effected; it may induce our readers to appreciate
more highly their present security, and the
improvement in the police system.

On Sunday, the 25th of September, 1726,
the Bicester waggon was stopped, about
midnight, near Ealing. The highwayman wore a
red rug coat and a laced hat, rode a grey
horse, and carried a screw-barrel pistol in his
hand. He rode past the waggon several times,
and at last stopped the deputy waggoner, who
was riding the head waggoner's horse while the
head waggoner turned in to sleep. The rogue
threatened to shoot him through the head, lent
him his own knife to cut the waggon ropes,
and ordering the passengers to get down,
unloaded several hampers and searched for money.
Eventually he found a small brown-paper
parcel, containing fifteen moidores and two
hundred and fifty guineas, which were wrapped
with an old fan in a linen bag and an old
gown. Before riding off, the prisoner told the
waggon people that it was no use resisting him,
as the road was beset with highwaymen, and
thundered and swore at the women and
children.

On the next Tuesday the deputy waggoner
arrested the highwayman at the Black Boy and
Unicorn, at West Wickham. A pistol was
found on him, with £7 in money, some bank
bills, and a receipt. Under the armpit of his
coat was found £276 in bills and notes, sewn in
the lining. He tried to prove an alibi but
failed, eventually confessed his crime, and was
hung at Tyburn.

The prisoner had been a bricklayer and
doctor of smoky chimneys at Wendover, in
Buckinghamshire, and got £500 by his wife.
He pleaded that he had never been a robber,
and had lived in as good a character as any man
in his neighbourhood, and that he had only been
led into this robbery by the inducements of the
waggoner.

A little further on, in the Old Bailey Session
Papers, we find the highwaymen venturing
deeper into London. On Monday night,
December 1, 1730, Dr. Mead, the fashionable
physician of Dr. Johnson's time, who married a
blacksmith's daughter in Fetter-lane, and had
been a friend of Pope, Newton, and BentIey,
was stopped by a highwayman in Holborn, near
Furnival's Inn. The man presented a pistol at
the coachman, ordered him to stop, demanded
the doctor's watch and money, and told the
footman he was a dead man if he dared to jump
down. The servant did, however, jump down,
and cried, "Stop thief!" A shopman pursuing
the highwayman, the latter flashed a pistol at
him, but was eventually run down in Leather-
lane, taken to the Black Bull Inn in Holborn,
and searched. Powder and shot were found
in his pockets. He told the men searching
him that they could not hang him for that,
but that he wished he had done murder,
for he had rather be hanged than not. He
was tried at the Old Bailey, and fined forty
marks.

The April following, this same highwayman
(James Dalton) was indicted for robbing a linen
pedlar in the fields between Tottenham-court
and Bloomsbury. Dalton had been drinking
with this man at the Adam and Eve public-house
at Pancras, and, it being night and the way
lonely, he bought a link to light himself and the
prisoner home. At the end of the second field
Dalton pulled out a pistol, swore at the pedlar,
knocked him down, threatened to shoot him
through the head, and robbed him. He was
found guilty, and hung at Tyburn, May the 12th,
1730.

The life of this man presents a curious
picture of the unsettled state of the metropolis
one hundred and thirty years ago. Dalton's
father was a Dublin tailor, who enlisted and
went to Flanders, came home, turned card-
sharper, and was hung. Dalton's mother was
transported for thieving. The boy turned shop-
lifter at eleven years old, and (as soon as he grew
stronger) became a footpad in St. Giles's.
Transported for a robbery in the Islington-road, he
joined a mutiny at sea, and escaped. Returning
home, he was seized for a robbery at Bristol, and
transported to Virginia; he escaped, and took
to stealing slaves.

On returning to London, this thief confessed
that in three months he and another man had
picked no less than five hundred pockets. He
was the first robber who ventured on stopping
coaches in London streets. His first crimes of
this kind were in Castle-yard, Holborn, Hatton-
garden, and St. Paul's Churchyard.

There is no great variety in these highway
robberies, but the evidence in them generally
contains some curious traits of manners, or
some interesting bits of topography. It is
easy, from the perusal of a volume or so of the
Old Bailey Session Papers, circa 1720—60, to
get a general idea of the habits of highwaymen,
and of their modes of attack and of
escape. Let us cull from the trials of 1730 a
case interesting for its trait of highwayman
character.

On the 24th of December, 1730, a
highwayman in a red rug coat stopped a coach,
containing two ladies, a maid-servant, and a
child, at Battle-bridge. The thief, to disguise
his voice, put the cape of his coat into his
mouth; he was very civil, and as soon as he got
the money rode off. The husband of one of the
ladies instantly came up and pursued the
highwayman, and he was taken, but not until the day
after, at a tavern in Cripplegate. He had got
a dagger and pistol, and threatened to shoot
the shoemaker who took him; but the
shoemaker jumped in on him, and secured him.
The prisoner tried to prove an alibi, but in
vain, and was hung at Tyburn, February 20,
1730.

The biography of this thief helps to show
from what rank of life these men sprung. John
Everett had been apprenticed to a salesman, but
before his time was expired he ran away and
enlisted in Flanders, where he became sergeant
in General How's regiment of foot. On his
return he purchased his discharge, and became