A Book of Scoundrels | Page 7

the morning, eager to pay
their final debt. Their journey from Newgate to Tyburn was a triumph,
and their vanity was unabashed at the droning menaces of the Ordinary.
At one point a chorus of maidens cast wreaths upon their way, or
pinned nosegays in their coats, that they might not face the executioner
unadorned. At the Crown Tavern they quaffed their last glass of ale,
and told the landlord with many a leer and smirk that they would pay
him on their way back. Though gravity was asked, it was not always
given; but in the Eighteenth Century courage was seldom wanting. To
the common citizen a violent death was (and is) the worst of horrors; to
the ancient highwayman it was the odd trick lost in the game of life.
And the highwayman endured the rope, as the practised gambler loses
his estate, without blenching. One there was, who felt his leg tremble in
his own despite: wherefore he stamped it upon the ground so violently,
that in other circumstances he would have roared with pain, and he left
the world without a tremor. In this spirit Cranmer burnt his recreant
right hand, and in either case the glamour of a unique occasion was a
stimulus to courage.
But not even this brilliant treatment of accessories availed to save the
highway from disrepute; indeed, it had become the profitless pursuit of
braggarts and loafers, long before the abolition of the stage-coach
destroyed its opportunity. In the meantime, however, the pickpocket
was master of his trade. His strategy was perfect, his sleight of hand as
delicate as long, lithe fingers and nimble brains could make it. He had
discarded for ever those clumsy instruments whose use had barred the
progress of the Primitives. The breast-pocket behind the tightest

buttoned coat presented no difficulty to his love of research, and he
would penetrate the stoutest frieze or the lightest satin, as easily as Jack
Sheppard made a hole through Newgate. His trick of robbery was so
simple and yet so successful, that ever since it has remained a tradition.
The collision, the victim's murmured apology, the hasty scuffle, the
booty handed to the aide-de-camp, who is out of sight before the hue
and cry can be raised--such was the policy advocated two hundred
years ago; such is the policy pursued to day by the few artists that
remain.
Throughout the eighteenth century the art of cly-faking held its own,
though its reputation paled in the glamour of the highway. It
culminated in George Barrington, whose vivid genius persuaded him to
work alone and to carry off his own booty; it still flourished (in a silver
age) when the incomparable Haggart performed his prodigies of skill;
even in our prosaic time some flashes of the ancient glory have been
seen. Now and again circumstances have driven it into eclipse. When
the facile sentiment of the Early Victorian Era poised the tear of
sympathy upon every trembling eyelid, the most obdurate was forced to
provide himself with a silk handkerchief of equal size and value.
Now, a wipe is the easiest booty in the world, and the Artful Dodger
might grow rich without the exercise of the smallest skill. But wipes
dwindled, with dwindling sensibility; and once more the pickpocket
was forced upon cleverness or extinction.
At the same time the more truculent trade of housebreaking was
winning a lesser triumph of its own. Never, save in the hands of one or
two distinguished practitioners, has this clumsy, brutal pursuit taken on
the refinement of an art. Essentially modern, it has generally been
pursued in the meanest spirit of gain. Deacon Brodie clung to it as to a
diversion, but he was an amateur, without a clear understanding of his
craft's possibilities. The sole monarch of housebreakers was Charles
Peace. At a single stride he surpassed his predecessors; nor has the
greatest of his imitators been worthy to hand on the candle which he
left at the gallows. For the rest, there is small distinction in breaking
windows, wielding crowbars, and battering the brains of defenceless
old gentlemen. And it is to such miserable tricks as this that he who
two centuries since rode abroad in all the glory of the High-toby-splice
descends in these days of avarice and stupidity. The legislators who

decreed that henceforth the rope should be reserved for the ultimate
crime of murder were inspired with a proper sense of humour and
proportion. It would be ignoble to dignify that ugly enterprise of to-day,
the cracking of suburban cribs, with the same punishment which was
meted out to Claude Duval and the immortal Switcher. Better for the
churl the disgrace of Portland than the chance of heroism and respect
given at the Tree!
And where are the heroes whose art