Port to Port

Why Dick went to Amsterdam is no real mystery - then as now, those who had made Britain too hot for themselves found the air a little cooler on the other side of the Channel. His former associates in the Essex Gang, the ringleader Sam Gregory and his brother Jerry, had been attempting to get to Boulogne when they were captured on the road.

What Dick did in Holland - friendless, poor, without a word of Dutch - we'll never know. It was at the time perhaps the most truly cosmopolitan of Europe's cities, vibrant with trade - trade both authorised and unauthorised. Smuggling flourished there, and I suspect that after five years of criminal activity Dick had become too enmeshed in the habits of the criminal world to remember how to live a 'normal' life again.

Whatever precipitated his return, in February 1737 he took a passage to Harwich and within a month was back in London with two new croneys, making the suburbs dangerous for anyone with jingly pockets.