The verdict fell upon a man dressed to be seen. At his trial, John Rann appeared in a new pea-green suit, a ruffled shirt, and a hat bound with silver cords. He had taken great pains with his attire and confidently anticipated an acquittal; indeed, a supper had been ordered to celebrate his deliverance. The jury, however, found him guilty of the robbery committed upon the Reverend Dr. William Bell. The easy assurance that Rann had so long displayed in the streets and public resorts then gave way to the grim apprehension of his fate.
Rann had assumed an appellation calculated to catch the ear: “Sixteen-stringed Jack.” According to Camden Pelham, he was born near Bath of poor parents, gained an early livelihood by hawking fruit, and at twelve years of age was taken into the service of a gentlewoman, whom he attended to London. Having served awhile in her stables, he was employed as an ostler at an inn, and subsequently engaged as postilion by a wealthy gentleman in Portman Square. It was in this latter station that he began to wear breeches adorned with eight strings at each knee—a sartorial affectation that soon fixed his celebrated moniker.
Pelham asserts that Rann subsequently forfeited his character and took to thieving in company with Jones, Clayton, and College, a youth styled Eight-stringed Jack. At the Old Bailey, in April 1774, Rann, Clayton, and Shepherd were indicted for robbing William Somers upon the highway. They were acquitted for want of evidence. A second trial, for the robbery of Mr. Langford, terminated in a like manner. Such acquittals by no means exempted the accused from future suspicion; they merely left the offenses unpunished.
On May 30th, Rann was apprehended once more, this time following the theft of the watch and money of John Devall upon the Hounslow road. According to the account, Rann delivered the watch to Eleanor Roche, the young woman with whom he cohabited. Roche entrusted it to Catherine Smith, who attempted to pawn it with a pawnbroker named Hallam. Suspecting the timepiece to have been stolen, Hallam caused both women to be detained. Smith testified at the trial that, on the day of the robbery, Roche had spoken of expecting Rann to return with money; Rann arrived towards ten o’clock at night and withdrew in private with Roche. Roche subsequently confided to Smith that he had given her a watch and five guineas, declaring he had taken them from a gentleman on the road.
Rann was remanded to Newgate, yet was acquitted in July. His appearance at the bar struck the court spectators: his dress seemed far too fine for his station; a nosegay nearly as large as a broom adorned his coat, and his fetters were decorated with blue ribbons. The chronicle dwells upon this spectacle because Rann assiduously cultivated his renown. He made little effort to conceal his identity, vaunting himself as the famous Sixteen-stringed Jack, highwayman. He frequented public gardens and resorts in garb deliberately chosen to draw the eyes of the crowd.
Two or three days after this latest acquittal, another misadventure brought him before the magistrates at Bow Street. Rann had promised to sup with a woman residing in Bow Street; arriving late, he found the door barred and attempted to enter her chamber through the window. A watchman interrupted him and took him into custody. The woman having declared that he harboured no felonious intent, and would have been admitted had she not fallen asleep, he was discharged, with an admonition to pursue his amours by less perilous methods.
Shortly before the robbery that was to cost him his life, Rann attended an execution at Tyburn. He begged to be admitted within the ring of constables surrounding the gallows, remarking that he might himself have good reason to be a spectator. In Pelham’s telling, this speech served to burnish the notoriety Rann was fashioning for himself; it did not necessarily foretell what followed. On September 26, 1774, Rann set forth with William Collier upon the Uxbridge road, with the intent of plundering travellers.
Between three and four o’clock in the afternoon, the Reverend Dr. William Bell, chaplain to the Princess Amelia, was riding near Ealing. He observed two men of mean appearance pass him, without suspecting that they meant to molest him. Presently, one of them, whom Dr. Bell believed to be Rann, rode across his horse’s head. He commanded the clergyman to deliver his money without raising an outcry, threatening to fire upon him otherwise. Dr. Bell surrendered one shilling and sixpence—all the silver he had upon his person—together with a common watch in a tortoiseshell case.
That evening, Roche and her servant, Christian Stewart, carried this watch to Cordy, a pawnbroker in Oxford Road. Cordy retained the piece and sought out its owner through Grignon, the Covent Garden watchmaker who had crafted it. Meanwhile, a witness placed Rann at Acton within twenty minutes of the commission of the robbery. The officers of justice apprehended Rann and Collier; Roche and Stewart were likewise indicted as accessaries after the fact. These two pieces of evidence—the article identified by its maker and Rann’s presence hard by the scene of the crime—provided the prosecution with an unbroken chain linking the highway, the watch, and the prisoners at the bar.
At the trial, the evidence essentially repeated that which had been delivered at Bow Street. The jury returned a verdict of guilty against Rann. Collier was recommended to mercy, and his sentence was subsequently respited by royal command; Roche was sentenced to fourteen years’ transportation. Stewart was acquitted. Rann alone was left for execution.
As he awaited his end, his former bravado crumbled. Pelham relates that he had ordered a feast, fully persuaded that he would go free. On Sunday, October 23rd, whilst in confinement, seven young women came to dine with him; he sought to drown his melancholy in their lively company. Then arrived the death warrant, bringing home the inescapable reality of the law’s sentence. The chronicler observes that he thereupon composed himself to meet his fate.
Rann was hanged on November 30, 1774. He met his death with a resignation described by Pelham as decent and becoming, and his body was delivered to his friends for interment. The fluttering ribbons and knee-strings, the former acquittals, and the scenes of swaggering audacity had made him a figure of popular note; yet the final judgment turned upon a far simpler and more precise fact: the robbery of Dr. Bell upon the Uxbridge road, and a watch recovered in the hands of Roche and Stewart.