Odgen and Reynolds at a later date met a tallyman, who was a well-known trader in St. Giles, and demanded his money. "Money!" he exclaimed; he was merely a poor man, who had the greatest difficulty in earning his daily bread.
"Thou spawn of h—ll!" exclaimed Ogden, in a violent passion—or, at least, an excellent imitation of it—"have pity on thee, shall I? No, sirrah, I know thee too well, and I would almost as soon be kind to a bailiff or an informing constable, as to you. A tallyman and a rogue are terms of similar import. Every Friday you set up a tenter in the Marshalsea Court, upon which you rack and stretch poor prisoners like English broadcloth, beyond the staple of the wool, till the threads crack; which causes them, with the least wet, to shrink, and presently to wear threadbare. I say that you, and all your calling, are worse rogues than ever were hanged at Tyburn."
After this abominable abuse, Ogden went over his pockets, stripped him naked, and bound him hand and foot, and left him in a ditch, "to ruminate on his former villainies." By which it would seem quite evident that tallymen shared the hatred felt for attorneys.
Ogden and Reynolds were the particular friends of Thomas Jones and John Richardson, the one a butler and the other a footman, in the employ of a gentleman living at Eltham. They instructed the footman and the butler in their own business, and it was not long before they took to robbing on Blackheath, whenever their master was away from home. On one of these occasions, they plundered a gentleman, and left him bound on the heath, and, their master coming home unexpectedly, found him there, and after the manner of a Good Samaritan, took him to his own house, and gave him a glass of wine, to recruit his spirits. The butler no sooner appeared, than the ill-used traveller, much to the astonishment of himself and his master, recognised him as one of the men who had attacked and robbed him. The guilty pair were eventually hanged at Rochester, on April 2nd, 1714.
Ogden and Reynolds ended at last at Kingston, on April 23rd, 1714; Ogden himself dying with an air of complete indifference. He threw a handful of small change among the crowd, with the remark: "Gentlemen, here is a poor Will's farewell."
JACK OVET
Jack Ovet was born at Nottingham, and after serving his time as apprentice to a shoemaker, took up that useful employment for a livelihood. But he soon grew tired of his awl and his cobblers'-wax, and disregarding the old saw which advises cobblers (and, no doubt, also boot and shoe makers) to "stick to their last," deserted his last and his bench, and took to the highway. A shoemaker newly emancipated from his useful, but not romantic, trade does not impress us as a figure of romance; but that is merely prejudice; and really he started off at score, and at his first essay robbed a gentleman of twenty of the best, without a moment's hesitation. The dispute as to whom the guineas should belong took place on the road to London from his native Nottingham, so you will perceive how quickly Ovet fell into his stride. Ovet argued that the guineas were rightly his, "by the law of capture"; thus following the theory of the poet who put the law of ownership in property so neatly in declaring it:
His to take who has the power,