Dark Stories True Crime Blog

John Dykes: The Gambler Turned Highwayman

John Dykes cannot stop gambling. It is this single compulsion; documented in Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals; that drags a young man from indulged eldest son to pickpocket to something far worse, tracing the kind of spiral that still defines true crime centuries later.

Born to parents of middling means who sacrifice their own comfort for his education, Dykes refuses every apprenticeship, every honest path set before him. Instead he haunts the gaming tables when flush and plays span-farthing in the gutter with street boys when broke, each loss pushing him one step closer to the road.

The dice keep rolling, and Georgian London keeps score in ways a young man rarely sees until the ledger is already closed.

Hear the full account read aloud from Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals; a voice from nearly three hundred years ago, waiting for you now.

John Dykes: The Gambler Turned Highwayman

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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.

Gaming: today we might picture video games; in the eighteenth century this word meant gambling and nothing else. Dice, cards, hazard tables: the kind of play that devours money and then devours the player. When the text says Dykes had an ‘itching after gaming,’ it means he was addicted to wagering, not to innocent amusement.

Chuck and span-farthing: these were street games played for small stakes, often by children and the desperately poor. Chuck involved pitching coins at a mark, while span-farthing required tossing a farthing close enough to an opponent’s coin to span the gap with your hand. That Dykes stoops to these games in a ragged coat tells you exactly how far a night at the tables has brought him down.

Bridewell: not a single prison but a type of institution; originally the Bridewell Palace near Fleet Street was converted into a house of correction in the sixteenth century, and the name became shorthand for any local lockup where petty offenders were held and put to hard labour. Tothill Fields Bridewell, mentioned here, sat in Westminster and was notorious for its grim conditions.

Horsepond: a pond used for watering horses, but also a place of informal punishment. To be ducked or dragged through the horsepond was a humiliation inflicted on petty criminals and social nuisances. It was not judicial in any formal sense; more a community ritual of degradation.

Swore upon: to be ‘swore upon’ meant to have someone give sworn testimony against you before a magistrate. When West tells his brother he is in danger of being swore upon by coiners, he is claiming that counterfeiters are about to name him as an accomplice under oath; a terrifying prospect in an era when such testimony could lead swiftly to the gallows.

To recruit: in modern usage, to recruit means to enlist people. In the eighteenth century it also meant to replenish or restore something that had been depleted. When the text says Dykes took to the road ‘to recruit’ his cash, it means he robbed travellers to refill his empty purse.

Took up with the road: a euphemism for becoming a highwayman. To ‘take the road’ was to ride out on public highways and rob travellers at gunpoint. The phrase sounds almost casual, as if it were simply another career option; and for men like Dykes, that was precisely how it felt until the law caught up.

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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William Casey: The Soldier Accused of Robbery in the Park

by Davros Dark

William Casey is barely out of boyhood when military life delivers him into the world of violence and accusation that defines his story. Enlisted at fifteen into the Guards by his own soldier father, Casey serves in Spain and returns to London carrying the restless habits of a young man raised among regiments; Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals captures his brief, troubled trajectory in vivid detail.

His is a case where the line between righteousness and brutality blurs beyond recognition. It is the kind of true crime account where competing versions of events leave the reader suspended between sympathy and suspicion, uncertain who is the aggressor and who is the victim.

In the shadows of a London park, a confrontation takes shape that will drag a young soldier before the full machinery of Georgian justice. The full account lives in Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals; settle in now and let it unfold in your hearing.

William Casey: The Soldier Accused of Robbery in the Park

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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.

Fray: today we mostly encounter this word when fabric is coming apart at the edges, but in the eighteenth century a fray was a brawl, a sudden violent scuffle between individuals. It carries a sharper edge than ‘fight’; it implies disorder, chaos, something erupting without warning in the dark.

Prosecutor: in Georgian England this word did not mean a government lawyer standing at a podium. The prosecutor was the victim themselves; the person who brought the complaint and pressed the charge. John Stone is called ‘the prosecutor’ because he is the one who set the legal wheels turning against Casey.

Neck-cloth: a strip of linen or muslin worn tied around the throat, ancestor of the modern necktie. In the early 1700s it was a standard item of a gentleman’s dress, and stealing one counted as a meaningful theft; clothing had genuine resale value in a world before mass manufacture.

Swear sodomy upon him: to accuse someone formally of the crime of sodomy, which in this period was a capital offence. The threat to ‘swear sodomy’ on a man was not merely social ruin; it was a threat to have him hanged. It functioned as a devastating weapon in disputes, and false accusations were not unheard of.

Viz.: short for the Latin ‘videlicet,’ meaning ‘namely’ or ‘that is to say.’ It appears in Casey’s written statement and was common legal and literary shorthand of the era. You can think of it as the eighteenth century version of ‘i.e.’ or ‘specifically.’

Ignominious: meaning deeply shameful, bringing public disgrace. The word still exists today but was far more commonly deployed in this period, particularly in connection with public punishment, where the shame was considered part of the penalty itself.

Discharge his conscience: to relieve the burden on one’s soul by speaking the truth before death. This phrase carried heavy spiritual weight; the belief was that dying with a lie on your lips endangered your immortal soul. When Casey chooses to ‘discharge his conscience,’ he is making what he considers a sacred final act.

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John Wigley: The Lone Highwayman of Finchley Common

by Davros Dark

A plasterer by trade, John Wigley abandons honest work early and slides into what Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals calls ‘felonious methods of getting money.’ His is a solitary brand of criminality; he rides out alone onto the dark roads around the commons north of London, trusting no one, convinced that gangs always betray themselves in the end.

This true crime story from the early eighteenth century carries the smell of damp hedgerows and cheap brandy. Wigley drifts between a woman who sells spirits on the common and a life spent prowling the highways, always alone, always suspicious of companionship.

The roads he haunts are patient places, but the justice of Georgian England is not, and something is closing in on the lone highwayman who refuses to trust anyone but himself. Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals tells his story in full; listen now and walk those dark roads beside him.

John Wigley: The Lone 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.

Bred: today we might say someone was ‘raised’ or ‘trained,’ but in the eighteenth century to be ‘bred’ to a trade meant you had been apprenticed in it from youth. It carried weight: your breeding was your destiny, and to abandon it was a moral as well as a practical failure.

Ill courses: a phrase that sounds almost gentle to modern ears, but it meant a sustained pattern of criminal or immoral behaviour. Not a single mistake; a chosen path, walked deliberately and repeatedly.

Benighted: today this word means ignorant or unenlightened, used as a metaphor. In this text it is purely literal: to be benighted was to be overtaken by nightfall while travelling, stranded in the dark. On the roads around London, being benighted could be fatal for reasons that had nothing to do with weather.

Confederacies in villainy: a wonderfully heavy phrase for criminal gangs. A ‘confederacy’ implied an organised alliance, almost a conspiracy. The text uses it to describe the very partnerships Wigley despised, believing that sworn oaths among thieves always crumbled when their lives were at stake.

Receded from: to recede from a resolution meant to abandon or retreat from a decision you had made. It carries a sense of weakness; Wigley’s whole philosophy rests on working alone, and the moment he recedes from that principle, everything changes.

Rapine: a word that has all but vanished from everyday English. It meant the violent seizure of property; plunder by force. It is distinct from mere theft; rapine carries the connotation of aggression, of taking things at the point of a weapon.

Malefactor: a criminal or wrongdoer, drawn from Latin roots meaning ‘one who does evil.’ It was a common courtroom and literary term in the eighteenth century, carrying a solemnity that the word ‘criminal’ sometimes lacks. When you hear it in this episode, imagine it spoken by a judge.

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John Meff: The Housebreaker Who Could Not Stay Away

by Davros Dark

John Meff is the son of French Protestant refugees who fled persecution under Louis XIV, raised in London with great care and bound apprentice to a weaver. He serves faithfully, marries, and then finds himself unable to keep his family alive on honest wages; it is poverty, not wickedness, that first pushes him toward housebreaking, a trajectory recorded in Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals with the unsentimental clarity that makes it one of the earliest works of true crime writing we possess.

What follows is a life of compounding misfortune: narrow escapes, broken resolutions, and a restless drift across oceans that never quite carries Meff far enough from the world he is trying to leave behind. His story belongs to a London where the line between desperation and damnation is thinner than anyone cares to admit.

Every road Meff walks seems to curve back toward the same dark gravity, and the law of Georgian England is not a patient institution. Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals holds the full account; hear it now, read aloud in all its grim detail.

John Meff: The Housebreaker Who Could Not Stay Away

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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.

Transported: in modern usage this word simply means moved from one place to another, but in eighteenth century criminal law it carried a very specific and dreaded meaning. To be transported was to be shipped to the colonies as punishment, forced into years of hard labour far from home. It was considered a mercy compared to hanging, though those who endured it might have disagreed.

Marooned: today this word is used loosely to mean stranded anywhere, but its origin is steeped in pirate custom. To be marooned was to be deliberately abandoned on an uninhabited island, usually with little or no provisions; it was a death sentence disguised as exile, a punishment pirates inflicted on those who refused to join their crew or who broke their code.

Springes: a word now almost entirely extinct. A springe was a snare or trap for catching birds and small animals, typically made from a loop of cord or wire attached to a bent branch. In this account, the castaways fashion them from the horsehair of an old wig; desperation breeds invention.

Fluxes: in the eighteenth century a flux was a violent and often fatal bout of diarrhoea or dysentery, the kind of illness that could reduce a strong person to helplessness within days. The word had an urgency to it that its modern medical equivalents have lost; aboard ships and on desolate islands, flux killed as readily as fever.

Ill-courses: a polite eighteenth century way of saying a life of crime. The phrase carried a note of moral judgement baked right into it; one did not simply commit crimes, one ‘addicted’ oneself to ill-courses, as though lawbreaking were a sickness of the will.

Impeached: today impeachment belongs almost entirely to political language, but in this period it meant something closer to informing on or betraying one’s accomplices to the authorities. To impeach a fellow criminal was to give evidence against them in exchange for one’s own life; a survival tactic with a very short shelf life.

Act of Indemnity: a parliamentary pardon extended to certain classes of offenders, wiping the slate clean for specific crimes committed before a given date. These acts were political tools as much as legal ones, and whether a particular criminal fell within their scope could be a matter of life and death; in Meff’s case, the question is raised at trial with everything hanging in the balance.

Put in the cart: the condemned were loaded into an open cart and paraded through the streets to the place of execution. The phrase sounds almost mundane, but for the person sitting in that cart, surrounded by crowds, it was the last journey they would ever take.

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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