Harris was indicted at the Sessions on February 28th, and found guilty, but was afterwards reprieved.
Such lenient treatment was not calculated to render the highways more safe, and so especially dangerous became the road between Shoreditch and Cheshunt that the turnpike men were in 1722 provided with speaking-trumpets, in a singular effort to warn travellers and one another "in case any Highwaymen or footpads are out." It does not appear exactly how this idea was worked, or if travellers were supposed to wait until such highwaymen or footpads retired: but, according to a newspaper report of that time, the scheme was successful, for we read: "We don't find that any robbery has been committed in that quarter since they have been furnished with them, which has been these two months."
Other roads and suburban districts to the east and north-east of London continued to be extremely dangerous. In the history of Hackney we read, for example, of numerous highway robberies, burglaries, and murders, in a long series of years. The neighbourhood of the then almost trackless Hackney Marshes no doubt was a predisposing cause for this exceptional ill-repute. Here again, we find that soldiers were often the criminals. On November 23rd, 1728, the house of a Mr. Wood, a farmer, near Hackney, was broken open by half-a-dozen fellows, who seized and bound all the family. The account then goes on to say that, "They had the good conduct to take off their coats that nobody might know what regiment they belonged to, and robbed in their red waistcoats only, but left a cockade behind them. It is supposed they belonged to the Dragoons; but those gentlemen (it is humbly presumed) ought not to leave their cockades behind them when they go upon such expeditions, such things being of no use but upon reviews."
CHAPTER VI
"WHO GOES HOME?" IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS—FOOTMEN TURN HIGHWAYMEN—SIR SIMON CLARKE—A MERRY FREAK AND ITS TRAGICAL CONSEQUENCES—AMAZING POLTROONERY OF TRAVELLERS—ADVERTISEMENTS OF THE PERIOD—HIGHWAY ROBBERY IN PICCADILLY
An old-world survival, heard every night in the lobbies of the House of Commons during session, is that of the cry, "Who goes Home?" When the House rises, and the legislators, who have left their brains outside and have voted "as their leaders tell 'em to" are dispersing, the stentorian shout of "Who goes Home?" passes from policeman to policeman, along corridors and down staircases, until at last it reaches the coachmen and the cabmen waiting in Palace Yard. The cry means nothing now, except that the sitting is over, but it originated in the ill-guarded condition of the streets and of the suburbs some hundreds of years ago, when even members of Parliament were not safe from highwaymen and footpads, and when at that call they assembled in little bands, often under the protection of the linkmen, to journey together for mutual protection to their several destinations.