Publisher Description

'Hold the mare for me, lad. And when I come back I'll give you a golden guinea.' It's more money than the street urchin has ever dreamt of. But who is the rider, and why is there so much interest in his big black horse? And will the boy ever see the money he has been promised? There's highway robbery in the air, but it isn't always entirely clear just who is trying to rob who . . . Stunningly illustrated and fast-paced, this story for younger readers brings to life the legend of the most famous highwayman of them - and his amazing horse.

Despite the frequency with which criminals were sentenced to death, crime was still on the rise in England in the mid-1700s. Men were thrown in jail daily for everything from associating with gypsies to cutting down fruit trees and stealing sheep. Although these were punishable offenses, the crimes that made headlines in the local papers were much more serious.Men—and sometimes even women—in England were tried and executed every day for their roles in murders, robberies, kidnappings, and more. This collection features some of the most notorious and slightly disturbing stories of the crimes committed and the subsequent punishments assigned. Criminals who appear in this book include: Catherine Hayes, burnt alive for the murder of her husband Thomas Lympus, executed for robbing the mail Reverend Wheatley, sentenced to public penance for adultery John Everett, sentenced to death for highway robbery Francis Smith, condemned to death for the murder of a supposed ghost Richard Turpin, executed for horse theft And many, many more Many of these tales were first published in The Newgate Calendar, a popular publication that debuted in multiple volumes between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Historians believed that every household had a copy of at least one volume of the Calendar, which they stored alongside their copies of the Bible and The Pilgrim’s Progress.

Covers the period from 1790 to 1905 in The Times of London.