Extracts from 'The New and Complete Newgate Calendar', Vol. 1

MP3 Audio CD. THOMAS DUN



Head of a Gang of Outlaws, on Account of whom King Henry I. is credibly supposed to have built Dunstable. Executed Piecemeal.

THIS person was of very mean extraction, and born in a little village between Kempston and Elstow, in Bedfordshire. It is said he had contracted thieving so much from his childhood, that everything he touched stuck to his fingers like birdlime, and that, the better to carry on his villainies, he changed himself into as many shapes as Proteus, being a man that understood the world so well ? I mean the tricks and fallacies of it ? that there was nothing which he could not humour, nor any part of villainy that came amiss to him. To-day he was a merchant, on the morrow a soldier, the next day a gentleman, and the day following a beggar. In short, he was every day what he pleased himself. When he had committed any remarkable roguery his usual custom was to cover his body all over with nauseous and stinking sear cloths and ointments, and his face with plasters, so that his own mother could not know him.

He would be a blind harper to commit one villainy, and a cripple with crutches to bring about another; nay, he would hang artificial arms to his body. Besides, his natural barbarity and cruel temper was such, that two or three men together durst scarcely meet him; for one day, being upon the road, he saw a wagoner driving his wagon full of corn to Bedford, which was drawn by five good horses, the sight of which inflamed him to put the driver to death; accordingly, without making any reflection on the event, he falls on the wagoner, and with two stabs killed him on the spot, boldly took so much time as to bury him, not out of any compassion for the deceased, for he never had any, but the better to conceal his design; and then, mounting the wagon, drives it to Bedford, where he sells it, horses and all, and marched off with the money.