Charles Peace. The Adventures of a Notorious Burglar

Charles Peace alias John Ward, whose life and adventures form the subject-matter of our story, has gained for himself a reputation equal, if not superior, to the lawless ruffians, Jack Sheppard, Dick Turpin, and others of a similar class. He is a union of various elements.

In more senses than one he was a local character. Born in Sheffield he was, in early days, trained according to the customs of the day, and when about eight or ten years of age was one of the foremost amongst his companions in any game of audacious fun.

He was always considered a “rough,” even amongst his earlier associates, and it is said that he was dreaded by the children with whom he played. At ten years of age he had to assist his father who was named Joseph Peace, in the earning of the daily bread for the family.

Mr. Joseph Peace was a man well respected. He was what is known in Sheffield as a “little master,” but in commercial terms would be placed as a “file manufacturer.” He had a large family, and amongst his children was this lad, who has achieved such notoriety in the world.

Charles Peace, from his very boyhood, was wild. It is said that there was no adventure to be undertaken in regard to which he had any fear; neither did he require twice telling when he was requested to lead the way in any mischievous plot.

Mr. Joseph Peace was a man of religious inclinations, and was a member of the Wesleyan body. He occupied a house in George-street, Langsett-road, a thoroughfare which is now known as Gilpin-street.

He had a taste for music, and played the “bass” at the Wesleyan Chapel, Owlerton. When ten years of age Charles Peace commenced to take lessons on the violin, his instructor being his father, who rather prided himself on the way he could play the double-bass.

His son Charles was a diligent pupil, and ultimately, having acquired a proficiency in the instrument, he started in life as a sort of successor to Paganini— fiddling most successfully on one string, and only failing to achieve some distinction because he lacked the patience which was necessary to make the stage his “field of fame.”

Yet he was always an artist.

If he did not discern for himself a sufficiently splendid career in art, amateur violinists who lived in the neighbourhood of Greenwich, Peckham, or Blackheath had sufficient reason to regret Mr. Charles Peace’s devotion to music.

They found that some undiscovered burglar was abroad who had a good taste in the selection of fine instruments.

Mr. Peace indeed had a passion for violins; and if he spared a service of plate sometimes, he was never known to leave a really good fiddle behind.

He was distinguished, too, by his general cultivation and by his devotion to the fair sex. As his good fortune grew, so did the number of inamoratas increase, yet he never seems to have really deserted the wife whom he married.

In housekeeping his taste was luxurious, and he invariably moved into more aristocratic neighbourhoods as he prospered in the art and mystery of burglary. And here comes out the singular phase of his character.

There is no doubt his fame and fortune as a housebreaker culminated in the period between the Bannercross murder and his apprehension at Blackheath; but he appears to have previously enjoyed a reputation as a cracksman.

How does it happen, then, that he could settle down to the life of a picture-frame maker at Sheffield?

The circumstances would not be so mysterious if he had not really made picture-frames; but it appears that he actually worked at the trade. There is some mystery here which requires to be explained. It is difficult to believe Peace turned honest in a fit of repentance; he would, in all probability, have some other object, which has not yet been made clear.

But, indeed, Peace’s character in Sheffield is altogether in singular contrast with his character as exhibited elsewhere. His behaviour to the Dysons, as it was described in Mrs. Dyson’s evidence, was very much like that of a lunatic.

There appears to have been a singular absence of motive, both for his general conduct and the murder which he is said to have committed. Instead of being the ingenious and cautious Charles Peace of the London burglaries, he is simply an indiscreet and violent criminal.

Equally in contrast was his behaviour on the two occasions when he appeared in the prisoners’ dock. In London he was whining and supplicatory; in Sheffield he was reckless and defiant. This change may, perhaps, be accounted for on the grounds that he had a chance in one case, and no chance in the other; but other contradictions in his character are not so easily explained.

Without doubt he was a cunning, bold, and fearless scoundrel of the old heroic type. The history of his many exploits, of his clever disguises, of his extraordinary escapes from punishment, and of the success with which for many years he contrived to live on burglary, even in these days, when we have a large and well-organised police force, cannot fail to excite surprise in the minds of every citizen.

His career is almost unique in the annals of crime. Not only the boldness and skill which he showed in committing his depredations, but his remarkable success in eluding the vigilance of the police, must be regarded as being altogether uncommon. Working entirely alone in his burglarious course, he seemed to command success.

We are told that even dogs felt the influence of his power, and failed to give any alarm on his approach. As for locks, bolts, and other means of security, Peace simply laughed at them. If he made up his mind to get into a house he got into it, and the booty which he appropriated was exceedingly valuable.

Probably many of the stories which are told of his exploits have only an element of truth, but the sub-stratum on which they rest is doubtless constituted of actual facts. Scarcely less remarkable than his success as a burglar was the skill with which he contrived to escape detection by the police.

Although he had been living openly in London, walking even into Scotland-yard itself, he was not recognised as Mr. Dyson’s murderer; and his eventual detection was owing to the accident of his capture at Blackheath.

Peace certainly possessed remarkable ability in effecting an almost impenetrable disguise. He has boasted of his contempt for the police, and his confidence seems to have been abundantly justified.

The history of his life presents a combination of passion, craft, cruelty, great spite, and audacity, such as is rarely to be found in any single being.

But Peace has boasted of his ability to deceive the most astute constable or detective. As a proof of this we quote the following personal narrative of one of his old pals. We give it in the words of the narrator:—

“Once on a time, no matter where, no matter when, Charley Peace told me the whole story of his life after that little indiscretion which resulted in the death of Mr. Dyson, at Bannercross.

“It is a narrative of events which have never yet been made known to the public. It presents points of uncommon interest, for everybody has wanted to know how he escaped on that fatal night— how he was disguised, where he went, and how he has lived, down to the days when he reappeared at Peckham, and spent his days and nights after the manner now familiar to the public through the special commissioner of the Independent.

“I shall not trench on the latter well-known period. But I shall fill up the blank in his biography with these autobiographical episodes, for they are almost entirely his own words. I give to you, Mr. Editor, ample credentials to convince you that this is a genuine narrative, for I know, by the way you have stood former tests, that wild horses will not make you break confidence.

“So nobody need take the trouble to come fishing about either you or me for further ‘information.’

“Imagine, then, a circle of choice spirits assembled round Charles Peace, under circumstances calculated to make him loquacious.

“‘They talk,’ said he, ‘about identifying me! Why I could dodge any bobby living! I have dodged all the detectives in London many a time. I have walked past them, looked them straight in the face; and they have thought I was a mulatto.’

“Then he asked us if we knew how he did it; and said ‘Just turn your faces away a minute, and I’ll show you.’

“We turned our heads away, and when we looked again we found he had completely altered the expression of his countenance, and so entirely distorted and disfigured it— save the mark!— that he did not look like the same man.

“He threw out his under jaw, contracted the upper portion of his face, and appeared to be able so to force the blood up into his head as to give himself the appearance of a mulatto.

“Then he laughed heartily at his cleverness; went through pantomimic gestures that would have done credit to ‘Quilp,’ and again boasted of the many times he had ‘put on that face,’ and walked past the cute detectives in London and elsewhere.

“We then made allusion to the clever way in which he dodged the police and got away from Sheffield on the night of the murder; and he at once went off into a long story of his escape, telling it with almost fiendish glee, and occasionally laughing joyously at his exploits. He said:—

“‘After that affair at Bannercross I went straight over the field opposite, and through Endcliffe Wood to Crookes, and round by Sandygate. Then I doubled and came down to Broomhill, and there I took a cab and was driven down to the bottom of Church-street.

“‘I got out and walked into Spring-street, to the house of an old pal. There I doffed my own clothes and disguised myself. I stopped there a short time, and then I went boldly through the streets to the railway station, and took train for Rotherham. I walked from that station down to Masbro’, where I took a ticket for Beverley.

“‘On reaching Normanton I left the train, retaining my ticket, and took a ticket for York, where I put up that night. The next morning I went to Beverley, and then walked on to Hull.

“‘I got in an eating house near the docks, where I stopped a considerable time, and did a ‘bit of work’— (meaning, of course, committed a few robberies).

“‘Then I went to Leeds, and from Leeds to Bradford; and from Bradford I went to Manchester. I was there a short time and then I went to Nottingham; and in a lodging house there I picked up Mrs. Thompson.

“‘Whilst we were together one night, an inspector, who had heard I was there and suspected I was a “fence,” came and said to the landlady— “You have got a lodger here— have you not?” She said, “Yes, he is upstairs.”

“‘He said he wanted to see me, and upstairs he came into our bedroom. When I saw him I said, “Hullo!” He answered, “Where do you come from?” and I told him from Tunbridge Wells. “What is your name?” he asked. “John Ward,” said I. “Well,” he said, “what trade are you?”

“‘At that I let out and said, “What’s that to you what trade I am? What do you want to know for?”

“‘He told me he wanted an answer. “Then,” said I, “if you do I’ll give you one— I am a hawker!” “Oh,” said he, “a hawker. Have you got any stock?”

“‘I told him my stock and licence were downstairs, and if he would step down my wife and I would come and show him all. He was as soft as barm and went down.

“‘I said to Mrs. Thompson, “I must hook it,” and, hastily dressing myself, I bolted through the window and dropped into a yard, where I encountered a man, who was surprised to see me. I told him there was a screw loose, and the bobbies were after me with a warrant for neglecting my wife and family. I asked him not to say I had gone that way. He promised he would not.

“‘To leave the yard I had to go through the passage of a public-house, and at the door stood the landlady. She was frightened to see me without stockings or boots on; but when I told her the same tale as I had told the man in the yard she said it was all right, and I passed on.

“‘I took refuge in a house not forty yards from that I had left, and in a short time I got the woman who kept it to go for my boots, and she brought them.

“‘Soon after that I did a “big silk job” in Nottingham, and then, finding the place was getting too hot for me, I left it and went back to Hull. I had made several visits there before, and had given my wife money to maintain her.’

“Peace then told us how he paid no less than three visits to Sheffield after the murder, and more than once encountered one of the most astute and experienced inspectors of the force, but his disguise was so perfect that he passed unnoticed.

“Whilst in Sheffield he committed, he said, several robberies, and he particularly called attention to his adventures in a house at the corner of Havelock-square. ‘Do you mean,’ we asked, ‘at Barnascone’s,’ and he said, ‘Yes, that was the place. The family were out, and there I did very well. I got several rings, and brooches, and £6 in gold. The policeman said he saw me, but he didn’t. I saw him and blocked him, and he never saw me.’

“Peace declared to us that he was in Sheffield when the inquest was held on Mr. Dyson. Afterwards he returned to Nottingham, picked up with Mrs. Thompson, and went on to London with her, where his life and exploits are now matter of history.

“Peace went on to mention the names of several Sheffield people whom he met at different periods in London; and that part of his astonishing story has been confirmed in a remarkable degree by one of the persons himself.

“More than a quarter of a century ago he worked in Sheffield with Mr. William Fisher— in those days known as Bill Fisher— and they remembered each other very well. One day Mr. Fisher was walking across the Holborn-viaduct, when he saw the well-remembered figure approaching him.

“Their eyes met, and Mr. Fisher exclaimed— ‘That’s Peace!’ He turned to look again, but Peace had disappeared as if by magic, and was nowhere to be seen. About a week after, Mr. Fisher was going down the steps leading from Holborn to Farringdon-street, and about midway he again encountered Peace.

“Mr. Fisher gave information to the Sheffield police, and the news was sent to Scotland-yard that Peace was in London.

“‘But what,’ said Peace, ‘was the use of that, when I could walk under their very noses and not be recognised?’

“Again a demoniacal grin overspread his face, and again he went through a series of pantomimic gestures, and set us all laughing.

“It has been conceded that he could be exceedingly good company when he liked, and we assure you he had our attention whilst he related these, the most extraordinary chapters in his history.”

The personal appearance of Peace is thus described by one who paid a visit to Newgate while the burglar was awaiting his trial. He is a man about 5 ft. 3 in., with white hair on his head, cut very close, and bald in front of the head; but the razor had lately done this.

His eyebrows are heavy and overhanging the eyes, which are deeply sunk in their sockets; a chin standing very prominently— and, as if to make it more so, the head was thrown back with an air of half self-assertion, yet half-caution.

The lower part of his cheek-bones protruded more than was their wont in years gone by; but he had apparently some bruises recently, and had had his whiskers shaven off since he was last seen at Sheffield.

In addition he wore a pair of large brass-rimmed spectacles. Peace was professedly a religious man. The neighbourhood thought him so, and probably he thought so, too; so he associated with the good folk who congregated in the edifice, but never made himself conspicuous.

He trifled with Fate. She had made him rich in worldly goods, although they were not his own. Some idea of the magnitude of his operations may be gathered from the fact that there is evidence in the hands of the police that would convict him of no less than fifty burglaries.

The property he obtained is valued at several thousand pounds, but the burglar as a rule does not realise even one-fourth of the value of the property he appropriates.

The charges of “receivers” in every branch of the profession are of an unusual character, but it has been asserted upon reliable authority that he was a burglar years before the events which have made him so notorious.

It is quite twenty years since he worked at a rolling mill at Millsands, and it was while following this employment that he broke his leg. This accident appears to have thoroughly disgusted him with hard work, and as soon as the injuries were cured he went to Manchester.

Here he appears to have fallen into bad company, and to have been the leading spirit of a gang of burglars. In the small hours of the morning Peace and his confederates were tracked to a lonely house at Rusholme, and the police succeeded in obtaining an entrance.

After a desperate struggle Peace was secured, and a great quantity of the stolen property was recovered, but not before the officers had been severely handled. At Old Trafford he was sent to penal servitude, but he played the “good boy” and was let out on a ticket-of-leave.

After his Old Trafford sentence he returned to Sheffield and took a small shop in Kenyon-alley. Here he used to amuse his acquaintances by showing them the dexterity with which he could pick the most stubborn lock. He soon resumed his old courses, and made the acquaintance of Millbank.

The career of the notorious culprit whose doings are chronicled in this work furnishes the novelist with a moral. It will be clearly demonstrated to those who peruse these pages that, sooner or later, justice overtakes the guilty, and that it is impossible for the most astute and cunning scoundrel— such as Peace has proved himself to be— to escape punishment.

A life of crime is always a life of care, for the hearts of the guilty tremble for the past, for the present, and for the future. The author of the “Life of Peace” reprobates in the strongest degree that species of literature whose graduates do their best to cast a dignity upon the gallows, and strive to shed the splendour of fascinating romance upon the paths of crime that lead to it— to make genius tributary to murder, and literature to theft, to dignify not the mean but the guilty.

Let crime and its perpetrators be depicted as conscience sees them, as morality brands them; let them stand out in prominent but repulsive relief. There is yet wanted a picture of crime and its consequences true to nature and conscience, and it is hoped that the present serial will, in some measure, supply that want.

The author proposes to present to his readers the felon as he really is— to describe facts as they were found— to present pure pictures of guilt and its accompaniments.

He does not desire to make use of artificial colouring, believing that the interest in the work lies in its reality. The felon appears just as he is, as crime makes him, and as Newgate receives him— successful, it may be, for a season, but arrested, condemned, scourged by conscience, and cut off from society as unfit for its walks.

Of all the members of the family of man few have been so rapidly forgotten as those who have been swept from the face of the world by the fiat of the law and the hands of the public executioner. Yet the guilty and the unfortunate have left biographies behind them that speak to future generations in awful and impressive tones.

If they were inflictions on the past generation, they may be made useful in the present age as beacons to the reckless voyager— voices lifted up from the moral wrecks of the world speaking audibly to listening men “of righteousness, and temperance, and judgment.”