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From Rogues to the Rights of Men: Crime News and the Police Gazette (1845–1847)

John Murrell, 'the land pirate', said the weekly National Police Gazette, 'may be said to have drawn his barbarous and vicious nature from his mother's breast' (II, I, I; 12 September 1846). Young Murrell was ambitious-'strong willed'-and discontented with the relatively modest circumstances in which he found himself (II, 33, 258 ; 24 April 1847). Rejecting honest labor he succumbed readily to the teachings of his 'licentious' mother and quickly became 'an expert professional thief' (II, I, I; 12 September 1846). It was Murrell's express wish to be a rogue: while still a youth he resolved to study law 'to acquaint myself with all the dangers that laid in the way of success and escape' (ibid.). His lessons well-learnt, he gained standing in a local political party as a means of cultivating 'an influence which would above all others, protect him and his friends in case they should become openly obnoxious to the law' (II, 7, 49; 24 October 1846). The lad's small pilferings gave way to heinous crimes: horsetheft, robbery, land speculation and, on occasion, murder. Plunder financed his increasingly fashionable lifestyle. Then was conceived Murrell's 'great project' of 'exciting a rebellion among the negroes of the slave-holding states' (II, 10, 73; 14 November 1846). Intended solely as a means to vast personal wealth and power, the venture turned on the strategic deployment of a massive criminal organization, spanning a score of states and numbering perhaps half a thousand felons, including dozens of ostensibly respectable politicians. The scheme, however, was foiled. A brave informer entrapped its mastermind and, following numberless crimes, Murrell was sentenced to 10 years in prison. While a convict Murrell reformed, becoming 'a meek and sighing Methodist', and eventually, he was pardoned (II, 33, 258; 24 April 1847). His moral transformation left him with a vitiated spirit. 'Ambition had died within him, and resigning himself into the hands of his religious benefactors, he retired to a little piece of land ... set up a forge and sought to gain a living by tinkering, mending ploughs and chance blacksmithing.... Hut his course was run' and soon Murrell was a dead man (ibid.). This simple talc took more than half a year to tell as, in the Police Gazette, the scarlet threads of felony were knit routinely into protracted accounts of the battle between rogues and the rights of men, No longer were crime accounts the preserve