Ladron

“ Violence and murder threaten at every turn. Through the narrow and filthy streets young noblemen, flown with wine, storm at midnight. When a robber chief is nailed through the hand to a door, his devoted followers hew off his arm and set him free. They capture girls for ransom, and sell them to panders. When one is troublesome, they propose to sew her up in the paunch of the yet living ass, and expose her to the mid-day sun. ”

“ One evening, a party of my companions carried me along with them, and, opening the door of a certain house, conveyed from thence some trunks, which a faithful dog perceiving, he gave the alarm. The people of the house attacked the robbers, who threw down their burdens to defend themselves: meanwhile, I skulked into a corner all trembling. The watch made their appearance, and seeing three trunks in the street, two men dangerously wounded, and myself standing at a small distance, they seized me as one concerned in the robbery. ”

“ Robbery and plunder became common, and that not only on the track of armies or the route of smaller bodies of soldiers, for bands of mere marauders, taking up the cry of the faction that happened in any neighbourhood to have the ascendancy, plundered houses, robbed travellers, and were guilty of all sorts of violence. ”

“ Should the people slumber when a gang of robbers, and devils, and assassins, and fiends of rapine, are thundering at the gates of the commercial emporium, and even at the very doors and firesides of our sacred domestic castles, and daily and hourly rob our coffers, and ravish our daughters, and cut our throats, in open day, and through their hellish robbery, and taxation, drive the mechanic and laborer, and their dear little ones, to hunger, and rags, and madness, and crime, and to the dungeon, or scaffold, [6] or suicide? ”

“ With a death-dealing pistol in each hand, they fired with incredible rapidity, and at each discharge an unfortunate wretch fell to rise no more. Terror-stricken, the robbers fled in every direction. Some were arrested in their flight by the unerring aim of the outlawed brothers; and some more fortunate escaped to the mountains with life only, everything being left behind in order that they might save it. ”

“ Robbery stories may include anything from petty thievery to bank defaulting. Some of the possibilities are horse and automobile stealing, burglary, hold-ups, train and street-car robbery, embezzlement, fraud, kidnapping, safe-cracking, shop and bank robbery. It is well for the reporter who has to cover a story of this class to acquaint himself with the distinctions that characterize the various kinds of robbery and the various names applied to the people who commit this sort of crime: e.g., robber, thief, bandit, burglar, hold-up man, thug, embezzler, defaulter, safe-cracker, pick-pocket. ”

“ Thieves that are saved by their books and clergy, for the first offence, if they have stolen nothing else but oxen, sheep, money, or such like, which be no open robberies, as by the highway side, or assailing of any man’s house in the night, without putting him in fear of his life, or breaking up his walls or doors, are burned in the left hand, upon the brawn of the thumb, with a hot iron, so that, if they be apprehended again, that mark betrayeth them to have been arraigned of felony before, whereby they are sure at that time to have no mercy. ”

“ The jailer, however, was a man accustomed to deal with emergencies. "You need not laugh," he said, "every thing shall go on as before, and I shall take no notice of the absence of your companions. You are now numbered One to Seventeen inclusive, and you stand charged with highway robbery, forgery, treason, smuggling, barn-burning, bribery, poaching, usury, piracy, witchcraft, assault and battery, using false weights and measures, burglary, counterfeiting, robbing hen-roosts, conspiracy, and poisoning your grandmother by proxy. ”

“ The weapons used by the robbers is a short thick club, slung stone balls, and knives. They seldom use fire-arms, but dread them. The savage, dissipated negro, or Peruvian robber, may come up bravely with his dagger, intent to commit murder; but let him hear the click of a revolver and he vanishes; the noise is offensive to him. Robbers waylay travelling merchants, lonely strangers, and trains of merchandise with loads of silver. The mules are turned from the road into a wild mountain gorge, where none but robbers live, and forever lost to the owner. ”

“ Robbery seems to be the fashion; on the one hand masked burglars with pistols at your heads and gags in the mouths of your wife and children, and on the other hypocritical, lying, false-swearing, thieving scoundrels who get your money under fair pretences, and because of your trust in their characters and good faith, and then waste it in speculations and in luxurious living. ”

“ On the night previous to your intended departure, a thief enters your house, takes possession of all you have, and makes off, and you never hear of it more. Or suppose you are already on your journey, and after many days of fatiguing travel, find yourself near the place of your destination; when you are met by the highwayman, who, with a pistol at your breast, robs you of your last farthing.—Now I suppose this would be a case, where theft and robbery would stand out in their worst features. ”

“ Their mode of life forces upon them the character of thieves, and all their waking moments are devoted to the one object of making a raid. Whether it be on the meat in the igloo or the storehouse, or the bag of blubber for the lamps, or the seal-skin clothing, it is all the same. They know from experience that the severest penalty will be enforced as a punishment for their offence but to them the pleasure of theft and the exquisite bliss of greasing their stomachs with a slice of blubber outweighs every other consideration. ”

“ Except for my sword, with the damask work upon its blade and the ivory-and-horn hilt, and the silver in my girdle, no thief would covet aught of mine. Indeed, I have found that thieves come oftener to seek the goods of merchants and to hold them to ransom, than they come to trouble an old physician who would fetch a small price as a slave. ”

“ Then she explained it all How robbers kill the little boys And torture them and break their toys. Robbers are always big and tall: I cried: I was so small. How a man often kills his wife, How every one dies in the end By fire, or water or a knife. If you're not careful in this life, Even if you can trust your friend, You won't have long to spend. ”

“ We have hanged not only the murderer, the ravisher, and the incendiary—​not only the burglar, the highwayman, and the forger, but the sheep-stealer, the petty thief who purloined a roll of cloth or a loaf of bread from a shop-counter. If any nation ought to know how to hang, it should assuredly be the English. ”

“ We were three days in climbing the mountains and clambering over the rocks—such as I hope not to see again. Its precipices were fearful. We would sometimes wind our way up or down the face of a mountain by paths cut in the side, over which a person might be let down many hundred feet by ropes. It was a volcanic country, and its conical peaks were surrounded for miles with scoria and pumice-stone, which tore the shoes from the feet of our animals, rendering it almost impossible to travel. This was a country fitted for the ladrones and guerillas. ”

“ Hardened murderers, thieves, and assassins were here associated with boys in their teens who were undergoing imprisonment for some trifling robbery. It was not pleasant to rub elbows with miscreants who lounged past, almost smiling defiance, whilst the slim warder, in his straw hat, shirt sleeves, and drawers told you how such a fellow had murdered his mother, how another had killed a policeman, or a third had destroyed no less than three persons in a few moments. ”

“ Sir, replied one of the domestics, will you listen to a robber, who enters people's houses to plunder and murder them? if you will not believe us, only look upon his back. Upon which they showed it to the judge, who, without any other information, immediately commanded one hundred lashes to be given him with a bull's pizzle over his shoulders, and caused him afterwards to be carried through the town on a camel, with one crying before him, Thus are such men punished as enter people's houses by force! ”

“ Robbers, frequently in the service of the lord of the land, infested every province. It was safest to don the coarse frieze tunic of the pilgrim, without pockets, sling your little wax tablets and style at your girdle, strap a wallet of bread and herbs and salt on your back, and laugh at the nervous folk who peeped out from their coaches over a hedge of pikes and daggers. ”

“ They serve their orders in the dark, as if they were ashamed of their deeds. They break doors at midnight, strangle the victim prior to interrogating him and, pistol at the belt, hunting knife in hand, line up quietly around the accused, hidden under the mysterious and sinister cape of the black-robed penitents. ”

“ The robber, who during the story had grown deadly white, sprang up, and would have escaped, but the folks held him fast, and delivered him up to justice. And he and his whole gang were, for their evil deeds, condemned and executed. ”

“ Now how is this corroborating Evidence to be obtained in this Case? Street Robberies are generally committed in the dark, the Persons on whom they are committed are often in Chairs and Coaches, and if on Foot, the Attack is usually begun by knocking the Party down, and for the Time depriving him of his Senses. But if the Thief should be less barbarous, he is seldom so incautious as to omit taking every Method to prevent his being known, by flapping the Party's Hat over his Face, and by every other Method which he can invent to avoid Discovery. ”

“ Among other Mischiefs attending this wretched Nuisance, the great Increase of Thieves must necessarily be one. The Wonder in fact is, that we have not a thousand more Robbers than we have; indeed, that all these Wretches are not Thieves, must give us either a very high Idea of their Honesty, or a very mean one of their Capacity and Courage.
Where then is the Redress? Is it not to hinder the Poor from wandering, and this by compelling the Parish and Peace Officers to apprehend such Wanderers or Vagabonds, and by empowering the Magistrate effectually to punish and send them to their Habitations? ”

“ You see, if a thief comes up to a man armed with a revolver, and demands the man's purse, the man produces that revolver, and the thief says, "Pass on, friend." If a thief who has stolen money meets the man he stole it from, or a policeman, and can pull out a revolver, then he can say to the man or the policeman, "Let me pass, or I will shoot you down;" ”

“ The robbers plan a dreadful punishment for the culprits: to kill the ass, disembowel him and sew the girl up alive in his paunch to die by slow torture. But before they achieve this horror, a company of soldiers arrives, captures the whole band and carries them off to a magistrate. ”

“ The fear inspired by our guns and revolvers was a protection against thieves; our skill in shooting birds on the wing, or bringing down antelope with the rifle at long distances, instilled into them a wholesome dread, and every robber knew that he would pay the penalty of his life if caught in the act of stealing. ”

“ Mothers, not venturing out on the stairs, cried down to those below to catch their children. Drunken men, suddenly roused, reeled fighting and blaspheming into the court. Thieves plied their trade even on their panic-stricken neighbours, and fell to blows over the plunder. ”

“ And if any of these low people commits a robbery, concerning which a complaint has been made to the king or to the governor, they send to take the robber, and if they find the thing stolen in his hands, or if he confess that he did it, if he is a Gentile, they take him to a place where they carry out executions, and there they set some high posts with sharp points and a small stand, through which passes one of those points ”

“ He is always on the firing line, always liable to lead a forlorn hope; the revolver of burglar or anarchist is always imminent, the stiletto of some murderous swarthy ruffian or the bludgeon of one of the gas-house or car-barn gang. ”

“ What do those reporters expect of a man? Do they want [288] him to shoot everybody in sight, cut the dog’s throat, carry out everything valuable, and burn the house down? Can’t they understand that the burglar’s first thought is the loot and his second thought is to get out of the house as quietly and quickly as possible without harming people when they wake up on him? And what madness for the householder to try to corner a burglar in the dark, prepared to resist capture but not to kill for loot. ”

“ There was no fear of their shooting away all their charges, as the arms of the men who would inevitably fall would be at their disposal, and the chances were a hundred to one that the remainder would take to flight, and leave their treasure—for a considerable time, at all events—within reach of the robbers. ”

“ However, these robbers and other authors of this tumult, who were afraid, on their own account, lest I should punish them for what they had done, took six hundred armed men, and came to the house where I abode, in order to set it on fire. When this their insult was told me, I thought it indecent for me to run away, and I resolved to expose myself to danger, and to act with some boldness ”