There he must soon have realised the folly of resistance; for he became quiet and apparently resigned. In the short interval that remained between his sentence and that appearance on Kennington Common he had accurately foreseen, he occupied himself with drawing rough pictures on the whitewashed walls of his cell with the juice of black cherries that had formed part of the simple luxuries his purse and the custom of the prison permitted. These idle scribblings represented his own exploits on the road. In one he appeared in the act of stopping a post-chaise and threatening the driver: the words, "D—n your eyes! Stop!" appended. The remainder of this curious gallery pictured the other incidents common in a highwayman's life.
The time then allowed convicted criminals between their sentence and execution was very short. On August 3rd he was hanged on Kennington Common; game—or, rather, callous—to the last. Arrived there, he kicked off his boots among the great crowd assembled, and died unshod, to disprove an old saying of his mother's, that he was a bad lad, and would die in his shoes. He was but twenty-two years of age when he met this fate, not actually for highway robbery, but for murder. His body was afterwards hanged in chains in Putney Bottom, the scene of his chief exploits, and an old and nasty legend was long current in those parts of a sergeant in a regiment soon afterwards marching past firing at the distended body, by which (to make short of an offensive story) the neighbourhood was nearly poisoned. The sergeant was reduced to the ranks for this ill-judged choice of a target.
JOHN AND WILLIAM BEATSON
The very general idea that the highwayman ended with the close of the eighteenth century is an altogether erroneous one, and has already been abundantly disproved in these pages. They not only continued into the nineteenth century, but were very numerously executed for their crimes. Early among those who belong to that era were John Beatson and William Whalley. Theirs is a sad tale of business failure and of a desperate recourse to the road, rather than the story of professional highwaymen.
John Beatson was a Scotsman, who had in his youth been a sailor in the merchant service, and had made many voyages to India and other tropical countries. Tired at last of the sea, he settled at Edinburgh, where he established himself as an innkeeper at the "College Tavern." There he carried on a successful business for many years, and only relinquished it at last in favour of his adopted son, William Whalley Beatson, who for some time carried it on happily and profitably with his wife. Unhappily, his wife died, and when he was left alone it was soon seen, in the altered circumstances of the house, that it was she, rather than her husband, who had in the last few years kept the inn going. Left alone, and incapable of managing the domestic side of the house, he was taken advantage of by the servants, who robbed him at every opportunity; and, in short, in every respect the "College Tavern" declined and ceased to pay its way. He gave it up and went to London, with the idea of entering the wine and spirit trade there. Arrived in London, he took a business in Bedford Street, Covent Garden, and, finding it uncongenial, sold it to a man and accepted six months' bills in payment. The purchaser went bankrupt within three months, throwing Beatson himself into difficulties. At this juncture of affairs he consulted with his adopted father as to what was to be done, and the upshot of their long and anxious deliberations was that there was no help for it but to try and retrieve their fortunes by robbing upon the King's highway. Their first essay in this new business was begun on July 18th, 1801, when they travelled from London to the "Rose and Crown" at Godstone, Surrey, staying there the night. The next morning they set off on foot, and at midday were at the "Blue Anchor," on the road to East Grinstead. They dined there, and asked questions about the mail, and did not leave until six o'clock. Between eight and nine o'clock they were seen on East Grinstead Common. Half an hour after midnight, the postboy who drove the mail-cart was stopped by two men near Forest Row, south of East Grinstead. They produced a pistol and threatened him with it if he refused to give up the bags. Then, he unresisting, they led the horse into a meadow, where they took the bags and carried them off. It was afterwards found that they had walked no less a distance than six miles with them. They were afterwards found in a wheatfield near the village of Hartfield, the letters strewn about in the corn.
They had taken all the Bank of England notes, and notes issued by country banks, and had left drafts and bills of exchange worth upwards of £9,500.
The next morning the two Beatsons appeared at the "Chequers" at Westerham, in a very exhausted condition, and had breakfast. With the excuse that they were Deptford people, and under the necessity of reaching the dockyard there in a hurry, they hastily hired a horse and trap, paying for their refreshment with a £2 note, and for the hire with one for £5.
The people of the "Chequers" inn thought it strange, when their man returned, to hear that he had driven them, not to the dockyard at Deptford, but to a coach-office in the town, where they had at once taken places in a coach for London.