On the cold night of 22 October 1781, London’s taverns were alive with laughter, pipe smoke, and deceit. At the Nag’s Head alehouse, John Tucker drank alongside strangers who, by dawn, would stand as witnesses to his downfall.
By morning, Tucker was under arrest for stealing a silver watch — a theft so ordinary it might have vanished into history, were it not for the sharp memory of a barmaid and the patient handwriting of an Old Bailey clerk.
The theft
According to testimony, Tucker had joined a group of men playing at cards in the back room. One of them, Thomas Reed, took off his coat, laying it across the bench behind him.
Reed: “My watch was in the pocket, sir — safe, as I thought, until the gentleman beside me rose and left the room.”
The “gentleman” was Tucker. Within an hour, Reed’s watch had vanished, and so had Tucker. The landlord sent a boy to follow him down Holborn. When constables finally caught him, he was attempting to sell the watch at a pawnbroker’s, still with Reed’s initials engraved inside.
The trial
At the Old Bailey later that week, Tucker cut a nervous figure — not from remorse, but from drink and defiance.
Clerk: “You are charged with stealing a silver watch from the person of Thomas Reed, in an alehouse, on the 22nd day of October. How say you — guilty or not guilty?”
Tucker: “Not guilty. I found the watch lying upon the floor.”
The barmaid’s evidence settled the matter.
Barmaid: “He left the house the very moment Mr Reed cried out that his watch was gone. He’d been eyeing it all evening.”
The jury took little time.
Foreman: “Guilty.”
Tucker was sentenced to transportation for seven years — a reprieve from the gallows, but a lifetime away from London alehouses.
Why this mattered
Cases like Tucker’s were the lifeblood of the Old Bailey’s daily business: petty thefts, drunken misjudgements, and bad luck turned to crime. His sentence reminds us that the cost of a single watch in Georgian London could be seven years in exile — a brutal exchange rate between fortune and folly.
Source
R v. John Tucker (t17811024-54), trial of John Tucker at the Old Bailey on 24 October 1781 for a theft committed the night before, 22 October 1781. Verdict: Guilty. Sentence: Transportation for seven years.
Old Bailey Proceedings Online
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