The Life of JAMES DALTON, a Thief
The character of this criminal is already so infamous, and his crimes so notorious that I may spare myself any introductory observation which I have made use of as to most of the rest with respect to his birth. He was so unfortunate as to have the gallows hereditary to his family, his father, who was by birth an Irishman, and in the late Wars in Flanders a sergeant, coming over here was indicted and hanged for a street robbery. After his death, Dalton's mother married a butcher, who, not long before Dalton's death, was transported, and she herself for a like crime shared in the same punishment.
This unhappy young man himself went between his father's legs in the cart when he made his fatal exit at Tyburn. It has, indeed, remained a doubt whether Dalton the father were a downright thief or not; his own friends say that he was only a cheat, and one of the most dexterous sharpers at cards in England. It seems he fell in with some people of his own profession, who thought he got their money too much easily, and therefore made bold to fix him with a downright robbery.
As for James Dalton the younger, from his infancy he was a thief and deserved the gallows almost as soon as he wore breeches. He began his pranks with robbing the maid where he went to school. By eleven years old he got himself into the company of Fulsom and Field, who were evidences against Jonathan Wild and Blueskin, and in their company committed villainies of every denomination, such as picking pockets, snatching hats and wigs, breaking open shops, filching bundles at dusk of the evening. All the money they got by these practices was spent among the common women of the town, whose company they frequented. Then the Old Bailey and Smithfield Cloisters became the place of their resort, from whence they carried away goods to a considerable quantity, sold them at under-rates, and squandered away the money upon strumpets.
Towards Smithfield and the narrow lanes and allies about it, are the chief houses of entertainment for such people, where they are promiscuously admitted, men or women, and have places every way fitted for both concealing and entertainment. The man and woman of the house frequently take their commodities off their hand at low prices, and the women who frequent these sort of places help them off with what trifling sums of money they receive; for though they are utterly devoid of education, yet dinning and flattery are so perfectly practised by them, that these bewitched young robbers make no scruple of venturing soul and body to acquire wherewith to purchase their favours, which are frequently attended with circumstances that would send them rotten to their graves, if the gallows did not intercept and take them before they are got half way. But it happened that Field was apprehended, and to save himself immediately made an information against his companions, named Dalton and Fulsom, whereupon they were obliged to be very cautious and durst venture out only in the night. It happened that in Broad Street, St. Giles's they met about twelve o'clock at night a captain in the Foot-Guards. Dalton commanded the gentleman to surrender, but persons of his cloth seldom parting with their money so peaceably, there happened a skirmish, in which Fulsom knocked him down, and afterwards they rifled him, taking some silver and a leaden shilling out of his pocket, together with a pocket book, which had some bank notes in it, and therefore was burnt by them for fear it should betray them. But in this fact, Dalton, who had not even honesty enough for a thief, cheated his companion of seven guineas and a watch.
The woman to whom they sold their stolen goods was one Hannah Britton, who, upon Lambert's being committed to New Prison, was named in his information, taken up and committed to Newgate. At the sessions after she was convicted for that offence, and thereupon whipped from Holborn Bars to St. Giles's Pound; which proceeding so affrighted Dalton that he resolved for a time to retire out of London.
Thereupon he and one of his companions went down to Bristol, to see what they could make at the Fair. But they were not over-lucky in their country expedition, for they were apprehended for breaking a shop open, and tried at the assizes; but the witness not being able to swear directly to their persons, they were acquitted through the defect of evidence. As soon as they were out of prison, Dalton returned to London as speedily as he was able, where joining himself with the remainder of the old gang, shortly after his arrival they broke open a toy-shop near Holborn Bars, and carried off eight hundred pounds worth of goods, with a pretty large sum in ready money. Of the goods they did not make above two hundred and fifty pounds, and for the ready money, which was about twenty pounds, they shared it amongst them.
Dalton about that time frequenting a house near Golden Lane, found doxies there to help him off with it, and reduced him to the necessity of making t'other large stride in the way to Tyburn. Not long after, therefore, he committed a robbery in the road to Islington, for which being taken up he brought three who personated a doctor, apothecary and surgeon at his trial, who swore that the time the robbery was said to have been committed he was sick and even at the point of death, upon which he was acquitted.
But as this was a narrow escape, so his liberty was of no long continuance, for his companion Fulsom, being apprehended for a felony, to save himself, made an information against his comrades, and amongst the rest named Dalton, and gave so exact an account of his haunts that h e was quickly after apprehended, and at the ensuing sessions convicted and ordered for transportation.
At sea a great storm arising, they were glad to call up such of the criminals as they thought might be of use towards managing the ship, amongst whom was James Dalton, who no sooner was upon deck but he was contriving to make the crew mutiny and seize the ship. In a very little time he brought enough of them to be of his mind in order to execute their intent, and accordingly got the fire-arms and made themselves masters of the ship, and obliged the men to navigate her to a little port near Cape Finisterre, in Spain, where they robbed the ship of about a hundred pounds, and then went on shore and travelled by land to Vigo. They were scarce got thither before the ship arrived, and the captain charged them with the piracy they had committed; but from the lenity of the Spanish Government, they quickly got released, without giving the captain any satisfaction. The Governor, when they were discharged from their confinement, gave them a pass in which, after reciting their names, he styled them all English thieves, which putting them in no small fright, they resolved to prevent its doing them a mischief, committed it to the flames, and then ran the hazard of travelling the country without one. This, accordingly, they did, until they met with a Dutch ship, the master of which readily gave them a passage to Amsterdam, from whence Dalton and two or three more, found means to get over again to England, and came up to London.
On their arrival here they fell to robbing with such fury that the streets were hardly safe when the sun was set; but Dalton apprehending that this trade would not lost long, resolved to make a country expedition, in order to get out of the way. Thereupon down he went again to his old city of refuge, Bristol. There he did not continue long before he was apprehended for breaking open a linen-draper's shop but the burglary not being clearly proved, the jury found him guilty of the felony only, whereupon he was once more transported to Virginia.
He did not continue long in that plantation before growing weary of labour, he thought fit to threaten his master, so that the man was glad to discharge him, and thought himself happy of getting rid of such a servant. Upon which Dalton soon found out one Whalebone, a fellow of a like disposition with himself; and they went about stealing boats and negroes, running away with them and selling them in other colonies. At last Dalton met with a ship which carried him for England. By the way he was pressed on board the Hampshire man-of-war, in which he was a spectator of the last siege of Gibraltar.[[95]]
On his return he received his wages and lived on it for a little time. Then he with Benjamin Branch and William Field, took to snatching of pockets. At last they took Christopher Rawlins into their society and in a few months' time they three snatched five hundred pockets. Amongst the rest Dalton cut off one from a woman's side at St. Andrew's, Holborn, for which Branch being in company was taken and executed, although Dalton and Rawlins did all they could to have made up the affair with the prosecutor but in vain. This trade therefore being at an end, he and his companion Rawlins fell next to robbing coaches in the streets, and being once more apprehended, he found himself under a necessity of making an information against his companions, six or seven of whom were executed upon his evidence. He also received ten guineas to swear against Nichols the peruke-maker, but after he received the money, his conscience checked him, and though he did not return it, yet he absolutely refused to give any evidence against him. But Neeves, who had been taken into the same plot, went through with it, and as has been said before, hanged him for a fact which he never committed.[[96]]
A multitude of wives Dalton married during his life, and many of them were alive at the time of his decease, four of them coming at once to see him in Newgate when under his last misfortune, and appearing at that time to be very friendly together. He had not been long out of Newgate before be fell to his old practices, and a few sessions after was apprehended, and tried for stopping the coach of an eminent physician with an intent to rob it. For this he was sentenced to a fine and imprisonment, which upon insulting the court was ordered to be in one of the condemned cells in Newgate. But he did not remain long there, being the very next sessions brought to his trial on an indictment for robbing John Waller in a certain field or open place near the highway, putting him in fear of his life, and taking from him twenty-five handkerchiefs, value four pounds, five ducats value forty-eight shillings, two guineas, a three guilder piece, a French pistol, and five shillings in silver, on the 22nd of November, 1729. The prosecutor deposed, that being a Holland trader, the prisoner met with him as he was drinking at the Adam and Eve at Pancras, in his return from Hampstead, where he had sold some goods, and received a little money; that Dalton perceiving it grow dark, desired to walk to town with him, and that they had a link with them, which Dalton put out in the fields, and then knocked him down, beat him and abused him, and then robbed him of the things mentioned in the indictment; and that he threatened to blow his brains out if he made any noise or called for help. He swore also to a pistol which had been produced against Dalton on a former trial.
In his defence the prisoner insisted peremptorily upon his innocence, charged the prosecutor with being a common affidavit man, and a fellow of as bad if not worse character than himself. However, in order to falsify some circumstances which he had deposed against him, Dalton called three witnesses, Charles North, Edward Brumfield, and John Mitchell, who were all prisoners in Newgate, but were permitted by the Court to come down. Some of them contradicted the prosecutor as to a gingham waistcoat which he had swore Dalton wore in Newgate. They swore also to the prosecutor's visiting Dalton there, and owing that he never damaged him a farthing in his life. But the jury on the whole found him guilty, and he received sentence of death.
As he had little reason to hope for pardon, so he never deluded himself with false expectations about it, but applied himself, as diligently as he was able, to repent of those manifold sins and offences which he had committed. He confessed very frankly the manifold crimes and horrid enormities in which he had involved himself. He seemed to be very sensible of that dreadful state into which his own wickedness had plunged him. He behaved himself gravely when at public prayers at the chapel, and applied himself with great diligence to praying and singing of Psalms when in his cell; but as to the particular crime of which he was convicted, that he absolutely denied from first to last, with the strongest asseverations that not one word of all the prosecutor's evidence was true, and indeed there has since appeared great likelihood that he spoke nothing but the truth.
For this Waller going on in the same fact after the death of Dalton, became an evidence against many others, sometimes in one country by one name, by and by in another country by another name. In Cambridgeshire, particularly, he convicted two men for a robbery whose lives were saved by means of the Clerk of the Peace entertaining some suspicion of this Mr. Waller's veracity. But as practices of this sort, though they may continue undiscovered for some time, rarely escape for good and all, so Waller's fate came home to him at last; for a worthy magistrate suspecting the truth of an information which he gave before him by another name, and he coming afterwards and owning his true name to be Waller, he was apprehended for the perjury contained in the said examination, and committed to Newgate, and at the next sessions at the Old Bailey received sentence for this offence to stand in the pillory near the Seven Dials. He had scarce been exalted above five minutes, before the mob knocked him on the head, for which fact Andrew Dalton, who did it to revenge the death of his brother, the criminal of whom we are now speaking, together with one Richard Griffith, at the time I am now writing, are under sentence of death.
But to return to James Dalton, he continued to behave uniformly and penitently all the time he lay under conviction, and as the friends and relations of Nichols applied themselves to him about clearing the innocence of their deceased friend, he said that Neeves himself actually committed the fact, which he swore upon the person they mentioned, and that he was entirely innocent of whatever was laid to his charge.
When the bellman came to repeat the verses, which he always does the night before the malefactors are to die, Dalton illuminated his cell with six candles. In his passage to the place of execution he appeared very cheerful. When he arrived there, having once more denied in the most solemn manner the fact for which he was to suffer, he yielded up his breath at Tyburn, the 13th of May, 1730, being then somewhat above thirty years of age.
HIGHWAY ROBBERY OF HIS MAJESTY'S MAIL
Two waylaid postboys are being bound back to back, while one of the highwaymen carries off the mail-bag
(From the Annals of Newgate)
On Feb. 22, 1727, when the Spaniards attacked with 20,000 men and were repulsed with a loss of 5,000. The English lost 300.
See page [463].
The Life of HUGH HOUGHTON, alias AWTON, alias NORTON, who robbed the Bristol Mail
This unfortunate person was the son of honest and reputable people of Lancaster, who took care to give him a very good education, sufficient to have fitted him for any trade whatever. Afterwards they bound him out apprentice to a wine-cooper, to whom he served out his time very carefully and honestly, and appeared in his temper and disposition to be a civil, good-natured young man. For some time after his coming out of his time, he followed his trade of a wine-cooper, but being pressed on board a man-of-war, during the French War in the late Queen's time, he behaved himself so well on board that he acquired the goodwill of all his officers, attained to the degree of a midshipman, and was afterwards gunner's mate, receiving also a title to five pound per annum, out of the Pension Chest at Chatham.
After this he came to London, married a wife and was a housekeeper in town; and for his better support got himself into the Horse Guards, where he served with reputation, until some small time before his death, when some clothes of value being taken away, and he being strongly suspected on that score was dismissed the service, whereby he fell into great difficulties for want of money.
It seems that for many months before his death he had frequented the house of one Mr. Marlow, and was indebted to him for a considerable sum of money, but one day he came and discharged it, having for that purpose changed a twenty pound bank-note at a brewer's not far distant. But the Bristol mail happening about that time to be robbed, and the bank-note, after various circulations, being discovered to be one of those taken out of it, Houghton was thereupon seized and committed, being at the next sessions brought to his trial at the Old Bailey for the fact, when the course of the evidence appeared against him as follows. He was arraigned on an indictment for dealing from Stephen Crouches, on the King's highway, after putting him in fear, a sorrel gelding value five pounds, the property of Thomas Ostwich, a mail value four pounds, and fifty leather bags, value five pounds, the property of our Sovereign Lord the King, on the first of March, 1730.
Stephen Crouches deposed that on the day laid in the indictment, he was going with the Bristol and Gloucester mail, being near Knightsbridge, a man of the prisoner's size, who spoke like him, came out of the gateway and bid him stand; that he laid the horse to the farther side of a field, commanded him to show him the Bristol bag, which he took and went off with the horse, leaving this evidence bound with his hands behind him, threatening to murder him in case he made the least noise.
Daniel Burton deposed that the prisoner Houghton had more than once proposed to him the robbing of the Bristol mail, and upon his refusing to be concerned in it, would then have had him rob their landlady, Mrs. Marlow, which when her husband came to know, he turned him out of doors.
The next witness that was called was Mr. Marlow, who deposed that on the 2nd of March, the prisoner Houghton paid him five pounds which was owing to him, having changed for that purpose a bank-note of twenty pounds at Mr. Broadhead's the brewer. Then the note itself was produced, which had been paid by Mr. Broadhead to Mr. King, a factor, and by him to Mr. Dictorine's man, in Thames Street, and by him again to the servant of Messrs. Knight and Jackson, by whom it was brought into Court, an endorsement being upon it not to be paid till the fifth of May. But Mr. Marlow being asked as to his being acquainted by Burton with the prisoner's attempts to persuade him to robbing the Bristol mail, and afterwards robbing his house, Mr. Marlow answered that he did not remember he had ever been told such a thing, but that he did indeed know the prisoner together with one Masa, was for scandalous practices turned out of the Guards.
William Burligh deposed that he took out of the prisoner's pocket a pocket-book in which was several notes, which pocket-book the prisoner said he took up in Covent Garden. Mr. Langley, the Turnkey of Newgate, deposed that after he was committed to his custody, he searched his pocket and found therein three bank-notes of Mr. Hoare, which he gave to Mr. Archer. Mr. Archer deposed that he did receive such notes, which were so taken as had been before sworn by Mr. Langley.
There were some other persons produced who swore to some slips of leather which were found in Houghton's lodgings, and which were believed to be cut out of the bag which were taken from the Bristol Mail. The prisoner in his defence said he believed there was a trap laid for him and exclaimed against Burton. Two women positively deposed that Houghton all that night was not out of his lodgings. But the jury notwithstanding that, gave so much credit to the evidence offered for the King, that they found him guilty.
Under sentence of death, he said that he had hitherto lived free from most of those enormous vices into which criminals are usually plunged, who came to his unhappy fate. He said that through the course of his life he had always been a good husband, a loving parent, and had provided carefully for his family; that he had served the Government twelve years by land, and twelve years by sea, and in all that time never had any reflection upon him until the unhappy accident in the Guards, which he said he was not guilty of, and had been since confessed by another man.
As to the fact for which he was to die, he said that the same day the mail was robbed (which was on a Sunday morning) at six or seven o'clock he found a bundle of papers which he took up, and perceived them to be a parcel taken out of the Bristol mail, and therefore having perused them carefully, and taken out of them such as he judged proper, he being at that time out of business and in great want, put up the rest of them in a sheet of paper, directed to the Post Master General, and laid them down in the box-house at Lincoln's Inn Fields, being afraid to go with them to the office, because a great reward was offered for the robber. And that he, having changed a twenty-pound bank-note, paid five pounds of it away to his landlord, Mr. Marlow. He reflected also very severely on the evidence given against him by Mr. Burton, which he said was the very reverse of the truth. Burton having often solicited him to go upon the highway as the shortest method of easing his misfortunes and bringing them both money.
As he persisted in averring the confession he made to be the truth, it was objected to him that it was a story, the most improbable in the world, that when a man had hazarded his life to rob the Bristol mail, he should then throw away all the booty, and leave it in such a place as Covent Garden, for any stranger to take up as he came by; yet neither this nor anything else that could be said to him had so much weight as to move him to a free confession of his guilt, but on the contrary, he gave greater and more evident signs of a sullen, morose and reserved disposition, spoke little, desired not to be interrupted, made general confessions of his sins, pleased himself with high conceits of the Divine Mercy, and endeavoured as much as possible to avoid conferences with anybody, and especially declined speaking of that offence for which he was to die.
When he first came to Newgate, the keepers had, it seems, a strong apprehension that he would attempt something against his own life, and upon this suspicion they were very careful of him, and enjoined a barber who shaved him in prison to be so, lest he should take that occasion to cut his throat. Yet nothing of this happened until the day of his execution, when the keepers coming to him in the morning, found him praying very devoutly in his cell; but about twenty minutes after, going thither again, they perceived he had fastened his sword belt which he wore always about him to the grate of the window which looked out of his cell, to the end of which he tied his handkerchief, and having then adjusted that about his neck, he strangled himself with it, and was dead when the keepers opened the doors to look in.
The Ordinary makes this remark upon his exit, that it is to be feared he was a hypocrite and that little of what he said can be believed. For my part, I am far from taking upon me either to enter into the breasts of men or pretend to set bounds to the mercy of God, and therefore without any further remarks, shall conclude his life with informing my readers that at the time he put an end to his own being, he was about forty-eight years of age, and a man in his person and behaviour very unlikely to have been such a one as it is to be feared (notwithstanding all his denials) he really was.