There is not perhaps in the world a more agreeable study than that of Biography; nor any thing sought after and read with greater avidity, than the lives of unfortunate men, and those who suffer under the hands of the executioner more than any. In this narration will be seen, the early propensity to acts of robbery, preying upon, and living in an absolute state of war with all mankind, the long series of years Mr. Speckman escaped punishment, in which time he committed more robberies than any person before him brought to publick shame; all of them related by the unhappy man himself, in the following plain and undisguised manner.
I think proper for the benefit of the public, and to make all possible attonement for the injuries I have done to my fellow creatures, in England, Scotland, Ireland, North-America, and the West-Indies, in all which countries I have committed acts of hostility and depredation innumerable; I have no interest at all in this, only to warn the unwary, how they shall in general avoid the falling a prey to thieves and sharpers, and make those who tread in my wretched paths, be sensible and be warned in time to sly evil courses, as too truly will they find verified, that the wages of sin is death; besides that of undergoing in their wicked career, what is worse than death, the stings and daggers of a guilty mind: so that let their race be as long as it will, and their illicit practices attended with continual success, yet not one hour of true and solid happiness is the consequence.
About sixteen years ago, to the best of my memory, my father who lived in good reputation in London, where I was born, put me to a boarding-school, and bestowed more money on my education, than on all the rest of my brothers and sisters, (I was the eldest of eighteen) for all which I never made any grateful return, which gives me great affliction, and the most pungent remorse, when added to my present load of trouble. To shew my early inclination to what has brought me to this deserved doom, I well remember, as I was standing by the side of Mr. Andrews, a waterman, in Charles-court in the Strand, my nurse being with me, I took a fancy to pull his watch out of his fob, at the same time laughing in his face; on detecting me, Mr. Andrews said, my dear, you begin betimes; the nurse, however, appeased him, so that no ill consequences followed: I mention this affair, as my friends rebuked me many times, by telling me of this deed, and my early inclination to what would, and indeed has proved my ruin.
I was put to board with a worthy clergyman, by my father, at thirty pounds a year, in order to inure me to what was good, and improve me in learning; but my delight was riding of horses at livery-stables, ran away from school; the wicked disobedient child, soon finds out evil courses. The first injury I plunged myself into, was robbing my parents of a suit of cloaths, and pawning them to go to Sadler’s-wells. Now every fraud that my fertile brain could device, I put in practice in my father’s name, and got various sums of money, which answered my present purpose very well; however, my father had me catch’d, carried home, and kept me naked in a room several days, till I found an opportunity to get my sister’s cloaths, and with them on, I escaped from the house. I have been often brought home from Covent-Garden playhouse, by the orange women, to whom my father gave two shillings each time for their trouble. I was at length taken up by my father, and put into Covent-Garden round-house; but through the hole the prisoners received their victuals at, I escaped, though it was so small, no one could have conceived it possible. I learned more wickedness here in one night, than in all my preceding excursions, and verily believe, it tended greatly to fix me in the determinate resolution of aspiring at every act of wickedness, my unfortunate life has since been so fruitful of; making it my daily study to defraud every one who came in my way, and rob every one I could conquer.
One day I and two other boys, went into a grocer’s shop in Drury-lane, for some sugar-candy, the grocer told me, he sold not small quantities, on which asking him, if he was above his business, and perceiving a watch hang up in the parlour, I rolled a halfpenny as by accident into the parlour before me, I got the poor grocer’s watch; in coming out, he asked me, how I dared to go there? he was answered by my throwing some powder sugar in his eyes, which was lying on the counter, and got off without any molestation.
Soon after this, coming from Westminster with my two companions, there was a man had a stand by the Horse-guards, to sell all sorts of handkerchiefs, muslin, lawn, stockings, and other things in the pedlery way; I made bold to take him on one side, to talk about what I was to buy of him, which he was told was to a considerable amount; whilst I was thus amusing him, my two comrades made off with the pedlar’s whole stock, to the amount of fourteen pounds, and upwards: I however resolved to leave my companions, being determined, for the future, not to keep company with any, but act entirely on my own bottom.
I now set out for Newmarket; and, on my return home, hired a horse, under pretence of going express for a certain lord, well known on the turf, and came full gallop to the Blue Boar inn in Whitechapel, where I instantly ordered twelve stalls for the horses of my lord, which was to be there that night; telling the landlord, I was going to Hyde-park-corner for a running horse, and my haste occasioned me to come from my lord, without a sufficiency of money to defray all expences, and therefore begged him to let me have twelve guineas, to pay the charges of the horse and servant, and let his own servant go with me, to assist in bringing to the Blue Boar the running horse this night; all this he readily complied with; but the inn-keeper’s servant I took French leave of in Piccadilly, put my horse up in the usual stable and then went home to my lodgings.
Shortly afterwards, I took upon me to go about the town in a genteel dress, with a green apron on, as a watch-maker, under pretence of buying pieces of handkerchiefs to send abroad to my friends; I commonly found fault with the thinness of them, holding them up with one hand, and putting a dozen, or a piece, with the other into my apron: generally in these expeditions, after a sufficient quantity was obtained, I went into the country, and what could not immediately be sold, were raffled for.——In practicing one of these tricks upon a good worthy woman, who kept shop in the Borough of Southwark, I was detected putting a piece into my apron; I immediately flattered the honest woman, that I was a weaver in Spitalfields, telling her, my uncle had a journeyman who had stole four pieces, and had sent me with that piece to match the other, upon information my uncle had, that the pieces were sold by his man at this shop; by this means I got clear off, the unsuspecting woman not knowing her own.
In genteel apparel I next went among the silver-smiths and jewellers, where my dexterity and success was so great, that I used among them in their respective branches, it is almost incredible what quantities of spoons, rings, buttons, buckles, stones, &c. I stole; the robberies of this kind are so numerous, that I cannot particularize them, but I made bold to borrow something from every silver-smith and jeweller in the bills of mortality, and not only in all these attempts had the good fortune to escape, but on many occasions, had the most lavish encomiums passed on me, for the honesty of my looks, and the humanity expressed in the lineaments of the countenance. Alas! how seldom is it, that the outward appearance corresponds with the inward disposition. I am a shocking instance that my face was the most deceitful in the world. Of this kind of fraud and robberies, I believe I have not perpetrated less than two hundred.