In the paper above-mentioned, which I left with my friend, I have also set down the names of the several gentlemen whom we have robbed in Dublin streets for three years past. I have told the circumstances of those robberies, and shown plainly that nothing but the want of common courage was the cause of their misfortunes. I have therefore desired my friends that whenever any gentleman happens to be robbed in the streets, he will get the relation printed and published with the first letters of those gentlemen's names, who by their want of bravery are likely to be the cause of all the mischief of that kind, which may happen for the future. I cannot leave the world without a short description of that kind of life which I have led for some years past and is exactly the same with the rest of our wicked brethren.
Although we are generally so corrupted from our childhood as to have no sense of goodness, yet something heavy always hangs about us. I know not what it is, that we are never easy until we are half drunk among our whores and companions, nor sleep sound, unless we drink longer than we can stand. If we go abroad in the day, a wise man would easily find us to be rogues by our faces, we have such suspicious, fearful and constrained countenances, often turning back and sneaking through narrow lanes and alleys. I have never failed of knowing a brother thief by his looks, though I never saw him before. Every man amongst us keeps his particular whore, who is however common to us all when we have a mind to change. When we have got a booty, if it be money, we divide it equally among our companions, and soon squander it on our vices in those houses that receive us, for the master and mistress and very tapster go snacks, and besides make us pay treble reckonings. If our plunder be plate, watches, rings, snuff-boxes and the like, we have customers in all quarters of the town to take them off. I have seen a tankard sold, worth fifteen pounds to a fellow in —— Street, for twenty shillings, and a gold watch for thirty. I have set down his name, and that of several others in the paper already mentioned. We have setters watching in corners, and by dead walls, to give us notice when a gentleman goes by, especially if he be anything in drink. I believe in my conscience, that if an account were made of a thousand pounds in stolen goods, considering the low rates we sell them at, the bribes we must give for concealment, the extortions of alehouse reckonings, and other necessary charges there would not remain fifty pounds clear to be divided among the robbers, and out of this we must find clothes for whores, besides treating them from morning until night, who in requital award us with nothing but treachery and the pox, for when our money is gone, they are every moment threatening to inform against us, if we will not get out to look for more. If anything in this world be like Hell, as I have heard it described by our clergy, the truest picture of it must be in the back room of one of our alehouses at midnight, where a crew of robbers and their whores are met together after a booty, and are beginning to grow drunk, from that time until they are past their senses, in such a continued horrible noise of cursing, blasphemy, lewdness, scurrility, and brutish behaviour, such roaring and confusion, such a clatter of mugs and pots at each other's heads, that Bedlam in comparison is a sober and orderly place. At last they all tumble from their stools and benches, and sleep away the rest of the night, and generally the landlord or his wife, or some other whore, who has a stronger head than the rest, picks their pockets before they awake. The misfortune is, that we can never be easy until we are drunk, and our drunkenness constantly exposes us to be more easily betrayed and taken.
This is a short picture of the life I have led, which is more miserable than that of the poorest labourer who works for fourpence a day; and yet custom is so strong that I am confident, if I could make escape at the foot of the gallows, I should be following the same course this very evening. Upon the whole, we ought to be looked upon as the common enemies of mankind, whose interest it is to root us out like worms, and other mischievous vermin, against which no fair play is required. If I have done service to men in what I have said, I shall hope to have done service to God, and that will be better than a silly speech made by me full of whining and canting, which I utterly despise, and have never been used to yet such a one I expect to have my ears tormented with as I am passing along the streets.
Good people, fare ye well; bad as I am, I leave many worse behind me, and I hope you shall see me die like a man, though a death contrary.
E. E.
The Life of JAMES DALTON, a Thief
The character of this criminal is already so infamous, and his crimes so notorious that I may spare myself any introductory observation which I have made use of as to most of the rest with respect to his birth. He was so unfortunate as to have the gallows hereditary to his family, his father, who was by birth an Irishman, and in the late Wars in Flanders a sergeant, coming over here was indicted and hanged for a street robbery. After his death, Dalton's mother married a butcher, who, not long before Dalton's death, was transported, and she herself for a like crime shared in the same punishment.
This unhappy young man himself went between his father's legs in the cart when he made his fatal exit at Tyburn. It has, indeed, remained a doubt whether Dalton the father were a downright thief or not; his own friends say that he was only a cheat, and one of the most dexterous sharpers at cards in England. It seems he fell in with some people of his own profession, who thought he got their money too much easily, and therefore made bold to fix him with a downright robbery.