Dark Stories True Crime Blog

James Shaw: Highwayman and Murderer of the Hampstead Road

James Shaw is a man who cannot settle. Born into a family with the means to set him on a respectable path, he drifts through one trade after another, never sticking, never satisfied; Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals captures him at the precise moment restlessness curdles into something far more dangerous.

He blames a negligent wife, he blames circumstance, but beneath every excuse lies a temperament that finds honest labour unbearable. It is a story that belongs to the oldest tradition of true crime: the man who convinces himself that taking from others is no crime at all.

The Hampstead Road stretches ahead of him in the dark, full of coaches and strangers and the particular kind of trouble that cannot be undone. Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals tells what happens next; let it speak in its own voice.

James Shaw: Highwayman and Murderer of the Hampstead Road

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Dark Lexicon: Old words. Dark meaning.

The past speaks its own dialect; here is what to listen for in this episode.

Unsettledness: today we might say ‘restlessness’ or ‘instability,’ but in the early eighteenth century this word carried a sharper edge. It suggested a constitutional defect, a soul that refused to be governed; not merely fidgeting, but a deep incapacity for the discipline that society demanded.

Forger of gun-locks: nothing to do with forgery in the criminal sense. A forger here is a metalworker, someone who shapes iron at a forge. Shaw learns enough of this honest trade to occasionally earn money by it, though he prefers to earn it other ways entirely.

Footpad: a highway robber who operates on foot rather than on horseback. The distinction mattered enormously in this era; the mounted highwayman could at least pretend to a certain glamour, while the footpad was seen as the lowest and most brutal kind of street predator.

Goldfinches: Shaw uses this as slang for gold coins. When he tells his victims he ‘fancied the goldfinches were not yet flown,’ he means he suspects there is far more money hidden in the coach. It is a piece of criminal wit, delivered at swordpoint.

Knights of the road: an ironic, almost affectionate term for highwaymen, borrowing the language of chivalry to describe armed robbery. The phrase was common in the period and captures the strange way popular culture romanticised men who were, by law, common felons.

Committed: in legal usage, to be committed meant to be formally sent to prison by a magistrate to await trial. It did not imply conviction; it meant the wheels of justice had begun turning, and they rarely turned in the prisoner’s favour.

Tile kilns by Pancras: the brick and tile kilns that stood near the parish of St Pancras, then a semi-rural area on London’s northern fringe. It was exactly the kind of lonely, industrial borderland where footpads thrived; close enough to the city for victims, remote enough for violence.

Pinder of Wakefield: a well-known tavern near the Gray’s Inn Road area. Named after a figure from Robin Hood legend, it served in this story as the place where a dying man was carried after being attacked; a grim irony, given its folkloric associations with outlawry.

Fact: in eighteenth century legal language, ‘fact’ often meant ‘deed’ or ‘criminal act.’ When the text says ‘for a fact of murder,’ it means for the deed of murder; the word had a harder, more accusatory weight than it does today.

About This Series

Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals is one of the earliest works of true crime writing in the English language, nearly 300 years old, covering murderers, thieves, highwaymen, forgers, coiners and worse.

The book is entirely in the public domain and every word of it can be read today for free. But if you would rather listen, this podcast does exactly that: one criminal at a time, every week, read aloud.

True crime was not invented by podcasts or streaming services. Eighteenth century readers were just as fascinated by outlaws and killers as we are today. They just consumed their dark stories by candlelight.

The voice you hear is David Dark: crime researcher, theatre script writer, producer of live immersive experiences, and audiobook narrator and voice artist. This podcast uses an AI voice model trained on David’s own voice, built using the maximum available training data to faithfully represent how he actually sounds. To hear David’s real voice in human generated form, visit him on Audible, Online Stage, Voices of Today, Spoken Realms, and Internet Archive.

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John Smith: The Soldier Who Pulled the Trigger

by Davros Dark

John Smith is a man shaped by war; bold, fierce, and trained to violence on the battlefields of Flanders, he returns to civilian life carrying a soldier’s instincts into a world that has no place for them. Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals preserves his story as one of the most compact and unsettling true crime accounts of the early eighteenth century: a decorated veteran who squanders his pay and drifts toward theft and rage.

There is something volatile inside him that the wars merely sharpened. Discharged from military and naval service alike, he arrives in London with empty pockets, a jealous temper, and a loaded pistol he is not afraid to use.

What waits for a man like Smith, once the machinery of Georgian justice catches his scent, is a question the age answered without hesitation. Hear the full account now as Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals tells it: in its own words, read aloud.

John Smith: The Soldier Who Pulled the Trigger

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Dark Lexicon: Old words. Dark meaning.

The past speaks its own dialect; here is what to listen for in this episode.

Trusses: not medical supports or roof beams as we might think today. In a military context, trusses were bundles of forage or provisions gathered for horses and troops. When the captain’s party was ‘obliged to leave their trusses behind them,’ they were abandoning their supplies under enemy pressure; a small humiliation that sets up Smith’s reckless act of bravery.

Livery: today the word conjures up stables or taxi hire, but in the eighteenth century livery meant the distinctive uniform or clothing worn by a servant or soldier to mark who they belonged to. Smith’s yellow livery becomes a kind of disguise; its colour just plausible enough to pass among French troops at a distance.

Walloon: the French dialect spoken in the southern provinces of the Low Countries, what is now Belgium. Smith spoke it badly enough to sound like a native Frenchman, which is a wonderfully backhanded compliment; his incompetence in the language was, paradoxically, his camouflage.

Clapping: nothing to do with applause. To clap something in this era meant to place it swiftly and forcefully. Smith ‘clapped a gag in his mouth’ and later ‘clapped a pistol to her breast’; the word carries an almost percussive violence, a sudden sharp motion.

Fray: a noisy disturbance or fight, from the old word ‘affray.’ Today we might say a brawl or a commotion. The word still echoes in legal language, where an affray remains a public order offence, but in Smith’s London it was simply what happened when a man waved a pistol in a crowded room.

Lewd women: Smith uses this phrase repeatedly and it does not merely mean sexually immoral. In the eighteenth century, lewd carried a broader sense of wicked, base, or disreputable. Smith blames these women for his downfall; whether they deserve the charge is another matter entirely.

Sessions at the Old Bailey: the periodic sittings of London’s central criminal court, held roughly eight times a year. Being convicted ‘at the next sessions’ meant the wheels of justice turned with startling speed; there was little delay between arrest and trial in Georgian England.

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John Jones: The Young Pickpocket of Holborn

by Davros Dark

John Jones is barely a man when he stumbles into the trade that will define him. As Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals recounts, he is a boy raised with too much tenderness and too little discipline; a creature of idleness born in Holborn to parents who indulge every whim, hoping the flaws will simply fall away with age.

They never do. Refused by every honest trade and cut off by his own family, Jones drifts into a London underworld where true crime begins not with malice but with boredom, poverty, and the wrong friend met at the wrong hour.

The city he moves through is dense with bodies and opportunity, and the distance between a restless young man and a condemned one is terrifyingly short.

Hear his story read aloud from the pages of Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals; the full chapter awaits you now.

John Jones: The Young Pickpocket of Holborn

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Dark Lexicon: Old words. Dark meaning.

The past speaks its own dialect; here is what to listen for in this episode.

Malefactor: today this word survives mainly in legal documents and old novels, sounding almost quaint. In the eighteenth century it carried real weight; it simply meant a criminal, an evildoer, someone who had done wrong in the eyes of the law. When the text calls Jones a malefactor, it is not decorating him with drama; it is classifying him the way a court clerk would.

Put him out upon liking: this phrase describes a trial arrangement where a young person was placed with a tradesman on a probationary basis before formal apprenticeship papers were signed. Think of it as a working interview that could last weeks. If the boy and the master suited each other, an apprenticeship followed; if not, the boy was sent home. Jones, of course, found fault with every one.

Reluctancy: an older form of what we now call reluctance. It meant the same thing; an unwillingness or hesitation. The longer, slightly clumsier version was common in Georgian prose and has since been quietly trimmed by usage.

Blind alehouse: not a pub for the visually impaired. A blind alehouse was a disreputable drinking den, often unlicensed, tucked away in a back lane or cellar where it could operate out of sight of authorities. The word ‘blind’ here means hidden or obscure; the kind of place where criminal business could be discussed without being overheard.

Pocket: in this context, a pocket is not part of a garment but a separate pouch tied around the waist beneath the skirts. Women carried their valuables in these detachable bags, which is why pickpockets and cutpurses targeted them specifically. To ‘whip off her pocket’ meant to cut or snatch this pouch away from her body entirely.

By-alley: a narrow side passage off a main street; what we might now call an alleyway or a back lane. In Georgian London these cramped passages were everywhere, providing escape routes for thieves and cover for all manner of dark transactions.

Capital in its nature: this phrase means the crime carried the death penalty. In the eighteenth century, a staggering number of offences were capital; theft above a certain value, pickpocketing, housebreaking, even shoplifting could send a person to the gallows. The phrase sounds clinical, almost bureaucratic, but what it really says is: this will cost you your life.

Sessions: the regular sittings of a criminal court, particularly the Old Bailey sessions held roughly every six weeks in London. Being ‘condemned at the next sessions’ meant the wheels of justice turned quickly; there was no long wait on death row in the modern sense. Your trial came around with the calendar, and so did your sentence.

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Nathaniel Hawes: The Young Highwayman of Finchley Common

by Davros Dark

Nathaniel Hawes is barely out of his apprenticeship when he begins stealing from his master’s cash box, a slow slide from mischief into something far darker. Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals presents him as one of those young men who mistakes recklessness for courage; a Norfolk grazier’s orphan who falls into expensive company and never finds his way back out.

Among the true crime figures of early Georgian England, Hawes stands out not for cunning or calculation but for sheer, blistering nerve. He is sprightly, sharp, and utterly convinced that boldness alone can carry a man through any danger the world throws at him.

The roads around London are about to learn what that kind of conviction looks like on horseback, and the courts of justice are waiting to answer it in kind.

Nathaniel Hawes: The Young Highwayman of Finchley Common

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Dark Lexicon: Old words. Dark meaning.

The past speaks its own dialect; here is what to listen for in this episode.

Grazier: today the word barely registers, but in the eighteenth century a grazier was a substantial farmer who fattened cattle or sheep for market. It carried weight; a rich grazier meant a man of real rural prosperity, the kind whose estate might be worth fighting over after his death.

Put him out apprentice: this phrase describes the common practice of placing a young person with a master tradesman to learn a craft, usually for seven years. It was less a choice than a transaction; guardians paid a premium to bind the child, and the master gained cheap labour in return.

Good parts: nothing to do with physique. In Georgian speech, to say a man had ‘good parts’ meant he was clever, quick witted, and naturally talented. It was a compliment that made his criminal waste of those gifts all the more pointed.

Runners of the prison: these were low ranking servants or turnkeys who fetched and carried within the gaol, running errands for both keepers and inmates. They occupied a murky space; paid poorly by the system, often tipped by prisoners, and rarely trusted by either side.

Crow: today we might say crowbar, but in the early 1700s the tool was simply called a crow. It referred to any iron bar with a flattened, slightly curved end used to prise things apart; in this case, stones from a prison roof.

Stays: what we now call a corset. Stays were stiffened undergarments worn by women to shape the torso, but the rigid boning also created hidden channels and flat surfaces perfect for concealing tools, cord, or contraband against the body.

Sentence of the press: this is the legal term for peine forte et dure, a grim procedure in which heavy weights were placed on the chest of a prisoner who refused to enter a plea. It was not punishment for the crime itself; it was punishment for silence, designed to force the accused to submit to the court’s authority.

Mute: in a courtroom context, standing mute did not simply mean staying quiet. It meant formally refusing to plead guilty or not guilty, which halted the trial entirely. The law treated this refusal as a kind of defiance so dangerous it required its own brutal remedy.

Profligate: the word still exists but has softened over time. Today it suggests wasteful spending; in the 1720s it carried a heavier moral charge, meaning utterly dissolute, abandoned to vice, and beyond the reach of shame.

Dark Stories True Crime Blog

Dark Lexicon: Old words. Dark meaning.

About This Series

Spread the word on your favourite platform!

Dark Lexicon: Old words. Dark meaning.

About This Series

Spread the word on your favourite platform!

Dark Lexicon: Old words. Dark meaning.

About This Series

Spread the word on your favourite platform!

Dark Lexicon: Old words. Dark meaning.

About This Series

Spread the word on your favourite platform!

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