CAPTURE OF BOULTER
But what local law and order could not accomplish was effected at Birmingham, to which town the confederates had made a journey in the spring of 1778, for the purpose of selling some of the jewellery and watches they had accumulated. Boulter had approached a Jew dealer on the subject, and was arrested, together with Caldwell, and thrown into Birmingham Prison. They were sent thence to Clerkenwell, from which, having already secured by bribery a jeweller’s saw and cut through his irons, he escaped, with two other prisoners, carrying the irons away with him, and hanging them in triumph on a whitethorn bush at St. Pancras. With consummate impudence he took lodgings two doors away from Clerkenwell Prison, and, procuring a new outfit, set off down to Dover, to take ship across the Channel. But, unfortunately for him, the country was on the eve of a war with France, and an embargo had been laid upon all shipping. He could not even secure a small sailing-boat. Hurrying off to Portsmouth, he found the same difficulty, and could not even get across to the Isle of Wight. Thence to Bristol, haunted with a constant fear of being arrested; but not a single vessel was leaving that port. Then it occurred to him that the desolate Isle of Portland was the most likely hiding-place. Setting out from Bristol, he reached Bridport, and went to an inn to refresh himself and his horse. When he asked what he could have for dinner, he was told there was a family ordinary just ready. He accordingly sat down at table, beside the landlord and three gentlemen, one of whom eyed him with a searching scrutiny, until, becoming fully satisfied that this was none other than Boulter, the escaped prisoner, he beckoned the landlord out of the room, and reminded him of the duty and necessity which lay upon them of securing so notorious an offender. The landlord then returned to the dining-room and desired Boulter to accompany him to an adjoining parlour, where he revealed to him the perilous state of affairs; but added, ‘As you have never done me an injury, I wish you no harm, so just pay your reckoning, and be off as quick as you can.’
Boulter bade him tell the strangers that they were totally mistaken, that he was a London rider (that is to say, a commercial traveller), and that his name was White; but having no wish to be the cause of a disturbance in his house, he would take his advice and go on his way.
The landlord went back to his guests, and Boulter got on his horse with all possible expedition. Once fairly seated in the saddle, a single application of the spur would have launched him beyond the reach of these hungry pursuers, nor in such an emergency as this would his pistol be harmlessly pointed against those who thus sought to earn the rewards offered for his capture. Alas! he had but placed his foot in the stirrup when out rushed the false landlord and his guests. They secured him, and being handed over to the authorities, he was lodged in Dorchester Gaol. He was arraigned at Winchester with Caldwell (who had been removed from London) on 31st July, and both being found guilty, they were hanged at Winchester, 19th August 1778.
XXXII
Soon after those two comrades had met their end, there arose a highway-woman to trouble the district. This was Mary Sandall, of Baverstock, a young woman of twenty-four years of age, who had borrowed a pair of pistols and a suit of his clothes from the blacksmith of Quidhampton, and, bestriding a horse, set out one day in the spring of 1779, and meeting Mrs. Thring, of North Burcombe, robbed her of two shillings and a black silk cloak. Mrs. Thring went home and raised an alarm, with the result that Mary Sandall was captured, and committed for trial at the next assizes. Although there seems to have been some idea that this was a practical joke, the authorities were thick-headed persons who had heard too much of the real thing to be patient with an amateur highway-woman, and so they sentenced Mary Sandall to death in due form, although she was afterwards respited as a matter of course.
WILLIAM PEARE
William Peare was the next notability of the roads, but it is not certain that he was the one who stopped Mr. Jeffery, of Yateminster, on his way home from Weyhill, 9th October 1780, and knocking him off his horse, robbed him of £500 in bank-notes and £37 in coin. It was the same unknown, doubtless, who during the same week robbed a Mrs. Turner, of Upton Scudamore, of £45, in broad daylight. He was a ‘genteelly-dressed’ stranger. Making a low bow, he requested her money, and that within sight of many people working in the fields, who concluded, from his polite manners, that he was a friend of the lady.
William Peare was only twenty-three years of age when he was executed, 19th August 1783. His first important act was the robbing of the Chippenham coach on the 2nd of February 1782. Captured, and lodged in Gloucester Gaol, he escaped on the 19th of April, and began a series of the most daring highway robberies. On the 8th of February 1783 he stopped the Salisbury diligence just beyond St. Thomas’s Bridge, smashed the window, and fired a shot into the coach, terrifying the lady and gentleman who were the only two passengers, so that they at once gave up their purses. He then went on to Stockbridge, where he stopped a diligence full of military officers; but finding the occupants prepared to fight for the military chest they were escorting, hurried off. After many other crimes in the West, he was captured in the act of undermining a bank at Stroud, in Gloucestershire. He was tried and sentenced at Salisbury, and executed at Fisherton, going to the gallows with the customary nosegay, which remained tightly held in his hand when his body was cut down. A set of verses, purporting to be by his sweetheart, was published that year, lamenting his untimely end:—
For me he dared the dangerous road,
My days with goodlier fare to bless;
He took but from the miser’s hoard,
From them whose station needed less.