Ten guineas, a sailor’s jacket, and a vessel bound for Dieppe: thus did Jeddediah West wheedle from his brother the charges for an imaginary flight. His friend John Dykes awaited him at the appointed rendezvous, only to be condemned in another matter altogether: the robbery of Charles Wright, from whom he took a penknife, a seal, and five shillings and eightpence.
Dykes was the eldest son of a family of middling station. His parents bestowed upon him an education and an indulgence for which the chronicler subsequently reproaches them, observing that this schooling pressed heavily upon their modest fortune. When the hour arrived to find him an apprenticeship, John ever found some pretext to evade it. The ancient account makes gaming his prevailing inclination: he frequented the tables of the town with such moneys as he possessed, and, when brought to penury, would slip into an old coat to play at chuck and span-farthing with the street urchins. The shift of scene followed hard upon his losses: from the gaming tables of the city to gutter hazards, and from mature companions to whoever crossed his path out of doors. It chanced at times that he won enough to return among his former circle, yet this resource remained ever precarious. Far more frequently, according to the chronicler, he turned to picking pockets.
These petty thefts brought about his frequent arrest and subsequent confinement in Bridewell. His kinsmen, above all his father, set before him the ignominious end to which such practices must lead. They urged him to bethink himself while there was yet time and to amend his ways, promising to do all that lay within their power notwithstanding his past transgressions. The chronicle imputes to him great cunning and a singular talent for dissimulation. He knew how to assume before his kin the appearance of complete contrition, persuading them that he was firmly resolved upon reform.
Upon a fresh arrest, following a public correction in a ducking-pond, he was brought before a justice of the peace and committed to Tothill Fields Bridewell. There he fell in with Jeddediah West, the son of a Quaker, detained for practices of a similar nature. The two young men formed a close friendship. West was the elder and, in the chronicler’s estimation, the more consummate deceiver; he schooled Dykes in the art of feigning genuine repentance. Out of shame, West delayed for two or three days before addressing his family, subsisting chiefly upon the moneys Dykes received from home. At length he plucked up courage to write to his brother, an eminent man of business, and contrived to persuade him that he had been unjustly immured. This first tale moved his brother to pity and assistance, so that he came even to hold West guiltless of the offence for which he had been committed. Dykes’s parents did not entirely credit the innocence displayed before them, yet their son’s contrite demeanor sufficed to secure their pardon; they took him home and furnished him with a new suit of clothes, promising to do all that lay in their power provided he continued to conduct himself with propriety.
The two young men renewed their correspondence, regained the favor of their kinsfolk, and once more had money at their disposal. Dykes and West continued to meet and to haunt the gaming tables in company. For some three weeks, fortune appeared to smile upon them; then they lost their all and were left without the means to defray their charges. Despairing of obtaining further sufficient relief from their friends to support such expenses, West proposed an expedient to raise money at the expense of the brother whose trust he had already abused—a design he was to execute alone.
West knew the hour at which his brother was accustomed to return from the Royal Exchange for dinner. This time, the venture was played out at the family counting-house. He presented himself clad in a sailor’s jacket, his hair cropped close to his ears, his eyebrows blackened, and a kerchief knotted about his neck. His brother recognized him despite the disguise and marvelled to behold him in so wretched a plight. West related that two counterfeiters newly apprehended had seen him in Bridewell, and had subsequently accused him together with three others in order to be admitted as evidence and escape the gallows themselves. He feigned to have hazarded his life to come and crave assistance before embarking with the next tide for Gravesend, whence the vessel was to sail for Dieppe.
The brother was utterly undone; he burst into tears and threw his arms about West’s neck. He advised him to take a coach for Billingsgate, handed him ten guineas, and promised to honor his bills of exchange to the value of a hundred pounds, to be drawn from Dieppe. He verily believed he was succoring a youth unjustly impeached and compelled to fly the realm. Scarcely had he quitted the street where his brother dwelt than West rejoined Dykes at the appointed place. The chronicle records their high satisfaction at the success of the stratagem.
When Mr. West discovered the imposture, he renounced his brother for ever. Shortly thereafter, Jeddediah was arrested for a debt of twelve pounds owed to his tailor. This liability, wholly distinct from Dykes’s robberies, carried him likewise to prison. He remained in close confinement, without the slightest aid from his brother, until well after Dykes had been hanged.
Dykes, for his part, did not abandon the gaming table. When his losses stripped him of coin, he took to the road or sought other means to furnish his pockets. In the parish of Stepney, upon the highway between Mile End and Bow, he set upon Charles Wright. Wright was travelling along that road when Dykes clapped a pistol to his breast and demanded his surrender, upon pain of being shot through.
The booty proved a trifling matter: a penknife, an ordinary seal, and five shillings and eightpence. Two days later, Dykes was apprehended for this robbery, conveyed to Newgate, and condemned at the ensuing sessions. The peril to which Wright had been exposed was monstrous in comparison with what he lost.
The chronicle depicts Dykes as exhibiting during his confinement a troubled exterior, wherein it discerns the inward agonies of the prisoner. He confessed to having committed many wicked actions. At the close of this dreary expectation, he resigned himself to death with far greater composure than he had displayed throughout his captivity. He was executed on October 23, 1721, being about twenty-three years of age.