Will Ogden, who was born in Walnut Tree Alley, Tooley Street, Southwark, now claims our attention. He was a waterman by trade and a highwayman by inclination, so that he presently exchanged the river for the road. But he did not blossom out all at once as a fully-equipped highwayman. He passed a kind of transition period of about two years in the plundering of ships lying in the Pool, between Southwark and Billingsgate, and in the rifling of waterside shops. In these activities he was associated with one Tom Reynolds, a native of Cross Key Alley, Barnaby Street, and admiral of a sludge-barge. Being apprehended in the burglary of a watch-maker's shop, they were lodged in Newgate, and tried and convicted at the Old Bailey; but received a pardon, on what grounds does not appear.
This ended their burgling experiences, and they then agreed to go upon the road, in the humbler, padding form of the highwayman's trade.
Early in their experiences, Ogden one evening met a parson walking home by the light of the moon, and approached him in the character of a distressed seaman walking the highway to the nearest port, where he might chance to get a ship. His dismal story excited the compassion of the parson, who gave him sixpence and passed on.
He had not proceeded far when Ogden, who had hurried round in advance of him by a side lane, approached him again, and renewed his story.
"You are the most impudent beggar I ever met," exclaimed the parson; but Ogden told him he was in very great want, and that the sixpence he had received would not carry him very far. The parson then gave him half-a-crown, which Ogden gratefully accepted, adding: "These are very sad times, and there's horrid robbing abroad; so, if you have any more money about you, you may as well let me have it, as another who don't deserve it so much, and may perhaps even ill-use you, and, binding you hand and foot, make you lie in the cold all night. If you'll give me your money, I'll take care of you, and conduct you safely home."
An offer of this kind, so delicately and yet so significantly framed, had only to be made to be accepted by any prudent man, who did not feel himself equal to knocking that impudent humorist on the head; and so the parson made a virtue of necessity, and, as cheerfully as he could, handed him all his money; about forty shillings.
Ogden then remarked, "I see you have a watch, sir; you may as well let me have that too." Whereupon the watch also changed hands.
As they were thus plodding along two or three men, accomplices of the ingenious Ogden, came out of the wayside bushes; but Ogden calling out their pass-words, "The moon shines bright," they let them proceed. A little further on, the same incident was repeated, by which the parson could clearly see that, had he not met with the gentle and persuasive Ogden, he might in all likelihood have fallen into far worse hands, and have been ill-used and tied up, even as he had been warned.
The clergyman was at last brought safely to his own door, and so greatly appreciated this safe-conduct—though at the loss of some forty shillings and a watch—that he invited Ogden in; but that person was as cautious as ingenious, and declined. He thought the clergyman was laying a trap for him; but he said he had no objection to taking a drink outside. The good parson then brought a bottle of wine, and, drinking to Ogden, gave him the bottle and the glass to help himself, upon which he ran off with both.
A little later, Ogden met a well-known dandy of that time, Beau Medlicott by name. He commanded the Beau to stand and empty his pockets, but instead of doing so, he drew his sword and made some half-hearted passes with it. Ogden thereupon drew his pistols, and the Beau was obliged to yield to superior armament. But Ogden might have left that fashionable person alone, for he had little about him. Like the more or less famous music-hall character, "La-di-da," of whom he must surely have been the ancestor, he was scarcely worth robbing. Of what was that music-hall celebrity possessed?
The contents of Beau Medlicott's pockets were pitiful enough to draw tears of rage from any self-respecting highwayman: consisting only of two half-crowns; and one of them was a brass counterfeit!
Ogden very rightly gave that cheap toff a good thrashing.
Reynolds does not appear in the stories just narrated; but in addition to another ally, Bradshaw by name, said to have been a grandson of that Serjeant Bradshaw who was one of the regicides, he now appears lurking in the woods on Shooter's Hill, one night in 1714, for whatever fortune might be pleased to send them. It was poor sport that evening, for only a servant-girl, one Cecilia Fowley, came along the road, carrying her box; but these low-down footpads despised nothing, and were ready to rob any one.
It was not worth the while of the three, they thought, to rush out of their lurking-place for the sake of one servant-girl, and so they deputed Bradshaw for the job. He accordingly sprang into the road, seized the box, and broke it into fragments. It contained the girl's clothes, "and fifteen shillings, being all her wages for three months' service." (Servants were cheap then, it seems.)
Turning over these things, Bradshaw turned out a hammer, which the girl seized, and suddenly dealt him a blow with it upon the temple, followed by another with the claw of the hammer upon his neck, which tore his throat open. He fell down in the road, and died there.
At that moment, up came a gentleman, to whom the girl narrated the circumstances. He searched the dead man's pockets, and found in them a large sum of money and a whistle. Putting the whistle to his mouth, he blew upon it—a rash enough thing to do—and thereupon Ogden and Reynolds leapt out from the wayside coverts. Finding, however, that something disastrous had happened, and that it was a stranger who had whistled them, they fled.
Odgen and Reynolds at a later date met a tallyman, who was a well-known trader in St. Giles, and demanded his money. "Money!" he exclaimed; he was merely a poor man, who had the greatest difficulty in earning his daily bread.
"Thou spawn of h—ll!" exclaimed Ogden, in a violent passion—or, at least, an excellent imitation of it—"have pity on thee, shall I? No, sirrah, I know thee too well, and I would almost as soon be kind to a bailiff or an informing constable, as to you. A tallyman and a rogue are terms of similar import. Every Friday you set up a tenter in the Marshalsea Court, upon which you rack and stretch poor prisoners like English broadcloth, beyond the staple of the wool, till the threads crack; which causes them, with the least wet, to shrink, and presently to wear threadbare. I say that you, and all your calling, are worse rogues than ever were hanged at Tyburn."
After this abominable abuse, Ogden went over his pockets, stripped him naked, and bound him hand and foot, and left him in a ditch, "to ruminate on his former villainies." By which it would seem quite evident that tallymen shared the hatred felt for attorneys.
Ogden and Reynolds were the particular friends of Thomas Jones and John Richardson, the one a butler and the other a footman, in the employ of a gentleman living at Eltham. They instructed the footman and the butler in their own business, and it was not long before they took to robbing on Blackheath, whenever their master was away from home. On one of these occasions, they plundered a gentleman, and left him bound on the heath, and, their master coming home unexpectedly, found him there, and after the manner of a Good Samaritan, took him to his own house, and gave him a glass of wine, to recruit his spirits. The butler no sooner appeared, than the ill-used traveller, much to the astonishment of himself and his master, recognised him as one of the men who had attacked and robbed him. The guilty pair were eventually hanged at Rochester, on April 2nd, 1714.
Ogden and Reynolds ended at last at Kingston, on April 23rd, 1714; Ogden himself dying with an air of complete indifference. He threw a handful of small change among the crowd, with the remark: "Gentlemen, here is a poor Will's farewell."