Drunks, Whores and Idle Apprentices: Criminal Biographies of the Eighteenth Century

246 Pages·1992·1.38 MB·English

by  Philip Rawlings

DRUNKS, WHORES AND IDLE
APPRENTICES
DRUNKS, WHORES AND IDLE
APPRENTICES
Criminal biographies of the eighteenth century
Philip Rawlings
First published 1992 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge's
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge a division of
Routledge, Chapman and Hall Inc. 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
© 1992 Philip Rawlings: Editorial material, Introduction, Commentary All rights
reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any
form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Rawlings, Philip Drunks,
Whores and Idle Apprentices: Criminal Biographies of the 18th Century I. Title
364.10922
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Rawlings, Philip Drunks,
whores and idle apprentices: criminal biographies of the eighteenth
century/Philip Rawlings. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1.
Criminals—England—History—18th century— Biography. 2. Criminals—
England—History—18th century—Biography—History and criticism. I. Title.
HV6945.R38 1992 364.′092.′242–dc20 [B] 91–46370
ISBN 0-203-99110-9 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-415-05056-1 (Print Edition)
’Tis in vain to hope for a Reprieve, The Sheriff’s come down with his
Warrant; An Account I behind me must leave Of my Birth, Education and
Parents.
(‘Epistle on Jack Sheppard’, Daily journal, 16 November, 1724)
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.
(The Life and Wonderful Transactions of Mr. Charles
Speckman, alias Browne, 1763)
PREFACE
We can understand much about a society from looking at the way in which it
treats its criminals. It is not just the punishments which are revealing, but also
the literature. In this book I have brought together a small selection of
eighteenth-century accounts written about the lives of contemporary criminals.
My primary aim is to bring to a wider reading public a flavour of a body of
literature which, while it was extremely popular when published, has been all but
forgotten for two hundred years. Although the biographies can stand by
themselves, in the General Introduction some of the problems surrounding their
use are discussed.
In the putting together of this book many people have given me assistance,
willingly and unwillingly, knowingly and unknowingly. I will refrain both from
praising their virtues and from heaping blame upon myself for the faults which
the book has; after all, should not those with whom I discussed it and who failed
either to point out these faults or to persuade me to change the book, bear some
of the blame? However, I did work in various places around the country on this
book and I would like to thank the staff of the many libraries and record offices I
used including: the British Library, including the Newspaper Library at
Colindale; the Guildhall Library; the Public Records Offices at Kew and
Chancery Lane; County Records Offices in Surrey, Essex and Somerset; the
Greater London Record Office; the John Rylands Library in Manchester; Brunel
University Library. The University Library at Aberystwyth was particularly
important in the formation of ideas, through the books there, but, just as
importantly, through its provision of a place in which to hold discussions with
colleagues: my apologies and thanks both to them and to the students who
constantly asked us to be quiet. More specifically, I would like to thank Richard
Ireland and Ian Bell; the loan of his computer by Peter Wallington was, viewed
objectively, somewhat foolhardy, but I prefer to see it as the act of a farsighted
individual who has the benefit of good insurance cover. I would also like to
thank my father, who read the whole book several times, my mother and Debbie,
three people whose boredom thresholds have been seriously tested.
This book opens with a General Introduction. Its purpose is to provide the
novice with not only a discussion of the criminal biographies and their writers
and readers, but also an examination of the ways in which scholars have used, or
dismissed, these works. The remainder of the book is taken up with reprints of
the biographies prefaced by brief introductions. These introductions outline
some of the themes which appear in the biographies and provide background and
bibliographical information. Each biography is also supplemented by notes
intended to clarify the text.
ABBREVIATIONS
GLRO: Greater London Record Office
OBSP: the published reports of the trials held at die Old Bailey
Ordinary of Newgate's Account; see the General Introduction and the
introduction to the Ordinary of Newgate's Account: Mary Young (1741) in this
volume
PRO: Public Record Office (Kew and Chancer)- Lane)
In the citation of books, pamphlets and essays, square brackets have been used
as follows:
where placed around a writer’s name, such as [H.Walpole], this indicates that
the named writer almost certainly wrote the piece even though his or her name
does not appear on the title page. If the name is followed by a question mark,
such as [H.Walpole?], then the writer was more likely than not H.Walpole;
where the brackets are placed around a date, such as [1751], or around a place
name and date, such as [London, 1751], this indicates that the date of
publication was almost certainly 1751, or the place and date of publication were
almost certainly London and 1751. The addition of a question mark has the same
effect in reducing certainty as above.
In the chapters where the criminal biographies are reprinted, square brackets
around a number, such as [p. 2], indicate the original page breaks.
The peculiarities of spelling, punctuation and grammar in the original texts
have been retained.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
THE BIOGRAPHICAL LITERATURE OF CRIME AND
ITS POPULARITY
During the late seventeenth century and throughout the eighteenth century
crime provided one of the principal subjects for popular literature. All aspects
were covered: the crime itself, the investigation, the trial, the punishment and the
life of the offender. The works ranged from newspaper articles through
broadsheets and pamphlets to large books, sometimes in several volumes. This
book focuses on biographical pamphlets, that is, pamphlets which took as their
subjects real people, who had been accused of, usually, a capital crime. Some of
these pamphlets proclaim themselves to be autobiographies, although, as is
argued later in this General Introduction, it is not easy to decide whether such
claims were true or even partly true. These criminal biographies have been the
subject of much controversy amongst modern scholars. There is, for example, an
argument about the role they played in the development of the novel, and
certainly some of the techniques which appear in them were also used by
novelists, such as Defoe in Moll Flanders. The problem is further complicated
by the claim, which is hard to substantiate, that novelists like Defoe also wrote
criminal biographies, and by the difficulty in separating ‘fact’ from ‘fiction’ in
the biographies. One thing is certain: the criminal biography, which became
firmly established in the eighteenth century, continues to flourish up to the
present day.
Although reliable sales figures are not available, there are plenty of reasons
for supposing that criminal biographies sold well in the eighteenth century. First,
there is the anecdotal evidence. John Dunton, a well-known publisher of the late
seventeenth century, financed the more expensive, and less lucrative, side of his
business from the profits of his criminal biographies.1The York printer Thomas
Gent wrote that in 1722 when he was printing the dying speech of Christopher
Layer, who had been hanged for treason, he was so besieged by hawkers anxious
for the publication that he was unable to step outside his office until he had
finished the work, which took several days.2In 1732 Rev. Piddington was said to
have sold the confession of Sarah Malcom, who had been convicted of murder,
for £20—the average labourer’s weekly wage was, at that time, somewhere
between ten and twenty shillings.3In 1754 the publishers Goadby and Owen
issued an apology for their failure to keep pace with the demand for The
Discoveries of John Poulter:
The Press has been kept almost continually going, on the above Work for several
Weeks past, yet Orders for great Numbers of them from different Parts of the
Country could not be supplied, but as a very large Number is now printed off,
and the Press kept still going on it, the Publick may depend on a proper supply
for the future.4
This may, of course, have been merely a publisher puffing his wares, yet
evidence of the literature’s popularity comes also from those who saw nothing to
applaud in it. In 1750 Horace Walpole complained to a friend of ‘the ridiculous
rage’ of buying biographies of criminals,5and in 1786 the commercial success of
a lengthy biography of Charles Price, who had been accused of fraud, led to
adverse comment in the Press: the Whitehall Evening Post remarked, with
disgust, that,
Since the first appearance of THE MEMOIRS OF CHARLES PRICE, little else
has been read or talked of. There have been several thousands already sold, and
as many more are now printing! This fact is stated as a proof, that the
contemplation of the baseness of human nature is become a more pleasing
subject than its virtues. If the life of that excellent man, Dr. Jebb, which would
form an admirable contrast to that of Price, was published, in all probability the
sale would not amount to the expence of advertising it!!!6
Second, the sheer number of different criminal biographies gives some
indication of their popularity. Aside from newspaper articles, somewhere
between two and three thousand biographies have survived from the eighteenth
century.7Notorious cases attracted more than one publication: the trial of Mary
Blandy in 1752 for the murder of her father led to more than thirty pamphlets,
books and broadsheets, as did the controversy in 1753–4 surrounding the alleged
kidnapping of Elizabeth Canning. Biographies often went through many
editions: A Warning to Youth: The Life and Death of Thomas Savage appeared in
at least twenty-two editions in the early eighteenth century; The Discoveries of
John Poulter went through seventeen editions between 1753 and 1779; and A
Narrative of all the Robberies, Escapes, &c. of John Sheppard ran to eight
editions in the space of two months at the end of 1724. 8
READERS
It is sometimes argued that the expansion of the book trade which began in the
seventeenth century was the result of an increase in literacy. But the connection
between the trade and readership is more complex: was it advances in literacy
which led to more publications, or was it more publications which led to more
readers? Looking just at literacy rates ignores other issues which had an effect on
the book trade, such as changes in the organization of the publishing business