The Real Life Criminal Who Inspired Jekyll & Hyde | Britain's Outlaws | Absolute History

i'm alice loxton and i present documentaries over on history hit tv if you're passionate about all things history sign up to history hit tv it's like netflix but just for history we've got hours of ad-free documentaries about all aspects of the past you can get a huge discount from history hit tv make sure you check out the details below and use the code absolute history all one word when you sign up now on with the show [Music] crime was endemic in the 18th century on the open roads robbers robbed with impunity on the high seas pirates roamed and closer to home rogues threatened the lives and livelihoods of ordinary citizens nowhere was safe least of all towns and cities where from their own underworld felons robbed burgled and cheated from the lowest to the highest from the likeable rogue to the seemingly respectable gentleman there was contempt for the rule of law men like thomas benson mp a sheriff turned outlaw deacon brody the original jekyll and hyde and jack shepherd the most artful one of them all for a time they evaded the law but the law was closing in this was the last age of the outlaw [Music] the most famous rogue of the age was an orphaned apprentice jack shepherd and a very likable rogue he was too jack would go on to be the most written about and celebrated criminal of the last 300 years the legend of jack sheppard was forged one september day in 1724 when he escaped from the condemned cell in newgate prison the most secure prison in the land no prison no matter how secure seemed able to contain him he was admired by men and adored by women jack shepard was famous in his lifetime and for three centuries after he inspired books operas and films he was the rock star of his age a lovable rogue he was jack the lad [Music] jack was brought up in poverty by his mother but he was fortunate to get a carpenter's apprenticeship it was an opening that would serve him well carpentry was a good safe trade because london was growing all the time there was never a shortage of customers london was also the largest city in europe through its port and merchant houses a river of valuable commodities and money flowed it was a good place to earn an honest living but it was the perfect place for a life of crime in london's dense network of thoroughfares the very rich rubbed shoulders with the desperately contemporary accounts tell us that jack never finished his apprenticeship his father had been an honest man and jack may well have followed suit if he'd not been fond rather too fond of a drop of veil and of the company of women one fateful night he was drinking in the black lion in drury lane and we know that he then met elizabeth lyon known to all as edgeworth bess bess was a prostitute and petty thief who frequented the taverns of the town later writers would suggest that jack had been led astray by bess jack shepard's story follows a very common narrative thread in the 18th century where it's the woman that leads the slightly innocent man into sin so he wants to buy her presents he wants to impress her he wants to take her out carousing and so she maybe introduces him to someone who'll fence some goods that she suggests he might steal love struck jack was eager to please and as an apprentice carpenter he had every opportunity to pilfer from the houses of the well to do when no one seemed to notice the quick and nimble jack small items he brought home to curry favor with the ample bess jack now embarked on a new career as a pickpocket and burglar with bess as his ideal fence jack's elder brother thomas had already been branded on the hand as a thief now jack was following after because of his trade jack knew how window and door locks worked and he also knew how the window bars that were so common in london were fitted so it was easy work for him to remove the bars rob the house and then replace them very clever jack shepherd and his brother then set out on a short but disastrous crime spree cash from a public house a large hall of linen from a drapers then fatefully a house robbery in drury lane [Music] and then things started to go wrong jack's brother was caught with the swag i hesitate to say red-handed but now fearing for his owner's skin and hoping to receive leniency he blamed it all on edgeworth best and jack his own brother jack was soon arrested and taken to st giles's roundhouse near charing cross st giles's roundhouse was just a local lock-up and clearly inadequate for keeping jack in for long he was to be detained just for one night and questioned in the morning jack had to act quickly that night he broke through the timber ceiling onto the roof the noise of his escape and the falling roof tiles attracted a small crowd and then displaying the typical coolness that later endeared him to all of london he joined the crowd and distracted them saying he could see the shadow of the prisoner escaping over the rooftops and then he slipped away jack was agile in mind and body his escape and his daring made him the perfect model as the 18th century anti-hero it was april 1724 jack was just 22 years old and the chain of events that would make jack famous dead famous had just begun within a few weeks on the 19th of may shepard was arrested for a second time he was caught picking a pocket in leicester fields modern day leicester square jack was put in saint anne's roundhouse where he was visited by bess and then she too was arrested as his accomplice and thrown in jail with him jack and bess appeared before magistrates and were sent to new prison in clarkenwell manacled and held in cells with iron bars escaping from there would be a different proposition altogether and yet within days both of them were free using a smuggled file they cut through the manacles then jack managed to work a bar loose in the cell window with a rope of knotted bed clothes he first lowered bess and then escaped himself this small slight boy really carries his a plump i think is the kind way to describe her she was described as a blousey carrying her somehow over the wall out the window down the wall through the yard up and over again and it's definitely part of his mystique that he he does it with you know he does it with her their audacious escape hit the newspapers broadsides and ballads proclaimed jack's name jack daring and gallant was the talk of the town plays about jack shepherd would become one of the most popular entertainments of the next two centuries and he would be immortalized as the artful dodger in dickens's oliver twist no matter how popular jack now was he soon made an unfortunate enemy it was known that most of london's criminal underworld was controlled by one man jonathan wilde wild was an apparently respectable man who moved in influential circles he used his connections to lead a double life by running criminal gangs and bringing thieves to justice jonathan wilde called himself thief taker general it wasn't an official position but he got a lot of official backing because he could produce the results i mean jonathan was a complete rogue and a villain he was the moriarty of crime in fact arthur conan doyle in historic home stories refers to moriarty and calls him jonathan wilde he ran gangs he fenced stolen goods he shocked rival gang members and of course i suppose from the authorities point of view okay he's destroyed one gang so actually let's get rid of all that lot on the other hand he'd increased his own power uh probably increased his own manpower and had a larger share in the takings the justice system relied on men like wilde he even had an office in the old bailey as well as a house a few doors down at number 68. jonathan wilde seemed to be the puppet master for the courts of justice and the criminal underworld and everything was going his way until he picked on a thief and burglar young jack shepherd jack shepherd held it as a point of pride that he had never dealt with jonathan wilde and that was part of the reason he was popular on the streets of london because he held himself apart from the kind of criminal fraternity that the wild represented even though bess and blueskin blake and others of his kind of other accomplices were involved with wild jack always was proud not to have been jonathan wilde was determined to catch shepard and seeing bess as the weak link he plied her with drink and she foolishly led wild to jack successful as jack was at escaping unfortunately he was equally as successful at getting caught jack never seemed to wander far from his usual haunts in this part of town if he was not womanizing he was drinking and most of the time it was both at the same time one day he'd been burgling again this time with his friend and fellow criminal joseph blue skin blake now where did wild's men find jack why at blue skin blake's mother's brandy shop jack was sent to newgate a much more serious proposition being the most secure prison in london to be tried at the old bailey next door the old belly consisted of a single open-air courtroom i mean part of it undercover where the judge would sit and so on but the majority of the space was just open exposed and open air but the reason was two-fold one it was thought that you were less likely to catch disease and the other thing of course was open justice and public justice in terms of people being able to see the procedures see people being tried found guilty or not guilty but justice being done but convictions and false convictions often carried rewards it was a corruptable system and no one knew how to corrupt it better than the devious jonathan wilde wilde exerted a powerful hold on criminals across london if they didn't cooperate he simply had them arrested and claimed the reward and if he needed any witnesses to secure a conviction well he knew plenty of people who tell a convincing tale for a little bit of cash a lot of people wild shocked were guilty criminals anyway um so you didn't need to fabricate false evidence against them they often came leading with it themselves but it would but it was certainly it was certainly true that there was unease within the legal profession and this and the senior judiciary that in fact we might be getting a lot of miscarriages of justice as a result of our over reliance on paid and well-paid informants [Music] on the 12th of august 1724 jack faced two charges of theft and one of burglary a serious prospect as even quite minor crimes against property were punishable by death on the first two charges of theft he was acquitted for lack of evidence but the third for burglary was recorded as plainly proved jack was sentenced to hang [Music] jack shepherd and jonathan wilde were now inextricably linked each would lead to the downfall of the other [Music] jack was a condemned man wilde appeared to have had the upper hand jack was still allowed visitors including his supposed wife bess the woman whose weakness for drink had landed him in this trouble on the day that the official warrant arrived naming friday the 4th of september as the day that shepard would be turned off as the slang would have it rjack escaped again and this time from newgate itself over the intervening three weeks jack had managed to loosen a bar and using bess and her friend paul maggot to distract the guards he changed into women's clothing and coolly walked out of the most secure prison in the land jack's freedom was short-lived only nine days again wilde tracked him down arrested him and brought him back to newgate this time high up in the building to a cell called the castle it was considered escape proof here he was bound hand and foot and shackled to the floor jack was now famous throughout london his charm and daring escapes made him a hero at newgate he was a one-man tourist trade as many paid to see the living legend that was jack shepherd to his admiring fans and to the jailers he would then display the tricks he used to escape his chains to discover more about jack's techniques i've come to london's guildhall library to meet peter ross a leading expert on jack shepard we know from an account of when people came into his cell he was very willing to demonstrate how he got his cuffs off he did it repeatedly he was caught in itself with his cuffs off he would have got out of them by slipping his hand through the handcuff itself so that's what he was doing and he was willing to demonstrate that to anybody who wouldn't be willing to to watch him do it it sounds almost implausible that you could just slip off manacle so he must have been a real escapologist he was he was exactly with an eschatologist these chains are from the metropolitan police's black museum by late victorian times many wanted to believe these were the genuine article what's significant about these particular cuffs is they have a lock on them and we think it's probable that jack shepherd's cuffs did not have a lock on them and that uh he would have been fixed into them with a rivet by a blacksmith who would have been at newgate prison so he did pick locks because we know he picked the lock that fixed him to the floor of the cell but in this case he had no problem slipping his hands out it's so clear that people just want to have artifacts relating to this person particularly artifacts like handcuffs and manacles because they represent the law they want they want a hero who can escape authority yes it's something about the uh the 1720s the fact that the government was very oppressive uh the fact that people in london uh were fixed in their jobs apprentices were controlled the whole of society was controlled so if you see somebody who's sort of not really anti-society but is against the government in some way by escaping from the government escaping from the authority uh then he progression becomes as a popular hero the next chapter in jack's legend was down to a stroke of luck while he was in prison blue skin blake had been double crossed by wild and convicted of robbery on his evidence in a fit of rage blake rushed at wild with a blade and slashed his throat a riot ensued high up in the castle jack took advantage of this mayhem he slipped his handcuffs and still in leg irons attempted to wriggle up the chimney he managed to burrow into the chimney with an iron bar he found there and climb up through the chimney and out through five or six bolted rooms onto a roof um eventually at the edge of the prison where he saw he could climb down he realized he had nothing like a rope to climb down with so he retraced his steps back to his cell gathered up his blankets and then went back to the roof where he lowered himself onto the house of one william bird who was fast asleep jack was away and free he bribed a shoemaker to break his chains and stole some fine clothes and dressed as a gentleman for two weeks he lived life to the full you have to wonder why doesn't he just leave why doesn't he do what one of his accomplices did and make a new life in the united states why doesn't he go and live in the country why doesn't he just escape london he doesn't seem to have the idea of possibility of a different life he's so grounded in that underworld of covent garden of pickpockets of sharps and flash women that he can't ever imagine living outside it after a night's drinking it said that he even took two floozies in a cab past newgate to show them where he'd escaped from now he had a fine old night that night but in the morning he had far more than a hangover to contend with [Music] jack was found in a local tavern a few hours later blind drunk and dressed in a handsome suit of black with a fine ring on his finger unfortunately for him the people that found him were the officers of the law back in newgate the great and the good bribed their way in to meet him and even the king sent sir james thornhill his personal portrait painter to capture jack's image jack's last journey was along what is now oxford street but then oxford road two hundred thousand people that's a third of london turned out to see him he was their hero people waved women called his name on the day of jack's execution he's taken in a cart from newgate to tyburn which is modern marble arch along the oxford road people drank his health as he passed them outside pubs he drank some brandy the roads would have been crowded with people coming out to see their hero die at marble arch was the tyburn gallows a triangle of wood known as the tyburn tree and it was here where our jack was hanged it was a ghastly experience for the crowd because his slim boyish frame which had been such an asset for breaking and entering and escaping now condemned him to a slow death by strangulation for 15 minutes his body writhed and kicked before he died [Music] although jack's crimes look quite modest to modern eyes the legal system of the time came down hard on all forms of robbery or burglary in fact any theft of over five shillings could be punishable by death in order to deter people from property theft when detection was unlikely when prevention was equally unlikely deterrence was considered to be the be all and end-all and deterrence was not it wasn't that you hanged people for the most serious offenses you hanged people for the set for the offenses that were easiest to commit and what about jonathan wilde jack's nemesis legend and broadsheet had it that wild turned up to watch jack die but in truth he'd been too weakened by blueskin blake's attack to venture outdoors as his health failed wild's grip on his criminal empire began to weaken previously terrified witnesses came forward to accuse him and it was only a matter of time before he too was in the dock of all his vile and devious crimes it was finally the simple theft of some lace that had him convicted and sent to the gallows as a loyal public servant he pleaded for a reprieve but reprieve there was none on his journey to the gallows he was pelted with rotten fruit such was the desire to see wilde executed that tickets were actually sold for the best seats in his execution this is a satirical copy sending up this macabre trade here at the top is a image of a very worried looking jonathan wilde and underneath it is the invitation to all the thieves [ __ ] pickpockets family felons in great britain and ireland you are hereby desired to accompany your worthy friend the pious mr jonathan wilde to ye triple tree where he is to make his last exit when it finally came to it wilde was strung up alongside three of his associates wilde was the last to die jonathan wilde's body was cut down by his family and buried quietly in a nearby churchyard but he would not rest in peace this is the huntarian the museum of the college of surgeons or surgeons and barbers as it would have been in the 18th century it's full of strange and disturbing relics of the human condition and ladies and gentlemen allow me to introduce you to mr jonathan wilde thief taker general and yes it is he in an opportunistic theft of which he may or may not have approved his body was exhumed and sold to the royal college of surgeons and he has been their guest ever since not that far from the old bailey where he plied his deadly trade while all that remains of wild is his skeleton the legend of jack shepherd continued to live and grow in plays operas and ballads for the next 300 years hogarth was said to have based his idol apprentice engravings on jack shepherd and a century after his death a novel about jack by william harrison ainsworth was the publishing sensation of victorian england outselling books by a chap called dickens yes ainsworth did romanticize it a bit but jack had been orphaned at four and life had been very difficult both for him and for his mother and yet he lived life to the full he enjoyed a good party and he died as he lived with wit charm and panache a real working-class hero jack shepherd was a legend in his own lifetime and long after a popular ballad told his story in the slang of the criminal underworld [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so that was fantastic but the interesting thing for me is the language what's what's going on there we take the first line it says in the box of a stone jug i was born and that means he's basically saying i was born in a prison cell okay and was that true not at all it sounds great so we've got um these incredible stories which are basically made up but sung in this in this funny language as well but it's it's the um the boisterousness of it which so appeals to me because you want to sing it to someone else and i suppose that's how it's spread that's what made the difference between which songs survived and which didn't and if it had a great tune then that would definitely help it to spread across the country you could really imagine people standing on street corners singing that one can't you they certainly did what you get a sense of i think with these songs is that a really exciting story is much more important than the true story and of course the most fantastical story is that brilliant one about mary toft yes the woman who gave birth the rabbit the woman who gave birth to rabbits and we believe it all it's got this brilliant line this song the weakest woman sometimes made the wisest man deceive so i think it's one we should play out on excellent let's go for [Music] it is [Music] believe it or not alexander pope the greatest poet of the age and translator of homer was the author of this boardy ballad to the rabbit breeder of godalming in the annals of all roguery there's nothing to compare with this one of the greatest frauds of all time if jack shepard was the most widely loved villain of the age then mary toft the rabbit woman was the most curious criminal case of the century she was famous for being sent to prison for giving birth to rabbits yes rabbits and rather a lot of them it was a hoax that captivated the crowd as much as it mocked the king and his court in the language of the time it was known as the great wim wham a swiftly made trifle a bit of fun mary toft was an illiterate pregnant 25 year old from surrey she seemed in every way unremarkable but her story would be the most remarked on of the age and it would unfortunately land her behind bars so how did this bunnies in the oven story begin well in the nature of all good rabbit stories let's begin at the beginning what's the matter doctor joshua it would appear that your wife has been delivered of a rabbit maritoff's story is that when she was pregnant she saw a rabbit in a field and it captivated her suddenly all she could think about was rabbits and this somehow meant that the baby she was carrying turned into a rabbit or maybe it was always a rabbit and who knows but there she is giving birth to to rabbits the doctor drunk or not who delivered the rabbit was john howard if you don't believe me go look for yourself john howard seemed to believe what he wanted to believe and he wanted to be in on the greatest medical sensation of the age so when he should have paused he jumped right in and he immediately penned a letter to the eminent medical men including the swiss german nathaniel santondre the surgeon to the royal household who believed him now joining the ranks of the credulous was the king himself and his son the prince of wales mary toft was now famous for being famous like all the best confidence tricks the rabbit births played into a narrative that people were strangely willing to believe and this was a pseudo-scientific theory called maternal impressions it had long been a sort of idea of folklore and common belief that if you saw something that deeply impressed you when you were pregnant your child would somehow reflect that experience uh the elephant man was the most famous example of this it was said that the mother had seen an elephant while she was pregnant and that has was what had caused the baby to be born um in that way it was said during the civil war that a woman had given birth to a baby with two heads because that was the division reflected the division in society at the time so it's it's quite a common view i mean i suppose it's an extension of the idea that if you have a terrible shock when you're pregnant it might affect your baby mary was a national sensation these were the early days of newspapers and if crime sold well rabbits sold even better physicians in the land of gentry competed to meet her feel her stomach and await the next rabbit no one might enter the bed chamber except on payment of a guinea what doctors and andre will let me in i'm his most intimate friend hey guinea madam oh very well before long lords and ladies thronged to goddamning to meet the wonder of the age no amount of thieving could have brought mary greater success oh the sweet harmless little creatures may i have one and take it back to london i'm sure mr toff would be delighted to sell you one there is no question of it madam these animals belong to science tough have your strong basket of course anyone looking at it rationally would say you know women can't give birth to rabbits but we're just moving from a period in which you know from an age of wonders to an age of science and there are all sorts of gray areas in between where the perpetuation of popular culture popular ideas superstitions still seems to sort of have a sort of a draw to it you know well we know that can't be right but hang on how is she doing it then how is it that doctors have been to see her and apparently come out shrugging their shoulders and say she seems to be doing it of course some people thought that this was all complete tosh but then again if the king his heir the prince of wales and the most eminent surgeon in the land believed it this was all going to end unhappily for someone the king's surgeon nathaniel santondre examined a rabbit and then with all medical propriety the intimate regions of mary toft he was satisfied with what he saw he rushed to publish the learned thesis that he hoped would cement his place in history it would but not in the way he imagined the final act was exquisite in its timing while nathaniel santondre's book was at the printers rumors spread that mary toft's husband had been caught smuggling rabbits into the household he claimed they were for a meal a rather unsettling observation for a man whose wife was giving birth to rabbits on a fairly regular basis then another obstetrician thomas manningham decided to confront mary and say that he felt obliged to conduct an investigatory operation to see if she was formed differently from other women mary was terrified she quickly broke down and confessed [Music] the immediate public aftermath was glee the most eminent satirical engraver of his day william hogarth etched his famous cuniculari or the wise men of godlymen in which he lampooned the main players it delighted the public to hold their betters up to ridicule especially the king and his german cronies a whimwam it most certainly was of course once the gaff is blown then everybody slaps themselves on the back and said yes of course yes of course um but then the whole thing gets used by critics of the english um you know particularly i mean thinking voltaire even writes about mary toft mainly so that he can just point out how superstitious the english are you know the french of course far more sophisticated wouldn't dream of doing anything so silly of course there were casualties santandre was the first he was publicly humiliated at court and it was said that he never ate rabbit again mary was sent to bridewell prison for being a vile imposter and a cheat she was satirized as the surrey rabbit breeder and she never escaped the sexual innuendo of her condition after all the 18th century word for a rabbit track was a prick mary was held in tott hill fields prison but she could not be held indefinitely without a trial and who would lose most by her conviction after all she hadn't done much except hoodwink the establishment so she was quietly released in her time mary toft had achieved something remarkable she had outwitted a society that seldom expected or allowed any social progress especially for women when maritoff died her name was in the newspaper it was listed alongside the great and the good there's no way in her ordinary existence her name would have been listed in the newspapers when she died um so in some ways i suppose you could say that it had been a you know a successful fraud fraud was a growing problem in the 18th century it was the white collar well the white ruffle crime of the day and no one was more roguish villainous or devious than one particular member of the georgian elite the rich it appeared were often above the law one well-connected devon merchant thomas benson cheated the taxman out of close to a million pounds in today's money was a human trafficker and committed one of the largest insurance frauds of the century benson's crimes were perpetrated far away from crowded london they centered on the picturesque and peaceful north devon town of appledore [Music] in 1747 at the age of 39 the world seemed to lie at benson's feet he was married with children and had inherited wealth and merchant ships from his successful father what's more the king had just made him sheriff of devon so benson was law and order in the county the man to bring justice to its people what could possibly go wrong lived at a time and in a place where there were immense rewards to be had the north devon coast in the mid 18th century was benefiting enormously from the trade in and out of bristol and to the americas so how did benson begin his climb up the greasy pole and how did he acquire the veneer of respectability well one particular object in the guild hall in barnstable i think gives the game away and this is it it's a seriously impressive solid silver very large punch bowl just here we can see benson's coat of arms now next to it there's an inscription the gift of thomas benson esquire to the corporation of barnstable and the key thing in understanding that is that we know he gave it to them just before he decided to run as member of parliament for barnstable and that that year he was elected unopposed now i shouldn't really say it here but i think it might have been a bribe the thomas benson case illustrates i think just how above a certain level corruption was rife everybody knew that uh corruption lay at the heart of the english electoral system you know i mean the idea that there were you know perks and preferences and croniest kind of activities going on at all levels of society was common people understood that the higher up the social scale you went the less likely you were to get caught the less likely you were to be put through the courts it was the poor what always gets the blame benson now started to play the system for all it was worth by escalating his occasional dodgy dealing into full-scale fraud benson lived on that hill up there and from there he could watch as his ship set sail for france portugal and the americas now behind me is the sheltered estuary but beyond it is the open sea and that's where we'll discover that this man who was the law sought to live outside of the law [Music] to get to the bottom of benson's rotary i'm taking a boat trip to the island of lundy in the bristol channel hiya hello how are you doing sam isn't it it is nice to be here thank you very much over a period of six years from 1747 to 1753 an extraordinary tale unfolded one that would shock benson's constituents dishonor his office and leave a catalogue of smuggling and deception on a quite breathtaking scale lundy would play an important part in benson's tale shortly after he became mp and sheriff for devon thomas benson took the lease of the island an island that was apparently uninhabited neglected and derelict on a good day benson could see this island from his house but he wasn't interested in romantic ruins and he decided to make lundy the key to his nefarious deeds he would make this island his own private kingdom lundy lies at the gateway to the bristol channel just three miles long it is now the peaceful haunt of holiday makers and bird watchers in the 18th century it was a dangerous place a place of smugglers and mysterious comings and goings it was not a place that welcomed prying eyes or probing questions thomas benson mp used his position to secure lucrative tobacco contracts but strangely the amount of tobacco loaded on his ships in america was always more than that which was unloaded in england i think you can guess where the rest went to evade customs tax benson secretly unloaded tobacco on lundy then when he felt it was safe he would smuggle the rest ashore under the noses of the revenue men a very profitable scam but benson had another secret to conceal as well as smuggle tobacco he also had an illicit trade in convicts benson was able to get a contract to transport convicts to the americas not very many of them at a time but but a few of them and what he did was take them to lundy island which was not in his view part of england in the making of this programme we uncovered 14 separate contracts in the devon heritage center these documents reveal the true scale of benson's corrupt empire evidence that the real rogues of the age were not the poor pickpocket or thief but men like thomas benson this is one of the original contracts that benson signed to take convicts to america and it's a remarkable document that puts everything that he did into context first of all we have the date just under his signature and his seal at the bottom then there is a list of these poor people who are going to be transported we see elizabeth penny william frost john lake and others there are 12 people here it says very clearly that they have been adjudged to be transported to some of his majesty's colonies and plantations in america now i think most interesting of all is is that right down at the bottom here it says the only reason that he is not to fulfill this duty is if these conflicts suffer from death casualties of the seas or having been taken by enemy only those are the exceptions by which he doesn't have to fulfill this contract despite what seemed watertight contracts some of these men and women never reached america they ended up in lundy barely 12 miles off the coast it was said that the convicts were housed in the ruins of the castle and sometimes in a cave below the graffiti on the cave walls some believe belongs to the poor unfortunate convicts men and women who were exploited without mercy trapped because the penalty for escaping transportation was death he's so brazen about this that he invites various other local grandees to go and visit lundy they stay the night there they see the people working there benson makes jokes about how it's not you know as long as he's taken them out of england they've they've been transported it doesn't matter if they don't actually get to america benson's arrogance was nearly his undoing he was prosecuted for failing to honor his contracts to take the convicts to the americas amazingly he got off but in the process had drawn attention to his smuggling he already owed over 8 000 pounds in unpaid taxes a considerable sum in the 1750s and the revenue men were closing in he then came up with another good wheeze one that would solve the problem of lundy and make him a tidy sum the plan involved a rather broken down aging ship the nightingale a previously upright captain a full cargo of pewter linen and salt all insured to the hilt of course oh and some convicts bound for maryland 12 chained men and three manacled women these convicts were nearly a master stroke and then just before the ship finally sailed from lundy she was unloaded of all her goods because benson wanted a maximum return and so the nightingale left lundy and when she was close to another ship the charming nancy of philadelphia the nightingale was scuttled and a fire was lit the ensuing blaze of course was blamed upon the convicts the captain the crew and the chain convicts then took to the boats and the nightingale slowly sank it seemed the perfect crime and it almost was but a drunken member of the crew with too loose a tongue let the whole tale unravel even benson couldn't stop the arrest trial and sentence to death of his captain lancey and with the noose tightening around him benson fled to portugal his brief rule over the kingdom of lundy was at an end benson's crime spree had ended in utter disgrace once a sheriff he was now an outlaw this wonderful room is the main chamber of the barnstable guild hall and it used to be the town's courtroom it's a wonderful place there are galleries for witnesses and tiered seating you get a real sense that this was once the beating heart of law and order in the town now also all around the walls are portraits of mayors local dignitaries people who donated money to the town and there's one very important one missing thomas benson benson was never seen again rumors circulated that he had secretly returned using his influential contacts but in truth he lived out his days in a porto and is buried in an unmarked grave by the river there thomas benson a man outwardly respectable but appearances can be deceptive benson had been able to hide in plain sight because public life was so corrupted in georgia and britain take the sinister case of edinburgh town councillor william deacon brody scotland's most wanted outlaw a man who was an upright member of edinburgh society during the day and an unscrupulous ruthless and immoral felon at night it seemed as if every door in the town was open to him especially after dark the title deacon didn't come from the church but because he was a master craftsman a cabinet maker and he was head of the woodworkers and carpenter's guild he appeared to be a sober and industrious man on the royal mile in edinburgh is a pub commemorating william brody as one of the city's least favorite sons on the front of the sign is brody elegant and respectable on the reverse is the dark side of the man a thief and a burglar and a very cunning one at that this is william brody and here through this wonderful old edinburgh arch used to be his workshop where under brody's supervision the finest furniture for the finest houses in edinburgh would be made brody's house just across the street from the pub no longer exists but his workshop does brody's workshop is now a rather nice cafe but it's here that he would have made his furniture work which included the fitting and repair of locks so like jack shepard his trade gave him the necessary skills to get into and out of any property he chose but unlike jack brodie was supposed to be a respectable man william brody came from an upstanding local family it's strange that a man with apparently so much to lose should risk it all on a life of robbery but away from refined society brody kept two mistresses with children both were unknown to his friends and his parents and both were unknown to each other he liked a gamble he was particularly fond of [ __ ] fighting and he also liked to drink this was a man who was addicted to living beyond his means by 1786 brody was facing a deepening cash crisis his appetite for women drink and the gaming tables was driving him to bankruptcy he needed another trade and his access to clients keys gave him the means to embark on a nightlife of thieving as brody himself said why break in when you can walk in a one-man crime wave gripped the old town brody was twice blessed he had the stolen property and gained extra work providing new locks and stronger windows for the victims of his crimes the two sides of brodie's personality are captured in the story of an exquisite cabinet that survives in the writer's museum in edinburgh a piece of craftsmanship that would link him to one of the most famous literary works of the next century this fine cabinet was in the childhood bedroom of writer robert louis stevenson and it was made by our very own william deacon brody stevenson as a child became fascinated with brody's story particularly with his dual personality and it said that it inspired him to write the story of dr jekyll and mr hyde a man who embodied both good and evil it's a macabre object for a small boy's bedroom brody was a risk taker having tasted a life of crime he overreached himself everybody knew that when somebody got caught the best way to avoid prosecution was to shock your comrades your erstwhile associates like many criminals of his time brody's mistake i suppose is yes becoming somewhat overconfident and not being too careful about who he chooses to work with [Music] brodie assembled a small gang to affect his robberies andrew ainsley george smith and john brown a convicted thief already on the run from transportation their ambition was soon to outgrow their ability the edinburgh excise office the tax office was in this court and on the night of 5th of march 1788 it was to be the location of brody's most daring raid and his undoing the excise office was known to store large sums of money and that night 600 pounds in cash was to be kept on site brody planned it well he had cased the joint and made a copy of the main door key brody and his three accomplices cloaked and masked and with dimmed lanterns made their way down the alley brodie had been drinking heavily which was his first mistake he only had a key to the outer door so they had to force the inner door they were then disturbed by the unexpected arrival of mr james boner a bank official who had forgotten some papers in a panic they knocked bona aside and they fled to save his own skin brodie then split from the others so he could establish an alibi but that was his main mistake in showing no loyalty to his accomplices they would then show no loyalty to him particularly when there was a large reward on offer the weak link was brown john brown was already on the run having escaped from transportation turning king's evidence against brodie might lead to a pardon a once in a lifetime opportunity brown chanced it and brody fled first to york then london and on to amsterdam all with george williamson one of scotland's chief law officers hot on his [Music] trail the remarkable thing was that he ran but didn't get away although he escaped edinburgh the scottish constables had new allies in the south once he's absconded to amsterdam the bow street office in london tries to engineer getting him back now this is in a period before we have formal extradition orders with anyone but the bow street office takes initiatives um so they intercept his correspondence in which he gives away that he's in austend on his way to amsterdam i think well we'll correspond with the magistrates of amsterdam and see if we can get him picked up and held while we come over and collect him sounds like formal extradition it wasn't formal at all it was an it was a it was a one-off actually brought back to edinburgh on an overcast august morning in 1788 brody and his co-accused smith faced a packed court [Music] brody was described as a sometime right and a cabinet maker the first witness for the king was john brown his evidence would prove fatal for both men they had robbed together and would hang together [Music] deacon brody was destined to die on a scaffold that he had helped build himself after all it was his civic duty as an upstanding member of the city to make sure that habitual criminals got their just desserts 40 000 people came to watch here just yards from his workshop and home as he climbed the scaffold deacon seemed relaxed he had an easy manner about him even at this late hour had he one last trick up his sleeve well his collar rumors circulated that brody had one final devious plan to cheat the inevitable there were stories of a secret steel collar stories of a special deal with the hangman stories he had cheated death all fanciful [Music] his body was cut down by his friends and rushed back through this alley to his workshop where there were desperate attempts to revive him but the hangman had done his job well and william deacon brody was no more [Music] one of the saddest mementos of brody's life is this the brodie family bible it's rather fragile but beautifully preserved and one of the prized artifacts here in the museum of edinburgh now towards the back are the details of the brody family tree francis brody william's father has faithfully recorded the details of his marriage to cecil grant and also the birth of his sons well one son actually because the details of his first son william presumably the apple of their eye have been erased from their memory but not from history by the end of the 18th century it was no longer possible to live outside the law the age of the dashing highwayman and that of the swashbuckling pirate had passed urban crime and fraud would of course continue but policing and police detection meant that although the rogue could still break the law he could no longer live outside the law the modern world brought to an end the criminal as some sort of good guy or pantomime villain but our more traditional rogues gave us ripping yarns dark morality tales and the unlikeliest of escapades and you know that's good enough for me [Music]

Channel: Absolute History

Views: 144,768

Keywords: history documentaries, absolute history, world history, ridiculous history, quirky history

Id: 7PoACySzrPs

Length: 58min 55sec (3535 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 07 2021