Across the way, on the west side of Berkeley Street, the curious sunk thoroughfare, known as Lansdowne Passage, (the name as painted up is spelled wrongly, without the concluding "e") dividing the gardens of Lansdowne House and the Duke of Devonshire's mansion, is connected with a highwayman story of some eighteen years later. The entrance to this passage-way for pedestrians is divided by an iron bar, which renders it impossible for anything more bulky than a man to squeeze through, and there are even some particularly stout persons who might find it difficult to pass. The passage conducts to Curzon Street, and is at such a low level that a flight of steps leads down to it, through the narrow opening.
LANSDOWNE PASSAGE.
The iron bar dates from about 1768, and was placed there immediately after the sensation caused by a mounted highwayman, who, having committed a robbery in Piccadilly, evaded his pursuers by riding up Berkeley Street and down the steps of Lansdowne Passage, and so through it and into Bolton Street, at a gallop.
When such things as those just narrated were possible, it is only a little more surprising to read how Sir John Fielding, the Bow Street magistrate, could raid a masquerade ball, on March 6th, 1753, in search of highwaymen. He had received information that some of the profession would be present, and went with his men and entered the gaming-room, and obliged all the company to unmask and give an account of themselves. "It is supposed," says the Gentleman's Magazine, "those fellows had notice of his coming before he could get upstairs, and so made off in the crowd, for none of them were taken." There had been deep gaming that night, and a plentiful circulation of bad guineas.
It is amazing to modern readers who read of the notoriety in which the highwaymen often lived, that they should have been suffered to appear in public so frequently, and yet their profession to be so well known. At Ranelagh, at Vauxhall, at the fashionable coffee-houses they were found, enjoying the gaieties of the town, and reading, no doubt, in the newspapers of the day, accounts of their own enterprises of a day or two earlier. There was a certain or an uncertain period of grace allowed most of these fine fellows, whose careers, long or short, were very largely lengthened or shortened by the amount of the rewards that presently began to be offered for their apprehension. The convenience or safety of the long-suffering public was never consulted. It never is. Then and now, the public existed, and still exists, for the support of officials and functionaries. That is what we of the unofficial classes are here for. This system, carried to its logical conclusion, may be best studied in France and Germany, but we in England are fast advancing on the same lines.
In the days of the highwaymen, the system worked, in respect of them, in this way: they were not worth catching until a reward was offered, and it even then remained a nice point whether it were not better to wait until a still larger reward was advertised, before closing in upon the fellows and haling them before the magistrates. You had simply to watch the "public form," so to speak, of your man, just as people accustomed to bet upon horse-races watch the performances of the animal they favour. If your highwayman were a dashing and enterprising fellow, likely to make much of a stir in his line, it was obviously not worth the while to collar him for the sake of a mere £40 reward offered for the apprehension of a highwayman. You just waited until he became a notorious person, with some great deeds to his credit—a big haul of guineas or jewellery, or perhaps even a murder. Then he would be worth £100, or, in extreme cases, even more; and then only would he be taken, unless, indeed, some foolish competitive busybody officiously intervened, and got him before he had quite ripened.