Dick Low was a not very distinguished person, and indeed his name, except in association with Hall and Bunce, is utterly unworthy of record in these annals. He was more expert at stealing from shops and emptying tills than in any other branch of the thieving profession, and would have made an expert area-sneak had areas been then in existence. Unfortunately they came in about a century later. But he was an expert at the "running-smobble," which consisted in two or three confederates planning to rob a shop after dark: one going in with an exaggerated pretence of drunkenness and creating a disturbance; while the others would enter on the excuse of seeing what the matter could be, and then, turning out the lights, clearing out the till, and laying hands on any light articles of value that might be within reach. One of them would come provided with pepper, or handfuls of mud and throw it in the faces of the shopkeeper and his assistants, when they began to cry "Stop, thief!"
For the rest, Dick Low was a violent, sullen brute, often, like his two allies, in Newgate, and when there generally in the bilboes for savage assaults on his fellow-prisoners.
Stephen Bunce, or Bunch, began his iniquities as soon as he could toddle, and, according to the Reverend Mr. Thomas Pureney, the Ordinary of Newgate, was old in crime while he was yet an infant in years. Another biographer picturesquely says he was "born a thief," which, as his parents were the inevitably "poor but honest" folk of the conventional type of biography, seems an extreme criticism.
The depravity of Stephen Bunce was, however, so precocious that, as a child, he would go and play with the children of a charcoal-man, who lived near his native London alley, for the express purpose of filling his pockets with the charcoal, and then selling it, for hot codlins, to a woman who kept an apple-stall. One day, when the codlins were more than ever tempting and the charcoal not so easily to be stolen, he asked the woman for some apples on trust, but she refused, and Stephen resolved upon revenge.
On the next opportunity, pocketing a larger quantity of charcoal than usual, he filled the holes in it with gunpowder and then stopping them with black sealing-wax, sold the charcoal to the unsuspecting woman, who presently replenished her fire with it, with the natural result that her brazier was blown to pieces and herself almost frightened out of her wits.
Graduating in crime as he grew up, Stephen naturally worked his way through picking and stealing at the coffee-houses to practising on the road. "Amongst others of his notorious pranks, he often played several comical tricks, the most remarkable whereof is this, viz.: One day being upon some prospect in Essex, and destitute of money, as he was coming along a footpath from Brentwood to London, he espied over the hedges a gentleman mounted upon a very fine gelding, valued at above forty pounds. Bunce presently gets the length of two or three fields before the gentleman, and going over a stile at the turning of a lane, he there lays himself down by a ditch-side, with his ear close to the ground, till the gentleman was come up with him. Seeing him lie in that posture, he asked him the meaning of it.
"Bunce, in a sort of admiration, holding up his hands, as much as to say, 'Don't disturb me,' gave no answer for some time, and then, rising, said, 'Sir, I have heard much talk of fairies, but could never believe there were any till now; for, upon my word, under this spot of ground there is such a fine harmony of melodious tunes playing, upon all sorts of charming instruments, so ravishing to the ears, that a man with the great transports thereof (providing they were continually to play) could lie here for ever.'
"The gentleman, eager to hear these fine raptures, alights from his gelding, and lays his ear to the ground, with his face towards Bunce, but told him he could hear nothing.
"'Oh! sir,' replied Bunce, 'lay the other ear to it.' With that the gentleman very attentively lays his other ear to the ground, to hear these harmonious sounds, and his back being then towards Bunce, he presently mounts the gelding, and rid as fast as he could away.