Episode 004: Robert Perkins: The Disinherited Baker Turned Thief

Robert Perkins grows up in Hertfordshire as the son of a prosperous innkeeper, but prosperity does not protect him. After his mother dies and his father remarries, the boy is cast out of his own home; stripped of affection, stripped of inheritance, stripped of everything that might have held him steady.

As recorded in Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals, Perkins drifts into the kind of company that haunts the margins of Georgian England: drinkers, gamblers, idlers whose appetites outrun their means. His is the sort of true crime story that begins not with malice but with dispossession; a young man living as though he still possessed his father's fortune while owning almost nothing at all.

What follows is a life pulled further and further from solid ground, carried across oceans and through the gears of a justice system that does not forget.

Dark Lexicon: Old words. Dark meaning.

The past speaks its own dialect; here is what to listen for in this episode.

Mother-in-law: today this means your spouse's mother, but in the eighteenth century it was the standard term for a stepmother. When the text says Perkins's mother-in-law had him turned out of the house, it means his father's new wife; not some distant relative by marriage, but the very woman who replaced his mother under the same roof.

Groat: a small silver coin worth fourpence. To say someone was 'never a groat the better' means they gained absolutely nothing; not even the most trivial sum. It was a common way of expressing total exclusion from any benefit or inheritance.

Cast: in legal language of this period, to be 'cast' meant to be found guilty at trial. It sounds almost casual to modern ears, like being tossed aside; and in a sense it was exactly that, the court casting you out of ordinary life and into the hands of punishment.

Upon the rake: to go 'upon the rake' meant to go out carousing; drinking, gambling, chasing trouble through the streets. A 'rake' was a dissolute young man, and the phrase captures the reckless energy of young men looking for anything but honest work.

Shuffle-board: not quite the gentle cruise-ship game of today. In Georgian alehouses, shuffleboard was a tavern pastime played on long wooden tables, and it was closely associated with gambling, idleness, and the kind of company that led to worse things.

Crown piece: a large silver coin worth five shillings. In this account, the alehouse owners had marked a crown with particular scratches or notches so it could be identified if stolen from the till; a trap that snapped shut on Perkins.

Transportation: the sentence of being shipped to the colonies as forced labour. It sounds almost merciful compared to the gallows, but in practice it meant being sold to a planter and worked in conditions little different from enslavement; and returning without permission was a capital offence.

Vulgar pleasures: today 'vulgar' suggests crude or obscene, but in this context it simply meant common or low; the cheap amusements of ordinary people. Drinking, gaming, skittle-playing: none of it was scandalous on its own, but together these pastimes marked a young man as someone drifting toward ruin.

About This Series

Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals is one of the earliest works of true crime writing in the English language, nearly 300 years old, covering murderers, thieves, highwaymen, forgers, coiners and worse.

The book is entirely in the public domain and every word of it can be read today for free. But if you would rather listen, this podcast does exactly that: one criminal at a time, every week, read aloud.

True crime was not invented by podcasts or streaming services. Eighteenth century readers were just as fascinated by outlaws and killers as we are today. They just consumed their dark stories by candlelight.

The voice you hear is David Dark: crime researcher, theatre script writer, producer of live immersive experiences, and audiobook narrator and voice artist. This podcast uses an AI voice model trained on David's own voice, built using the maximum available training data to faithfully represent how he actually sounds. To hear David's real voice in human generated form, visit him on Audible, Online Stage, Voices of Today, Spoken Realms, and Internet Archive.

Transcript

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This is a Dark Stories presentation of the lives of the most remarkable criminals who have been condemned and executed for murder, highway robbery, housebreaking, street mugging, forgery, or other offences. Collected from original papers and authentic memoirs and published in 1735, edited by Arthur L. Haywood. Episode 4. Robert Perkins, the disinherited Baker, turned thief. Robert Perkins was the son of a very considerable innkeeper, in or near Hempstead, in Hertfordshire, who during the lifetime of his wife treated him with great tenderness and seeming affection, sending him to school to a person in a neighbouring village. But no sooner had death snatched away the poor woman than his father began to change his measures. Robin continued not long in this state, his hardships were quickly increased by the second marriage of his father, upon which he was fetched home and treated with some kindness at first. But in a little time, perceiving how things were going, his mother in law soon prevailed to have him turned out, and absolutely forbidden his father's house, the ready way to force a naked, uninstructed youth on the most sinful courses. Whether Robin at that time did anything dishonest is not certain, but being grievously pinched with cold one night, and troubled also with dismal apprehensions of what might come to his sister, he got a ladder and by the help of it climbed in at his mother's window. This was immediately exaggerated into a design of cutting her throat, and poor Bob was thereupon utterly discarded. A short time after this, old Mr Perkins died and left a fortune of several thousand pounds behind him, for which the poor young man was never a groat the better, being bound out apprentice to a baker, and left as to everything else, to the wide world. His inclination, joined to the rambling life which he had hitherto led, induced him to mind the vulgar pleasures of drinking, gaming, and idling about much more than his business. Perkins fell quickly among bad company, and often rambled abroad with them on the usual errands of hoaring, shuffleboard, or skittle playing. The thoughts of that estate which injustice he ought to have possessed, did not a little contribute to make him thus heedless of his business, for he affected living at the rate his father's fortune would have afforded him, rather than in the frugal manner which his narrow circumstance actually required. Methods which necessarily pushed him on such expeditions for supply as drew on those misfortunes which rendered his life miserable and his death shameful. One day, having agreed with some young lads in the neighbourhood to go out upon the rake, they steered their course to Whitechapel, and going into a little alehouse, began to drink stoutly and indulge themselves in brutal delights. In the height of all their mirth, the people of the house missing out of the till a crown piece with some particular marks, they sent for a constable and some persons to assist him, who caused all the young fellows instantly to be separated and searched one by one. On which the marked crown was found in Robert Perkins' pocket, and he was thereupon immediately carried before a justice, who committed him to Newgate. The sessions coming on soon after, and the case being plain, he was cast and ordered for transportation. Robin had the good luck to make himself tolerably easy in the ship, his natural good nature and obliging temper prevailing so far on the captain that he gave him all the liberty and afforded him whatever indulgence it was in his power to permit. But our young traveller had much worse luck when he came on shore at Jamaica, where he was immediately sold to a planter for ten pounds, and his trade of baker being of little use there, his master put him upon much the same labour as he did his negroes. Robin's constitution was really incapable of great fatigue. His master, finding in the end that nothing would make him work, sold him to another, who put him upon his own employment of baking, building an oven on purpose. Whether this master really used him cruelly or whether his idle inclinations made him think all labour, cruel usage is hard to say, but Robin ran away from this master and got on board a ship which carried him to Carolina. After being taken by the Spaniards and enduring many other great hardships, he at last with much difficulty got home. After his arrival in England he worked for near two years together at his own business, and had the settled intention to live honestly, but the fear he was continually in of being discovered rendered him so uneasy that at last he resolved to go over into the East Indies. For this purpose he was come down to Gravesend in order to embark when he was apprehended, and being tried on an indictment for returning from transportation, he was convicted thereon and received sentence of death. During the time he lay under conviction, the principles of a good education began again to exert themselves, and by leading him to a thorough confidence in the mercies of Christ weaned him from that affection which hitherto he had for this sinful and miserable world, in which as he had felt nothing but misery and affliction, the change seemed the easier, so that he at last began not only to shake off the fear of death, but even to desire it. Nor was this calmness short and transitory, but he continued in it till the time he suffered, which was on the fifth of july seventeen twenty one at Tyburn. He said he died with less reluctance because his ruin involved nobody but himself, he leaving no children behind him, and his wife being young enough to get a living honestly.