Read Ill Met by Gaslight: Five Edinburgh Murders for Free Online Page B

would promise his parents to remain with them and resume trade. The promises were made in faith and sincerity. Only somehow, when the fear of death receded, his naturally blithe spirit re-asserted itself; the contrast between drab respectability and the pleasures and excitement of the sporting life was too marked. `When I recovered, all thoughts of repentance soon left my mind.’ Still, for a time at least, it was useful to have parents who could provide a base for convalescence and a respectable alibi also. This is something professional criminals are usually swift to learn: the value of safe houses.
    David however was too full of levity to set a proper value on this, just as he soon neglected the old rule that the fox does not rob in his own backyard. Instead he worked harder and faster in Edinburgh and Leith than anywhere else. In February 1820 for example he committed ten crimes in eight days in Leith; no wonder that he should have decided that the town was `a pretty good place for a few adventures’. His speciality there was housebreaking. `I generally entered the houses in Leith by forcing in the small window above the outer doors. This was an invention of my own, but it is now so common that I mention it to put families on their guard.’
    His rate of criminal activity was so great that his luck was bound to run out. Captain Ross of the Leith Police had his eye on him. No doubt there was somebody ready to inform. In those days, before the arrival of scientific aids to detection, the police were even more dependent on informers than they are now. Captain Brown of the Edinburgh Police made this quite clear, defending his establishment of a secret fund to buy information. Few criminals indeed would have been convicted only those caught red-handed or with the proceeds of their robbery on them - but for the existence of this useful and despised body of men.
    Ross and his constables apprehended Haggart in his lodgings in Johnston Street, North Leith. He put up a struggle, and is kind enough in his Memoirs to commend the ‘humanity’ displayed by Sergeant Thorn in the course of the arrest. Haggart’s career shows clearly enough how police and criminals had, and still have, much in common. It wasn’t only in fiction that thief-catchers and thieves talked the same language, a language that often excluded those not immediately concerned with criminal activity. And Haggart kept meeting the same policemen - Captain Brown and Ross as well as the persistent John Richardson. Clearly they had also numerous acquaintance in common who were ready enough to tip either side the wink, as seemed most expedient.
    This time however David broke out of Leith jail and immediately `went upon the hoys and got about twelve yards of superfine blue cloth’. This wasn’t the foolish or incorrigible act it might first appear. David had resolved prudently to get out of Edinburgh for a time; the journey had to be financed, and there was no other means of doing so. He was off to the Borders again, heading for Dumfries by way of a cattle show at Kelso. In Dumfries he was delighted to come upon Barney again, but his time the joy was short-lived, Barney being snatched by the ubiquitous and tireless Richardson. His luck was finally exhausted. He got, `a free passage to Botany Bay for a fourteen stretch. He was a choice spirit and a good friend to me. We spent many a joyous merry hour together, for I had no thought and no sorrow till I lost Barney.’ The elegaic note is irresistible.
    The pace could not last. David himself was soon captured again, and had no longer the advantage of anonymity. Instead he had risen to the status of a wanted man. This time he could not hope for a mere brief spell of imprisonment such as an earlier one when Captain Brown had sent him to The Planting for four months. (He had been put in charge of the young prisoners there - `I had a rope for punishing them and I never spared the use of it’, he records, a note which does