At Smithfield, an elderly man extended his hand to John Lewis. Moll Davis had just introduced him to the old man as her husband. The man went by the name of Tompkins, she claimed, and was to deliver to her a share of two hundred pounds held at his lodgings. He seized Lewis above the wrist, stamped his foot, and threw him to the ground; several men sprang forth, bound him, and dragged him out into the street. The crowd accused him of having held a knife to the old man’s throat whilst Moll and an accomplice stripped him of his goods. Yet, by the victim’s own deposition, Lewis had taken no part in this robbery. Moll’s snare nonetheless cost him two sessions at Newgate before he could obtain his discharge.
The account refers to this man as John Lewis, alias Laurence. It records neither his birthplace nor the identity of his parents. It notes that he had been apprenticed to a butcher, had obtained the freedom of the City, and had worked for a time as a journeyman. It imputes to his early associates an inclination toward drink, indolence, and liaisons with women whom the chronicler censures in the scornful vocabulary of the period. He details, above all, a succession of paramours: Lewis would desert them after a few weeks, only to seek out another. This moral portrait belongs to the chronicler; the legal proceedings that followed furnish far more precise particulars.
Moll Davis, surnamed Diver for her dexterity in picking the pockets of her fellows, had been cohabiting with Lewis for but a short time when she offered him money in exchange for a pledge: that he should never share his life with another woman. She maintained that two hundred pounds lay deposited with a respectable uncle who knew nothing of her unlawful pursuits. On the appointed day, Moll and Lewis repaired to an inn near Smithfield Market. An elderly man arrived and greeted Lewis as a prospective bridegroom. Tompkins’s gesture was the preconcerted signal; his confederates entered, pinioned Lewis, and charged him with having engaged in a highway robbery.
The chronicle contends that Moll had contrived the scene to fix a false accusation upon Lewis, and that she received five guineas from the victim’s brother, who had enacted the part of the uncle. At trial, the plundered man acknowledged that Lewis was not his assailant. Despite his failing eyesight, he declared he could distinguish voices; the thief had seemed taller than himself, whereas Lewis was of lesser stature. This recognition saved him from conviction, though not from languishing through two sessions at Newgate.
Once set at liberty, Lewis threatened Moll and declared he would crop her ears. She made no attempt to conceal herself, frequenting a brandy-shop where he knew she might be found. He went there toward the customary hour, but someone in her circle had already informed a tipstaff who had turned witness. The constables lay in wait. They seized him and conveyed him back to Newgate. At the following session, he was acquitted for lack of any testimony beyond that of the informer; the court, however, required him to furnish sureties for his good behaviour. Two months elapsed before he could provide them. Counting his two prior commitments, he spent nearly three months behind bars.
Moll, for her part, was actively sought following the theft of a considerable sum from a gentleman’s pocket. Lewis scoured her former haunts, hoping to effect her capture. Her sister Susan accosted him in a tavern in Fleet Street. She gave him half a crown and a large silver medal, which she said he might pawn, appointing to meet him on the morrow. Lewis carried the medal to a pawnbroker in Houndsditch. The broker feigned to carry it into an adjoining room to weigh it; ten minutes later, he returned with a constable and two assistants. The medal had been advertised together with eleven guineas in a green purse, stolen from a gentleman. The account identifies this robbery as the very one that had caused Moll to abscond.
Following this occurrence, Lewis retired into the country. He deemed he had already suffered imprisonment too often without just cause and resolved this time, in the trenchant phrase of the chronicle, to deserve it. Upon the Gravesend road, he set upon a retired officer living in the district. Springing from behind a hedge, he placed a pointed knife against the gentleman’s breast and demanded his money. The gentleman handed over a few shillings. Lewis took offense, protesting that he was not being treated like a gentleman, and proceeded to rifle the man’s pockets himself. He held the knife between his teeth, after the manner of a butcher dressing a sheep for the slaughter. The officer wrenched it away; in the struggle, Lewis’s jaw was nearly broken. He fled, but the country folk raised the hue and cry and apprehended him just as he was about to board a boat at Gravesend.
The indictment charged him with highway robbery with violence. At the assizes, the jury brought in an acquittal; the circumstance that he had shown indignation at the paltry coins proffered by the officer weighed in his favour, according to the chronicle. This acquittal afforded him a fresh opportunity to resume his course. Within the very first week of his liberty, he broke into a house on Ratcliff Highway, carrying off goods of trifling value. A few days later, he snatched a woman’s pocket in the street. Apprehended upon the spot, he was tried at the Old Bailey and convicted. The court sentenced him to transportation.
A woman whom Lewis then called his wife was sentenced to the same punishment. The master of the vessel promised them their liberty upon their arrival in South Carolina provided they remained peaceable. The pair consented; once ashore, the captain kept his word. They did not tarry long in the colony, finding means to return to England aboard the very same vessel. During the voyage, they were lawfully wed. Lewis did not long remain with her: he went in terror that she might betray his return from transportation in hopes of procuring some favour for herself, and he reproached her for keeping company with other men.
He went to sea again aboard a vessel bound for the Straits of Gibraltar. Falling grievously ill at Genoa, he was left behind by the ship’s company. Though he might later have rejoined his vessel, he chose to return to England upon the first available bottom. In London, he fell in with old acquaintances who lived by plunder. In their company, he broke with great difficulty into an inn in Fore Street, known as the King of Hearts, and carried off a dozen tankards which they took to be silver. Upon inspection, they discovered them to be merely well-scoured pewter. They melted them down and cast them away, judging the disposal too hazardous for so miserable a booty.
Lewis subsequently preferred to work the streets alone. In the Old Artillery Ground, he tore away a woman’s pocket. She raised an outcry; the neighbours joined in hot pursuit. The narrative relates that he dangerously wounded two or three persons before being overpowered. Conveyed to Newgate, he was tried at the next session and found guilty. This time, he could entertain no hope of life. The chronicler portrays him as hardened, destitute alike of religion and repentance—a judgment he contrasts with the silence Lewis maintained at the place of execution.
Lewis said nothing to the multitude, save that he repented not having remained in Carolina, where he believed he should not have been hanged. He was nearly forty years of age. He was executed on June 27, 1720. The chronicle of his life thus runs from a charge fabricated by Moll to a condemnation ultimately earned by his own hands: between the two, acquittals, terms of imprisonment, and an unlawful return from exile had done nothing to arrest his thievery.