The decay of the highwayman's trade and its replacement by that of the burglar and the bank-robber is well illustrated by the career of Huffum, or Huffy, White, who was first sentenced for burglary in 1809. Transportation for life was then awarded him, and we might have heard no more of his activities, had not his own cleverness and the stupidity of the authorities enabled him to escape from the hulks at Woolwich. Thus narrowly missing the long voyage to Botany Bay, he made direct for London, then as now the best hiding-place in the world. He soon struck up an acquaintance with one James Mackcoull, and they proposed together to enter upon a course of burglary; but at the very outset of their agreement they were arrested. Mackcoull, as a rogue and vagabond, was sent to prison for six months, and White was sentenced to death as an escaped convict, the extreme penalty being afterwards reduced to penal servitude for life.

On January 20th, 1811, Mackcoull was released, and at once, like the faithful comrade he was, set about the task of securing White's escape from the convict ship to which he had again been consigned. Dropping overboard in the fog and darkness that enshrouded the lower reaches of the Thames on that winter's evening into the boat that Mackcoull had silently rowed under the bows of the ship, White was again free.

An astonishing enterprise now lay before White, Mackcoull, and a new ally: a man named French. This was nothing less than a plan to break into the premises of the Paisley Union Bank at Glasgow. Arrived in Glasgow, they at length, after several disappointments, succeeded in forcing an entry on a Saturday night, selecting that time for the sake of the large margin it gave them for their escape, until the re-opening of the bank on the Monday morning. Their booty consisted of £20,000 in Scotch notes: a large sum, and in that form an unmanageable one, as they were eventually to discover.

The burglary accomplished, their first care was to set off at once for London, posting thither by post-chaise, as fast as four horses could take them. At every stage they paid their score, which they took care should be a generous one, as beseemed the wealthy gentlemen they posed as, with a £20 note: thus accumulating, as they dashed southward along those four hundred miles, a heavy sum in gold.

On the Monday morning the loss of the notes was of course at once discovered. Information was easily acquired as to the movements of the men who were at once suspected, and they were followed along the road, and some days later White was arrested in London by a Bow Street runner, at the house of one Scoltock, a maker of burglars' tools. None of the stolen property was found upon White, Mackcoull having been sufficiently acute to place all the remaining notes in the keeping of a certain Bill Gibbons, who combined the trade of bruiser with that of burglars' banker.

Mackcoull himself went into hiding, both from the law and from his associates, he having had the counting and custody of the notes, and told White and French the amount was but £16,000.

It now became quite evident to French, at least, that, so far as he and his friends were concerned, the remaining notes were merely so much waste-paper. Their numbers were bound to be known, and they could not safely be negotiated. So he suggested to Mrs. Mackcoull that they should propose to return the paper-money to the Bank, and save further trouble, on the understanding that they should not be prosecuted.

Mrs. Mackcoull appears to have had an influential friend named Sayer, employed in close attendance upon the King, and by his good offices secured a pardon for all concerned, on the conditions already named. Unfortunately, she could not fully carry out the bargain agreed upon, for, on the notes being counted, it was discovered that only £11,941 remained.

White, already in custody, was once more condemned to transportation for life. The procedure must by this time have become quite staled by familiarity, and we picture him going again to the hulks with an air of intense boredom.

He, of course, again escaped, and was soon again on his burglarious career: this time at Kettering among other places. But the exploit which concluded his course was the almost purely highwayman business of robbing the Leeds mail-coach, on October 26th, 1812, near Higham Ferrers. He had as accomplices a certain Richard Kendall and one Mary Howes. White had booked an outside seat on the coach, and had, in the momentary absence of the guard in front, cleverly forced open the lock of the box in which the mail-bags were kept, extracted the bags, and replaced the lid. At the next stage he left the coach. The accomplices, who had a trap in waiting, then all drove off to London, White immediately afterwards making for Bristol, where he was soon located, living with two notorious thieves, John Goodman and Ned Burkitt. A descent was made upon the house, and the two arrested, but White escaped over the roof of a shed, and through the adjoining houses.

He was traced in April 1813 to a house in Scotland Road, Liverpool, where, in company with a man named Hayward, he was meditating another burglary. The officers came upon them hiding in a cellar, and a desperate struggle followed; but in the end they were secured.

Richard Kendall and Mary Howes, alias Taylor, were already in custody, and White was arraigned with them at the ensuing Northampton Assizes, for the robbery of the Leeds mail. Witnesses spoke at this trial to having seen the men in the gig on the evening of October 26th, on the road near Higham Ferrers, and afterwards at the house of Mary Howes, who lived close by, and the keeper of the turnpike deposed to only one gig having passed through that evening. There were no fewer than forty witnesses, and the trial occupied fourteen hours.

Mary Howes was acquitted, not from lack of evidence, but merely on a technical flaw in the indictment; her offence having been committed in another county. White and Kendall were convicted and sentenced to death.

White again came near to escaping. By some unknown means, a file had been conveyed to him, and on the night before the execution he filed through his irons, and then forced a way through several doors, being only stopped at the outer gate. The following morning, August 13th, 1813—unlucky date, with two thirteens—he met his fate with an unmoved tranquility. He declared Kendall to be innocent. When the chaplain asked him earnestly if he could administer any comfort to him at that solemn moment, he replied: "Only by getting some other man to be hanged for me."

Kendall was then brought to the gallows, declaring himself to be innocent, and a murdered man.

Mackcoull, the earlier associate of White, disappeared for years, but was arrested for a robbery in 1820, and died in prison soon after receiving sentence.