Sixteen String Jack

DESCRIPTION: "A cloudy night, and pretty hard it blowed, The dashy, splashy, leery little stringer" takes his horse and goes seeking victims on the highway. He catches the Lord of Cashel, then a lady. Jack kisses her; she says she wouldn't mind being robbed again
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1931 (Shoemaker-MountainMinstrelsyOfPennsylvania)
KEYWORDS: robbery horse clothes
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
1750? - Nov 30, 1774 -- Life of John Rann, known as "Sixteen String Jack"
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Shoemaker-MountainMinstrelsyOfPennsylvania, pp. 302-303, "Sixteen String Jack" (1 text)
Roud #15021
NOTES [819 words]: "Sixteen String Jack" is one of those famous highwaymen frequently mentioned in British folklore. There was an account of his alleged exploits published around the time of his death, An account of John Rann, commonly called Sixteen String Jack; being a narrative of his principal transactions and his amours, etc. (1774); it's available on Google Books. But it looks to me like one of those standard "biographies" that took a few facts known from Jack's trial and stuck them into a whole-cloth biography -- e.g. it insists that he was born of "very honest parents, on the 15th of April 1752."
What we can say with confidence is summed up in Benet, p. 1037: "Sixteen-string Jack. The almost affectionate nickname of a famous highwayman whose real name was John Rann and who is referred to in Boswell's Johnson. He was renowned for his affectation of fine clothes. His nickname was an allusion to the many 'strings' or ribbons he wore at his knees. He was hanged in 1774."
The citation of Boswell is in connection with a eulogy Samuel Johnson made of the poet Thomas Gray; Johnson say Gray's work "towered above the ordinary verse as SIxteen String Jack above the ordinary footpad" (Pringle, p. 251).
The folklore version of his history says that John Rann was born in 1750 in Bath in Somerset. At the age of twelve he was handsome and clever enough to be put into service. By the age of twenty or so, he was promoted to a coachman working in London (Brandon, p. 91; Pringle, p. 251).
It was there that temptation caught up with him. All accounts agree that he liked fine clothes, and he liked girls, and he needed a way to pay for both. So he turned highwayman.
He apparently worked with partners, at least occasionally; Pringle, p. 252, names three of them with whom he robbed the Hampstead stage-coach.
Supposedly he was taken into custody many times (Pringle, p. 252, says seven, although folklore claimed that it was sixteen times to go with his sixteen strings), the first time being in 1772. But because he was careful to mask himself (Pringle, p. 251), and always avoided directly dealing with a fence (Pringle, p. 252), he was able to avoid conviction (Brandon, pp. 91-92).
Only twice before his end was he really threatened with punishment. On the first, he was caught red-handed breaking into a house. He claimed that he was visiting a lady-friend, and was late, so the door was locked and he had to break in. The alleged lady friend showed up, dressed rather immodestly, to support his case, and Judge John Fielding, the "Blind Beak," let him off with a warning (Brandon, p. 93; Pringle, pp. 253-254). Which still meant he had to answer to his usual girlfriend Eleanor Roche, whom Pringle, p. 252, claims was a streetwalker.
Ironically, for a man credited with many robberies, he was once arrested for debts supposedly incurred while partying with Eleanor to take her mind off his visit to the other girl (Pringle, p. 254). But his friends paid the debt on the spot, so he got off -- but he still had the debt to pay, which caused him to go back to highway robbery.
His final crime came when he and a partner named William Collier up a minister named Bell in September 1774. They didn't get much money, but they took Bell's distinctive watch -- and the pawnbroker was able to trace it. It was enough evidence to pull Rann into custody. And although Bell could not identify Rann or Collier, another man had seen them in the vicinity at the time. Rann and Collier were sentenced to death (although Collier's sentence would be commuted), and Eleanor was sentenced to transportation (Pringle, pp. 256-257).
When he was finally sentenced to hang, he took it gaily, receiving many (mostly female) visitors as he waited to be hung, chattering with the hangman and the crowd on his way to the scaffold, and supposedly died wearing "a suit of pea-green clothes ordered specially for the occasion with a large nosegay as an accessory" (Brandon, p. 93).
Pringle, p. 251, gives a contemporary description: "He was about five feet five inches high, wore his own hair, of a light brown colour, which was combed over his forehead, remarkably clean, and particularly neat in his dress, which in two instances was very singular, that of always having sixteen strings to his breeches knees, always of silk (by which means he acquired his fictitious name) and a remarkable hat with strings, and a button on the crown. He was straight, of a genteel carriage, and made a very handsome appearance."
This song, at least as given by Shoemaker, doesn't seem to have much to do with the history related above; it claims Jack robbed "My Lord of Cashel," and the accounts do not mention that. But the song calls him "Rann," declares him a "little stringer," says he was "little," and hints that he was good at kissing. So I suppose it fits with the legend. I would not have associated it with Jack without Shoemaker's title. - RBW
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