ABSTRACT
The story of Captain Harrison describes a familiar theme in crime chapbook literature. Like the story of “The penitent apprentice”, it carefully outlines the slow and steady decline of a man of good upbringing and honest employment into a wicked life of debauchery, deceitfulness, and eventually murder. On several levels, this story serves as a warning to readers. First, it warns about the ease by which a good man could become corrupted. The author emphasizes Harrison’s genteel upbringing, good education, and the strong examples and instruction of his parents but asserts that “a good father may have a bad son” and challenges any notion that “virtue and vice” are created by “nature”. That is a man’s behaviour is not dictated by his parentage or upbringing but rather – in this case – by the company with whom he chooses to spend his time. Second, this story warns innocent readers about the “rooks” that surround and prey on them. This semi-organized criminal underworld used a wide variety of techniques – each distinct enough to deserve its own name – to swindle, deceive, and otherwise impoverish innocent people who came within their grasp. Ultimately, the story warns about the inexorable backsliding caused by seemingly innocent vice. Although gambling and whoring, in themselves, were not serious criminal activities, the author makes clear that the person who partakes in these activities starts down the path that leads to greater and greater deviance. This would also become a common urban theme in the eighteenth century, especially as described in the satirist William Hogarth’s series of prints entitled “The idle apprentice”, in which, like Harrison, a young man’s loose living causes him to leave his apprenticeship, backslide into vice, and eventually be hanged at Tyburn Tree.
