On the misty evening of 20 October 1779, a traveller named John Staples stopped a carriage on the London road, pistol in hand and bravado in voice. What followed was swift, absurd, and utterly Georgian: a highway robbery gone wrong.
The crime
Staples, a man of about twenty-five, had taken to the highway armed with a flintlock pistol and a hungry purse. His chosen victim was John Vass, a clerk carrying several shillings and a watch.
As the indictment read:
“John Staples was indicted for making an assault upon John Vass, upon the King’s highway, putting him in corporal fear and danger of his life, and feloniously taking from his person one watch and certain monies.”
Vass testified that the attack was almost theatrical.
Vass: “He cried out ‘Stand and deliver!’ and I, thinking him in jest, said, ‘You are a bold one, sir.’ But then he levelled the pistol.”
Prosecutor: “Did you resist?”
Vass: “I gave him the watch. He thanked me for it, and rode off at a gallop.”
The pursuit
Unfortunately for Staples, a patrol of constables was only a field away. They pursued him through the hedgerows, the sound of hoofbeats echoing down the turnpike. When they caught him, the watch was still in his pocket and the pistol primed.
Constable: “He begged that I not take him to the watch-house, saying he had only meant to frighten the gentleman.”
Judge: “A strange jest with a loaded pistol.”
The trial and sentence
At the Old Bailey, Staples faced the full weight of 18th-century law. Robbery on the highway was a capital offence, and juries knew it. The prisoner pleaded for mercy, insisting he had been “drunk and desperate.”
The jury deliberated briefly and returned a guilty verdict.
Judge: “You have taken to a practice which strikes at the peace of all travellers. The sentence of the law is that you be hanged by the neck until you are dead. May God have mercy upon your soul.”
Execution followed at Tyburn within the month — one of the last years before the gallows would move permanently to Newgate.
Why this mattered
The case of John Staples shows how fear and fascination surrounded highway robbery at the end of the 18th century. Once romanticised, by 1779 it had become a dying trade — driven to extinction by better roads, armed patrols, and the certainty of the noose.
Staples’ brief adventure marks the twilight of the English highwayman, when pistols still glinted under lantern light and every coachman’s heart leapt at the cry of “Stand and deliver!”
Source
R v. John Staples (t17791020-13), tried at the Old Bailey on 20 October 1779 for violent theft, highway robbery. Verdict: Guilty. Sentence: Death (execution at Tyburn).
Old Bailey Proceedings Online
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