John Hall, born in 1675 of poor parents in Bishop's Head Court, off Gray's Inn Lane, was one of those late seventeenth and very early eighteenth-century evil-doers, who anticipated the sordid career of the modern thief, without any redeeming qualities. A chimney-sweep by trade, he was, among other things, a highwayman, but he more often padded the hoof upon the highway than rode along it, and he would turn his hand, according to what he deemed the necessities of the moment, to pocket-picking, shop-lifting, or ringing the changes, with equal facility. At the same time, he was not altogether a fortunate malefactor. As a pickpocket, he was frequently detected and, we learn, "treated in the usual manner, by ducking in the horsepond," by those who did not want the trouble of prosecuting him. Happening upon more vindictive persons, he was arrested, time after time, and thrown into Bridewell and often whipped. Which was the more desirable, to be flung into a horsepond, or be whipped, it must be left to individual tastes to decide. It depends largely, no doubt, upon the comparative filthiness of the pond and the kind of lash in use by the brawny warders of Bridewell.
He was eminently versatile, but the public has ever looked with suspicion upon versatility; and perhaps for this, among other reasons, his name is scarcely famous: only notorious in a small way as a jack-of-all-trades, except honest ones, and a great master in no particular one.
He was, it may be at once granted, industrious enough in his perverted way, and was for always frequenting churches, fairs, markets, and public assemblies: he had also generally a confederate at hand, to whom he would swiftly pass on the swag, to be himself found empty-handed when searched, and with nothing on him to prove his guilt; quite in the modern style.
He had, as a shoplifter, the same painfully chequered fortunes that studded his pocket-picking career with deplorable incidents. In January 1682 he was convicted at the Old Bailey of stealing a pair of shoes, and was whipped at the cart's tail. A little later, still smarting from that correction, he was back at the same trade, and in the long span of eighteen years suffered a series of duckings, whippings, and the distressing indignities that are the common rewards of clumsy rogues, sufficient to have cured many an one. But Jack Hall was clearly an "habitual." The delight of sport gilded his occupation, and salved his moral and physical hurts; and, after all, although he was a more than commonly blundering criminal, it was in itself no mean feat in those severe times to follow the course he steered, and yet for so long to keep his neck out of the noose.
After eighteen years of miscellaneous villainy, he was convicted of breaking into the house of one Jonathan Bretail, and for this was sentenced to be hanged. With so lengthy a record as this, he was fortunate indeed in receiving a pardon conditional upon his being transported within six months to the American colonies. Fortunate colonies! But he escaped at the last moment from the convict ship, and England therefore did not lose her Hall.
Having tried many kinds of petty robbery with no very great or continued success, and being too well known as a pickpocket and shoplifter, against whom every pocket was buttoned, all tills locked, and goods carefully secured, he struck out a new line; robbing country waggons and stealing portmanteaus off coaches. But even here, in this arduous branch of a thief's varied business, ill-luck malevolently pursued him; for he was caught in the act and convicted in 1702. This brought him a period of two years' enforced seclusion in Bridewell, and the painful and disfiguring sentence of branding in the cheek, by which all men might know him on sight for a convicted felon, and be warned accordingly. This inevitable carrying his own condemnation with him wherever he went severely handicapped him when he was again at liberty; and it was probably for this reason that he returned to burglary, which, conducted at night-time, might reasonably offer inducements to a man with a scarred face.
With Stephen Bunce, Dick Low, and others, he broke into the shop of a baker named Clare, at Hackney, soon after midnight. They proceeded at once to the bakehouse, where they surprised the journeyman and apprentice at work, and, tying them neck and heels, threw them into the kneading-trough. One stood guard over them with a drawn sword, while the others went upstairs to rob the house.
The elderly Mr. Clare was awakened from sleep and bidden disclose where his money lay, but he stoutly refused, in spite of all their threats, until Hall seized a little girl, the baker's granddaughter. "D——n me!" he said, "if I won't bake the child in a pie and eat it, if the old rogue won't be civil."
Mr. Clare seems to have been alarmed by this extravagant threat. Perhaps the flaming "F" for felon, or "T" for thief, on Hall's cheek, made him appear exceptionally terrible. At any rate, Mr. Clare then revealed his hoard of gold, which amounted to between seventy and eighty guineas; and with that, very satisfied, the midnight band departed.
Although this daring raid was naturally the subject of much excited comment, the robbers were not captured, and they were presently bold enough to break into the house of a man named Saunders, a chairman in the same locality. Saunders was informed that Hall was one of the thieves, and, knowing him well by sight, he pursued him and his gang at three o'clock in the morning, accompanied by a watchman. The gang fired at their pursuers, and the watchman fell, wounded in the thigh. Hall escaped altogether, and although some of his accomplices were captured, they were acquitted, from lack of sufficient evidence.
In 1705 Hall was again in trouble, under the alias of "Price," but was acquitted on the charge of housebreaking then brought against him. He was similarly fortunate in October 1706, when he was charged in company with Arthur Chambers with being concerned in stealing a handkerchief. Such a trivial theft would seem hardly to need collaboration.
Later on, he was again in custody, but meanly obtained his liberty by turning evidence against two accomplices.
Finally, in 1707 he was arrested with his old pals, Stephen Bunce and Dick Low, for a burglary committed at the house of Captain Guyon, near Stepney. All three were convicted, and suffered in company at Tyburn, on December 7th, 1707.
Dick Low was a not very distinguished person, and indeed his name, except in association with Hall and Bunce, is utterly unworthy of record in these annals. He was more expert at stealing from shops and emptying tills than in any other branch of the thieving profession, and would have made an expert area-sneak had areas been then in existence. Unfortunately they came in about a century later. But he was an expert at the "running-smobble," which consisted in two or three confederates planning to rob a shop after dark: one going in with an exaggerated pretence of drunkenness and creating a disturbance; while the others would enter on the excuse of seeing what the matter could be, and then, turning out the lights, clearing out the till, and laying hands on any light articles of value that might be within reach. One of them would come provided with pepper, or handfuls of mud and throw it in the faces of the shopkeeper and his assistants, when they began to cry "Stop, thief!"
For the rest, Dick Low was a violent, sullen brute, often, like his two allies, in Newgate, and when there generally in the bilboes for savage assaults on his fellow-prisoners.
Stephen Bunce, or Bunch, began his iniquities as soon as he could toddle, and, according to the Reverend Mr. Thomas Pureney, the Ordinary of Newgate, was old in crime while he was yet an infant in years. Another biographer picturesquely says he was "born a thief," which, as his parents were the inevitably "poor but honest" folk of the conventional type of biography, seems an extreme criticism.
The depravity of Stephen Bunce was, however, so precocious that, as a child, he would go and play with the children of a charcoal-man, who lived near his native London alley, for the express purpose of filling his pockets with the charcoal, and then selling it, for hot codlins, to a woman who kept an apple-stall. One day, when the codlins were more than ever tempting and the charcoal not so easily to be stolen, he asked the woman for some apples on trust, but she refused, and Stephen resolved upon revenge.
On the next opportunity, pocketing a larger quantity of charcoal than usual, he filled the holes in it with gunpowder and then stopping them with black sealing-wax, sold the charcoal to the unsuspecting woman, who presently replenished her fire with it, with the natural result that her brazier was blown to pieces and herself almost frightened out of her wits.
Graduating in crime as he grew up, Stephen naturally worked his way through picking and stealing at the coffee-houses to practising on the road. "Amongst others of his notorious pranks, he often played several comical tricks, the most remarkable whereof is this, viz.: One day being upon some prospect in Essex, and destitute of money, as he was coming along a footpath from Brentwood to London, he espied over the hedges a gentleman mounted upon a very fine gelding, valued at above forty pounds. Bunce presently gets the length of two or three fields before the gentleman, and going over a stile at the turning of a lane, he there lays himself down by a ditch-side, with his ear close to the ground, till the gentleman was come up with him. Seeing him lie in that posture, he asked him the meaning of it.
"Bunce, in a sort of admiration, holding up his hands, as much as to say, 'Don't disturb me,' gave no answer for some time, and then, rising, said, 'Sir, I have heard much talk of fairies, but could never believe there were any till now; for, upon my word, under this spot of ground there is such a fine harmony of melodious tunes playing, upon all sorts of charming instruments, so ravishing to the ears, that a man with the great transports thereof (providing they were continually to play) could lie here for ever.'
"The gentleman, eager to hear these fine raptures, alights from his gelding, and lays his ear to the ground, with his face towards Bunce, but told him he could hear nothing.
"'Oh! sir,' replied Bunce, 'lay the other ear to it.' With that the gentleman very attentively lays his other ear to the ground, to hear these harmonious sounds, and his back being then towards Bunce, he presently mounts the gelding, and rid as fast as he could away.
"When being come within a quarter of a mile of Romford, he alights and turns the gelding loose, thinking if the gentleman used any inn in that town, the gelding would make to it; and it did accordingly run into the 'Red Lion.' At the same time, the ostler happened to come out, and, seeing the gelding running in without a rider, cried out, 'O! master, master; here's Mr. What-d'ye-call-him's gelding come without him' (calling him by his name).
"Bunce being just by, takes the advantage of hearing what the gentleman's name was, and replied that he was engaged with some gentleman at Brentwood, desiring the innkeeper to send him £10, and had sent his gelding for pledge, as designing to be there himself in two or three hours' time.
"'Ay, ay,' quoth the innkeeper, a hundred pounds was at his service, if he had sent for it, and accordingly gave Bunch £10, with which he came up to London.
"About four or five hours later, the gentleman came up to the inn, puffing and blowing, in his jack-boots, asking the innkeeper if he had seen any one with his gelding.
"The innkeeper bid him not fret, for his man had left his gelding there, and he had given him £10, according to his desire.
"'Rat him for a dog,' quoth the gentleman, 'he's none of my man; but I'm glad he's left my gelding here and raised no more money than that upon him. However, it shall be a warning to me for ever, alighting from my horse to hear fairies play upon musick.'"