All things change, but still stay the same...

It is amazing how nothing really ever changes with Crime, yet criminologists are so sure it does. This underlines the importance of looking back over history to understand the true roots of crime.

“Highwaymen for the most part are such that were never acquainted with an honest trade, whom either want of money or employment prompted them to undertake these dangerous designs; and to make their persons appear more formidable, and to gain respect, they dub one another ‘colonel,’ ‘major,’ or at least a captain, who never arrived to a greater height than a trooper disbanded…
“Having made up a party, ere they proceed to act their villainies, they make a solemn vow to each other, that, if by misfortune any one should be apprehended, he shall not discover his complices: and that if he be pressed hard to particularize his companions, he must then devise names for men that never were, describing their persons, features, and discovering their habitations, but so remote one from another, that the danger of the trial may be over ere sufficient inquiry can be made.
“And further, to procure mercy from the bench, there must be a plausible account given, how you fell into this course of life: fetching a deep sigh, saying that you were well born, but by reason of your family falling to decay you were exposed to great want, and rather than shamefully beg (for you knew not how to labour), you were constrained to take this course as a subsistence; that it is your first fault, which you are heartily sorry for, and will never attempt the like again…
“In the first place, you must have a variety of periwigs in your lodgings, and the like you must carry with you, if occasion require the necessity of changing the colour of the hair: neither must you be without your false beards of several colours. For want of them, you may cross your locks athwart your mouth, which is a good disguise: patches also contribute much thereto. And lest your voice should be known another time by him that is robbed, put into your mouth a pebble, or any suchlike thing, which will alter your tone advantageously to your purpose…
“You must instantly fall to work, seizing with your left hand the traveller’s bridle, and with your right presenting a pistol. This so terrified that he delivers instantly, for who will trust a pistol at his breast loaded with a brace of bullets, and a mouth discharging at the same time volleys of oaths, that if he deliver not instantly he is a dead man?
“Having o’ermastered them you set upon, do you carry them into some covert, where you search so severely that nothing can be hidden from you…Having then changed your horse for theirs, if better than your own, the next thing to do is to make them swear neither to follow you, nor to raise the country with a hue-and-cry upon you. Thus, leaving the poor traveler forlorn, you ride to some strange place, or else where you are known and winked at, and there you share that which you unlawfully have got, not without cheating one another….
“All the time they can spare from robbing and undoing poor men is spent in wine and women; so that the sunshine of their prosperity lasts but a moment, no so long as to warm their hands by the blazing fire of their prodigality, before cold death comes and seizeth them. And how can it be otherwise expected?”
--Francis Jackson, famous Highwayman (1674) “Jackson’s Recantation or, the Life & Death of the Notorious High-way-man Now Hanging in Chains At Hampstead.” Writing to warn the public about the acts of such men in order to repent before being put to death. From Half-hours with the highwaymen: Picturesque biographies and traditions of the ‘Knights of the Road.’ Charles G. Harper, Vol. 1, London: Chapman & Hall, Limited, 1908.