Criminal Biography: Irish Highwaymen and James Freney

Abstract

Criminal biography, the lives and actions of robbers and highwaymen, was, like the romances of chivalry, a frequent, if not universal, feature of popular literature in western Europe. While some romances, such as Valentine and Orson, were printed in many countries, the literature of crime tended to be more national. At the same time, however, there were striking similarities between texts from different countries, in chronology, structure and content, suggesting common or mutual influence. The typical criminal figure was active in the seventeenth or early eighteenth century, and the printed lives followed shortly after, many remaining in print until the nineteenth century. Both England and Prance had a corpus of texts based on an urban gangleader active about 1720 in the capital city, Cartouche in Paris and Jonathan Wild in London. Ireland and France both witnessed the success of texts featuring comparatively late figures, James Freney whose life was published in 1754, and Mandrin, the first of whose lives dates from 1755. Collections of criminal lives were issued in early eighteenth-century England, inspiring a collection of Irish lives, The Lives and Adventures of the Most Notorious Irish Highwaymen, a decade or so later. There are also similarities in content, such as the representation of criminals as constituting an ‘underworld’, an alternative society mirroring conventional society, and similar moral attitudes, such as that of the successful criminal as a gifted individual who has gone wrong due to circumstance or innate character flaws, but whose cleverness is to be admired.