In the winter of 1775, at Covent Garden, George Barrington attempted to relieve the Russian Prince Orloff of a gold snuff-box encrusted with diamonds, valued by Pelham at thirty thousand pounds. Orloff seized him by the collar; amidst the confusion, Barrington restored the prize to its owner. According to Camden Pelham, the prince subsequently declined to prosecute upon hearing the young man’s tale of medical studies and a respectable lineage. A magistrate admonished him and set him at liberty. The scene strikes the keynote of the chronicle: an adroit thief, a persuasive orator, spared from time to time by clemency. Yet Pelham also attributes to him an act of salvation at sea, the veracity of which remains doubtful.
Pelham’s opening pages place the birth of George Waldron in 1755 at Maynooth, assigning him a silversmith for a father and a mantua-maker for a mother. In Pelham’s telling, the youth entered a Dublin grammar school through the patronage of a dignitary of the Church of Ireland, who defrayed his board and tuition. Following an affray with an elder schoolfellow, George stabbed the boy with a penknife. Fearing chastisement, he fled. Before taking his leave, he stole money and a repeating watch from his master, then took to the high road toward Drogheda.
At an inn, he fell in with a company of strolling players. Its manager, Price, had himself been sentenced to transportation and was then living in exile in Ireland. He became counselor to the young fugitive, who laid aside the name of Waldron for that of Barrington and joined the troupe. In a matter of days, he mastered the part of Jaffier in Venice Preserved, performing it before a crowded barn. Yet the company wanted money. Barrington delivered the stolen watch to the troupe, which sold it and divided the proceeds. Shortly thereafter, several merchants of Derry were pillaged during the fair; Pelham tallies the plunder at forty guineas in specie and one hundred and fifty pounds in bank-notes. The company quitted the town; at Ballyshannon, Barrington perceived that cutpursery yielded far greater profit than the stage. At Derry, he had also conceived an attachment to the actress who played Belvidera. She had run away from Coventry at sixteen with a naval lieutenant who abandoned her in Dublin; Price had received her into his company. Their liaison, Pelham writes, ended only with the young woman’s death, she being drowned at eighteen while crossing the Boyne.
He then assumed the character of the “gentleman pickpocket,” displaying the easy air of a man of fortune. When Price was apprehended and convicted, Barrington made for Dublin, where he plied his trade chiefly under cover of evening. Recognized at a race-meeting in County Carlow, he restored the stolen articles and escaped prosecution. In 1773, he crossed into England. At Ranelagh, he mingled with fashionable company and, according to Pelham, made off with money belonging to the Duke of Leinster and Sir William Draper, together with a watch. He rejoined his companions without exciting their suspicion.
Two years later, Barrington frequented the watering-places, passing himself off as a man of family. He also went to Court on the Queen’s birthday, disguised as an ecclesiastic; there he stole several articles, among them a nobleman’s diamond star, and quitted the palace without being stayed.
Admonitions did not deter him. Recognized in the House of Lords, he was turned out by an usher, then remanded to prison for want of bail. Upon his enlargement, he robbed a woman at the Drury Lane Theatre. Pelham dates his sentence of three years’ hard labor on the Woolwich hulks to 1777. His orderly conduct earned him a remission, and he was released after twelve months. Less than six months later, he was arrested for a theft at St. Sepulchre’s Church; on this occasion, according to Pelham, the sentence was five years on the hulks.
Barrington thereupon sank into despair and plunged a penknife into his chest. The wound was deep, yet not mortal. A visitor of high station, having come to inspect the condition of the prisoners, was moved by his extremity and obtained a pardon on condition of his leaving the kingdom. He was provided with money to return to Dublin. Soon afterward, he was charged with stealing a nobleman’s watch and money at the playhouse; the evidence being insufficient, he was acquitted. He left Dublin for Edinburgh, returned to London, and was subsequently detained at Newgate for having violated the condition of his pardon. Later, he was arrested for the theft of Mr. Le Mesurier’s purse at Drury Lane, but escaped from the constable. While the lawyers sought his outlawry, Barrington traversed the North under various guises: an ecclesiastic, an itinerant physician, a gentleman traveler. Apprehended at Newcastle, he was brought back to London upon a writ of habeas corpus; the outlawry was reversed and, for want of a material witness, he was acquitted. He then returned to Dublin, and thence to England, where he was once more taken at the races.
The Australian Dictionary of Biography dates his trial at the Old Bailey to September 15, 1790, identifying the offense as the theft of a watch and gold chain at the Enfield races. Pelham names the victim as Henry Hare Townsend and transcribes a lengthy speech wherein Barrington laments that his deeds and words had ever been construed against him. He was sentenced to seven years’ transportation; his passage to Botany Bay followed.
Pelham subsequently converts the voyage into a scene of heroic deliverance: according to his account, convicts attempted to seize the arms chest, whereupon Barrington struck down one of them with a handspike and defended the hatchway. The master supposedly rewarded him with an order for one hundred dollars at the Cape of Good Hope. The Australian Dictionary of Biography observes that the press had indeed credited him with suppressing a mutiny, but that the facts did not accord with the tale. The episode must therefore be read as a legend attached to his name, rather than as an established fact.
In Pelham’s version, the master commended Barrington to the governor. The Australian Dictionary of Biography places his arrival aboard the Active in September 1791, and his appointment as high constable at Parramatta in 1796. Pelham also mentions an office of superintending the convicts at an annual stipend of fifty pounds. He places his retirement in 1801, attributing it to an impairment of his faculties; the ADB dates his resignation to 1800. He died in 1804. The chronicle thus weaves together public service, anecdote, and legend.