In January 1818, on their way to Durham, to attend a fair, they came to a house in a lonely place, and determined to break into it. They entered it by a window, and met a strong resistance from the master of the house; but, having knocked him down, they succeeded in binding him hand and foot, and gagging him with a handkerchief. The rest of the family were females, and were too much terrified to interrupt them, and they proceeded to rifle the house. Having taken about thirty pounds, they went to Durham, where Haggart was apprehended the next day; but having changed his clothes, and considerably disguised himself, the man whose house they had entered could not identify him; and he was liberated, and returned to Newcastle. In two or three days they were both apprehended, and carried back to Durham, having on the same clothes in which they had committed the burglary; and the man whom they had robbed having then immediately recognised them, he was bound over to prosecute. They were tried under the feigned names of Morrison and Arkinson, and were found guilty, and sent back to prison, in order to be brought up for sentence of death at the end of the assizes. They, however, lost no time in contriving their escape, and after long deliberation with their fellow-prisoners, they resolved on the attempt. They set to work on the wall of their cell, and had got out to the back passage, when the turnkey made his appearance. They seized him, took his keys, bound and gagged him; and having gained the back yard they scaled the wall, but Barney and another prisoner fell, after gaining the top: by this time the alarm was given, and the two latter were both secured; but Haggart having made his escape, returned to Newcastle, in company with a Yorkshireman, where he obtained a tool with which to assist M'Guire in making his escape; and they were returning to Durham when they were pursued by two officers, who got close to them on a wild part of the road unobserved. Just as they were springing on Haggart, he laid one of them low with his pistol, and left him, uncertain whether he had his murder to answer for. The Yorkshireman knocked down the other, and they then proceeded to Durham; where, in the night-time, Haggart, by means of a rope-ladder, got over the back wall of the jail, and conveyed a spring saw to M'Guire, who made his escape that same night, by cutting the iron bars of his cell window, and followed Haggart to Newcastle, and thence accompanied him to Berwick-on-Tweed, Dunse, and Coldstream. At these places they lost no opportunity of plying their trade; but on their reaching Kelso, M'Guire was secured while in the act of picking a farmer's pocket, and sentenced to three months' imprisonment.