Matthew Clark is the kind of figure who makes true crime so unsettling: not a mastermind, not a hardened villain, but a lazy, cowardly young man whose small vices compound into something monstrous. Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals introduces him as a creature formed entirely from the worst impulses of low life; idle, drunk, driven by lust, and too timid to commit even the crimes he plans.
Born in St. Albans to parents of modest means, Clark squanders every opportunity placed before him. Dismissed from a gentleman’s household for sheer incorrigibility, he drifts into roadside robbery on the heaths outside London; not from ambition, but because honest labour feels harder than the risk of the noose.
The Georgian world Clark inhabits is one where cowardice and desperation make a volatile combination, and the roads between country and city are lined with gallows that watch every traveller pass. Hear the full account read aloud from Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals; let this dark voice from nearly three centuries ago carry you into Matthew Clark’s story.
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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.
Footpad: a robber who works on foot, as opposed to a highwayman who attacks from horseback. The footpad was considered the lowest and most contemptible breed of thief; lacking even the theatrical swagger of the mounted robber, he was simply a desperate figure lurking in hedgerows and waiting for someone weaker to come along.
Meaner sort: nothing to do with cruelty here. In eighteenth century usage, ‘mean’ referred to lowly social standing or humble circumstances. The ‘meaner sort’ were the poor and labouring classes; the ones Georgian writers worried most about when it came to moral corruption.
Passengers: today we think of someone sitting in a vehicle, but in this era a passenger was simply anyone passing along a road on foot, horseback, or in a coach. Every passenger on a lonely heath was a potential victim; every stretch of road between towns was a hunting ground.
Junketting: feasting, merrymaking, carousing. The word ‘junket’ still survives in modern English, usually meaning a lavish trip at someone else’s expense, but in Clark’s day it was rawer and more physical: drinking bouts, dancing, and the reckless spending of stolen money on fleeting pleasures.
The matrimonial maggot bit his brain: a wonderfully vivid eighteenth century expression. A ‘maggot’ in this context was a whim or a sudden foolish fancy; the image is of a parasitic idea burrowing into a person’s thoughts and driving them to irrational action. When the matrimonial maggot bit Clark, it meant the notion of marriage seized hold of him like a fever.
Timorous: fearful, easily frightened. Still in use today but far less common, it perfectly captures Clark’s defining trait: a man who plans violence but whose own cowardice keeps undoing him, at least until desperation finally overwhelms his fear.
Jocose: playful, humorous, given to joking. The word carries a warmth and ease that makes its use in this story deeply chilling; Clark sits laughing and flirting with a woman he is already planning to kill.
Made a shift: managed with difficulty, barely succeeded. In this account, the phrase describes a dying woman’s final desperate effort; she ‘made a shift to mutter his name,’ meaning she barely managed to speak it through a wound that should have silenced her entirely.
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.
