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Nathaniel Hawes: The Young Highwayman of Finchley Common

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.

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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Richard James: The Highwayman of the Oxford Road

by Davros Dark

Richard James comes into the world already half abandoned: the son of a nobleman’s cook, fatherless before he can remember, cast to sea at twelve years old. As Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals recounts his story, what emerges is a man shaped less by malice than by a relentless current of misfortune; a figure whose slide toward highway robbery feels almost inevitable, and who belongs to the long, dark tradition of true crime that stretches from Georgian England to our own restless fascination with outlaws.

Captured by Spaniards, taken by pirates, abandoned by a wife who declared him dead while he still breathed: every return to England strips away another reason to live honestly. By the time he turns to the Oxford Road with violence in his hands, there is almost nothing left of the boy who once crossed oceans just to come home.

The road ahead for Richard James narrows with every robbery, and the Georgian world he inhabits does not forgive men without friends or fortune. Hear his full story read aloud from Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals; it waits for you now.

Richard James: The Highwayman of the Oxford 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.

Disobliged: today we might use this word lightly, meaning to mildly offend or inconvenience someone. In eighteenth century usage it carried far more weight; to disoblige your friends was to sever ties, to alienate those whose goodwill was your only safety net. When Richard James ‘disobliged’ his few remaining friends, the text is telling us he burned every bridge he had.

Betake him: a construction that sounds strange to modern ears, meaning simply to take himself off to something; to resort to an occupation or course of action. James ‘betook him’ to the sea the way a man might shrug and walk toward the only door still open.

Viz.: short for the Latin ‘videlicet,’ meaning ‘namely’ or ‘that is to say.’ Writers of this period used it the way we might use ‘i.e.’ or ‘in other words.’ Here it introduces the blunt truth of James’s new career with almost clinical precision.

Waggoners: not simply drivers but the men who hauled goods along the major roads in heavy horse-drawn wagons. They were frequent targets for highwaymen because they travelled predictable routes, moved slowly, and often carried cargo worth stealing. Robbing a waggoner was less glamorous than holding up a coach, but far more reliable.

Reprieve: in Georgian criminal justice, a reprieve was a temporary suspension of a death sentence, often granted by royal mercy or through the intercession of powerful friends. It did not mean acquittal; it meant a pause, a breath of time in which fate might be renegotiated. That James claims he would refuse one even if offered tells us something chilling about the man.

Inclinable: meaning disposed toward or willing. A word that has faded from everyday speech but once served as the standard way of saying someone was leaning toward a decision. James’s companions were ‘inclinable’ to return the lady’s possessions; James himself was not.

Ignominious: a word still in use but rarely felt as sharply as it was in the eighteenth century, when public execution was designed to be a spectacle of shame as much as a punishment of death. An ignominious death was one that marked you before the crowd as something lower than human; the disgrace was considered part of the sentence.

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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.

Dark Lexicon: Old words. Dark meaning.

About This Series

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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!

Subscribe to Dark Stories