Poulter then went off to Trowbridge, in company with a new recruit, Burke by name, an Irishman, who had been confidential ostler to Roberts, and was now advanced to full membership of this body of raiders. Meeting a post-chaise near Clarken Down, Burke proposed to attack it, but Poulter would agree only on condition that no violence were used. Poulter then led the attack, but in the darkness put his hand with accidental force through the window, and cut it severely. In doing so, his pistol went off, and Burke thinking it was the occupant of the chaise who had fired, replied with his own firearms. Fortunately, no one was hit.
The chaise was occupied by Dr. Hancock and his little girl. Poulter took up the child and kissed her, and then, setting her down, robbed the Doctor of one guinea and a half in gold, six shillings, a gold watch, and some clothes: a booty not worth all the trouble, and certainly not by a long way worth the further trouble the affair was presently to bring.
After seeing the post-chaise disappear in the darkness, Poulter and his companion made their way to a neighbouring inn, and coolly displayed their takings to the landlord and his wife, who appear to have been, if not actual confederates, at least better disposed to self-revealed robbers than honest innkeepers should be. The landlady gave the highwaymen a bag for the clothes, and the landlord, when they lamented the fact of all their powder and ball being fired off, obligingly removed the charge from his loaded fowling-piece, and melted down two pewter spoons for casting into bullets. The landlady, when Poulter and Burke asked her if these preparations for arming did not alarm her, said: "No, they are not the first pistols I have seen loaded by night in this kitchen." Evidently an inn that the solitary and unarmed traveller with money about him should avoid.
She added thoughtfully that, after this robbery, they had better travel as far away as they could, that night from the spot. She would send them any news.
They then left, and, taking a horse they chanced to see in an adjacent meadow, proceeded to Exeter, where they sold the stolen articles to a receiver.
It was not more than three weeks later when Poulter was arrested on suspicion of being concerned in the robbery of Dr. Hancock. He was thrown into Ilchester gaol, brought to trial, and condemned to death. He made a full confession and disclosed the names of no fewer than thirty-one of his associates, their places of meeting, and their methods. He was not only anxious to save his life by thus turning evidence against the gang, but he was genuinely wearied of the manner of life into which he had been hounded.
Many members of the gang, he said, lived to all appearances respectably. Their general meeting-place was Bath. He added that it was on every account desirable that the messenger to the police at Bath, entrusted with these disclosures, should keep all these things secret, except to the Mayor; but some one had gossiped, for within one hour of his arrival those revelations were the talk of the town, and the names of those implicated in them were freely mentioned. The next day they were even printed, in accounts of the disclosures hastily struck off and sold in the streets. The very natural result was that most of the persons named escaped before justice could lay hands upon them. A list of nineteen not taken, and twelve in various gaols all over the country, is printed in the Discoveries.
Dr. Hancock's property was found and returned to him. His conduct was one of the most astonishing features in this amazing case, and reflected considerable discredit upon him; for although he visited Poulter in Ilchester gaol, before the trial, and assured the prisoner that although he was obliged to be a prosecutor, he would bear lightly upon the facts, and would in the event of a conviction use his best efforts to obtain the Royal pardon, he treacherously used every effort to secure his being hanged. There seems to have been no motive for this double-dealing, except his own natural duplicity. His treachery was thorough, for he even used his influence with the judge to obtain a shortening of the period between sentence and execution.
The trial and the revelations made by Poulter excited keen and widespread public interest, and the lengthy pamphlet account of them, entitled "The Discoveries of John Poulter, otherwise Baxter, apprehended for robbing Dr. Hancock on Clarken Down, near Bath," had a large and long-continued sale. A copy of the fourteenth edition, issued in 1769, fourteen years later, is in the British Museum library.
He was respited for six weeks, in consideration of the further disclosures he was to make, or of any evidence he might be required to give, and in this time, so moving was his tale, and so useful was the information he had given, that the corporations of Bath, Bristol, Exeter, and Taunton, together with numerous private gentlemen of considerable influence, petitioned that he might be reprieved. It is probable that these efforts would have been successful; but Poulter was an unlucky man, and at this particular crisis in his affairs happened in some way to rouse the ill-will of the gaoler, who was never tired, in all those days of suspense, of assuring him that he would certainly be hanged, and serve him right!