und him guilty of the
felony only, whereupon he was once more transported to Virginia.

He did not continue long in that plantation before growing weary of
labour, he thought fit to threaten his master, so that the man was glad
to discharge him, and thought himself happy of getting rid of such a
servant. Upon which Dalton soon found out one Whalebone, a fellow of a
like disposition with himself; and they went about stealing boats and
negroes, running away with them and selling them in other colonies. At
last Dalton met with a ship which carried him for England. By the way he
was pressed on board the _Hampshire_ man-of-war, in which he was a
spectator of the last siege of Gibraltar.[95]

On his return he received his wages and lived on it for a little time.
Then he with Benjamin Branch and William Field, took to snatching of
pockets. At last they took Christopher Rawlins into their society and in
a few months' time they three snatched five hundred pockets. Amongst the
rest Dalton cut off one from a woman's side at St. Andrew's, Holborn,
for which Branch being in company was taken and executed, although
Dalton and Rawlins did all they could to have made up the affair with
the prosecutor but in vain. This trade therefore being at an end, he and
his companion Rawlins fell next to robbing coaches in the streets, and
being once more apprehended, he found himself under a necessity of
making an information against his companions, six or seven of whom were
executed upon his evidence. He also received ten guineas to swear
against Nichols the peruke-maker, but after he received the money, his
conscience checked him, and though he did not return it, yet he
absolutely refused to give any evidence against him. But Neeves, who had
been taken into the same plot, went through with it, and as has been
said before, hanged him for a fact which he never committed.[96]

A multitude of wives Dalton married during his life, and many of them
were alive at the time of his decease, four of them coming at once to
see him in Newgate when under his last misfortune, and appearing at
that time to be very friendly together. He had not been long out of
Newgate before be fell to his old practices, and a few sessions after
was apprehended, and tried for stopping the coach of an eminent
physician with an intent to rob it. For this he was sentenced to a fine
and imprisonment, which upon insulting the court was ordered to be in
one of the condemned cells i