An ‘incredibly rare’ deathbed confession from an 18th-century highwayman, written just before he was ‘hanged in chains’ for robbing the Yarmouth Mail and describing his relieved response to a failed gay seduction, was obtained by Horsham Museum .
The Life of Thomas Munn, alias, the Gentleman Brick-Maker, alias, Tom the Smuggler lasts up to 24 pages and was printed in 1750. It is part of the once popular genre of deathbed confessions, a forerunner of true crime and claims to be an autobiography that Munn handed over to the Yarmouth Gaoler on the morning of his execution on April 6, 1750.
The pamphlet, which would be sold by hawkers for pennies, details Munn’s life of smuggling, robbery and ‘jokes’, and reveals how he turned to a crime life after growing up in Kent in a family. which manufactured with brick. He later went to Sussex to become a dance master and wrote how he “got a set of Young Fellows as unconscious as I was … to get along with my Morris dance, as it is called in the province.” This is, according to Horsham Museum, one of the earliest documented references to morris dance.
Munn made bricks again about three years later and at one point recounted how he “dragged” to Horsham to meet a potential woman. The woman, Munn says, was a wealthy 70-year-old widow: “I immediately noticed that the poor old soul could not bite me because she had a tooth in her head that softened her kiss.” A local lawyer is also addressing her hand in the marriage, and Munn gives up his suit after the lawyer visits the widow, and she dams up stairs with him and apparently is there long enough to be a case to try. ”. However, it was a ‘very unfortunate match’, he notes.
The Horsham Museum said that what elevated the pamphlet above the usual deathbed confessions was “the extent to which Thomas was self-conscious and reflected his life”. He describes one incident in an inn in Southampton, when the son of innkeeper Munn joins his bed and informs him that “I like to lie with a naked man”.
“He was not long in bed, but began to act a part so contrary to nature that I began in bed, and wanted words to express my confusion, surprise, and passion at his suggestions,” says Munn. The ‘cap’ leaves after Munn threatens him with a penknife and makes ‘many apologies’ the next day.
As Munn puts it: ‘It was something I had never met before, nor had it, but the philosophy had enough in me to be sorry to expose a young man,’ to which he pointed out a very abominable sin; and surely we shall have pity on those who commit crimes above what is common, for no one knows whether he will be tempted to resist them. ”
The curator of the Horsham Museum, Jeremy Knight, said it was noteworthy that Munn had this reaction, and that he also chose to give a public report on it.
“Giving it space in his confession – the only space he had to give a public report of himself – is really interesting,” he said. ‘The printer could also have taken offense and not included it – after all, the author would not make use of it … Yet both considered it important enough to tell. And what Munn says is that although it is seen as a sin, his immediate response is conditioned by his education and social norms. He’s not so sure he was awakened by the boy, and who should we judge if we ourselves have that reaction? A desire for tolerance and acceptance – that is human nature. “
Justin Croft, a British bookseller who came across the pamphlet at an American auction and bought it, before selling it to the museum, calls it ‘an interesting reflection on royalty.
“In some ways, it’s a very typical confession on deathbed. There were hundreds of them at the time,” he said. ‘But this kind of weird episode is unusual. This is not something I have noticed before in any of these. It’s unequivocal – he says it happened, I did what I did, but do not blame me, because could you resist in the same circumstances? ‘
The Horsham Museum obtained the booklet, which is kept in only four libraries around the world, with the help of the Friends of the National Libraries. It will display it in a new gallery when it reopens in the summer.