The Highwayman Who Returned to Watch His Victim – and the Boy Who Broke His Mother’s Heart
On 9th November 1722, two young men faced the ultimate punishment for robbery in Georgian London. One was a hardened and apparently fearless highwayman who had terrorised travellers around Westminster. The other was a homesick Irish teenager whose troubled life had led him from Dublin to Oxford and eventually to the gallows.
Their names were William Marr and John Quin.
Both had been convicted at the Old Bailey, and both featured in the Ordinary of Newgate’s Account, the chaplain’s published record of the condemned prisoners’ lives, confessions and preparations for death.
Yet their stories could hardly have been more different.
William Marr: A Highwayman Before His Twentieth Birthday
William Marr was not yet twenty years old when he faced execution.
Born into circumstances that offered at least some prospect of a respectable future, Marr had an uncle of considerable wealth who traded with India, China and Persia.
The young man apparently hoped that his uncle’s influence might secure him employment overseas, perhaps as a commercial agent or factor.
His uncle, however, had reservations.
Marr had already demonstrated a troublesome disposition, telling lies, fighting with other boys and generally behaving badly. Rather than expose him to the temptations of a life at sea, his uncle arranged an apprenticeship with a goldsmith in Wapping.
It was not a success.
Marr quarrelled with neighbours, fought other apprentices and admitted becoming too familiar with someone in his master’s household. His treatment subsequently deteriorated, and he abandoned his apprenticeship before completing his term.
Instead, he went to sea.
A Sailor with a Taste for Danger
Marr’s seafaring adventures took him to France, the Mediterranean, Messina and Sicily.
He claimed to be exceptionally hardy, able to endure terrible weather on deck with his waistcoat unbuttoned, his chest exposed and neither stockings nor shoes upon his feet.
Ship captains apparently valued his strength and willingness to undertake difficult duties.
But his dishonesty followed him aboard.
When questioned by the Ordinary, Marr admitted stealing small articles from fellow sailors, although he claimed that only once had a captain discovered his behaviour.
According to Marr, the captain overlooked the offence because of his exceptional work.
Within a year of leaving the sea, however, Marr had embarked upon a much more dangerous occupation.
He had become a highway robber.
A Lady Who Refused to Be Intimidated
One of Marr’s most extraordinary confessions concerned a robbery behind Buckingham House, the predecessor of today’s Buckingham Palace.
It was night-time, the roads were poor, and Marr stopped a hackney coach containing a gentleman and a lady.
He ordered the gentleman out of the carriage.
But the woman was not easily frightened.
She boldly informed Marr that although he might consider himself a gentleman of the road, she knew London just as well as he did, and he had made a poor choice of victims.
Marr responded by threatening her with his pistol.
The gentleman promptly climbed out, and Marr relieved him of approximately £10, a watch, a ring and other valuables.
He searched the lady for jewellery but found nothing worth stealing.
He subsequently claimed that he had allowed her to go unharmed because he believed her to be a woman of pleasure.
Whether this was genuine restraint or simply a convenient explanation is impossible to know.
The Highwayman Who Joined the Crowd
Perhaps the most remarkable incident in Marr’s account occurred later that same night.
Around midnight, he robbed another gentleman near Whitehall, forcing him through a gate into the Privy Garden.
Having taken what little the man possessed, Marr pushed him back through the gate and shut it.
The unfortunate victim began shouting for help.
Marr fled through King Street.
But instead of disappearing into the darkness, he did something extraordinarily audacious.
He returned to the scene of the robbery.
A crowd had gathered around the victim, including two sentinels and a soldier.
Marr quietly joined the spectators, peering over their shoulders to observe the commotion he had caused.
Nobody recognised him.
He then walked away, apparently entirely unnoticed.
It was an astonishing display of nerve, particularly from someone still in his teens.
Pistols in St Martin’s Lane
Marr’s adventures became increasingly reckless.
On another evening, he robbed a pedestrian of his hat, wig and money before joining companions who had learned that several ladies of rank would be travelling from Kensington to St James’s.
The gang waited near Piccadilly, hoping to intercept their coaches.
Their plan failed when the carriages crossed from one park into another, avoiding the intended ambush.
Marr then continued towards St Martin’s Lane, where he robbed another gentleman of approximately thirty shillings.
This time, however, his victim raised the alarm.
A crowd pursued him through the streets.
Marr turned into a court, only to discover that it was a dead end.
Trapped, he turned to face his pursuers, holding a pistol in each hand.
Someone struck his left arm with a heavy stick, causing him to drop one pistol, which discharged as it hit the ground.
Marr fired the other.
The crowd scattered.
Once again, he escaped.
Even a Highwayman Had His Limits
Marr also described an encounter involving an associate known as Casey the Soldier.
The two men and another companion were standing near a wall in Whitehall when Marr spotted a potential victim.
He suggested that they rob the approaching man.
Before Marr could act, Casey knocked the stranger to the ground.
Marr claimed to have been furious.
He protested that he was perfectly capable of robbing someone without murdering them.
He then walked away from his companions.
It is an extraordinary distinction for a man who routinely threatened people with loaded pistols, but it reveals something of the peculiar moral boundaries Marr wished to present to the prison chaplain.
Of course, these were Marr’s own accounts, and we cannot independently establish every detail.
The Robbery That Finally Brought Him Down
For all his elaborate adventures, Marr’s eventual conviction concerned a comparatively modest robbery.
On the evening of 21st September 1722, Michael Paxton was walking between the Horse Guards and the Admiralty Office in Westminster.
At approximately eight o’clock, someone knocked him to the ground and stole his hat, worth five shillings, and his cane, also valued at five shillings.
Marr was subsequently apprehended.
When Paxton visited him in custody, Marr admitted the robbery but begged him not to prosecute, claiming that he intended to provide evidence against other criminals.
There was a second charge.
Earlier that same evening, Marr had stolen a laced hat worth four shillings from the shop of Mary Sedgwick.
The stolen hat was recovered at the guardhouse.
Constable Thomas Walker testified that Marr had admitted both offences.
Marr attempted to undermine the confession by claiming that he had been drunk when he made it.
The witnesses disputed this.
The jury found him guilty.
His extensive history of highway robbery, much of it revealed through his own subsequent confessions, now stood in stark contrast to the relatively small value of the property involved in his conviction.
John Quin: The Homesick Boy from Ireland
The second condemned prisoner, John Quin, presented a very different picture.
He was not yet eighteen.
Born approximately eight miles from Dublin, Quin was the son of a dairyman who had ensured that he received an education.
After his father’s death, his mother apprenticed him to a tailor.
But Quin was desperately homesick.
He repeatedly ran away from his apprenticeship, sometimes spending entire nights in the streets in the hope that his mother would become worried and bring him home.
She did.
She arranged another apprenticeship, but the same pattern continued.
Before she could find him a third occupation, she died.
Quin later reflected bitterly upon his behaviour, believing that the distress he had caused his mother might have contributed to his eventual misfortunes.
There were also family difficulties involving his sister, whose relationship with a gentleman had apparently caused their mother considerable unhappiness.
After his mother’s death, Quin received only £7 of the £60 he said she had left.
Eventually, he decided to seek out his brother, who was serving as a soldier in England.
Travelling with a group of Chelsea pensioners, he crossed to England and eventually found employment in Oxford, looking after horses belonging to the butler of Queen’s College.
He remained there for approximately two years.
Later, he moved to London and found work assisting builders.
But his life was about to take a disastrous turn.
Three Shillings and a Death Sentence
On 4th October 1722, at approximately seven o’clock in the evening, Rebecca Carter was walking in Oxendon Street.
Quin assaulted her, knocking her to the ground and snatching her pocket containing three shillings.
In the eighteenth century, women’s pockets were often separate fabric pouches tied beneath their clothing rather than sewn into garments.
Quin was convicted of the robbery and condemned to death.
The amount stolen was small, but robbery involving violence was treated with extreme severity.
While awaiting execution, Quin insisted that he had not previously been involved in criminal behaviour.
He struggled to understand how his life had reached such a dreadful conclusion.
Eventually, he attributed his fate to his treatment of his mother.
The Ordinary recorded that Quin appeared serious and earnest in his religious preparations, asking questions about the sacrament and what awaited him after death.
For a young man who had spent much of his childhood running away from home, there would be no final return.
Two Young Lives, Two Very Different Stories
The Ordinary’s account presents Marr as a bold, experienced criminal who had repeatedly escaped capture, while Quin appears as a vulnerable and unsettled young man whose actions ultimately brought him before the same unforgiving justice system.
Marr had robbed travellers at gunpoint, threatened pursuers and boasted of his extraordinary escapes.
Quin had stolen three shillings from a woman in a London street.
Both were condemned.
Their crimes were not identical, but the law treated violent robbery as a capital offence, regardless of whether the property stolen was particularly valuable.
The Ordinary recorded Marr’s intention to make his peace with God before death, while Quin appeared deeply troubled by memories of his mother.
The account leaves us with two strikingly different portraits of young men facing the consequences of their actions.
The Sage’s Reflection
There is something particularly unsettling about the ages of these two prisoners.
William Marr had not yet reached twenty. John Quin was not yet eighteen.
Marr’s story reads almost like a Georgian adventure novel, filled with pistols, daring escapes, night-time robberies and astonishing acts of bravado.
Quin’s story is quieter and infinitely sadder.
He had spent his childhood longing for home, only to discover, after his mother’s death, that the home he wanted no longer existed.
Yet both ended up in Newgate, awaiting the same punishment.
Perhaps the most revealing contrast is that Marr seemed to have spent much of his short life running towards danger, while Quin had spent his running away from responsibility.
One returned to the scene of his own robbery to watch the spectacle. The other looked back towards his childhood and the mother he had repeatedly disappointed.
Both stories remind us how little room Georgian criminal justice sometimes allowed for the distinction between an established violent offender and a young man convicted of a single desperate act.
Historical Footnote – Why Could Robbery Lead to the Gallows?
In 1722, robbery involving violence or intimidation was a capital offence under English law.
Unlike some forms of theft, highway robbery was generally excluded from the protection of benefit of clergy, the legal privilege that could spare certain offenders from execution.
Consequently, even relatively modest robberies could result in a death sentence.
The Ordinary’s Account dated 9th November 1722 discusses both Marr and Quin as condemned prisoners preparing for death. Although the account refers to Marr’s approaching execution, the extracts supplied do not independently describe the execution itself.
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