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  • Episode 025: Thomas Butlock: The Aspiring Thief Who Stole for Fine Clothes

    Episode 025: Thomas Butlock: The Aspiring Thief Who Stole for Fine Clothes
    2026/11/02
    Send us your FeedbackThomas 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. 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.Support the show
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    4 分
  • Episode 024: James Booty: The Young Ravisher of Holborn

    Episode 024: James Booty: The Young Ravisher of Holborn
    2026/10/26
    Send us your FeedbackIn the dim workshops of early Georgian London, a boy barely into his teens finds himself infected by a disease he does not understand, and in his desperate ignorance he becomes something monstrous. Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals captures his story with the blunt clarity of a court record: a fatherless apprentice, left to the mercy of older hands, absorbing the worst possible counsel from the men around him. James Booty is no hardened criminal when his life begins to unravel; he is a child without capacity, as the old text puts it, adrift in a world that offers him nothing but cruel superstition. His case stands as one of the earliest documented episodes in the long lineage of true crime writing, where youth and depravity collide in ways that still disturb. What follows is a tale shaped by ignorance, infection, and the pitiless logic of eighteenth century justice closing in on a boy who scarcely comprehends his own actions. Dark Lexicon: Old words. Dark meaning.The past speaks its own dialect; here is what to listen for in this episode. Peruke-maker: a peruke is the formal word for what we now casually call a wig. A peruke-maker crafted those elaborate powdered creations that sat atop Georgian heads; it was a skilled trade and a respectable living, placing the Booty family squarely in the artisan class of Holborn. Foul distemper: this is the text's euphemism for venereal disease, almost certainly syphilis or gonorrhoea. In the eighteenth century, 'distemper' could mean any illness or bodily disorder; adding 'foul' before it was the polite way of saying the unspeakable. Made a shift: today 'making a shift' sounds like rearranging furniture, but in this period it simply meant managing with difficulty or contriving to do something. The boy made a shift to learn the cause of his pain: he scraped together enough information from those around him to understand what afflicted him. Sound: in modern speech, 'sound' means reliable or healthy in a general sense. In Georgian medical language it carried a much more specific meaning: free from disease, particularly venereal infection. To lie with someone who was 'sound' was the supposed cure; a lethal piece of folk superstition. Sessions: the regular sittings of the criminal court, held at the Old Bailey in London. Cases were tried in batches at these sessions, often at breakneck speed; a prisoner might wait weeks in Newgate only to be tried, convicted and sentenced in a single day. Newgate: London's most infamous prison, a name that carried dread for centuries. By 1722 it was already ancient, filthy, and overcrowded; a place where disease killed almost as efficiently as the gallows that awaited beyond its walls. Tyburn: the principal site of public execution in London, located near what is now Marble Arch. Condemned prisoners were carted through the streets to Tyburn in a grim procession that served as both spectacle and warning; the gallows there were known simply as 'the tree.' Infant criminals: the text uses 'infant' not in the modern sense of a baby but in its older legal meaning: a person under the age of majority. That the law could condemn a child to the same gallows as a grown murderer reveals how differently Georgian England understood youth, responsibility, and mercy. 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.Support the show
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    3 分
  • Episode 023: Richard Whittingham: The Young Footpad of London's Streets

    Episode 023: Richard Whittingham: The Young Footpad of London's Streets
    2026/10/19
    Send us your FeedbackRichard Whittingham is barely past boyhood when he abandons his apprenticeship and steps into London's criminal underworld. As Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals recounts, his downfall begins not with malice but with weakness: an easy temper exploited by the wrong company and the relentless demands of women who trade affection for coin. His story is the kind of true crime narrative that reveals how quickly a young life can unravel in Georgian London. Whittingham is not born a villain; he is made one, piece by piece, by appetite and circumstance, until the streets themselves become his trade. The world he enters is one of coordinated violence and fragile loyalty, where the very companions who share the spoils are also the ones most likely to turn. Dark Lexicon: Old words. Dark meaning.The past speaks its own dialect; here is what to listen for in this episode. Footpad: today the word means nothing to most people, but in the eighteenth century it was instantly understood and deeply feared. A footpad was a robber who worked on foot, as opposed to the more glamorous highwayman on horseback. There was nothing romantic about a footpad; they were street-level predators who relied on speed, surprise and numbers. Hot-presser: this was a tradesman who used heated plates to press and finish cloth, giving fabric a smooth and lustrous surface. It was a respectable trade, the kind of steady apprenticeship that might have kept a young man out of trouble; Whittingham chose otherwise. Cutting off women's pockets: today a pocket is sewn into a garment, but in the early eighteenth century women wore separate pouches tied around the waist beneath their skirts. Thieves would literally slice the strings and snatch the pocket away. This is also the origin of the term 'pickpocket,' though the method here was closer to outright robbery. Impeached: we think of impeachment now as a political process, a formal accusation against a president or officeholder. In this era it meant something rawer and more personal: one criminal informing on another to save his own skin. To be impeached by a companion was to be betrayed from within. Passenger: in modern usage a passenger is someone riding in a vehicle, but in early eighteenth-century English it simply meant a person passing by on foot. The victims of Whittingham's gang were ordinary pedestrians walking London's broad streets. Condemned hold: this was the section of Newgate Prison where those sentenced to death were confined in their final days. It sat deep in the building, dark and airless, and the condemned could hear other prisoners beneath them through cracks in the floor; a last cruelty layered on top of all the others. Dissolution: today the word carries a formal, almost bureaucratic tone; the dissolution of a company or a parliament. In this context it means death itself: the dissolving of body from soul. It was the polite, prayerful way of naming the thing that waited at Tyburn. 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.Support the show
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    4 分
  • Episode 022: Thomas Reeves: The Notorious Highwayman and Footpad

    Episode 022: Thomas Reeves: The Notorious Highwayman and Footpad
    2026/10/12
    Send us your FeedbackThomas Reeves is raised with every advantage a tradesman's son could hope for: an indulgent father, a respectable apprenticeship, and a clear path forward. But as Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals tells it, the young tinman falls under the influence of men who mock religion and treat morality as nothing more than a convenient fiction. It is a corruption of the mind before it becomes a corruption of the hands. This true crime account captures the precise moment a young man trades honest work for the company of thieves; his boldness quickly making him leader of a gang that prowls the darker edges of Georgian London. What waits for a man who fears nothing; not law, not consequence, not even the state of his own soul; is a question the eighteenth century answers without mercy. Dark Lexicon: Old words. Dark meaning.The past speaks its own dialect; here is what to listen for in this episode. Footpad: Today we might say 'mugger' but in the eighteenth century the word footpad described a robber who worked on foot rather than horseback. Where the highwayman had a certain romantic swagger, the footpad was considered the lowest kind of street predator; no horse, no style, just violence in a dark lane. Bred: Nothing to do with baking. In this context, bred means raised or trained in a trade. To say a man was 'bred a tinman' is to say his entire upbringing was shaped toward that craft; a path laid out for him before he could walk. Priestcraft: A word dripping with contempt. It described what sceptics saw as the manipulation of ordinary people by clergy; religion not as truth but as a tool of control. The men who taught Reeves to think this way were not philosophers; they were thieves looking for an excuse. Preferred him: Today 'preferred' means to favour one thing over another. Here it means elevated or promoted. Reeves was preferred to be leader; meaning his boldness pushed him to the front of the gang, not that anyone politely chose him. Debauches: Bouts of wild, reckless indulgence; drinking, spending, living beyond any reasonable means. The word carries a heavier moral weight than 'partying' ever could; it implies a deliberate surrender to vice. Fact: In eighteenth century legal language, a fact was not merely something true; it was a criminal deed, the act itself. To be convicted 'for this fact' means convicted for this specific crime. The word has narrowed dramatically since then. Sensible: Today it means level-headed or practical. In this text it means aware or conscious of something. When Hartly appeared 'less sensible,' it does not mean he became foolish; it means he became numb, barely able to comprehend what was coming. Intermediate state: A theological concept Reeves batted around with unsettling calm. It refers to a possible condition of the soul between death and final judgement; neither heaven nor hell but something in between. That he discussed it as idle curiosity rather than desperate hope tells you everything about the man. 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.Support the show
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    4 分
  • Episode 021: John Thomson: Sailor Turned Highway Robber

    Episode 021: John Thomson: Sailor Turned Highway Robber
    2026/10/05
    Send us your FeedbackJohn Thomson grows up in London among dishonest company, learning the taste of easy money before he ever learns a trade. Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals records how this weaver's apprentice abandons his loom for the sea, where years of plunder and bloodshed remake him into something harder than the boy who left the shore. When Thomson finally returns to land, the violence he has absorbed does not stay at sea. His story is the kind of true crime account that reveals how a man's character can curdle slowly, shaped by poverty, restlessness, and the grim education of wartime waters. The streets of Georgian London wait for men like Thomson; and the law waits too. Dark Lexicon: Old words. Dark meaning.The past speaks its own dialect; here is what to listen for in this episode. Listed himself: today we might say 'enlisted,' but in the early eighteenth century the word was simply 'listed.' It meant signing up for military or naval service, often on impulse, and it carried a weight of finality; once listed, you belonged to the Crown. Man-of-war: not a warrior but a warship. A man-of-war was a vessel built and armed for combat, crewed by pressed or volunteered sailors who lived in conditions brutal enough to make a London slum look comfortable. Thomson served aboard one and came home changed. Prizes: in naval usage, a prize was an enemy ship captured during wartime along with its cargo. Seizing prizes was legal plunder; crews received shares of the spoils, and a good cruise could make a common sailor rich. The word carried none of the innocent connotation it holds today; it smelled of gunpowder and salt water. Persons of no substance: this did not mean they lacked personality. Substance here means material wealth and social standing. Thomson's parents were poor, without property or reputation, and the phrase carried a quiet judgment: people of no substance were people who could not be trusted to raise a child properly. Creditable method of life: a way of living that earned you credit in the eyes of society; respectable, honest, worthy of trust. Thomson's shipmates managed it. Thomson did not. Debauched: the word still exists, but in the eighteenth century it carried heavier moral freight. To live a debauched life meant not merely to drink too much but to have been thoroughly corrupted; turned away from all discipline, all order, all decency. Thomson's chronicler uses it to describe a boy who had never so much as opened a Bible. Fact: today a fact is a piece of verified truth. In Georgian legal language, a fact was a deed; specifically, a criminal deed. When the text says Thomson was 'apprehended soon after this fact,' it means he was caught shortly after committing the crime itself. 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.Support the show
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    4 分
  • Episode 020: William Burridge: The Soldier Turned Highwayman

    Episode 020: William Burridge: The Soldier Turned Highwayman
    2026/09/28
    Send us your FeedbackWilliam Burridge grows up strong, handsome, and restless in Northamptonshire, a young man built for the wrestling ring and the cudgel match but never for the carpenter's bench his father sets him to. Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals captures him at the pivot point: a boy indulged too long, slipping easily from stolen poultry at country fairs to something far darker on the open road. His is the kind of story that feeds the oldest appetite in true crime: a man whose physical gifts and inflated sense of his own worth carry him past every warning and every second chance. The praise he wins only sharpens his hunger for a life unburdened by honest labour. Ahead of him lies a world of highways, prisons, and the slow tightening of a justice system that never forgets a name. Dark Lexicon: Old words. Dark meaning.The past speaks its own dialect; here is what to listen for in this episode. The vulgar: today this word means crude or obscene, but in the eighteenth century it simply meant the common people; the ordinary masses. When the text says the vulgar have false notions of courage, it is not insulting anyone's manners; it is saying that everyday folk misunderstand what bravery really is, and that misunderstanding can ruin a man. Cudgel-playing: a rough sport in which two opponents battered each other with short, heavy sticks, trying to draw blood from the head. It was a fixture of country fairs and wakes, and winning earned a man the kind of local fame that could go straight to his skull; in more ways than one. Junketting: not a spelling error but an older form of junketing, meaning feasting, carousing, and generally having a wild time. Burridge's particular flavour of junketting involved servant girls in the neighbourhood, which tells you everything about where his priorities lay. Man-of-war: a warship; specifically a vessel in the Royal Navy armed and crewed for battle. Burridge's family hoped the discipline of naval service would straighten him out. The sea had other plans. Becoming evidence: this phrase meant turning informer; offering testimony against your fellow criminals in exchange for your own life. It was a desperate bargain, and the courts knew exactly how to exploit it. A man who became evidence bought time, but rarely bought trust. Wakes: in this context, not funeral vigils but annual parish festivals; loud, drunken, communal celebrations that often featured wrestling, cudgel bouts, and other rough entertainments. They were the proving grounds where young men like Burridge built dangerous reputations. Bay gelding: a castrated male horse with a reddish brown coat. Stealing one was no petty matter; horses were enormously valuable property, and horse theft was treated as a serious felony that could carry the heaviest of consequences. Old Bailey: London's central criminal court, standing next to Newgate Prison. For centuries it was the last courtroom many defendants would ever see. Its name alone carried weight enough to make a hardened man go pale. 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.Support the show
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    4 分
  • Episode 019: William Colthouse: The Jacobite Highwayman of Yorkshire

    Episode 019: William Colthouse: The Jacobite Highwayman of Yorkshire
    2026/09/21
    Send us your FeedbackWilliam Colthouse is a well-educated Yorkshire man with firm religious principles and even firmer political convictions; it is these convictions that first drag him into the orbit of criminality. As recorded in Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals, his outspoken Jacobite sympathies land him inside Newgate, where the company he keeps teaches him a new and darker set of skills. What emerges from this true crime account is a figure caught between conscience and temptation: a man who knows the difference between right and wrong yet finds the lure of easy money irresistible once honest labour loses its shine. His story is shaped by political loyalties, family bonds, and a restlessness that refuses to be tamed by ordinary work. The roads of Georgian England are waiting, and for a man like Colthouse, every choice narrows the path ahead. Dark Lexicon: Old words. Dark meaning.The past speaks its own dialect; here is what to listen for in this episode. Hereditary rights: in the early eighteenth century this phrase was politically explosive. It referred to the belief that the crown passed by divine bloodline alone, and that Parliament had no authority to redirect the succession. For Jacobites like Colthouse, hereditary right meant the exiled Stuart line still held the only legitimate claim to the throne; to say so aloud under the new Hanoverian king was sedition. Jacobite: from the Latin 'Jacobus' for James, a Jacobite was a supporter of the deposed Stuart dynasty, particularly James II and his descendants. In the reign of George I, professing Jacobite sympathies was not merely unfashionable; it was dangerous enough to land a man in prison. Seditious words: today sedition feels like a term from dusty law textbooks, but in Georgian England it was a potent weapon. Speaking against the king or the Protestant succession could be prosecuted as a crime in itself; no riot or rebellion required. Words alone could put you in chains. Journeyman: not a traveller, though the word hints at journeys. A journeyman was a skilled worker who had completed his apprenticeship but did not yet run his own shop. He worked for a master, hired by the day; the word comes from the French 'journee,' meaning a day's work. In Colthouse's case, he worked as a journeyman joiner: a qualified carpenter labouring for wages rather than profit. Expeditions on the road: a polite euphemism for highway robbery. The phrase lends a gentleman's gloss to what was in reality armed theft on the king's highways. Authors of the period sometimes deployed this sort of language with a wink, as though robbing travellers were a kind of sporting venture. Gridiron: a flat cooking grate made of iron bars set over a fire, used for grilling meat. That soldiers would press a man's face onto one that was red-hot gives a visceral sense of the casual brutality of alehouse brawls in this era; the scar Colthouse carried from it would later be mistaken for evidence of an entirely different crime. Condemnation: today we condemn ideas or behaviour, but in the criminal courts of the eighteenth century the word had a literal and lethal meaning. To lie under condemnation was to have received a death sentence and to be waiting, usually in the condemned cells of Newgate, for the appointed day. Temporal concerns: in Colthouse's farewell letter, temporal does not mean 'temporary.' It means worldly; of this earthly life as opposed to the spiritual. A man about to leave the world is expected to shed temporal concerns and fix his thoughts on the eternal; that Colthouse could not do so entirely makes his letter all the more human. 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.Support the show
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    5 分
  • Episode 018: James Shaw: Highwayman and Murderer of the Hampstead Road

    Episode 018: James Shaw: Highwayman and Murderer of the Hampstead Road
    2026/09/14
    Send us your FeedbackJames Shaw is a man who cannot settle. Born into a family with the means to set him on a respectable path, he drifts through one trade after another, never sticking, never satisfied; Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals captures him at the precise moment restlessness curdles into something far more dangerous. He blames a negligent wife, he blames circumstance, but beneath every excuse lies a temperament that finds honest labour unbearable. It is a story that belongs to the oldest tradition of true crime: the man who convinces himself that taking from others is no crime at all. The Hampstead Road stretches ahead of him in the dark, full of coaches and strangers and the particular kind of trouble that cannot be undone. Dark Lexicon: Old words. Dark meaning.The past speaks its own dialect; here is what to listen for in this episode. Unsettledness: today we might say 'restlessness' or 'instability,' but in the early eighteenth century this word carried a sharper edge. It suggested a constitutional defect, a soul that refused to be governed; not merely fidgeting, but a deep incapacity for the discipline that society demanded. Forger of gun-locks: nothing to do with forgery in the criminal sense. A forger here is a metalworker, someone who shapes iron at a forge. Shaw learns enough of this honest trade to occasionally earn money by it, though he prefers to earn it other ways entirely. Footpad: a highway robber who operates on foot rather than on horseback. The distinction mattered enormously in this era; the mounted highwayman could at least pretend to a certain glamour, while the footpad was seen as the lowest and most brutal kind of street predator. Goldfinches: Shaw uses this as slang for gold coins. When he tells his victims he 'fancied the goldfinches were not yet flown,' he means he suspects there is far more money hidden in the coach. It is a piece of criminal wit, delivered at swordpoint. Knights of the road: an ironic, almost affectionate term for highwaymen, borrowing the language of chivalry to describe armed robbery. The phrase was common in the period and captures the strange way popular culture romanticised men who were, by law, common felons. Committed: in legal usage, to be committed meant to be formally sent to prison by a magistrate to await trial. It did not imply conviction; it meant the wheels of justice had begun turning, and they rarely turned in the prisoner's favour. Tile kilns by Pancras: the brick and tile kilns that stood near the parish of St Pancras, then a semi-rural area on London's northern fringe. It was exactly the kind of lonely, industrial borderland where footpads thrived; close enough to the city for victims, remote enough for violence. Pinder of Wakefield: a well-known tavern near the Gray's Inn Road area. Named after a figure from Robin Hood legend, it served in this story as the place where a dying man was carried after being attacked; a grim irony, given its folkloric associations with outlawry. Fact: in eighteenth century legal language, 'fact' often meant 'deed' or 'criminal act.' When the text says 'for a fact of murder,' it means for the deed of murder; the word had a harder, more accusatory weight than it does today. 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.Support the show
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    5 分