Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals

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Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals is a true crime podcast unlike any other; because every word of it was written nearly 300 years ago.  Each week, we read aloud one chapter from a remarkable book first published in London in 1735: a sprawling collection of murderers, highwaymen, coiners, housebreakers, pirates and worse, recorded in vivid and unsparing detail.  The crimes are real. The voices are authentic. And the world they reveal, brutal, strange, and surprisingly familiar, has been waiting three centuries to be heard again. True crime did not begin with podcasts. It began here by the burning light of a candle.

  1. 2d ago

    Episode 014: James Wright: The Weeping Highwayman of the Old Bailey

    Send us your Feedback A respectable wigmaker on the Old Bailey begins to spend faster than he earns, drawn into pleasures he cannot afford and will not abandon. Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals captures his slide with quiet precision: James Wright does not turn to crime out of malice but out of want, a man whose appetites gnaw through his livelihood until nothing remains but the road. What makes Wright linger in the annals of true crime is not his daring but his conscience. He is described as a highwayman who could hardly rob a traveller without weeping, a man forever promising himself he would stop, forever failing to keep that promise. The tension between remorse and repetition shapes everything that follows, a loop of guilt and need tightening around a man who cannot break free. Dark Lexicon: Old words. Dark meaning.The past speaks its own dialect; here is what to listen for in this episode. Malefactor: today this word sounds almost theatrical, something pulled from a superhero film. In the eighteenth century it was deadly serious: a malefactor was simply a person who committed a crime, a wrongdoer in the eyes of the law. It carried no dramatic flair; it was the plain, official label pinned to anyone awaiting judgement. Peruke-maker: a maker of perukes, which is to say wigs. In Georgian England the wig trade was a legitimate and often lucrative craft, serving everyone from lawyers to gentlemen of fashion. To be apprenticed to a peruke-maker was a perfectly respectable start in life; the fact that Wright had one makes his fall all the sharper. Equipage: today this word is virtually extinct, but in the 1700s it referred to the carriage, horses, servants and general outfit a wealthy person travelled with. Wright used equipage as his guide; the finer the coach and livery, the fatter the target. Villainies: not the cartoonish scheming the word might conjure now, but a straightforward plural for criminal acts. In this era it carried real legal weight; a list of villainies was a list of offences that could send a person to the gallows. Impeached: in modern usage we think of presidents and parliamentary proceedings, but in eighteenth century criminal slang, to be impeached meant to be informed upon by an associate. It was betrayal dressed in legal clothes: one thief turning evidence against another to save his own skin. Assizes: the travelling courts that moved through the English counties, bringing the full power of royal justice to provincial towns. The assizes at Kingston, where Wright was tried and acquitted on one occasion, were periodic sessions where serious criminal cases were heard by visiting judges. Ignominious: bearing public shame and disgrace. Wright uses the word when speaking of the death that awaits him, and in the context of a public hanging it is precise; the punishment was designed not merely to kill but to humiliate, serving as a spectacle of disgrace for all who watched. 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

  2. Aug 10

    Episode 013: Richard James: The Highwayman of the Oxford Road

    Send us your Feedback Richard James comes into the world already half abandoned: the son of a nobleman's cook, fatherless before he can remember, cast to sea at twelve years old. As Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals recounts his story, what emerges is a man shaped less by malice than by a relentless current of misfortune; a figure whose slide toward highway robbery feels almost inevitable, and who belongs to the long, dark tradition of true crime that stretches from Georgian England to our own restless fascination with outlaws. Captured by Spaniards, taken by pirates, abandoned by a wife who declared him dead while he still breathed: every return to England strips away another reason to live honestly. By the time he turns to the Oxford Road with violence in his hands, there is almost nothing left of the boy who once crossed oceans just to come home. The road ahead for Richard James narrows with every robbery, and the Georgian world he inhabits does not forgive men without friends or fortune. Dark Lexicon: Old words. Dark meaning.The past speaks its own dialect; here is what to listen for in this episode. Disobliged: today we might use this word lightly, meaning to mildly offend or inconvenience someone. In eighteenth century usage it carried far more weight; to disoblige your friends was to sever ties, to alienate those whose goodwill was your only safety net. When Richard James 'disobliged' his few remaining friends, the text is telling us he burned every bridge he had. Betake him: a construction that sounds strange to modern ears, meaning simply to take himself off to something; to resort to an occupation or course of action. James 'betook him' to the sea the way a man might shrug and walk toward the only door still open. Viz.: short for the Latin 'videlicet,' meaning 'namely' or 'that is to say.' Writers of this period used it the way we might use 'i.e.' or 'in other words.' Here it introduces the blunt truth of James's new career with almost clinical precision. Waggoners: not simply drivers but the men who hauled goods along the major roads in heavy horse-drawn wagons. They were frequent targets for highwaymen because they travelled predictable routes, moved slowly, and often carried cargo worth stealing. Robbing a waggoner was less glamorous than holding up a coach, but far more reliable. Reprieve: in Georgian criminal justice, a reprieve was a temporary suspension of a death sentence, often granted by royal mercy or through the intercession of powerful friends. It did not mean acquittal; it meant a pause, a breath of time in which fate might be renegotiated. That James claims he would refuse one even if offered tells us something chilling about the man. Inclinable: meaning disposed toward or willing. A word that has faded from everyday speech but once served as the standard way of saying someone was leaning toward a decision. James's companions were 'inclinable' to return the lady's possessions; James himself was not. Ignominious: a word still in use but rarely felt as sharply as it was in the eighteenth century, when public execution was designed to be a spectacle of shame as much as a punishment of death. An ignominious death was one that marked you before the crowd as something lower than human; the disgrace was considered part of the sentence. 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

  3. Aug 3

    Episode 012: John Dykes: The Gambler Turned Highwayman

    Send us your Feedback John Dykes cannot stop gambling. It is this single compulsion; documented in Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals; that drags a young man from indulged eldest son to pickpocket to something far worse, tracing the kind of spiral that still defines true crime centuries later. Born to parents of middling means who sacrifice their own comfort for his education, Dykes refuses every apprenticeship, every honest path set before him. Instead he haunts the gaming tables when flush and plays span-farthing in the gutter with street boys when broke, each loss pushing him one step closer to the road. The dice keep rolling, and Georgian London keeps score in ways a young man rarely sees until the ledger is already closed. Dark Lexicon: Old words. Dark meaning.The past speaks its own dialect; here is what to listen for in this episode. Gaming: today we might picture video games; in the eighteenth century this word meant gambling and nothing else. Dice, cards, hazard tables: the kind of play that devours money and then devours the player. When the text says Dykes had an 'itching after gaming,' it means he was addicted to wagering, not to innocent amusement. Chuck and span-farthing: these were street games played for small stakes, often by children and the desperately poor. Chuck involved pitching coins at a mark, while span-farthing required tossing a farthing close enough to an opponent's coin to span the gap with your hand. That Dykes stoops to these games in a ragged coat tells you exactly how far a night at the tables has brought him down. Bridewell: not a single prison but a type of institution; originally the Bridewell Palace near Fleet Street was converted into a house of correction in the sixteenth century, and the name became shorthand for any local lockup where petty offenders were held and put to hard labour. Tothill Fields Bridewell, mentioned here, sat in Westminster and was notorious for its grim conditions. Horsepond: a pond used for watering horses, but also a place of informal punishment. To be ducked or dragged through the horsepond was a humiliation inflicted on petty criminals and social nuisances. It was not judicial in any formal sense; more a community ritual of degradation. Swore upon: to be 'swore upon' meant to have someone give sworn testimony against you before a magistrate. When West tells his brother he is in danger of being swore upon by coiners, he is claiming that counterfeiters are about to name him as an accomplice under oath; a terrifying prospect in an era when such testimony could lead swiftly to the gallows. To recruit: in modern usage, to recruit means to enlist people. In the eighteenth century it also meant to replenish or restore something that had been depleted. When the text says Dykes took to the road 'to recruit' his cash, it means he robbed travellers to refill his empty purse. Took up with the road: a euphemism for becoming a highwayman. To 'take the road' was to ride out on public highways and rob travellers at gunpoint. The phrase sounds almost casual, as if it were simply another career option; and for men like Dykes, that was precisely how it felt until the law caught up. 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

  4. Jul 27

    Episode 011: William Casey: The Soldier Accused of Robbery in the Park

    Send us your Feedback William Casey is barely out of boyhood when military life delivers him into the world of violence and accusation that defines his story. Enlisted at fifteen into the Guards by his own soldier father, Casey serves in Spain and returns to London carrying the restless habits of a young man raised among regiments; Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals captures his brief, troubled trajectory in vivid detail. His is a case where the line between righteousness and brutality blurs beyond recognition. It is the kind of true crime account where competing versions of events leave the reader suspended between sympathy and suspicion, uncertain who is the aggressor and who is the victim. In the shadows of a London park, a confrontation takes shape that will drag a young soldier before the full machinery of Georgian justice. Dark Lexicon: Old words. Dark meaning.The past speaks its own dialect; here is what to listen for in this episode. Fray: today we mostly encounter this word when fabric is coming apart at the edges, but in the eighteenth century a fray was a brawl, a sudden violent scuffle between individuals. It carries a sharper edge than 'fight'; it implies disorder, chaos, something erupting without warning in the dark. Prosecutor: in Georgian England this word did not mean a government lawyer standing at a podium. The prosecutor was the victim themselves; the person who brought the complaint and pressed the charge. John Stone is called 'the prosecutor' because he is the one who set the legal wheels turning against Casey. Neck-cloth: a strip of linen or muslin worn tied around the throat, ancestor of the modern necktie. In the early 1700s it was a standard item of a gentleman's dress, and stealing one counted as a meaningful theft; clothing had genuine resale value in a world before mass manufacture. Swear sodomy upon him: to accuse someone formally of the crime of sodomy, which in this period was a capital offence. The threat to 'swear sodomy' on a man was not merely social ruin; it was a threat to have him hanged. It functioned as a devastating weapon in disputes, and false accusations were not unheard of. Viz.: short for the Latin 'videlicet,' meaning 'namely' or 'that is to say.' It appears in Casey's written statement and was common legal and literary shorthand of the era. You can think of it as the eighteenth century version of 'i.e.' or 'specifically.' Ignominious: meaning deeply shameful, bringing public disgrace. The word still exists today but was far more commonly deployed in this period, particularly in connection with public punishment, where the shame was considered part of the penalty itself. Discharge his conscience: to relieve the burden on one's soul by speaking the truth before death. This phrase carried heavy spiritual weight; the belief was that dying with a lie on your lips endangered your immortal soul. When Casey chooses to 'discharge his conscience,' he is making what he considers a sacred final act. 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

  5. Jul 20

    Episode 010: John Wigley: The Lone Highwayman of Finchley Common

    Send us your Feedback A plasterer by trade, John Wigley abandons honest work early and slides into what Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals calls 'felonious methods of getting money.' His is a solitary brand of criminality; he rides out alone onto the dark roads around the commons north of London, trusting no one, convinced that gangs always betray themselves in the end. This true crime story from the early eighteenth century carries the smell of damp hedgerows and cheap brandy. Wigley drifts between a woman who sells spirits on the common and a life spent prowling the highways, always alone, always suspicious of companionship. The roads he haunts are patient places, but the justice of Georgian England is not, and something is closing in on the lone highwayman who refuses to trust anyone but himself. Dark Lexicon: Old words. Dark meaning.The past speaks its own dialect; here is what to listen for in this episode. Bred: today we might say someone was 'raised' or 'trained,' but in the eighteenth century to be 'bred' to a trade meant you had been apprenticed in it from youth. It carried weight: your breeding was your destiny, and to abandon it was a moral as well as a practical failure. Ill courses: a phrase that sounds almost gentle to modern ears, but it meant a sustained pattern of criminal or immoral behaviour. Not a single mistake; a chosen path, walked deliberately and repeatedly. Benighted: today this word means ignorant or unenlightened, used as a metaphor. In this text it is purely literal: to be benighted was to be overtaken by nightfall while travelling, stranded in the dark. On the roads around London, being benighted could be fatal for reasons that had nothing to do with weather. Confederacies in villainy: a wonderfully heavy phrase for criminal gangs. A 'confederacy' implied an organised alliance, almost a conspiracy. The text uses it to describe the very partnerships Wigley despised, believing that sworn oaths among thieves always crumbled when their lives were at stake. Receded from: to recede from a resolution meant to abandon or retreat from a decision you had made. It carries a sense of weakness; Wigley's whole philosophy rests on working alone, and the moment he recedes from that principle, everything changes. Rapine: a word that has all but vanished from everyday English. It meant the violent seizure of property; plunder by force. It is distinct from mere theft; rapine carries the connotation of aggression, of taking things at the point of a weapon. Malefactor: a criminal or wrongdoer, drawn from Latin roots meaning 'one who does evil.' It was a common courtroom and literary term in the eighteenth century, carrying a solemnity that the word 'criminal' sometimes lacks. When you hear it in this episode, imagine it spoken by a judge. 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

  6. Jul 13

    Episode 009: John Meff: The Housebreaker Who Could Not Stay Away

    Send us your Feedback John Meff is the son of French Protestant refugees who fled persecution under Louis XIV, raised in London with great care and bound apprentice to a weaver. He serves faithfully, marries, and then finds himself unable to keep his family alive on honest wages; it is poverty, not wickedness, that first pushes him toward housebreaking, a trajectory recorded in Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals with the unsentimental clarity that makes it one of the earliest works of true crime writing we possess. What follows is a life of compounding misfortune: narrow escapes, broken resolutions, and a restless drift across oceans that never quite carries Meff far enough from the world he is trying to leave behind. His story belongs to a London where the line between desperation and damnation is thinner than anyone cares to admit. Every road Meff walks seems to curve back toward the same dark gravity, and the law of Georgian England is not a patient institution. Dark Lexicon: Old words. Dark meaning.The past speaks its own dialect; here is what to listen for in this episode. Transported: in modern usage this word simply means moved from one place to another, but in eighteenth century criminal law it carried a very specific and dreaded meaning. To be transported was to be shipped to the colonies as punishment, forced into years of hard labour far from home. It was considered a mercy compared to hanging, though those who endured it might have disagreed. Marooned: today this word is used loosely to mean stranded anywhere, but its origin is steeped in pirate custom. To be marooned was to be deliberately abandoned on an uninhabited island, usually with little or no provisions; it was a death sentence disguised as exile, a punishment pirates inflicted on those who refused to join their crew or who broke their code. Springes: a word now almost entirely extinct. A springe was a snare or trap for catching birds and small animals, typically made from a loop of cord or wire attached to a bent branch. In this account, the castaways fashion them from the horsehair of an old wig; desperation breeds invention. Fluxes: in the eighteenth century a flux was a violent and often fatal bout of diarrhoea or dysentery, the kind of illness that could reduce a strong person to helplessness within days. The word had an urgency to it that its modern medical equivalents have lost; aboard ships and on desolate islands, flux killed as readily as fever. Ill-courses: a polite eighteenth century way of saying a life of crime. The phrase carried a note of moral judgement baked right into it; one did not simply commit crimes, one 'addicted' oneself to ill-courses, as though lawbreaking were a sickness of the will. Impeached: today impeachment belongs almost entirely to political language, but in this period it meant something closer to informing on or betraying one's accomplices to the authorities. To impeach a fellow criminal was to give evidence against them in exchange for one's own life; a survival tactic with a very short shelf life. Act of Indemnity: a parliamentary pardon extended to certain classes of offenders, wiping the slate clean for specific crimes committed before a given date. These acts were political tools as much as legal ones, and whether a particular criminal fell within their scope could be a matter of life and death; in Meff's case, the question is raised at trial with everything hanging in the balance. Put in the cart: the condemned were loaded into an open cart and paraded through the streets to the place of execution. The phrase sounds almost mundane, but for the person sitting in that cart, surrounded by crowds, it was the last journey they would ever take. 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

  7. Jul 7

    Episode 008: John Winship: The Young Highwayman of Covent Garden

    Send us your Feedback He is seventeen, an apprentice carpenter in Covent Garden, and he has just noticed a young woman standing in a doorway. In Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals, the story of John Winship begins not with violence but with infatuation; a boy whose idle upbringing leaves him entirely unprepared for the cost of courtship, and who drifts toward the road when honest wages fall short. There is something quietly inevitable about Winship's slide from lovesick youth to mounted robber, a trajectory that feels as urgent now as it did in the 1720s. His is a piece of true crime from an era when the line between a restless boy and a desperate outlaw could be crossed in a single reckless season. The dark roads outside London are waiting, and John Winship is about to learn what the night demands in return for its silver. Dark Lexicon: Old words. Dark meaning.The past speaks its own dialect; here is what to listen for in this episode. Footpad: a highway robber who works on foot rather than on horseback. Where the highwayman had a certain theatrical glamour, the footpad was considered the meaner, more desperate breed; closer to a mugger than a mounted outlaw. Winship is called both, which tells you he took whatever opportunity came his way. Pistoles: not pistols, though the words look similar enough to confuse. A pistole was a gold coin, originally Spanish, widely circulated across Europe. When the Frenchman loses a hundred and twenty of them, the sum is enormous; this is serious money taken at serious risk. Caressed: today this word suggests gentle physical affection, but in the eighteenth century it meant to treat with favour, to flatter, to welcome warmly into a group. When the gangs 'caressed' Winship, they were not being tender; they were courting his agility and daring for their own profit. Chariot: not the ancient two-wheeled war vehicle. In Georgian England a chariot was a light, enclosed carriage for one or two passengers, often privately owned. It signals wealth; if you are riding in a chariot, you are worth robbing. The Ordinary: the chaplain of Newgate Prison, whose official duty was to minister to condemned prisoners. He also had a sideline that would raise eyebrows today: publishing accounts of their confessions and lives for public sale. When Winship refuses to confess to the Ordinary, he is refusing to feed both the man's spiritual office and his printing press. Suffered: in modern English, to suffer is to endure pain. In this text, it simply means 'allowed' or 'permitted'; youths are 'suffered to live' in idleness means they are let alone to do nothing. The word carried no implication of agony, only of passive tolerance. Divers: nothing to do with swimming. This is an old form of 'diverse,' meaning various or several. When Winship is said to have been concerned in 'divers gangs,' the word paints a picture of a man drifting between criminal circles, never settling, always available. Run distracted: to go mad, to lose one's reason from grief or shock. It is a vivid phrase; the mind does not simply crack, it runs, as if sanity were a thing that bolts from the body and cannot be caught again. 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

  8. Jun 29

    Episode 007: Matthew Clark: The Cowardly Footpad Who Turned Killer

    Send us your Feedback Matthew Clark is the kind of figure who makes true crime so unsettling: not a mastermind, not a hardened villain, but a lazy, cowardly young man whose small vices compound into something monstrous. Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals introduces him as a creature formed entirely from the worst impulses of low life; idle, drunk, driven by lust, and too timid to commit even the crimes he plans. Born in St. Albans to parents of modest means, Clark squanders every opportunity placed before him. Dismissed from a gentleman's household for sheer incorrigibility, he drifts into roadside robbery on the heaths outside London; not from ambition, but because honest labour feels harder than the risk of the noose. The Georgian world Clark inhabits is one where cowardice and desperation make a volatile combination, and the roads between country and city are lined with gallows that watch every traveller pass. Dark Lexicon: Old words. Dark meaning.The past speaks its own dialect; here is what to listen for in this episode. Footpad: a robber who works on foot, as opposed to a highwayman who attacks from horseback. The footpad was considered the lowest and most contemptible breed of thief; lacking even the theatrical swagger of the mounted robber, he was simply a desperate figure lurking in hedgerows and waiting for someone weaker to come along. Meaner sort: nothing to do with cruelty here. In eighteenth century usage, 'mean' referred to lowly social standing or humble circumstances. The 'meaner sort' were the poor and labouring classes; the ones Georgian writers worried most about when it came to moral corruption. Passengers: today we think of someone sitting in a vehicle, but in this era a passenger was simply anyone passing along a road on foot, horseback, or in a coach. Every passenger on a lonely heath was a potential victim; every stretch of road between towns was a hunting ground. Junketting: feasting, merrymaking, carousing. The word 'junket' still survives in modern English, usually meaning a lavish trip at someone else's expense, but in Clark's day it was rawer and more physical: drinking bouts, dancing, and the reckless spending of stolen money on fleeting pleasures. The matrimonial maggot bit his brain: a wonderfully vivid eighteenth century expression. A 'maggot' in this context was a whim or a sudden foolish fancy; the image is of a parasitic idea burrowing into a person's thoughts and driving them to irrational action. When the matrimonial maggot bit Clark, it meant the notion of marriage seized hold of him like a fever. Timorous: fearful, easily frightened. Still in use today but far less common, it perfectly captures Clark's defining trait: a man who plans violence but whose own cowardice keeps undoing him, at least until desperation finally overwhelms his fear. Jocose: playful, humorous, given to joking. The word carries a warmth and ease that makes its use in this story deeply chilling; Clark sits laughing and flirting with a woman he is already planning to kill. Made a shift: managed with difficulty, barely succeeded. In this account, the phrase describes a dying woman's final desperate effort; she 'made a shift to mutter his name,' meaning she barely managed to speak it through a wound that should have silenced her entirely. 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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Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals is a true crime podcast unlike any other; because every word of it was written nearly 300 years ago.  Each week, we read aloud one chapter from a remarkable book first published in London in 1735: a sprawling collection of murderers, highwaymen, coiners, housebreakers, pirates and worse, recorded in vivid and unsparing detail.  The crimes are real. The voices are authentic. And the world they reveal, brutal, strange, and surprisingly familiar, has been waiting three centuries to be heard again. True crime did not begin with podcasts. It began here by the burning light of a candle.

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