Stage-coach and Tavern Days

CHAPTER XVIII

KNIGHTS OF THE ROAD

It is impossible to read of the conditions of life on the public highway in England and not wonder at the safety and security with which all travel was carried on in the American colonies. In Great Britain shop-robbing, foot-padding, street assaults, and highway robberies were daily incidents. Stage-coach passengers were specially plundered. From end to end of England was heard the cry of “Stand and deliver.” Day after day, for weeks together, the Hampstead, Islington, Dover, and Hackney coaches were stopped in broad daylight, and the passengers threatened and robbed. The mail from Bristol to London was robbed every week for five weeks. Scores of prisoners were taken, and scores more strung up on the gallows; many were shipped off to the Plantations because on hanging day at Tyburn, there was not room enough on the gallows for the convicted men. All classes turned outlaws. Well-to-do farmers and yeomen organized as highwaymen in the Western counties under the name of “the Blacks.” Justices and landed gentry leagued with “the Owlers” to rob, to smuggle, and defraud the customs. Even Adam Smith confessed to a weakness for smuggling.

Travellers journeyed with a prayer-book in one hand and a pistol in the other. Nothing of this was known in America. Citizens of the colonies travelled unhampered by either religion or fear. Men and women walked through our little city streets by night and day in safety. The footpads and highwaymen who were transported to this country either found new modes of crimes or ceased their evil deeds.

Not only on convict ships came highwaymen to America. As redemptioners many rogues came hither, sure thus of passage across-seas and trusting to luck or craft to escape the succeeding years of bound labor. Among the honest men seized in English ports, kidnapped, and shipped to America were found some thieves and highwaymen, but all – whether “free-willers,” convicts, or “kids” – seemed to drop highway robbery in the new world. We were nigh to having one famous thief. Great Moll Cutpurse, had her resources been of lesser sort, had been landed in Virginia, for she was trapanned and put aboard ship, but escaped ere ship set sail. Perhaps ’twould have been of small avail, for in Virginia, with its dearth of wives, even such a sturdy jade as Moll, “a very tomrig and rumpscuttle,” sure had found a husband and consequent domestic sobriety.

There was one very good reason why there was little highway robbery in America. Early in our history men began to use drafts and bills of exchange, where the old world clung to cash. English travellers persisted in carrying gold and bank-notes, while we carried cheques and letters of credit. To this day the latter form of money-transfer is more common with Americans than with the English. Express messengers in the far West carrying gold did not have to wait long for a Jesse James. But our typical American scamp has ever been the tramp, formerly the vagabond, not the highwayman; though the horse thief kept him close companion.

By this absence of the highwaymen, our story of the road has lost much of its picturesqueness and color. I have envied the English road-annalists their possession of these gay and dashing creatures. Their reckless buoyancy, their elegance, their gallantry, their humor, make me long to adopt them and set them on our staid New England roads or on Pennsylvania turnpikes. Dick Turpin, Claude Duval, Beau Brocade – how I should love to have them hold up Benjamin Franklin or John Adams!

There was no lack of rogues in the colonies, but their roguery did not take the outlet of highway robbery. One Henry Tufts, a famous vagabond, has left an amusing and detailed history of his life and deeds. He stole scores of horses by sneaking methods, but never by open seizure on the road. He began his wrong-doing after the universal custom of all bad boys (but why be invidious? – of all good boys, too), by robbing orchards. He soon raised himself to be a leader in deviltry by the following manœuvre. A group of bad boys were to have a stolen feast of bread and cucumbers; for the latter esteemed viand they raided a cucumber patch. As they seated themselves to gorge upon their ill-gotten fare, Henry Tufts raised a cry that the robbed cucumber farmer was upon them. All fled, but Tufts quickly returned and ate all the feast himself. He survived the cucumbers, but pretended to his confederates that he had been captured and had promised to work out the value of the spoils in a week’s hard labor. This work sentence he persuaded them to share; he then farmed out the lot of young workmen at a profit, while they thought themselves nobly sharing his punishment. He lived to great old age, and, though at the last he “carried his dish pretty uprightly,” it was by taking a hand at forgery and counterfeiting that he lived when burglary became arduous; his nature, though irretrievably bad, was never bold enough to venture his life by robbing on the highway.

A very interesting thread of Tuft’s story is his connection with the War of the Revolution; and it awakens deep compassion for Washington and his fellow-generals when we think how many such scamps and adventurers must have swarmed into the Federal army, to the disorder of the regiments and to their discredit and to the harassment alike of patriot officers and patriot soldiers. There were frequent aggressions at the hands of rogues in the Middle states, and they became known by the name of Skinners. Cooper’s novel, The Spy, gives an account of these sneaking bands of sham patriots. Among those who allied themselves on the side of the King was a family of notorious scoundrels, five brothers named Doane.

The story of the Doanes is both tragic and romantic. They were sons of respectable Quaker parents of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and during the Revolutionary War became celebrated for their evil deeds. They were all men of remarkable physical development, tall, strong, athletic, and all fine horsemen. Before the war they were of good reputation, and it is said proposed to remain neutral; but the Doanes were not permitted to take a middle course, and soon enrolled themselves as Tories, which at once engendered a bitter feeling between them and their Whig neighbors. They began their career of infamy by robbing and plundering in the neighborhood, gradually extending their field of operations into neighboring counties. Sabine’s Loyalists gives the names of three other Doanes – kinsmen who were allied with the five brothers in their evil deeds. Their place in historical books and history comes to them through their services to the British officers during the war. In a dingy chap-book entitled Annals of the Revolution, or a History of the Doanes, full credit is assigned to Moses Doane for giving information to General Howe, and planning with him the stratagem which led to the victories of the British on Long Island. The Edge Hill skirmish, laid out by Doane and agreed to by Howe and Lord Cornwallis, was to be an important move of the British. The move was lost by the prompt and brave action of Mrs. Lydia Darrach, who overheard the plot and carried news of it to Washington. In the terrible massacre at Wyoming the Doanes took prominent part. The close of the war seemed but to increase their career of crime. Each brother had a sled drawn by four horses. There was heavy snow and a long season of sleighing in 1782, and they fairly raided the entire state, robbing again and again on the highway. At last an act was passed by the General Assembly of Pennsylvania “to encourage the speedy apprehending and bringing to justice of divers Robbers, Burglars, and Felons,” naming the Doanes, and offering a large reward for their capture and a gift of £150 to any person injured in helping to arrest them, or £300 to the family of such a helper should he be killed while aiding the cause of justice.

Joseph Doane was finally secured in prison. He broke jail, however, and escaped to New Jersey, where, like many another thief and rogue of his day, he found occupation as a school-teacher. He then fled to Canada, and died peacefully at an advanced age. Two brothers, Abraham and Mahlon, were hanged in Philadelphia. Moses, the leader of the outlaws, had the most tragic end. He was the most cruel and powerful of them all; of famous athletic powers, it was said he could run and jump over a Conestoga wagon. In the latter part of the summer of 1783, the Doanes went to the house of one Halsey who lived on Gallows Run, and asked for something to eat, and Halsey sent his son to a neighboring mill to get flour for them. The boy told that the Doanes were at his father’s house, and the miller sent the word to a vendue in the neighborhood. A party of fourteen armed and mounted men promptly started to capture them. The house was surrounded. On approaching the men saw through the clinks of the logs the Doanes eating at table, with their guns standing near. William Hart opened the door and commanded them to surrender, but they seized their arms and fired. Hart seized Moses Doane, threw him down, and secured him. Then Robert Gibson rushed into the cabin and shot Doane in the breast, killing him instantly. Colonel Hart sent the body of the dead outlaw to his unhappy father, who was also tried for sheltering the robbers, and burnt in the hand and imprisoned.

The most noted scourge of the eighteenth century was Tom Bell. He was for years the torment of the Middle colonies, alike in country and in town. He was the despair of magistrates, the plague of sheriffs, the dread of householders, and the special pest of horse-owners. Meagre advertisements in the contemporary newspapers occasionally show his whereabouts and doings. This is from the New York Weekly Post Boy of November 5, 1744: —

“The noted Tom Bell was last week seen by several who knew him walking about this city with a large Patch on his face and wrapt up in a Great Coat, and is supposed to be still lurking.”

Two years later, in April 14, 1746, we read: —

“Tuesday last the famous and Notorious Villain Tom Bell was apprehended in this city and committed to Jail on Suspicion of selling a Horse he had hired some time ago of an Inhabitant of Long Island. His accuser ’tis said has sworn expressly to his Person, notwithstanding which he asserts his Innocence with a most undaunted Front and matchless Impudence. We hear his trial is to come off this week.”

His most famous piece of deviltry was his impersonation of a pious parson in New Jersey. He preached with as much vigor as he stole, and his accidental resemblance to the minister increased his welcome and his scope for thieving. So convinced was the entire community that it was the real parson who robbed their houses and stole their horses, that on his return to his parish he was thrust into prison, and a clerical friend who protested against this indignity was set in a pillory in Trenton for false swearing. Still, Tom Bell was not a highwayman of the true English stamp; he more closely resembled a sneak thief.

In the year 1741 the little child of Cornelius Cook, the blacksmith of Westborough, Massachusetts, and of his wife Eunice, lay very close to death. As was the custom of the day, the good old parson, Dr. Parkman, and his deacons prayed earnestly over the boy, that the Lord’s will be done; but his mother in her distress pleaded thus: “Only spare his life, and I care not what he becomes.” Tom Cook recovered, and as years passed on it became evident by his mischievous and evil deeds that he had entered into a compact with the devil, perhaps by his mother’s agonized words, perhaps by his own pledge. The last year of this compact was at an end, and the devil appeared to claim his own as Tom was dressing for another day’s mischief. Tom had all his wits about him, for he lived upon them. “Wait, wait, can’t you,” he answered the imperative call of his visitor, “till I get my galluses on?” The devil acquiesced to this last request, when Tom promptly threw the suspenders in the fire, and therefore could never put them on nor be required to answer the devil’s demands.

Tom Cook became well known throughout Massachusetts, and indeed throughout New England, as a most extraordinary thief. His name appears in the records of scores of New England towns; he was called “the honest thief”; and his own name for himself was “the leveller.” He stole from the rich and well-to-do with the greatest boldness and dexterity, equalled by the kindness and delicacy of feeling shown in the bestowal of his booty upon the poor and needy. He stole the dinner from the wealthy farmer’s kitchen and dropped it into the kettle or on the spit in a poor man’s house. He stole meal and grain from passing wagons and gave it away before the drivers’ eyes. A poor neighbor was ill, and her bed was poor. He went to a thrifty farm-house, selected the best feather bed in the house, tied it in a sheet, carried it downstairs and to the front door, and asked if he could leave his bundle there for a few days. The woman recognized him and forbade him to bring it within doors, and he went off with an easy conscience.

In Dr. Parkman’s diary, now in the library of the American Antiquarian Society at Worcester, under the date of August 27, 1779, is this entry: “The notorious Thom. Cook came in (he says) on Purpose to see me. I gave him wt admonition, Instruction, and Caution I could – I beseech God to give it force! He leaves me with fair Words – thankful and promising.” There came a time when his crime of arson or burglary led to his trial, conviction, and sentence to death. He heard the awful words of the judge, “I therefore sentence you to be hanged by the neck till you are dead, dead, dead,” and he called out cheerfully, “I shall not be there on that day, day, day.” And when that day came, surely enough, his cell was empty.

Tom Cook was most attractive in personal appearance; agile, well formed, well featured, with eyes of deepest blue, most piercing yet most kindly in expression. He was adored by children, and his pockets were ever filled with toys which he had stolen for their amusement. By older persons he was feared and disliked. He extorted from many wealthy farmers an annual toll, which exempted them from his depredations. One day a fire was seen rising from the chimney of a disused schoolhouse in Brookline, and Tom was caught within roasting a stolen goose, which he had taken from the wagon of a farmer on his way to market. The squire took him to the tavern, which was filled with farmers and carters, many of whom had been his victims. He was given his choice of trial and jail, or to run a gantlet of the men assembled. He chose the latter, and the long whips of the teamsters paid out many an old score of years’ standing.

A very amusing story of highway robbery is told of John Buckman of Buckman’s Tavern, of Lexington, Massachusetts (which is shown on page 23 (#Page_23)). An old toper bought a bottle of rum, and the by-standers jokingly asked him what he would do if he were attacked on the road. He answered solemnly that he would rather give up his life than his rum. John Buckman slipped out of the room, took a brass candlestick that had a slide that could be snapped with a noise like the trigger of a pistol. He waylaid the rum-lover not far from the tavern, and terrified him so that he quickly gave up his beloved bottle. This was a famous joke when John told it in the tavern taproom, but John did not laugh the next day when he was arrested for highway robbery and fined fifty dollars.

In the year 1818 there took place the nearest approach to a highway robbery on the English methods that had ever happened in America. It was the robbery of the mail-coach which ran between Baltimore and Philadelphia. The story is thus told by one of the victims: —

    “Havre de Grace,
    “Thursday morning, 4 o’clock.

“John H. Barney, Esq.,

“Sir: I take the earliest opportunity to send you by an express an account of what happened to the mail last evening. About 2 miles from this place the driver of your mail wagon and myself were attacked by three highwaymen, each armed with a double barrelled pistol and a dirk. They had, previous to our arrival, built a rail fence across the road, and immediately on our driving up they leaped from behind the same, where they lay concealed, and presented their pistols, threatening to blow our brains out if we made any resistance. We were then carried some distance from the road into the woods; there they tied the driver and myself to a tree and commenced searching the mail. Every letter was opened and all the bank notes taken out; they showed me a large bundle of bills, and I much fear the loss will be found very great. They were from 11 until 3 o’clock busily employed in opening the letters. After they had done this they tied us to the back of the wagon, mounted three of the horses and galloped off towards Baltimore. They were all white men – had their faces blackened, and neither of them appeared more than 20. I have just arrived at this place and have stated the facts to the deputy postmaster, who will use every exertion to recover the letters that remain in the woods. They did not take anything belonging to me, & appeared not to wish anything but bank notes. They were all dressed in sailor’s trowsers and round jackets, & were about the middle size; two wearing hats & the other having a silk handkerchief tied around his head.

    “I am your obt. servt.
    “Thos. W. Ludlow.

“P. S. They called each other by their several names – Johnson, Gibson, and Smith, but I expect they were fictitious.”

At that date and season of the year the “Eastern mail,” on account of the heavy roads, was carried in a light carriage called a dearborn, with four horses. This Lieutenant Ludlow of the United States Navy obtained permission to accompany the driver in this mail-carriage. They left Baltimore at three o’clock and were held up at eleven. One robber desired to shoot Lieutenant Ludlow and the driver, but the others objected, and, on leaving, offered the driver ten dollars. They took no money from Ludlow, and though they looked at his handsome gold repeater to learn the time, they carefully returned it to his pocket. The very next day two men named Hare, known to be journeymen tailors of Baltimore, entered a clothing shop in that city, and made such a lavish display of money that they were promptly arrested, and over twenty thousand dollars in money and drafts was found upon them. They were puny fellows, Levi Hare being but twenty years old, and contemporary accounts say “one person of average strength could easily manage them both.”

The total amount of bills and drafts recovered amounted to ninety thousand dollars, and made the robbery the largest ever attempted. A few days later a third brother Hare was arrested, and thirteen hundred dollars was found in his house. The third robber proved to be John Alexander.

A Baltimore newspaper dated May 18, gives an account of the sentence of the three men after their interesting trial: —

“On Thursday last John Alexander, Joseph T. Hare, and Lewis Hare were brought before Court to receive sentence. Judge Duval presided – first addressed Lewis Hare and sentenced him to ten years’ imprisonment – J. T. Hare and Alexander sentenced to death. As Jos. T. Hare was proceeding from the Court House to prison accompanied by the constable, they had to cross Jones’ Falls, over which the trunk of a tree was laid for foot passengers to walk on; when they arrived in the middle of the creek Hare made an attempt to release his hands from his irons, and to knock the constable into the creek; it proved fruitless, but in the scuffle Hare tore off the lappelle of the constable’s coat. After he reached prison he made an attack on the turnkey and nearly bit off his finger.”

I have seen an amusing old chap-book entitled The Life of the Celebrated Mail Robber and Daring Highwayman Joseph Thompson Hare, and it has a comical illustration of “The Scuffle between Hare and the Constable,” in which the constable, much dressed up in tight trousers, tailed coat, and high silk hat, struggles feebly with the outlaw as they balance like acrobats on the narrow tree-trunk.

The whole account of this mail robbery has a decidedly tame flavoring. The pale tailors, so easily overcoming a presumably brave naval officer and a government mail-carrier; the leisurely ransacking of the mail-bags; the speedy and easy arrest of the tailors and recovery of their booty, and the astonishing simplicity of transporting the scantily guarded felon across a creek on a fallen tree as though on a pleasant country ramble, all combine to render it far from being a tale of terror or wild excitement.

The account of the death of the highwayman is thus told in the Federal Republican and Baltimore Telegraph of September 11, 1818.

“THE EXECUTION

“Agreeably to public notice, the awful sentence of death was yesterday inflicted on J. Thompson Hare and John Alexander, in the presence of a vast concourse assembled to witness the ignominious ceremony. Their lives have expiated the crime for which they suffered. Justice has no demands on them in the grave.

“The gallows was sufficiently elevated above the walls of the prison to afford a distinct view of the unfortunate men to spectators at the distance of several hundred yards.

“Hare has made a confession which is now hawking about town for sale. In it he observes that, ‘for the last fourteen years of my life I have been a robber, and have robbed on a large scale, and been more successful than any robber either in Europe or in this country that I ever heard of.’”

This lying dying boast of Hare fitly closes his evident failure as a highwayman.

An account of a negro highwayman is given in the Federal Republican and Baltimore Telegraph of September 11, 1818.

In the early years of this century there existed in eastern Massachusetts an organized band of thieves. It is said they were but one link in a chain of evil night-workers which, with a home or shelter in every community, reached from Cape Hatteras to Canada. This band was well organized, well trained, and well housed; it had skilful means of concealing stolen goods in innocent-faced cottages, in barns of honest thrift, and in wells and haystacks in simple dooryards. One mild-manered and humble house had a deep cellar which could be entered by an ingeniously hidden broad-side door in a woodshed; into this cave a stolen horse and wagon or a pursued load of cribbed goods might be driven, be shut in, and leave no outward sign. Other houses had secret cellars, a deep and wide one beneath a shallow, innocuous storage place for domestic potato and apple bins, and honest cider barrels. In a house sheltering one of these subterranean mysteries, a hard-working young woman was laboriously and discreetly washing clothes when surprised by the sheriff and his aids, who wisely invaded but fruitlessly searched the house. Nothing save the simplest household belongings was found in that abode of domesticity; but in later years, after the gang was scattered, a trap-door and ladder were found leading to the sub-cellar, and with chagrin and mortification the sheriff remembered that the woman’s washing tubs stood unharmed upon the trap-door during the fruitless search.

An amusing battering ram was used by another woman of this gang on the sheriff who came to her house to arrest one of those thieves. The outlaw fled upstairs at the approach of the officer, but his retreat was noted, and the man of law attempted to follow and seize him. The wife of the thief – his congenial mate – opposed the passage of the sheriff, and when he attempted to push her one side and to crowd past her, she suddenly seized the crosspiece over the staircase, swung back by her hands and arms, planted both feet against the officer’s chest, and knocked him down with such a sudden blow and consequent loss of wind, that the thief was far away ere the sheriff could move or breathe.

The leader of this band of thieves was an ingenious and delightful scamp – one George White. He was hard to catch, and harder to keep than to catch. Handcuffs were to him but pleasing toys. His wrists were large, his hands small; and when the right moment came, the steel bracelets were quickly empty. Locks and bolts were as easily thrust aside and left far, far behind him as were the handcuffs. At last he was branded on his forehead H. T., which stands for horse thief; a mean trick of a stupid constable who had scant self-confidence or inventiveness. Curling lovelocks quickly grow, however, and are ill in no one’s sight; indeed, they were in high fashion in similar circles in England at that time, when various letters of the alphabet might be seen on the cheeks and brow of many a gay traveller on the highway when the wind blew among the long locks.

Term after term in jail and prison were decreed to George White when luck turned against him. Yet still was he pardoned, as he deserved to be, for his decorous deportment when behind bars; and he had a habit of being taken out on a writ of habeas corpus or to be transferred; but he never seemed to reach his journey’s end, and soon he would appear on the road, stealing and roistering. The last word which came from him to New England was a letter from the Ohio Penitentiary, saying he was dying, and asking some of his kin to visit him. They did not go, he had fooled them too often. Perhaps they feared they might put new life into him. But the one time they were sure he lied he told the truth – and his varied career thus ended.

Flying once along a Massachusetts highway on a stolen horse, George White was hotly pursued. At the first sharp turn in the road he dismounted in a flash, cut the horse a lash with his whip, altered the look of his garment with a turn of his hand, tore off his hat brim and thus had a jaunty cap, and started boldly back on foot. Meeting the sheriff and his men all in a heat, he fairly got under their horses’ feet, and as they pulled up they bawled out to know whether he had seen a man riding fast on horseback. “Why, yes,” he answered ingenuously, “I met a man riding as though the devil were after him.” They found the horse in half an hour, but they never found George White.

He once stole a tavern-keeper’s horse, trimmed the mane, thinned out the tail, and dyed the horse’s white feet. He led the renovated animal in to the bereft landlord, saying innocently that he had heard his horse was stolen, and thought he might want to buy another. He actually sold this horse back to his owner, but in a short time the horse’s too evident familiarity with his wonted stable and yard and the fast-fading dye revealed the rascal’s work. To another tavern-keeper he owed a bill for board and lodging, which, with the incongruity of ideals and morals which is often characteristic of great minds, he really wished to pay. The landlord had a fine black horse which he had displayed to his boarder with pride. This horse was kept temporarily in a distant pasture. White stole the horse one night, rode off a few miles, and sold it and was paid for it. He stole it again that night from the purchaser, sold it, and was paid. He stole it a third time and returned it to the pasture from whence it never had been missed. He then paid his board-bill as an honest man should.

These gangs of horse thieves became such pests, such scourges in the Northern states, that harassed citizens in many towns gathered into bands and associations for mutual protection and systematic detection of the miscreants. A handbill of the “Ashburnham Thief Detecting Society” had an engraved heading which is reproduced on this page, which showed a mounted thief riding across country with honest citizens in hot pursuit. The Thief Detecting Society of Hingham had, in 1847, eighty-seven members. It used a similar print for a heading for handbills, also one of a boy stealing apples – as a severe lesson to youth.

In the year 1805 an abrupt and short but fierce attempt was made at highway robbery and burglary in Albany. The story as told in a chap-book is so simple, so antique, so soberly comic, that it might be three centuries old instead of scarce one. The illustrations, though of the date 1836, are of the standard of art of the seventeenth century.

It seems a piece of modern Philistinism to spoil the story – as I must – by condensation. The title of the book is The Robber, or Pye and The Highwayman, and the irony of giving Pye place before the highwayman or any place at all will be apparent by the story. In this tale two sturdy Albany dames shine as models of courage and fearlessness by the side of the terror-stricken burghers of the entire town, whose reputation to a man was only saved from the branding of utter and universal cowardice by the appearance and manly carriage and triumph at the end of the night’s fray of old Winne the pennypost.