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 foot-
pads 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 in 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 approaching.