YOUR MONEY OR YOUR….

They’ve inspired legend, folklore, Adam Ant’s 1981 classic (sorry if you’re singing along already, it’s been stuck in our heads for days!), hilarious Horrible Histories sketches, and a whirl of Victorian fiction, fantasy and fandom….

But what were those highwaymen all about? Where did those legends start? Did they ever roam the lanes of Lichfield? And, along with the ‘footpads’ (fellow crims but on foot), were they really anything more than ye olde equivalent of muggers, carjackers & armed robbers….?

We’re back in the 1600s-1800s, when highwaymen dashed along tracks and turnpike roads, and skulked across heaths and commons. For travellers, for many decades, a pistol poking through their coach window was a very real fear, and their resulting experiences traumatic.

Remarkably, a nationally notorious highwayman was born right here in Lichfield: Jack Withers. Jack’s Dad was a butcher in town. Jack did his training and had a go at butchery here too, but quit and, after a time in the army, Jack hit the road, did some ‘miraculous’ thievery in Ghent (we need to come back to that story, it so deserves a post of its own….), and started attacking folk on roads back in England.

But all that ended with his apprehension for the robbery and (horrifically) vicious murder of a penny postman just outside London. On 16th April 1703, Jack was sent to his death, and, on reaching the gallows, Lichfield’s very own highwayman confessed to his grisly ghastly deeds.

Around our city and close by, other scarily noteworthy incidents brought the scourge of the highwaymen close to home, of which the following are just a few examples….

Way back on 27th April 1586, William Comberford was attacked by ‘Little Neddy’, aka Edward Stevenson, at Shenstone, who stole £72, an expensive gold ring and his sword.

(We’ll post a link in the comments to friend of LD Rev Patrick Comerford’s excellent blog page, which includes lots of fascinating Lichfield and family history. )

In 1703, the High Sheriff of Staffordshire, and his family and servants, were ambushed on the way from Lichfield Fair. The gang, with a record of bloody attacks in recent weeks, disappeared off with 60 Guineas and one of the poor servants had their hand chopped off….

The miscreants were later captured: they were a gang of nine, three of whom turned out to be women dressed as men.

Lichfield folk travelling further afield were waylaid, including Rev Archer, one of the prebendaries at our cathedral, who was robbed by a highwayman in Warwickshire in 1748, and had 25 guineas and a gold watch stolen.

While highwaymen took to horses, footpads were their pedestrian equivalents, who often managed to stop carriages and victims on horseback too.

One such incident was on Hopwas Hill in the cold January of 1793, when in the gloom of dusk amidst those deep dark foreboding trees, a Mr Heath, heading from Lichfield to Tamworth, was attacked by two pistol-wielding assailants. A pistol went off, his horse bolted, galloped up the road and threw Heath to the ground. Luckily, he managed to outrun his attackers and hid in nearby fields – perhaps in what are the now pig-packed fields of Packington.

Just to the north of Lichfield, in 1788, a Bartholomew Clay of Elmhurst had been held up by a footpad, had a pistol held against his head, and had such a considerable amount of money stolen that he took to the press to offer Twenty Pounds ‘over and above what is allowed by act of parliament’ for information leading to an arrest.

But supposed ‘footpads’ were often little more than petty street criminals, including a young William Cobb, who in 1764 attacked a Thomas Hurdman of Alrewas outside St Michael’s Churchyard on Greenhill. Caught by a constable, he wriggled free by sliding out of his coat and ran away in just a linen frock, only to be caught again and transported for his crimes the following year.

What about the dandiness of the real highwaymen, their supposed dashing fashions, and odd sense of honour…? Was all that just a later fanciful invention?

It certainly doesn’t seem to be…

There’s an extraordinary example of supposedly ‘gentlemen’ robbers here in Lichfield, five of whom attacked the Marquis of Donegal’s coach & horses on the Kings Bromley Road in January 1795. They assured his riders that they were ‘gentlemen’, and after pocketing the Marquis’s pistols, gold watch, gold chains, seals and ten guineas in cash, ‘politely bade his Lordship farewell and made off’.

We’ve found a striking description of a dandy highwayman too, who it’s thought had galloped his way (apparently on a very sweaty horse…) towards Lichfield after an attack between Eccleshall and Stone:

‘… a middle sized man, apparently about 30 years of age, a robust complexion; had on a pepper and salt coloured coat, new leather breeches, a shirt with a deep frill and stand-up collar, beautifully worked with a needle, had with him a pair of saddle bags nearly new, and rode a brown blood mare about 15 hands high, and by him robbed of about 34/ in bills and 8 guineas in gold.’

There are plenty of examples of highwaymen being portrayed as ‘romantic’ figures too, notably Claude Duval, who was said to have danced with a noble woman during a robbery on a heathland near London. We’ve included part of an 1860 painting depicting the scene at the end of this post. When Duval was captured, he, like so many highwaymen, was put to death, but in his case it’s said that many women supposedly pleaded (unsuccessfully) for him to be spared.

We’ll come back another time with more folklore and lurid legends about highwaymen in these parts, including a ‘famous beauty’ of a Lichfeldian landlady who was said to have been an ally of Dick Turpin, pubs that it’s been dubiously claimed that Turpin popped into for a pint, and the legend of Knox Grave Lane near Swinfen, long thought to have been named after a highwayman buried alongside…

So, we’ll leave you now, imagining dastardly deeds along Lichfield lanes, and humming that irksome Adam Ant earworm, but do watch out….

We’re thinking that Lichfield’s very own highwayman, notorious Jack Withers, might just make an appearance back on the streets of our city next year, along with a few other of Lichfield’s famous (and infamous) sons and daughters…. More on that soon too!

John T

(With a huge shout out to LD Katie and other LD researchers too )