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. 1d ago

    Episode 018: James Shaw: Highwayman and Murderer of the Hampstead Road

    Send us your Feedback James 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

  2. Sep 7

    Episode 017: John Smith: The Soldier Who Pulled the Trigger

    Send us your Feedback John Smith is a man shaped by war; bold, fierce, and trained to violence on the battlefields of Flanders, he returns to civilian life carrying a soldier's instincts into a world that has no place for them. Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals preserves his story as one of the most compact and unsettling true crime accounts of the early eighteenth century: a decorated veteran who squanders his pay and drifts toward theft and rage. There is something volatile inside him that the wars merely sharpened. Discharged from military and naval service alike, he arrives in London with empty pockets, a jealous temper, and a loaded pistol he is not afraid to use. What waits for a man like Smith, once the machinery of Georgian justice catches his scent, is a question the age answered without hesitation. Dark Lexicon: Old words. Dark meaning.The past speaks its own dialect; here is what to listen for in this episode. Trusses: not medical supports or roof beams as we might think today. In a military context, trusses were bundles of forage or provisions gathered for horses and troops. When the captain's party was 'obliged to leave their trusses behind them,' they were abandoning their supplies under enemy pressure; a small humiliation that sets up Smith's reckless act of bravery. Livery: today the word conjures up stables or taxi hire, but in the eighteenth century livery meant the distinctive uniform or clothing worn by a servant or soldier to mark who they belonged to. Smith's yellow livery becomes a kind of disguise; its colour just plausible enough to pass among French troops at a distance. Walloon: the French dialect spoken in the southern provinces of the Low Countries, what is now Belgium. Smith spoke it badly enough to sound like a native Frenchman, which is a wonderfully backhanded compliment; his incompetence in the language was, paradoxically, his camouflage. Clapping: nothing to do with applause. To clap something in this era meant to place it swiftly and forcefully. Smith 'clapped a gag in his mouth' and later 'clapped a pistol to her breast'; the word carries an almost percussive violence, a sudden sharp motion. Fray: a noisy disturbance or fight, from the old word 'affray.' Today we might say a brawl or a commotion. The word still echoes in legal language, where an affray remains a public order offence, but in Smith's London it was simply what happened when a man waved a pistol in a crowded room. Lewd women: Smith uses this phrase repeatedly and it does not merely mean sexually immoral. In the eighteenth century, lewd carried a broader sense of wicked, base, or disreputable. Smith blames these women for his downfall; whether they deserve the charge is another matter entirely. Sessions at the Old Bailey: the periodic sittings of London's central criminal court, held roughly eight times a year. Being convicted 'at the next sessions' meant the wheels of justice turned with startling speed; there was little delay between arrest and trial in Georgian England. 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 31

    Episode 016: John Jones: The Young Pickpocket of Holborn

    Send us your Feedback John Jones is barely a man when he stumbles into the trade that will define him. As Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals recounts, he is a boy raised with too much tenderness and too little discipline; a creature of idleness born in Holborn to parents who indulge every whim, hoping the flaws will simply fall away with age. They never do. Refused by every honest trade and cut off by his own family, Jones drifts into a London underworld where true crime begins not with malice but with boredom, poverty, and the wrong friend met at the wrong hour. The city he moves through is dense with bodies and opportunity, and the distance between a restless young man and a condemned one is terrifyingly short. 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 survives mainly in legal documents and old novels, sounding almost quaint. In the eighteenth century it carried real weight; it simply meant a criminal, an evildoer, someone who had done wrong in the eyes of the law. When the text calls Jones a malefactor, it is not decorating him with drama; it is classifying him the way a court clerk would. Put him out upon liking: this phrase describes a trial arrangement where a young person was placed with a tradesman on a probationary basis before formal apprenticeship papers were signed. Think of it as a working interview that could last weeks. If the boy and the master suited each other, an apprenticeship followed; if not, the boy was sent home. Jones, of course, found fault with every one. Reluctancy: an older form of what we now call reluctance. It meant the same thing; an unwillingness or hesitation. The longer, slightly clumsier version was common in Georgian prose and has since been quietly trimmed by usage. Blind alehouse: not a pub for the visually impaired. A blind alehouse was a disreputable drinking den, often unlicensed, tucked away in a back lane or cellar where it could operate out of sight of authorities. The word 'blind' here means hidden or obscure; the kind of place where criminal business could be discussed without being overheard. Pocket: in this context, a pocket is not part of a garment but a separate pouch tied around the waist beneath the skirts. Women carried their valuables in these detachable bags, which is why pickpockets and cutpurses targeted them specifically. To 'whip off her pocket' meant to cut or snatch this pouch away from her body entirely. By-alley: a narrow side passage off a main street; what we might now call an alleyway or a back lane. In Georgian London these cramped passages were everywhere, providing escape routes for thieves and cover for all manner of dark transactions. Capital in its nature: this phrase means the crime carried the death penalty. In the eighteenth century, a staggering number of offences were capital; theft above a certain value, pickpocketing, housebreaking, even shoplifting could send a person to the gallows. The phrase sounds clinical, almost bureaucratic, but what it really says is: this will cost you your life. Sessions: the regular sittings of a criminal court, particularly the Old Bailey sessions held roughly every six weeks in London. Being 'condemned at the next sessions' meant the wheels of justice turned quickly; there was no long wait on death row in the modern sense. Your trial came around with the calendar, and so did your 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

  4. Aug 24

    Episode 015: Nathaniel Hawes: The Young Highwayman of Finchley Common

    Send us your Feedback Nathaniel Hawes is barely out of his apprenticeship when he begins stealing from his master's cash box, a slow slide from mischief into something far darker. Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals presents him as one of those young men who mistakes recklessness for courage; a Norfolk grazier's orphan who falls into expensive company and never finds his way back out. Among the true crime figures of early Georgian England, Hawes stands out not for cunning or calculation but for sheer, blistering nerve. He is sprightly, sharp, and utterly convinced that boldness alone can carry a man through any danger the world throws at him. The roads around London are about to learn what that kind of conviction looks like on horseback, and the courts of justice are waiting to answer it in kind. Dark Lexicon: Old words. Dark meaning.The past speaks its own dialect; here is what to listen for in this episode. Grazier: today the word barely registers, but in the eighteenth century a grazier was a substantial farmer who fattened cattle or sheep for market. It carried weight; a rich grazier meant a man of real rural prosperity, the kind whose estate might be worth fighting over after his death. Put him out apprentice: this phrase describes the common practice of placing a young person with a master tradesman to learn a craft, usually for seven years. It was less a choice than a transaction; guardians paid a premium to bind the child, and the master gained cheap labour in return. Good parts: nothing to do with physique. In Georgian speech, to say a man had 'good parts' meant he was clever, quick witted, and naturally talented. It was a compliment that made his criminal waste of those gifts all the more pointed. Runners of the prison: these were low ranking servants or turnkeys who fetched and carried within the gaol, running errands for both keepers and inmates. They occupied a murky space; paid poorly by the system, often tipped by prisoners, and rarely trusted by either side. Crow: today we might say crowbar, but in the early 1700s the tool was simply called a crow. It referred to any iron bar with a flattened, slightly curved end used to prise things apart; in this case, stones from a prison roof. Stays: what we now call a corset. Stays were stiffened undergarments worn by women to shape the torso, but the rigid boning also created hidden channels and flat surfaces perfect for concealing tools, cord, or contraband against the body. Sentence of the press: this is the legal term for peine forte et dure, a grim procedure in which heavy weights were placed on the chest of a prisoner who refused to enter a plea. It was not punishment for the crime itself; it was punishment for silence, designed to force the accused to submit to the court's authority. Mute: in a courtroom context, standing mute did not simply mean staying quiet. It meant formally refusing to plead guilty or not guilty, which halted the trial entirely. The law treated this refusal as a kind of defiance so dangerous it required its own brutal remedy. Profligate: the word still exists but has softened over time. Today it suggests wasteful spending; in the 1720s it carried a heavier moral charge, meaning utterly dissolute, abandoned to vice, and beyond the reach of shame. 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. Aug 17

    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

  6. 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

  7. 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

  8. 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

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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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