At the Golden Lion, near Hyde Park, the officers of Justice Fielding came to apprehend William Page. Upon his person and among his effects, they discovered three loaded pistols, powder, shot, a disguise of hair, and an accurate map of the roads surrounding London. The man who had taken such delight in altering his attire had prepared his excursions with no less care than his appearance. On this occasion, however, a former confederate had denounced him.
Page was the son of a Hampton farmer. His cousin, a London haberdasher, had received the youth into his household to train and employ him. Yet the lad’s thoughts turned ever more to his apparel than to the shop. When his kinsman strictly forbade the local tailors from executing his commissions, Page fell to altering his own garments by night, by the dim beam of a lantern hidden beneath his bed. Borrow rails at his conceit; the circumstance reveals rather a young man intent upon fabricating an appearance, disdainful of the honest trade offered him.
His cousin subsequently curtailed his pocket-money. Whereupon Page purloined upwards of fifteen pounds from the shop-drawer, purposing to discharge the supposed debt of a woman of his acquaintance, then detained at the suit of an associate. The theft went at first undetected. The tradesman, suspecting his servants, marked several guineas and deposited them in the till. Searching the lodgings of each during the night, he discovered the marked coin in Page’s pocket. The youth was turned out-of-doors without delay.
The woman whom he had sought to assist turned him away in turn, fearing a search of her dwelling. For hours he wandered, virtually penniless. On the morrow, having pawned two handkerchiefs to procure food, he penned a letter to his cousin begging forgiveness. Touched by the missive, the tradesman sent him a guinea, but warned that any further solicitation would meet with prosecution. Page dissipated the sum the very next day and returned to demand another advance. His cousin refused him. His father, apprised of this disgraceful conduct, commanded him to depart, threatening otherwise to have him committed as a vagrant.
A gentleman thereupon offered him employment as a domestic. Page hesitated, then accepted the livery and returned to London with his master. Certain persons who had formerly beheld him dressed as a man of quality continued to address him as such, compelling his master to explain the circumstance. Upon the road, a robber halted their carriage. Page subsequently heard of several outrages laid to the account of the same malefactor, from which circumstance, Borrow observes, he conceived the notion of taking to the road himself. Yet he remained in his master’s service upwards of a year without awakening suspicion.
Having quitted this place, he entered the service of a second master. A contagious distemper compelled him to leave and seek admittance to an hospital. There he met a woman afflicted with the same ailment. Upon their discharge, they took lodgings together near Charing Cross, dwelling in company until penury drove Page to the highway and reduced his companion to walking the town.
His first venture occurred upon the Kentish road. Near Shooter’s Hill, Page stopped the Canterbury stage-coach, stripping the travellers of watches and money to the value of some thirty pounds. He then traversed a great part of the county to reconnoitre the by-roads before returning to London. Later, he took a chamber near Grosvenor Square and frequented the billiard-tables. So long as fortune favoured his play, he had no occasion to molest travellers; when a more artful gamester stripped him of his stake, he took once more to the road.
Near Hampton Court, he stopped a post-chaise, robbing a gentlefolk couple of ten guineas, their watches, and a diamond ring. A reward of fifteen guineas being offered for the ring, Page restored it and pocketed the ransom. Flushed with these illicit spoils, he established himself at Lincoln’s Inn, passing for a student of the law. He took lessons in dancing, borrowed volumes from the libraries, and made a figure in the assemblies at Richmond, Hampstead, and Sunninghill. At Hampstead, an heiress formed an attachment to him. Her father at first approved the suitor and ordered the wedding garments to be prepared.
Page’s cousin, chancing one day to observe him in a richly laced coat, expressed his astonishment to an acquaintance. The gentleman made enquiry into the young spark’s affairs and thereupon warned the bride’s father. The doors were closed against him, though the young lady, according to Borrow, continued steadfast in her esteem. Page, meanwhile, had drafted for his private guidance a precise map of the roads within a twenty-mile circuit of the metropolis. Travelling in a phaeton and dressed with elegance, he passed everywhere for a gentleman of condition. At a convenient distance from town, he would turn aside into some unfrequented lane, shift his coat and wig, saddle one of his cattle, and ride onto the turnpike to stop a carriage. The robbery effected, he returned to his carriage, resumed his fine feathers, and drove unmolested into London.
Upon one occasion, hotly pursued after robbing a traveller near Putney, he swam the Thames to baffle his pursuers. Some haymakers discovered the apparel he had left beside his carriage and carried it away. The pursuing party seized the men, charging them as confederates in the robbery. Page was soon informed of what had occurred. He cast the clothes he then wore into a well, returned half-clad, claimed the vehicle, and declared that these very fellows had stripped him and cast him into a ditch. The coachmaker confirmed the conveyance to be his. The haymakers were detained until the assizes, being discharged only when Page failed to appear to prefer an indictment against them. His change of costume had thrust innocent men into the felons’ dock.
Page was first apprehended after being tracked to the inn where he had baited his horse. At Maidstone, the witnesses failed to identify him, and an acquittal followed. He resumed his unsettled existence between the highway and the gaming-tables, resorting to Bath, Tunbridge, Scarborough, and Newmarket. During the three succeeding years, he associated himself with Darwell, a former schoolfellow. Borrow imputes to their partnership upwards of three hundred robberies. The money was divided equally; as to the watches, they cast lots or agreed upon an equitable price between themselves.
During a robbery upon Blackheath, Page set upon Captain Farrington, of Chislehurst. Yet at the trial, the postilion singled out another prisoner, a Mr. Douglas, swearing that a pistol-shot had been fired. Douglas established an alibi and was acquitted. After his own condemnation, Page asserted, according to Borrow, that no shot had been discharged, and that had Douglas been convicted, he would have surrendered himself to deliver the innocent man. History affords no means to elevate this belated declaration to the rank of verified fact; it reveals, however, the perilous uncertainty of witness identifications, which might bring an innocent man to the tree.
Page subsequently set out for Scotland, hoping to secure the succession of a distant kinsman. The vessel was cast away, and he lost nearly all he possessed. Upon reaching his journey’s end, he found his relation dead, having left him not a single groat. Returning to London, he resumed his depredations in concert with Darwell. Within six weeks, if the chronicle is to be credited, they committed between twenty and thirty robberies in the environs of the capital. By this time, the magistrates had marked their haunts. Men dispatched by Justice Fielding apprehended Darwell near Sevenoaks, upon the Tunbridge road. He offered to become a witness for the Crown, revealing the inns Page frequented and the liveries where he hired his cattle.
Confined in Newgate, Page lay from July until February awaiting his trial for the robbery of a Mr. Webb. For want of evidence, he was acquitted. Thence he was removed to Maidstone Gaol and placed at the bar at Rochester for the robbery of Captain Farrington. On this indictment, the jury found him guilty. He was hanged at Maidstone on the 6th of April 1758. The life he had sustained by continual transformations of attire had long baffled the eyes of witnesses; it was the treachery of his confederate, followed by a precise indictment, that at last surrendered him to the executioner.