A gentleman wished to recover his horse. He had been stripped upon Hounslow Heath: his mount, a silver watch, and a few coins had vanished into the hands of Ferdinando Shrimpton. Now that the robber lay in irons, the traveller came to entreat his assistance. Shrimpton gave his word. A guinea passed from hand to hand; the horse, valued at fifteen pounds, was duly restored. Touching the watch, the business proved less straightforward. The prisoner had other interests to consult, and they were by no means those of his victim.
It was necessary to disburse four-and-thirty shillings, through the medium of the landlord’s wife, to obtain the restitution of the watch from a pawnbroker with whom it had been pledged. The chronicle imputes the rogue’s initial reluctance to a care not to disoblige this broker. Shrimpton, for his part, deemed half a crown a paltry recompense for his pains. Thus did restitution itself yield a profit to the thief. Behind the assaults upon the road lay the dispersal of goods, the private compromises, and the fresh exactions levied upon those who had already been despoiled of everything.
The criminal record that preserves this scene recounts jointly the careers of Shrimpton and of Robert Drummond. At Sunderland, Drummond had kept a dealer’s shop in hardware and enjoyed a tolerable reputation. His neighbours little suspected, writes the chronicler, that he likewise sought his living upon the highway. Yet his excesses ultimately rendered this double life less discreet. Apprehended in the wake of a robbery, he was convicted at the assizes, but obtained a pardon conditional upon transportation. He nevertheless found means to return into England.
This return did not bring him back to his counter. The account charges him with numerous robberies and a ferocious temper: he discharged his pistol at travellers who attempted flight, and struck those who submitted. His own brother James was drawn into his enterprises. When the pursuit grew perilous, Robert abandoned him; the chronicler ascribes James’s death to this desertion. The gang, however, formed anew. Together with the Shrimptons, Drummond was said to have committed as many as nine or ten robberies in a single night—a number preserved by the chronicle that sufficiently conveys the measure of their reported industry.
Ferdinando, too, came of a house wherein respectability had served as a cloak. His father resided at Bristol; beneath an unblemished exterior, he was, according to the same memorial, a highwayman. One evening, officers rushed into an inn to apprehend another man. Believing himself pursued, he drew a pistol and killed one of their number. His sudden terror had betrayed him more surely than any inquest. Condemned for this murder, he confessed to other felonies. Following his execution, his body was hung in chains.
The son had received some schooling, but had been bred to no trade. After his father’s death, he enlisted as a foot-soldier in the Guards. His pay was supplemented by the proceeds of his robberies. He joined forces with Drummond, and the two men presently prevailed upon William Shrimpton, Ferdinando’s cousin, to bear part in one or two attacks. That first step once taken, Ferdinando allowed him no respite. Yet this kinsman, seduced onto the roads, was destined to become the very witness who would impeach them before their judges.
All three were apprehended. William consented to turn evidence against his companions. At the Old Bailey, one name overshadowed all other indictments: Simon Prebent, coachman in the service of Mr. Tyson. Ferdinando Shrimpton stood indicted for his murder; Robert Drummond, for aiding and abetting him. Both men were found guilty. They were convicted likewise of the robbery committed upon Tyson after the coachman’s death. The gang had taken the traveller’s gold; another man, his servant, had paid with his life.
Subsequent indictments brought other travellers and other chattels before the court. Robert Furnel had lost a valuable watch, a guinea and a half, some silver, a whip, and sundry effects. Jonathan Cockhoofs had been despoiled of a bay gelding valued at nine pounds, together with roasting pigs and portions of pork. Drummond and Shrimpton were again pronounced guilty. These disparate goods were the relics of so many journeys cut short upon the highway: whatever the robbers could carry off formed their harvest, with no distinction made between a gentleman’s watch and a carcass of pork.
Lying under sentence of death, they acknowledged only that they had been great offenders. To draw from them the particular circumstances of their deeds proved another matter. Two men, Knowland and Westwood, had already suffered death for robberies whereof Drummond and Shrimpton were now suspected. These latter would afford no confirmation. Hard-pressed with questions, Drummond flew into a passion, demanding whether they must needs take upon themselves all the robberies committed in the nation. This refusal left open an inquiry that their own condemnation could not suffice to resolve.
Knowland’s widow pressed her suit to their very last moments. She implored Drummond to speak the truth: he was upon the point of death, and a further confession could no longer aggravate his doom. For her, however, a few words might yet alter the repute of a name and the memory of an executed husband. She obtained no decisive answer. The chronicler records her appeal without being able to afford it the conclusion she sought. The suspicion against the two condemned felons remains a suspicion; their silence cannot be construed as the proof of another crime.
Even the slaughter of the coachman seemed not to trouble Ferdinando. During a sermon directed specifically against the sin of murder, he continued, reports the notice, to talk and jest with his fellows. The chronicler perceives in this deportment an absolute impenitence. We must leave him his judgment, yet the scene he transmits loses none of its callousness: while the discourse ran upon a man slain, he who had been condemned for that death appeared wholly insensible to the horror of it.
Drummond and Ferdinando Shrimpton were executed at Tyburn on the 17th of February 1730. The former was about fifty years of age, the latter some thirty. William, their companion turned King’s evidence, had helped bring them to the gallows. Knowland’s widow had come seeking an avowal they never granted. The traveller of Hounslow Heath had recovered his horse and his watch only by submitting to fresh extortions. At the close of this history, the reckoning remained unequal: certain goods could be restored; neither Simon Prebent nor the men already executed could ever return.