On his return from the north, he went to live at Rochester, and for nine years worked at his trade of shoemaker in that town. He was engaged in the conspiracy for which Colonel Despard suffered; but a temporary absence from town preserved him from sharing the same fate.
His last stay in town commenced on the 10th of March, 1818. From that time he attended all Mr. Hunt’s meetings, public and private, and was present at all the subsequent Radical meetings. He was introduced to Edwards by Brunt, at his own residence, Hole-in-the-Wall Passage, Baldwin’s-gardens. Edwards’s assumed violence suited his disposition, and he eagerly closed with every proposition, however desperate.
It was a most extraordinary circumstance that he had constantly an impression on his mind, for the last twenty years, that he was to be hanged. He frequently expressed to his wife that he should die on the gallows, who felt distressed at his entertaining such an idea, but he would still persist that such would be his fate. He was unhappily too good a prophet, and thus a life of irregularity terminated in the most ignominious manner.
Mrs. Tidd is a very decent woman; Tidd has left a brother and one daughter to deplore his fate.
Tidd, during the war, enlisted into more than half of the regiments under the crown, and received the different bounties. It is astonishing how he escaped detection; he was always in disguise when he enlisted, and, as soon as he had obtained the bounty, he deserted. When he had spent the money, he enlisted into another regiment.
It will be evident from this account, that the statements of his uniform good character and conduct published at the period of his first arrest, for the crime of which he was ultimately found guilty on an impartial trial by a Jury of his countrymen, were put forth by some zealous friend to produce a favourable impression on the public mind in his behalf.
JAMES INGS