TIM BUCKELEY.
Tim was reared to the useful occupation of a shoemaker, but leaving his master, he came to London, and soon found out companions suited to his disposition. He and his associates frequented an alehouse at Wapping; and one day being run short of cash, Tim asked the landlord for ten shillings, which he refused. Tim was so exasperated, that, along with some of his associates, he broke into his house, and bound him, his wife, and maid. When Tim was about this operation, the landlord conjured him to be favorable. “No, no, you must not expect any favor from my hands, whose prodigality makes you lord it over the people here like a boatswain over a ship’s crew; but I shall go to another part of the town, where I will be more civilly used, and spend a little of your money there.” Accordingly, Tim and his companions robbed the house of forty pounds, three silver tankards, a silver watch, and three gold rings.
Upon another day Tim was airing in Hyde-park-corner, and met withDr.Cateby, the famous mountebank. At the words “Stand and deliver!” the doctor went into a long harangue about the honesty of his calling, and of the great difficulty with which he made a living. Tim laughed heartily, saying, “Quacks pretend to honesty! there is not such a pack of cheating knaves in the nation. Their impudence is intolerable for deceiving honest simple people, and pretending that more men were not slain at the battle of the Boyne, than they have recovered from death, or beckoned their souls back when they have been many leagues from their bodies: therefore, deliver! or this pistol shall put a stop to your further ramblings and deception.”The doctor preferring his life to his gold, presented Tim with six guineas, and a watch, to show him how to keep time while spending the money.
Tim was once apprehended by a baker, in the character of a constable, and sent to Flanders as a soldier. He deserted, and returning to London, one day met with the baker’s wife. He presented a pistol, and demanded her money; she exclaimed, “Is this justice or conscience, sir?” “Don’t tell me of justice, for I hate her as much as your husband can, because her scales are even! And as for conscience, I have as little of that as any baker in England, who cheats other people’s bellies to fill his own!—Nay, a baker is a worse rogue than a tailor; for, whereas the latter commonly pinches his cabbage from the rich, the former, by making his bread too light, robs all without distinction, but chiefly the poor, for which he deserves hanging more than I, or any of my honest fraternity.” Then, taking from her eleven shillings and two gold rings, he sent her home to relate her adventure to her husband.
Tim next stealing a good horse, commenced upon the highway, and meeting with a pawnbroker by whom he had lost some articles, he commanded him to stand and deliver. The pawnbroker entreated for favor, saying “that it was a very hard thing that honest people could not go about their lawful business without being robbed.” “You talk of honesty, who live by fraud and oppression!—your shop, like the gates of hell, is always open, in which you sit at the receipt of custom, and having got the spoils of the needy, you hang them up in rank and file, like so many trophies of victory. To your shop all sorts of garments resort, as on a pilgrimage. Thou art the treasurer of the thieves’ exchequer, for which purpose you keep a private warehouse from whence you ship them off wholesale, or retail, according to pleasure. Nay, the poor and the oppressed have often to pay their own cloth, before they can receive them back by your exorbitant exactions. Come, come, blood-sucker, open your purse-strings, or this pistol shall send you where you are togo sooner or later.” The poor pawnbroker did not, however, wish to visit his old friend before his time; he therefore ransomed his life at the expense of twenty-eight guineas, a gold watch, a silver box, and two gold rings.
Upon another occasion, Tim fortunately met with a stock-jobber (who had prosecuted him for felony,) and robbed him of forty-eight guineas. He requested something to carry him home. Tim refused, saying, “I have no charity for you stock-jobbers, who rise and fall like the ebbing and flowing of the tide, and whose paths are as unfathomable as the ocean. The grasshopper in the Royal Exchange is an emblem of your character. What! give you something to carry you home out of the paltry sum of forty-eight guineas! I won’t give you a farthing.” He then bade him farewell until next meeting.
Though unexpected and unwished, it was not long before the stock-jobber reconnoitred Tim, and caused him to be apprehended and committed to Newgate. He was tried, and received sentence of death; but obtaining a reprieve, and afterwards a pardon, he was determined to be revenged of the man who would not give him rest to pursue his honest employment; he therefore set fire to a country-house belonging to him. To his no small chagrin, however, it was quenched before much harm was done.
Tim then went to Leicestershire, broke into a house, seized eighty pounds, purchased a horse, and renewed his former mode of life. Thus mounted, he attacked a coach in which were three gentlemen, and two footmen attending. Tim’s horse being shot under him, he killed one of the gentlemen and a footman, but being overpowered, was committed to Nottingham gaol, and suffered the due reward of murder and robbery, at the age of twenty-nine, and in the year 1701.