The Life of JAMES HOW, alias HARRIS, a notorious Highwayman and Thief

Though, generally speaking, the old saying holds true that nobody becomes superlatively wicked at once, yet it may be also averred that a long and habitual course of vice at last so hardens the soul that no warnings are sufficient, no dangers so frightful, nor reflections so strong as to overcome lewd inclinations, when their strength has become increased by a long unrestrained indulgence.

The criminal of whom we are now to speak was a native of the town of Windsor, in the county of Berks.  His parents were honest people in middling circumstances, who yet took such care of his education that he was fit for any business to which he would have applied himself.  But he, on the contrary, continuing to lead a lazy and indolent course of life, sauntering from one place to another, and preferring want and idleness to industry and labour, at last became so burdensome to his relations that with much ado they sent him to sea.  There being of a robust constitution and of a bold, daring spirit, he quickly gained some preferment in the ship on board of which he sailed and might possibly have done very well if he had continued at sea for any time, having the good luck to serve on board the admiral’s vessel, and to be taken notice of as a sprightly young fellow, capable of coming to good.

But alas!  James soon blasted this prospect of good fortune, for no sooner was he on shore than laying aside all the views he had formed of rising in the Navy, he associated himself with some of his old companions.  They persuaded him to take a purse, as the shortest and easiest method of supporting those expenses into which his inclinations for sensual pleasures naturally plunged him.  He too easily listened to their persuasions and from that time forward he left nothing unstolen upon which he could lay his fingers.

Punishment did not pursue his crimes with a leaden pace; on the contrary, he had scarce offended ere she made him sensible of the offences.  Bridewells, prisons, duckings, lashings, and beatings of hemp were made familiar to him by his running through them several times in the space of a few years.  At length, as he increased the guilt of his crimes, so he added to the weight of his sufferings; for after having been at Newgate several times for lesser offences, he was at last committed for a felony, and being convicted thereof, was ordered for transportation.  Rightly conceiving that if he was carried into the Plantations he would be obliged to work very hard, which he most dreaded, in order to escape he forged a letter as from a certain man of quality directing that he should be set at liberty in order to serve as a good hand on board of one of his Majesty’s ships.  His old ill luck pursuing him, the forgery was detected and he was thereupon ordered to remain two years at hard labour in Bridewell; but when he was brought thither, the keeper absolutely refused to have anything to do with him.  They knew him of old and said that he was a fellow only fit to make the other criminals who were there unruly, by projecting and putting them into way of making their escape.  Upon this he was carried back to Newgate and remained a prisoner for that space of time.