Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/52

 had sometimes the effrontery to pretend to be fellow thieves, and were allowed to pass toll free. On one occasion a bold officer in the army, forewarned that the coach would be stopped, hid himself in the basket, and on two highwaymen riding up, shot one through the head, and drove off the other. In later times, Townshend, the celebrated Bow-street runner, used often to ride as an armed escort before coaches conveying government money. Townshend was a little fat man, who wore a flaxen wig, kerseymere breeches, a blue straight cut coat, and a broad-brimmed white hat. He was daring, dexterous, and cunning; and his merits, manners, and odd sayings were much relished by the royal family. On one occasion, Townshend having to escort a carriage to Reading, took with him his friend Joe Manton, the celebrated gunmaker, who was fond of adventure, and as brave as a lion. Soon after reaching Hounslow, three footpads stopped the coach, and Joe was just going to draw trigger, when Townshend cried out, "Stop, Joe; don't fire! Let me talk to the gentlemen." A glimpse of the moon revealed Townshend's dreaded figure to the thieves, who instantly took to their heels; but he had already recognised them. In a few days his rough and ready hand was on their collars, and they were soon tried and packed off to Botany Bay.

There is a legend at Hounslow that a certain Bishop of Raphoe was shot on the heath, being mistaken for a highwayman. John Rann (alias Sixteen-string Jack) acquired a name, about 1774, at which Hounslow postilions trembled. This fellow had been coachman to Lord Sandwich, who then lived at the south-east corner of Bedford-row, and he acquired his singular name by wearing breeches with eight strings at either knee, to record the number of his acquittals. He was a handsome impudent fellow, much admired by his companions; and he is described as swaggering at Bagnigge-wells in a scarlet coat, deep-flapped tambour waistcoat, white silk stockings, and laced hat. He drank freely there, lost, with extreme nonchalance, a hundred-guinea diamond ring, and openly boasted that he was a highwayman, and could replace the lost jewel by one evening's work. He once showed himself at Barnet races in a blue satin waistcoat trimmed with silver, and was followed by an admiring crowd. He even had the matchless impudence to attend a Tyburn execution, and push his way through a ring of constables, saying that he was just the sort of man who ought to have a good place, as he himself might figure there some day. Just before he was taken for robbing Mr. Devall near the ninth milestone on the Hounslow road, he had stopped Dr. Bell, the chaplain to the Princess Amelia, and taken from him eighteenpence and an old watch. This fellow used to boast that Sir John Fielding's people always used him very genteelly; consequently if they held up a finger he would follow them as quiet as a lamb. When brought before Sir John, Rann wore a bundle of flowers as big as a broom in the breast of his coat, and had his irons tied up tastefully with blue ribbons. At his trial he appeared in a pea-green suit, a ruffled shirt, and a hat bound round with silver strings. He gave a supper a few nights before his execution. An intelligent observer, who saw the cart pass the end of John-street with Rann in it, bound for Tyburn, describes him in his pea-green coat, carrying, as he sat by his coffin, with the chaplain reading prayers to him, an enormous nosegay, presented, according to custom, from the steps of St. Sepulchre's Church. Nothing in life, however, so well became Sixteen-string Jack as the leaving it; for he died penitently, not like desperate Abershaw, who, on mounting the gibbet so long eager for him, kicked his shoes off among the crowd, and leaped savagely into another world.

It is interesting to remember that the first suggestion of Gay's Beggars' Opera was a remark of Swift's, as he sat with his friends, one day in Pope's villa at Twickenham. Hounslow Heath then spread within a quarter of a mile of Twickenham, and Pope must often have seen flying highwaymen chase past the door. Fielding, writing in 1775, does not say much for the moral tone of the Hounslow population at that time. He describes a captain of the Guards, who, being robbed on Hounslow Heath, as soon as the highwayman left, unharnessed a horse, mounted it, and pursued the fellow, at noon day, through Hounslow town, shouting, "Highwayman! Highwayman!" but no one joined in the pursuit.

There was always blood, bad or good, being spilled on Hounslow Heath; in 1802 a terrible crime, for a long time hidden in mystery, threw a darker gloom over the gibbet ground. Mr. Steele, a lavender merchant, in Catherine-street, Strand, who had a house and nursery-garden at Feltham, left town for Feltham on the afternoon of the fifth of November. About seven o'clock on the evening of the sixth, he left Feltham, on his way back to town, wearing a round hat, almost new, half boots, and a great coat. He was never seen again alive. About a quarter past eight, the driver of the Gosport coach, about ten minutes after having changed horses at Hounslow, and when between some trees near the powder mills and the eleventh milestone, heard a man moaning, and several groans. On the tenth the body of the murdered man was found in a ditch some little distance off the road, towards the barracks. The back part of the skull was beaten in, and there was a strap round the neck. A bludgeon lay near the body, and a pair of shoes, and an old soldier's hat, with worsted binding. No clue was obtained to the crime until the end of 1806, when a deserter named Hatfield, just sentenced to the hulks for theft, confessed it. Holloway and Haggarty, labourers, had arranged the murder while they were drinking together at a public-house in Dyot-street. Haggarty, then a marine an the Shannon frigate, was apprehended at Deal. When asked where he had been, that time four years, he turned pale and almost fainted. Hatfield proved that Holloway killed Mr. Steele because he struggled much, just as a coach was