ABSTRACT
Charles Speckman was condemned at the Old Bailey under the name of Charles Brown and hanged at Tyburn in November 1763. The editor of this biography said he was ‘of genteel appearance, a likely person, thin narrow face, somewhat cloudy brow’d, about five feet nine inches high, of a spare slender make, his demeanour courteous and affable, and his countenance, though pale, carried the vestigia not only of serenity but innocence’ (p. 211). Stephen Roe, the Ordinary of Newgate, had rather a different view of him as ‘thin, tall, and of a sallow complexion, so close and crafty that he never truly and particularly opened his family name or birth place’, adding that he had ‘an oily tongue, with an insinuating address’. The reason why Speckman was less than forthright and why Roe was so antagonistic towards him seems to have originated in a quarrel between the two over Speckman’s life story which gives some insight into the biographies. Roe complained that instead of ‘being open and sincere in his repentance, and the confession of his crimes and scheme of life’, Speckman ‘referred me to a written narrative of his life and actions, which he had promised on several occasions, to let me see, and now fixed to give me in the afternoon, but he did not: At the same time, he had amused others with the expectation of it, insisting on high terms, which were to provide for his funeral; boasting, as I was informed, that “he would be buried like a Lord”’.1 Roe gives the impression in his Account that Speckman could not be trusted, and indeed he recounts, in a passage which reveals as much about Roe as it does about Speckman, that on another occasion Speckman said he would not give Roe his life story because:
he had been informed, it would be of some advantage to me to get their confessions, (he mentioned a handsome thing, 25l. each sessions for that service, added to the benefit of the trials or proceedings, which he supposed, with equal truth, to be mine) and his meaning was that, in effect, he envied me these large emoluments, notwithstanding all the labour laid out on him and the convicts, and some particular kindnesses shown himself, and so by his witholding his confession he would disappoint me of them.
