EXCHANGE OF COMPLIMENTS.
A silent reminder of those times still stands beside the Bath Road at Gunnersbury, on the right-hand side of the way as you go from London, and between the modern church of St. James, and Gunnersbury Lane. This is an isolated square brick building, now covered with a tin roof, and quite commonplace in appearance. It has windows looking up and down the road, and large doors facing it. Until a few years ago, it had an old pantile roof, whose striking red colour was the only remarkable feature the building ever possessed. The neighbourhood has long been largely built over, but it still stands in what remains of the once wide-spreading Gunnersbury orchards. Local traditions still survive which tell us that this was a building erected in the time of George the Second, or Third, for the purpose of sheltering the horse-patrol that guarded the road when the King passed this way, travelling between London and Windsor.
Hounslow Heath would seem often to have been the training-ground on which young and inexperienced highwaymen first tried their luck. Graduating here, they would with confidence take the road in distant shires. For example, we have the careers of Messrs. John and William Hawkins, Wright, Sympson, and Wilson, whose doings are set forth at great length by the last of that brotherhood in crime, Ralph Wilson, who turned King's evidence and so saved himself from the gallows, and at the same time firmly fixed the noose round the necks of his surviving confederates. The story of the transactions of this firm was told by Wilson in a pamphlet published at the modest price of sixpence, in 1722, shortly after John Hawkins and George Sympson had been turned off.
Hawkins was the son of a small farmer at Staines. At fourteen years of age he went into domestic service, then left it to become employed in the tap at the "Red Lion," Hounslow. From that situation he rose to be a butler to a knight; one Sir Dennis "Dulry," according to the rough and ill-spelled tract (perhaps really Daltry), but was dismissed on what would seem to have been the well-founded suspicion that he had taken a hand in a robbery of his master's plate, shortly after entering his service. 'Twas a way they had in the eighteenth century, which nobody will deny.
It may be shrewdly suspected that employment in the tap of the "Red Lion" at Hounslow had gone a good way towards inclining John Hawkins toward the road; for, not only would he be brought into contact with gamesters, but talk of how the bold highwaymen on the neighbouring heath netted handsome sums formed, doubtless, the staple conversation of the place. The only wonder is that John Hawkins first went into service, and did not immediately go padding on the road. He must have been a singularly youthful butler, for even when he got his congé, and turned his attention to stopping the coaches, he was but twenty-four years of age. His initial enterprise was carried through single-handed, and his gains totalled the not despicable sum of £11. But he returned to the town only to gamble with his plunder, and in that way soon managed to dissipate it. Finding his solitary career on the heath a little hazardous, in consequence of meeting a rare succession of exceptionally brave travellers who did not scruple to loose off their pistols at a single adventurer, he sought the moral and physical support of companions of his own vocation.
It became a syndicate of five; himself, Eyles, Comerford, Reeves, and Lennard. For two years they dared much in their speciality of robbing stage-coaches and postboys carrying the mail-bags: those being the days before mail-coaches, when the bags (or often enough merely a small wallet, the post being then a comparatively small affair) were carried on horseback. In proportion to their daring, their takings increased, but they were always lost in the usual dissipations that give such a monotony to all accounts of highwaymen taking their ease after business hours.
Lennard at last got into trouble and was arrested, and when Hawkins and a recruit to the gang named Woldridge attempted a rescue, they too were seized. Three others were arrested, and appear, with Lennard, to have been hanged. Hawkins and Woldridge were discharged.
A new confederacy was then planned, but soon broke up, upon a member named Pocock, who had been flung into gaol, turning informer. Another, who acted as treasurer, at the same time absconding with their little earnings, the rest were reduced to poverty and to cursing the appalling lack of honesty in mankind.
Hawkins, desperately endeavouring to woo capricious fortune at the gaming-tables by staking his last coins, then met one Ralph Wilson, at that time clerk to a barrister of the Middle Temple. He, too, fell from respectability through gambling, and agreed to turn highwayman with the new association Hawkins contemplated forming: "The New Highways Exploitation Company," it might well have been named. John Hawkins's brother William joined, and George Sympson, and one Wright, among others.
The sphere of operations was widened, and business was carried on with the greatest energy: the Cirencester stage, and those for and from Gloucester, Worcester, Oxford, and Bristol, being all plundered one morning. The next day they would be speaking to the Colchester and Ipswich stages, and on the next would be again in some totally different direction.