David Haggart

Biography
        David Haggart (June 24, 1801–July 18, 1821) was a Scottish thief and rogue.  Born at Golden Acre, near Edinburgh, a gamekeeper’s son, he was taken twice as a gillie to the highlands, received a good plain education, but had already begun to commit petty thefts when he enlisted as a drummer in the Norfolk Militia in 1813.  George Borrow, who probably saw him in Edinburgh, gave a very fanciful sketch of him in Lavengro: the “wild, red-headed lad of some fifteen years, his frame lithy as an antelope’s, but with prodigious breadth of chest” was only twelve years old.  When the regiment left for England the next year, Haggart was discharged, and after nine months’ more schooling he began an apprenticeship as a millwright.
        The firm went bankrupt in April 1817 and the unemployed Haggart soon became a regular pickpocket, burglar, and sometimes shoplifter haunting fairs, racecourses, and towns across Scotland.  His luck varied but was never better than during the first four months when he and an Irish comrade shared more than three hundred guineas.  He was imprisoned six times and escaped four times; and on October 10, 1820, in his escape from Dumfries tolbooth he knocked out the turnkey with a stone and killed him.  He escaped to Ireland, and was sailing at one time for America, at another for France, but in March 1821 was arrested for theft at Clough market.  He was recognised and brought from Ireland to Dumfries and thence to Edinburgh.  There he was tried on June 11, 1821, and hanged on the 18th.
        He was visited in prison by George Combe, the phrenologist, and between the trial and his execution he partly wrote, partly dictated an autobiography which was published by his agent, with Combe’s phrenological notesand Haggart’s own comments as appendices.  It is a curious picture of criminal life, the best and seemingly the most faithful of its kind, and possesses also some linguistic value because it was mainly written in the Scottish thieves’ cant, which contains a good many genuine Romany words.

Bibliography (complete)
        The Life of David Haggart (1821)

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