Near the fourth milestone upon the Deptford road, James Salmon stood waiting with two pairs of leather breeches tucked beneath his arm. The night had fallen dark. Peter Kelly caught sight of him beside the way and drew near; according to Thomas Blee, Salmon readily yielded up his goods, entreating him to do him no hurt. Kelly took the apparel, a handkerchief, and a tobacco-box. In outward appearance, the deed had all the marks of a common highway robbery. In truth, it was a snare set by men intent upon having the robbers taken, that they might share the statutory reward.
Blee stood at the very centre of this contrivance. A long-time accomplice of John Berry, he lived in Berry’s house and did his bidding. When Berry and Stephen M’Daniel first bade him find two lads “for the highway,” Blee hung back: a former piece of business—the hanging of Kidden—had shown him what the blood money was worth, and what it cost. M’Daniel met his refusal with threats. A few days later, the pair sent him abroad to scour the streets and open markets of London for suitable prey.
Towards the middle of July 1754, Blee met Berry and M’Daniel in the bowling green of an alehouse near the sign of Sir John Oldcastle. James Salmon, a leather-breeches maker, made one of the company. Together they fixed upon a solitary spot between the New Cross Turnpike and Deptford, hard by the four-mile stone. The inhabitants of Greenwich had posted a reward of twenty pounds for the apprehension of any highwayman within their bounds. This public bounty, established to foster justice, became the engine of the conspiracy.
Berry proposed that James Egan should act as the fence, undertaking to purchase whatever the young men might take from Salmon. To the end that the stolen goods might be identified without dispute, the confederates prepared their tokens beforehand. Salmon was to mark his handkerchief with four holes, one pierced in each corner; the breeches bore a secret scratch beneath the waistband. M’Daniel supplied an uncommon tobacco-box and a crooked piece of money, which Egan marked with a shoemaker’s tool. As yet no thief had been snared, yet the proofs of the felony were already fashioned.
Blee lighted upon Peter Kelly and John Ellis at Fleet Market. Kelly was some one-and-twenty years of age; Ellis, a chimney-sweep, scarce twenty. Blee spoke to them at first of a parcel of linen to be stolen near Deptford, saying not a word of any assault upon Salmon. He spent a few pence upon them in gin and beer to keep them in his train. When Berry desired to see them, Egan drew within a few paces, scanned their persons, and returned to say they would serve the turn. Those who laid the plot took good care not to be seen in company with the lads.
The execution of the design suffered a brief delay. Ellis was taken up in a hue and cry after a pickpocket; in Pied-Horse Yard, the crowd dragged him to the pump and ducked him until, as Blee related, he was well-nigh dead. Blee went to seek him out, while M’Daniel charged him strictly not to let the lad slip through their fingers. Berry deferred the robbery until the Monday following; had the youths been taken on a Friday, they must have lain over Sunday in the watch-house, where they might have blabbed. This postponement turned the plot into a watchful vigil.
On the appointed morning, Berry gave Blee five shillings, that he might show the money to the youths as the wages of his own labour. He gave half a crown to Salmon as well, intended to be sworn to as stolen. Blee took Kelly and Ellis to eat bread and meat and drink beer, buying a breast of lamb at Borough Market. He loitered with them until nightfall before setting out for Deptford. They remained wholly ignorant, he swore, that their mark was Salmon rather than the linen.
At dusk, Salmon walked forth upon the highway. Blee recounted that Kelly accosted him, asking what he carried; Salmon, affecting great terror, gave up the breeches and the trifling articles he had prepared. The three returned to an inn in Kent Street, where they lay that night. Next morning, Blee led the lads to the Spread Eagle, sliping away on the pretext of fetching their breakfast. He repaired straight to Berry, Salmon, and Egan at the White Bear. Egan then went as a purchaser to the Spread Eagle, examined the breeches, offered five shillings, and feigned to have lost his tobacco-box. He asked Kelly and Ellis if they would sell him theirs; the marked coin, likewise disposed of, completed the chain of evidence the gang had devised.
The lads were left playing at skittles in the yard while Blee went back and forth between them and the conspirators. Berry commanded him to fetch away his greatcoat, which he had left in the taproom. At the Spread Eagle, M’Daniel pounced upon Kelly, declaring he had a warrant and was an officer, and pinioned Kelly and Ellis together with a cord. As he marched them towards Greenwich, he urged them to confess and demanded what was become of the third man; he promised to be their friend, to untie them at Deptford, and send them back by water. The youths denied having taken a guinea from Salmon. Yet the goods, found in their pockets or bought by Egan, appeared to seal their doom.
At Greenwich, the clerk of the court required M’Daniel to enter into a recognizance to prosecute the prisoners. He demurred, pretending that his business would not allow him to attend the assizes. The clerk then bound over Blee to prosecute. Subsequently, Egan swore an oath that he would never appear against Kelly and Ellis, boasting that he need only remove into another parish to defeat his bond.
Early in August, Joseph Cox, High Constable of the Hundred of Blackheath, received intelligence that a breeches-maker had been robbed and that two youths lay in Maidstone Gaol. After two or three days’ search, he apprehended Blee in Newgate Street, on the 9th of August. In the boat going down to Greenwich, Blee offered to make a clean breast of the whole affair. Cox carried him before a justice; the information was taken in writing and signed that day, and sworn to on the 13th. That same evening, Cox obtained warrants against M’Daniel, Berry, Salmon, and Egan. He was advised to keep Blee privately in his custody until the trial of Kelly and Ellis was concluded. Cox relates that he journeyed to Maidstone and stood in the courtroom during the trial, while Blee lay hid without the town; there he heard Salmon and his confederates swear away the lives of the two lads.
Kelly and Ellis were convicted at the Maidstone Assizes. Borrow assigns this trial to the 13th of August 1754, both in his narrative and in the transcript of the record produced by Cox; yet Cox himself places the proceedings he witnessed on the 15th of August. The papers assembled by Borrow do not reconcile this discrepancy. Kelly and Ellis had denounced Blee as their companion in the robbery; his sworn information now became the prime instrument against the four conspirators. He exposed their meetings, the money, and the prearranged tokens. Other witnesses confirmed the connection between the prisoners and the articles; one Serjeant testified he had seen a tobacco-box resembling that which M’Daniel had shown him, and Kirby swore he believed it to be his own. The robbery of Salmon had been fully concerted long before Kelly and Ellis ever set eyes upon him.
On the 1st of March 1755, at the Old Bailey, the four men were tried in the first instance as accessories before the fact. The jury returned a special verdict, submitting to the judges whether the facts found came within the statutes libelled. The twelve judges determined that the indictments, as framed, could not be sustained in law; they directed that the prisoners be indicted anew for a conspiracy. This second prosecution came on at the sessions of February 1756. Borrow assigns the trial to the 28th of February, under the mayoralty of Slingsby Bethel. The jury found all four guilty. At this second hearing, Blee supplied an omission from his former deposition: Berry, he swore, had told him he lay behind the four-mile stone and watched the robbery done. The indictment now charged them directly with compassing a false accusation to obtain the rewards.
The court sentenced them to seven years’ imprisonment in Newgate, to stand twice in the pillory, and to find sureties for their good behaviour. M’Daniel and Berry were set in the pillory near Hatton Garden on the 5th of March. The populace assailed them with stones and missiles of every description; the sheriff and the keeper were obliged to intercede, seeking to shelter them from a neighbouring balcony. Three days later, Egan—otherwise called Gahagan—and Salmon were turned out upon the pillory at Smithfield. A storm of oyster shells and heavy stones beat down upon them. Egan was struck dead upon the spot; Salmon received wounds so grievous to the head that his life was despaired of. The sentence pronounced by the bench had been public exposure, but the fury of the London mob turned the penalty into summary execution.