T.F. Banks - The Thief-Taker

Morton drifted into an odd dream where he wandered lost through dim, ruinous alleys, noisome and narrow. Wraith-like inhabitants lurked silently in the shadows, eyes sunken and hostile-and fixed on him.

The Runner awoke as the carriage rocked to a stop. The facade of the Bow Street Magistrate's Court loomed out of the gloom. A figure loitering on the stair stepped out into the faint morning light.

“Morton?”

Morton pushed the carriage door open. “Yes, come along, Jimmy. We've something to see to.”

The coach swayed as the newest Bow Street Runner pulled himself aboard and settled opposite Morton in a dissonant squeaking of carriage springs. In the faint light Morton could barely see his young colleague, but his great bulk could be sensed. Morton rather liked Jimmy Presley: a costermonger's son, strong as an ox; someone you'd like to have at your side if things got roiled. But Jimmy was still finding his way, still coming to understand he had some decisions to make about the kind of officer-and the kind of man-he wanted to be. It was to this end that Morton had arranged their morning's outing.

Presley leaned forward a bit, out of shadow, and in the soft grey light appeared even younger than his twenty-some years: broad-faced and boyish.

“Have we a profitable bit of business lined up?” he asked, and smiled.

“Profitable? Perhaps. But not in the usual sense.” Presley raised an eyebrow.

“Have you ever been to a hanging, Jimmy?”

The young man's voice faltered a little. “Nay, Morton, I've not. Nor ever wished to.”

“Well, that is about to change. We're off to Newgate to see those sad cullies, the Smeetons, dance on air for their sins.” Morton eyed his companion. “Mr. Townsend did me the favour of taking me to witness the hanging of the first criminals I ever nabbed. ‘Best to see what your efforts have wrought, Morton,’ he said. ‘If you haven't the stomach for it, then you'd better find yourself another trade.’ It is a part of your education that I thought George Vaughan might neglect.”

Vaughan was another Runner, and apparently Presley's mentor at Bow Street.

Jimmy Presley said nothing, but turned away from Morton, toward the window where the city of London was emerging from the dark of night into the grey of day.

Some distance from Newgate they were forced to continue on foot; the crowds were too thick for the coach to make progress. Morton cast his gaze up at the watery overcast, and wondered if the sky would shed tears for the Smeetons, and any other unfortunates who would come out the “debtors' door” that day.

Morton noticed that Presley carried his baton, the gilt top gleaming in the dull light. “I'd put that out of sight,” Morton said, nudging him. The older Runner had his own baton tucked away in a pocket inside his greatcoat.

Presley looked a bit surprised, but slipped his baton into his belt and pulled his coat over it. They jostled their way along Newgate to within sight of the prison. Here the crowd grew very dense, and Morton and Presley had to force their way forward.

“Look to your purse, Jimmy,” Morton warned in a low voice.

“Here?” Presley turned toward Morton, wondering if the older Runner was practicing on him.

“Oh, aye. Within sight of the hangman.”

A few paces farther on, Jimmy waved a hand down the street. “Look at them! There must be ten thousand, if there's a man.”

“Twenty-five, even thirty thousand, it's said.” Morton pointed up Ludgate Hill, past St. Sepulchre's Church. “Not so many years ago they had a panic here-no one knows what set it off-but when all was said and done nigh on thirty people had been trampled to death: men, women, and children. Scores more lay injured. But the very next day the crowds were back-just as large-as though it hadn't happened at all. Oh, they're great admirers of our work, Jimmy.”

This did not elicit even a smile from Presley.

Morton nodded to the houses lining the street across from the blind edifice of the prison. There were people sitting high up on the roofs. “Two sovereigns it would cost you for such a view.”

“Nay!” Presley protested.

“It's the truth. Three guineas to watch from a window.”

Pie-sellers and grog men began their bark, and a low, continuous rumble rose from the crowd pressed into the street before Newgate Prison.

Earlier, dray horses had pulled the wheeled gallows into position and carpenters and their assistants had set the posts in place and erected barriers around the black-draped base.

At a quarter of eight the City Marshall made his slow way on horseback through the pressing masses. Following on foot were the officials of the prison, the court, and the police. Immediately, parents began passing their children forward over the heads of the crowd so that they would be assured of a view.

Morton and Presley were still some way off, but their height allowed them to see. The younger Runner drew a long breath, and looked around, as though searching for a means of escape. It was a cruel thing Morton was doing, dragging this young man to such a spectacle.

The chimes of St. Sepulchre's started to sound the hour, and were answered by the dim ringing of the solitary bell deep within the walls of Newgate. The black debtors' door swung open and a party emerged onto the platform.

“Hats off! Hats off!” people began to cry, not out of respect, Morton knew, but so that no one's view should be blocked.

Before the sombre party came the Ordinary clergyman, in full canonical dress.

“There he is,” Morton said softly to Presley. “The man who enriches himself by publishing the Calendar .” The clergyman used his privileged position to record-or invent-an endless stream of lurid last confessions. “The man in the dandy green jacket is Calcroft, the hangman. See the flower in his buttonhole? He says that as he's not an undertaker he won't dress like one. Oh, he's a rare wit, he is.”

People in the crowd began to shout and jeer; Calcroft tipped his hat to them. Behind the hangman came his assistants, conspicuously bearing ropes, then the warders, and between them, heads bowed and hands bound, a man and a woman.

Presley straightened, his attention entirely focused now.

During the brief course of English justice, and the few days of their incarceration, the Smeetons had changed utterly. Where they had been but forty years of age when Morton and Presley apprehended them, they appeared sixty now. They shuffled forward, bent and ruined, faces pale as new-quarried stone. Morton could see the woman's cheeks glisten, but there was no sound of sobbing above the hush of the crowd. The man and woman came before the clergyman-like bride and groom, Morton thought.

Just as the nooses were to be set in place, the man took a step forward and raised his head. Morton saw despair written there, but defiance as well, and anger.

“Here's a pleasant diversion for you,” the condemned man hurled out, “watching old Caleb Smeeton and his good wife hang! Thieves, you think us!” He paused and Morton thought the man would break down, but he went on, strangely calm. “But how did those fine Bow Street men know where to nab us? Just where to be, and at what hour? Our ‘friends’ helped them, now didn't they?” he bitterly answered his own question, and glared out at the crowd. “Friends like you …

“Aye, one of our own peached on us… the same as told us about the panney, and what hour the owner would be away. The friend who said, ‘It'll be safe, sure. Take your wife to help! Never mind she don't want to. Take her!’ And her a God-fearing woman, who'd ne'er do such a thing for all her life!” He glanced over at her, and she met his eye, tears still slipping silently down her face.