"Narrative of the life of James Allen, alias George Walton, alias Jonas Pierce, alias James H. York, alias Burley Grove, the highwayman. Being his death-bed confession, to the warden of the Massachusetts state prison"

Read the complete text of The Highwayman

from ATHENÆUM ITEMS, No. 30 February, 1944:

ARE THERE OTHERS?

There is hardly a more curious treasure in the Athenæum Library than a little volume, bound in what seems a grayish leather, curious not only in itself, for it is the deathbed confession of a highwayman, but more curious by reason of its binding---in the skin of its author. The Latin inscription on its cover, HIC LIBER WALTONIS CUTE COMPACTUS EST, is susceptible of two translations: does it mean merely that Walton's book was bound in skin or in Walton's skin? The very name of George Walton was an alias for James Allen. So too were the names of Jonas Pierce, James H. York, and Burley Grove. Fortunately only one of them was Latinized for the label.

The interpretation always accepted here has been that the highwayman's own skin was used. This belief has recently been confirmed in a striking manner. A visitor to the Athenæum a few months ago announced himself as the son and namesake of one George Arnold, who did cataloguing work at this Library some ninety years ago. The visitor's grandfather, Peter Low, had come to Boston from London, where his father and grandfather were in the book business. Here he was engaged in bookbinding, for the Old Corner Book Store and other clients.

The grandson relates the story that the skin used for binding Walton's book came from Massachusetts General Hospital on the very day of his death. Walton was a Jamaica mulatto, and the skin, taken from his back, had been treated to look like a gray deer skin. Peter Low had not realized at first the precise nature of the material placed in his hands. By the time his day's work was done, however , he was in great distress of mind and, and nightmares filled the night that followed.

These gruesome facts relating to the outside of the book are matched by its lurid contents. Now, reposing in one of the cabinets in the Trustees' Room, it looks as innocent as a Book of Psalms. At large in the world are collectors of every thing--including, in a larger circle, the bindings of books, and in a smaller circle, which can be hardly larger than a dime, bindings made of human skin. It would be interesting to learn whether the Athenæum specimen in this limited field is unique, for surely there can be few books in the world of an interest so impartially divided between the interior and the exterior.

From a copy of a transcript pasted to paper backing of frame of a portrait of John Fenno:

"Extract from a letter from John A. Fenno, President of the Boston,
Revere Beach, and Lynn Railroad --

'... Our Grandfather, John Fenno, was attacked by a highwayman
name Walton. My father told me that he and his partner Payson
were riding home that evening and when near Powderhorn Hill, Chelsea,
Walton stepped out and demanded their money. Payson jumped out of
the rear of the wagon and ran away. Grandfather jumped on the
highwayman and was shot. He got into his wagon and drove home,
found he was not seriously injured, and went back to Boston.
(His daughter later said a button on her father's coat saved his life,
the bullet glanced and only made a flesh wound).

Walton was caught and sentenced to the State Prison for a long term of years. He died there. Before he died he sent for Grandfather
and told him he wanted to shake the hand of a brave man. Although
Walton had been a highwayman for many years, no man had ever faced him before. He was attended by Dr. Bigelow of Boston in the State Prison
and made the request that a book which he had written of his life be
published and two copies bound in his skin. This was done, and one
copy was given to Dr. Bigelow and the other to Grandfather Fenno.

Father always thought the book in the Boston Athenæum was originally Grandfather's.

The book in the Boston Athenæum was John Fenno's, given to that library by his daughter, Mrs. H. M. Chapin, because her children used its gruesome binding to frighten the neighbors' children. Her version of the highwayman story was that John Fenno captured Walton and returned with him to Boston.

Agnes Brooks Young

From the Boston Transcript, May 31, 1924:

A BOOK BOUND IN HUMAN SKIN A Picturesque Volume in the Vaults of the Boston Athenæum

William E. Henley once declared in a superb moment, that he was the Master of His Fate." George Walton, notorious highwayman, on a lower plane, once gave notice to the public that he was the "'master of his own skin," and the curious thing about his declaration was the use which he determined to make of that integument; the binding of a volume devoted to his own despicable exploits.

This is all a matter of ancient record, but a present fillip is given to it by the fact that Mr. Nathaniel D. Chapin, of the well-known Cleveland manufacturing firm of Billings, Chapin Company has just been in Boston in search of this very volume, by reason of his family connection therewith.

As a boy Mr. Chapin had cherished very lively recollections of the book, for in the days of his grandfather, and even later, it had been often used in place of the family slipper, as an instrument of punishment, on the theory, probably, that the skin of a bad man was particularly adapted for warming that of a bad child.

After some inquiry, Mr. Chapin succeeded in locating the book in the vaults of the Boston Athenaeum. The history of the volume is as picturesque as its binding. It is an octavo, yellowish-green in color, with a look of soft-finished pigskin or porous chamois, which bears the label "Hic Liber Waltonis Cute Compactus Est." It is "'A Narrative of the Life of James Allen, alias George Walton, alias Jonas Pierce, alias James H. York, alias Burley Grove, the Highwayman. Being his Deathbed Confession to the Warden of the Massachusetts State Prison."

This Grove, or Walton, was by his own account, as well as by the account of others, a most thoroughgoing scoundrel. He was a bank robber, a footpad and a sneak thief, being no more like the traditional highwayman of the Dick Turpin type than is the modern areaway holdup man. He was born in 1809, and died in prison some twenty-eight years later. During that period, he served prison sentences of about eight years, although sentenced to nearly forty. Mysterious pardons and equally mysterious escapes explain this discrepancy.

His parents were very poor and early left him. The boy supported himself by doing odd jobs for neighbors. Once he worked all summer for a farmer and received in his pay two counterfeit five-dollar bills, "well nigh half of what was owing me," he says. This was a landmark in his career, for he believed this was what first bred in him distrust of his fellow men. Such is the impressionism of youth! Who knows how many young Americans were led to crime and violence in those days by the famous wooden nutmegs of Connecticut?

After a period of work in the Charlestown shipyards and aboard a fishing smack Walton fell in with an ex-convict named Symmes. The latter was the first to show him the pleasures and perils of bank robbing. Being a novice in the art when he attempted it alone he was speedily caught, and in 1824 served his first prison sentence of six months for this crime.

When released, he and a jail acquaintance took to waylaying late travellers on the highways. It was apparently a far more hazardous occupation but he lacked sufficient capital to undertake the safer ways of crime. Indeed, Walton blames a large share of his misfortunes upon this lack of capital, which he says is as necessary in this as in any other profession. The two rascals fared indifferently well, so at last they journeyed to Keene, N. H., where they robbed the Cheshire Bank. Walton for this was sentenced to fifteen years in prison of which he served six.

The moment he again stepped out of jail he put himself in funds by robbing a jewelry store, and then took to the road once more. He seems to have behaved rather generously toward some of his victims, being content with their money and leaving them their watches and jewels. The reasons he gives for this, when twitted by his friends, seem fairly characteristic of the man.

"The first was that I thought it rather hard to take a man's watch, who might not feel able to supply its place by purchasing another - and secondly, I was apprehensive that it might lead to detection."

The reader may judge for himself which was probably the more weighty.

Walton at this time spent a longer time than usual on the road, but with apparently no startling success financially. Once, after describing several unsuccessful holdups, he remakks: "It was a dull day, and not much doing."

The majority of his victims offered no resistance, taking to their heels at once and leaving their wallets behind. A Mr. John Fenno, however, returning one evening across the old Chelsea bridge, turned out to be a very different customer. Walton had no sooner gotten out his "Money or your life" when Fenno, who was a stout, florid faced, but muscular man, jumped from his cart and seized the highwayman.

Walton was getting the worst of it until he managed to get out his pistol and shot his opponent. While the bullet was deflected by a suspender buckle, the shock staggered Fenno sufficiently to make him release his hold, whereupon Walton lost no time in making his escape.

Soon afterwards Walton was caught again and sentenced to twenty years hard labor for highway robbery and attempted murder, but escaped within seven months and went to Montreal, until the noise about him should quiet. While there he seems to have stolen everything upon which he could lay hands, and have drunk and brawled when not actively plying his trade. At length when the city became uncomfortably warm, Walton struck south again, leaving a trail of deprecations from Canada to Massachusetts. He had come back too soon, however, and before the memory of him had faded, with the result that he was speedily under lock and key once more. This time ill health brought his career to an end, but not before he had followed the popular fashion of notorious criminals of the time, and written a glowing confession of his mis-deeds.

The odd part of it was that, during his last confinement, the unusual courage of Mr. Fenno seems to have struck firmly in his mind. So great was his admiration for the man who had worsted him, that Walton directed that a copy of his "memoirs" be bound in his own skin and presented to Mr. Fenno as a token of esteem. Mr. Chapin is a descendant of this John Fenno to whom the book came. Such is the story of the gristly volume now in the vaults of the Athenaeum. This book covering, by the way, while gruesome enough, is not unique, for in Europe there exist several volumes so bound.

It is a rather fitting commentary upon the French Revolution that so many authors of reminiscences of that time should choose to bind them in the skins of its victims. Just why the "Constitution de la Republique Française" should have been so covered is a mystery, yet several copies are known, one of which is at present in the Museum Carnavalet at Paris.

In 1818 the sale of a noted French library attracted considerable attention largely because, among the items listed, were two books bound in the skins of women. The library had been founded by a M. Chevaney, who had a fine nose for spicy specialties, and these commanded a high price.

In the last century, too, there lived a Countess St. Agnes, who was famous for her beautiful shoulders. She left, in her will, the skin from them to the noted French astronomer, Camille Flammarion, who used it to bind a copy of "Heaven and Hell." Perhaps it was done with the thought that a lady whose shoulders had borne so gracefully the burden of life could as well support that of Heaven and Hell. However, that may be, the beautiful countess has become greater than the fabled Atlas, since he had only to support the physical world, while she now carried the eternal.

Stuart Lowell Rich

Further Reading:
—Bouckaert, Albert, "Bookbindings of Human Skin," Sexology, March 1949, p480-482.
—Blementhal, Walter Hart, Bookmen's Bedlam: An Olio of Literary Oddities. Rutgers University Press, 1955.
—Goodman, Lee Dana, "He Was bound to Come to a Bad End," Yankee Magazine, June 1991, p99.