The cracksman

THE CRACKSMAN Thomas Stacey, 1812-1864 Thomas Stacey, a Londoner, gets his blunt at the best, as he musters his bag of tools: a centre-bit with brace, gimlet, knife, chisel, phosphorous-box or phos, crowbar to jemmy, five skeleton keys or false screws, a dark lantern with candle burning or glim-jack.

And reckons it's good upon the crack to break into Jabez Woodhill’s jeweller's-crib for gems, sparklers and rings to fake the cull while he’s out and do the trick.

Cracking the chain containing the grate in Cannon Alley, Thomas lowers himself nimbly from ground floor to cellar.

But slour'd up against the stairs' landing stands the jigger.

Stacey tugs and shakes but wakes the staunch assistant, John Smith, who rouses the snoozing slaveys in an instant.

Shop-lobber Guy Clarke is woken, peels his peepers, witnesses Stacey heave out the cellar about to scarper.

'Watch! Watch!' cries Clarke. 'Shut your shop!' mutters.

Thomas. George Nichols, a fly watchman, hears the cry, comes bang up to the mark and spies a crack halter, a cracksman intending to bang-slang it, collars and floors him hard by the cellar door.

Bowled out at last, the lime-juicer is shopped, hobbled and led shame-faced to the roundy-ken to cop the verdict. 'Guilty!' declares the beak. The sentence: death.

Thomas must pay lagging dues; indeed, must pay the earth: confined on the John then setting sail for New South Wales.

Cox’s River, 1833 It lies along a dusty track, the Bathurst Road, this wooden jug just a blot or blur neath the boundless blue-domed horizon.

Quartered in the stockade a gang of ironed lags in slops marked with broad arrow, surly scowls and salt-crusted backs scarred.

Scarce two months pass afore Stacey takes to the bush, bolts with five renegades, two lairy lags and three crooked reds irate, disarming a sentry, seizing his musket, shot and bayonet.

These bushrangers shake a settler’s house of needy grub, but are apprehended and charged with highway robbery.

Stacey is pronounced prancer, dubbed crib-cracker, again absconds, is arrested and tickled fifty lashes for his pains.

The cuffin-queer sentences the gang for life to Norfolk Isle.

In the hulk’s cell they smuggle tools, undub their irons and by means of cutters sheer through the outer boards.

In the waves below, a waiting boatswain clasping oars.

Norfolk Island, 1834-54 For twenty years the desperately reckless cove suffers torment on the isle, a long reign for an old file in solitary confinement,

forced to endure three hundred lashes for being absent!

Other charges include possessing tobacco, disobedience, refusing to work, robbery, possessing cards, insolence, absconding, having bootlaces, fighting, dishonest conduct, possessing tea and coffee, obscene language, neglect . . .

And fifty lashes for not answering the guard.at night!

Michael Small June 30-July 8, 2014 Thomas Stacey was given his ticket-of-leave in 1858 and a conditional pardon in 1860.

He spent thirty-eight of his last forty-one years behind bars.