Thomas Butlock, alias Butloge, is a young man driven by what he calls an ‘aspiring temper’: a restless vanity that propels him from Ireland to London, always chasing the appearance of a gentleman he can never quite afford to be. As Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals recounts, his story is one of those quiet, devastating true crime episodes where the crime itself takes barely half an hour to commit but a lifetime of yearning to produce.
Raised among broken fortunes and borrowed prospects, Butloge drifts between masters and schemes, always just short of respectability. He is the kind of man the eighteenth century manufactured by the thousands: hungry for status, fragile in means, and dangerously convinced that appearance is everything.
In a city that measures a man by his coat and his coin, Butloge’s aspiring temper is about to meet its sharpest test. Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals tells his story with the plain, unflinching clarity that makes this nearly three hundred year old text still grip the throat; listen now and hear it for yourself.
Dark Lexicon: Old words. Dark meaning.
The past speaks its own dialect; here is what to listen for in this episode.
Vintner: today the word conjures images of boutique winemakers in sun-drenched valleys. In eighteenth century Dublin and London, a vintner was simply the keeper of a tavern or wine house; a place of drink, noise, and often the ‘lewd scenes’ the text describes corrupting young Butloge’s morals.
Broke: when the text says his master ‘broke,’ it does not mean he fell apart emotionally. To break meant to go bankrupt; to fail in business so completely that a man might flee the country to escape his creditors, exactly as Butloge’s master did when he crossed to Chester.
Substantial man’s daughter: the word ‘substantial’ here has nothing to do with size. A substantial man was one of solid financial standing; a man of property and credit. Marrying such a man’s daughter was a route back to respectability, a social rescue operation disguised as romance.
Aspiring temper: temper in this era did not simply mean a tendency to anger. It referred to one’s essential disposition or character. An ‘aspiring temper’ meant an ambitious, upward-reaching nature; the kind of restless drive that could lead to greatness or to ruin depending on how it was fed.
Getting into a place: a ‘place’ was not merely a location but a position; a salaried post, often in government or in the household of someone powerful. The pursuit of a place was the great hustle of Georgian England, and connections at the Law, meaning the Inns of Court, were considered a reliable ladder.
Louis d’ors: French gold coins, each one worth roughly a guinea or slightly more. Finding them in a London drawer alongside English guineas tells you something about the cosmopolitan flow of money through the capital; and about the foreign gentleman Butloge served.
Making a figure: to ‘make a figure’ meant to cut a striking public appearance; to dress well, carry oneself grandly, and be seen doing so. The phrase carried both admiration and warning. In Butloge’s world, making a figure was the performance that preceded the crime.
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.
