The Chronicles of Crime or The New Newgate Calendar. v. 2/2: being a series of memoirs and anecdotes of notorious characters who have outraged the laws of Great Britain from the earliest period to 1841Pelham, Camden
History
The Chronicles of Crime or The New Newgate Calendar. v. 2/2: being a series of memoirs and anecdotes of notorious characters who have outraged the laws of Great Britain from the earliest period to 1841
Pelham, Camden
Crime -- Great Britain; Criminals -- Great Britain; Newgate (Prison : London, England)
"About this time I was introduced to Thistlewood by one John Harrison.
Thistlewood asked me how much money it would take to make a few hundred
pikes, and how long it would take me. I told him it would entirely
depend on their size, and the steel or iron they should be made of. He
said they should be about nine or ten inches long, and I told him that
they would come to about fourpence or fourpence-halfpenny a pound. He
wished me to make one for a pattern, and I told him I would; but that I
had no place to make them in, and Harrison replied that he knew a person
who would lend me the use of his forge. Hooper and Harrison went with me
to a little shop in a cellar, kept by a man of the name of Bentley, in
Hart-street. I asked him to allow me to make use of his forge to make a
pike, to put round a rabbit-warren, or fish-pond. He told me that if I
would look out a piece of iron, he would make it himself, and, when
done, it was given to me, and I took it away. I afterwards carried it to
one Randall's, where I met the two Watsons, and Thistlewood, Harrison,
and Hooper; and Watson said that it was a famous instrument. Watson then
wrote down the name of the house where the committee sat, No. 9,
Greystoke-place, on a paper for me. On the night before, I had been to
Paddington with Thistlewood among the bargemen to seek to make converts,
and we found a great number of them out of employ, and treated them with
some beer. We sounded them, and they said that they wanted a good row,
for that they would rather be killed than be as they were. We told them
that we wanted them for a job, and asked how many they could collect
together, and they said that they could get five or six hundred any
morning, as there were so many out of employment. We afterwards went to
two public-houses in Long Acre and in Vinegar Yard, which are used by
the soldiers who attend the theatres, and we treated them with beer. We
asked them how they were treated by their officers, and what was their
pay, and one of them, a Yorkshireman, spoke violently against the
government. The conversation was about their pay, and as to their being
discharged without pensions. We also went to the Fox-under-the-Hill, in
the Adelphi, where we found a great number of coalheavers, and having
entered into conversation with some of them, they said that they could
get fifty or sixty of their fellows, who were out of employment, to join
us any day. I subsequently went about alone with the same object, and if
I found any man more violent than the rest, I took down his name and
communicated it to Thistlewood. A day or two afterwards the committee
met in Greystoke-place, to deliberate upon the best plan to set fire to
the barracks, and to get all the men we could together. A pike was
produced, and Thistlewood directed that Bentley should make 250 of them
immediately. Dr. Watson and I reported that we had examined the barracks
at Portman-street, and King-street, and had ascertained the number of
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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