tails of vipers, adders, snails, and lizards, six each; _aurum fulminans_, aqua fortis, and gunpowder, of each a pound; the clappers of seventeen bells, and the pestles of thirty apothecaries' mortars, which becoming all mixed, she calcined them in Mount Stromboli and dissolved the ashes in water, distilled just under London Bridge at three-quarters flow-tide, and filtered through the leaves of Calepin's dictionary, to render the operation more verbal; after which she distilled it again through a speaking-trumpet, and closed up the remaining spirits in the mouth of a cannon. Then she opened the graves of all recently-deceased pettifoggers, mountebanks, barbers, coffeemen, newsmongers, and fishwives at Billingsgate, and with the skin of their tongues made a bladder, covered over with drumheads and filled with storms, tempests, whirlwinds, thunder and lightning. Lastly, to irradiate the whole elixir, and make it more churlish, she cut a vein under the tongue of the dog-star, drawing thence a pound of the most choleric blood; and from which sublimating the spirits, she mixed them with the foam of a mad dog; and then, putting all together in the before-mentioned bladder, stitched it up with the nerves of Socrates' wife."

"A damned compound, indeed." said the farmer; "and surely it must be impossible for any man to tame a shrew at this rate."

"Not at all," replied Horner, "for when she first begins to be in her fits, you shall perceive it by the bending of her brows; then apply to her a plaster of good words: after that, give her a wheedling potion; and if that will not do, take a bull's tail, and, applying the same with a strong arm from shoulder to flank, it shall infallibly complete the cure."

The farmer was very well pleased with this prescription, and, giving Horner many thanks and treating him liberally at the next inn, they continued to ride on together. At last, coming to a convenient place, Horner said, "Please pay me now, sir, for my advice."

"I thought the entertainment I provided for you just now at the inn was all the satisfaction you required," retorted the surprised farmer.