tour 28 of 28
London 1753
An Exact Representation of Maclaine, the highwayman Charles Mosley (about 1720-70)
James Maclaine (1724-50) came from a
respectable Irish clergy family. In 1748, he set himself up in
lodgings in St James's Street and for two years he passed
in society as a wealthy gentleman though in fact - with his
'servant' Plunket as his accomplice - he was a
highway robber. One of his victims was Horace Walpole whom he
robbed of a gold watch in Hyde Park in November 1749. Maclaine was
finally caught on 27 July 1750 through attempts to dispose of fine
clothing taken from a passenger on the Salisbury coach at Turnham
Green a month earlier. Quantities of stolen goods were found at his
lodgings and he was found guilty at the Old Bailey on 13 September.
The trial caused a tremendous stir among those who had been taken
in by his gentlemanly appearance; according to Walpole 3,000 people
visited him in Newgate Prison on the Sunday after his trial. He was
hanged at Tyburn on 3 October. The story gave rise to a large
number of prints, broadsides, pamphlets and newspaper accounts.
Plunket was never
apprehended.
Tyburn, at the
north-east corner of Hyde Park, had been a place of execution since
the twelfth century. Eighteenth-century residents in fashionable
Mayfair objected to the proximity of public executions and the
rowdiness that accompanied them, and in 1783 the principal place of
execution for London was moved to the wide space of the Old Bailey
outside Newgate Prison. Executions ceased to be public in 1868. The
death penalty applied to about 200 offences, but its main function
was to act as a deterrent. During the 1750s a total of 281 people
were executed; one third of those sentenced were
reprieved.
This print -
priced at 6d plain, 1s coloured - shows Maclaine and Plunket
holding up Lord Eglinton's coach on Hounslow Heath on 26
June 1750. They are wearing elegant Venetian masks of the sort worn
at masquerades.