A lane running across the Great Eastern Railway at this point, known as Stoup Lane ("stoup" meaning a boundary-post) marks the boundary of the Ilford and Chadwell wards of Barking parish. Here it was, in 1794, on a night of December, that a King's messenger, James Martin by name, was shot by five footpads. The register of St Edmund's, Romford, records the burial of this unfortunate man on the 14th of that month. Let us not, however, in view of the more or less grisly dangers that still await belated wayfarers on this road, enlarge too greatly on the lawlessness of old times; for the homeward-bound resident making for his domestic hearth in these new-risen suburbs towards the stroke of ten o'clock is not infrequently startled by the sinister figure of a footpad springing from the ragged hedges of Chadwell Heath and demanding--_not_ his money or his life, as in the old formula, but--a halfpenny! This invariable demand of the nocturnal Chadwell Heath footpads, which argues a pitiful lack of invention on their part, is for half the price of a drink. "You haven't got a ha'p'ny about you, guv'nor?" asks the threatening tramp. "No," says the peaceful citizen, anxiously scanning the long perspective of the road for the policeman who ought to be within sight--but is not; "w-what do you want a halfpenny for?" "I've walked all the way from Romford and only got half the price of a glass o' beer," says the rascal. The citizen is astonished and incredulous, and his astonishment gets the better of his fear. "Oh, come now," he rejoins, "no one walks three miles from Romford for a glass of beer; besides, all the houses here close at ten o'clock." "Oh, they do, do they?" replies the tramp, offensively. "'Ere, my mate Bill'll talk to you," and, whistling, the ominous bulk of Bill emerges aggressively from the darkling hedge, and together they proceed to wipe the road with that respectable ratepayer, and, rifling his pockets, leave him, bruised and bleeding, to reflect on the blessings of civilisation and to be thankful that he was not born a hundred years ago, when he might have been shot dead instead of being felled to the ground by the half-brick in a handkerchief which he finds beside him and takes home as a trophy.