I just checked here: Retail Prices Index: Long run series: 1800 to 2024: Jan 1974=100 - Office for National Statistics.
If I read their tables correctly, 1 pound sterling in 1830 is worth roughly 150 today. So that “few pounds” may have been the equivalent of about 1000 modern pounds. Certainly more than most strong-arm robberies get today.
Long-run inflation is a hard thing to get our minds around.
The darn few, the darn proud, the Filipino-Russian-American brigade!
Great story. Thanks for sharing.
From digital genealogical records, I learned that my grandfather’s uncle spent almost two years in Sing Sing prison. He was a delivery man and apparently had been stealing packages for resale.
The rest of the family heeded the wisdom of the Baretta theme song:
“Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.”
It’s almost like a Doctor Zhivago story.
Decades ago, a none-too-bright relative (who I’ll call D) planned to fraudulently claim welfare payments. A call from a welfare office investigator followed. The investigator wanted to visit his home to confirm his dire financial situation. D dropped the claim, as his expensive home on an island was probably nicer than most welfare recipients’s homes, and his income as a lawyer was well above the average. D also owned 3 other nice homes. And an airplane.
I have an ancestor who had an unusual middle name matching the last name of one of the most famous murderers of the 20th century.
When I asked him about where his middle name came from, he refused to talk about it.
Hmm…
My umpty-ump grandfather planned the most notorious mass murder in Scottish history. A more recent ancestor (mid-1800s) had to relocate to Arkansas from South Carolina after he beat a man to death. A very distant cousin has a Supreme Court case named after them.
By doing absolutely no genealogy it’s amazing how much nicer my ancestors were than some of you rum lot!
If Mom or Dad or Wife didn’t mention it, I don’t know about it. My ancestral hands are clean! 
In 1946 my dad was charged with running a floating crap game and was given a $100 fine. My dad told the judge fine, that he had a hundred in his ass pocket. The judge then asked him if he had 30 days in his ass pocket and tossed him in jail for contempt of court.
I think it was more like 2 pounds, so maybe $500 nowadays (split 3 ways) plus whatever they could have gotten for the cloth. Not worth dying for, IMO.
My g-grandfather had a bank in a small town in the Great Plains. He had learned the business from his father-in-law who was a big shot. It went belly up in the downturn after WWI. The Feds came in and it wasn’t looking good. He said he was going to a spa resort to rest. He never came back. A son that was working with him went to jail.
Some years later my grandma got a letter from an unknown person out west concerning a recent incident regarding my father and brothers. But she recognized the handwriting and started corresponding. He convinced her to move out. They did.
My father and his brothers thought he was an uncle or something. Weren’t told who he was or anything.
My grandma always said he was going to pay back every penny if they’d just let him. Right. Her story was that he was lending money to people who were bringing relatives over from the told country. When the recession hit, they couldn’t pay and the back failed. Not sure of that either.
He died a little before I was born but I knew all about him. (He’s buried in the family plot under his real name.) I only found out much later doing genealogy that many of the family members had only recently heard the tale. So I have photos and tales of his other life to share.
He died when I was young so I never knew him very well but apparently my father led a colorful life, including (before he met my mom) time in prison for sleeping with an underage girl. He reportedly also had a casual attitude towards hunting and fishing license requirements, and excise taxes on home brew.
Fortunately nothing bad came of it but my wife worked as the bookkeeper for a small company that hired illegal aliens undocumented immigrants. As bookkeeper, she had to reconcile their bogus Social Security numbers in order to do payroll. I half-joked that if ICE ever raided the place I might have to bail her out of jail.
My grandmother supposedly had a brother who went away for murder but no one would discuss it and I never learned any details.
Tenuously “family”, but when my father remarried, the woman had a son from a previous marriage as well. Said son grew up and devised a scheme with his girlfriend of going to homes for sale posing as an engaged couple, taking the tour, then he’d excuse himself to use the bathroom while she distracted them with questions, during which time he’d steal jewelry and small valuables. I think they got four or five houses in before getting caught and convicted of various felonies and going to prison.
If you want to go back really far one of my many times great grandfathers was Hugh Despenser who was hanged, drawn and quartered for high treason
According to family lore, my dad had either an uncle or a great-uncle who owned a very popular speakeasy during the Prohibition. I don’t know that he had any legal problems from it, but I would expect that the police would have made it known to him which palms he should grease and how much grease to apply.
My uncle was very tangentially affiliated with the Mafia in Brooklyn in the 1960s. His best buddy was a brother of Tony Sirico (the actor who went clean and played Paulie on the Sopranos). He was a bookie for a bit working for a different bookie. He got in a bit over his head gambling on sports and worked off his debt.
An ancestor of mine’s largest entry in the historical record is when he was acquitted of charges horse theft. He lived near the Virginia/North Carolina border. He apparently made his living stealing horses in one colony, selling them in the other colony, then stealing a new batch and crossing the border again.
A cousin of mine killed Pat Garrett. He turned himself in to the authorities, and pleaded self-defense. The jury acquitted him.
Another cousin found the wreckage of the alleged flying saucer at Roswell. (But that was legal.)
If you have any Quakers in your family, it is very easy to trace your ancestors. The Quakers would excommunicate you for pretty trivial infractions, then reinstate you when you demonstrated repentance. Birth records, death records, and marriage records are as haphazard as any other church. But the disciplinary records are meticulous and copious. Three of my ancestors were excommunicated for joining the army in various wars. One of my ancestors was excommunicated for talking back to her husband.
My Daddy’s grandfather rode his white mule into the church while services were happening. Drunk. Went to the drunk tank. His wife asked why, he said “I was hungry for my dinner and couldn’t find you!” She forgave him.
He was arrested many times for selling bootleg hooch.
Fighting.
Gambling.
General carousing.
Grandmother said if he hadnt provided her with a nice living, she would kill him.
So I’m glad we didn’t have a murderer in the family, from what I can tell.
Can we stretch “family” to include my mother’s cousin? They were fairly close, and I used to call him “Uncle Bill.”
Anyway, Uncle Bill married Aunt Mary. Turns out that, at the height of the Red Scare in the 50s when Mary was very young, Mary’s father came down to breakfast one day, muttered a bit about communists, and then took out a pistol and killed Mary’s mother and sister at the breakfast table. He tried to kill Mary as well, but she managed to hide.
Many years later, after being released from prison and undergoing therapy, Mary’s father moved into a mobile home on the family farm with Uncle Bill and Aunt Mary. This was how I came to know him. When asked if she was nervous about having her father living a few yards away on the farm, Mary would say, “Not as nervous as not knowing where he is. At least I can keep an eye on him.”
He was always a great guy to me.
I was “pulled over” for riding a bicycle in Jones Beach State Park on Long Island about 30 years ago. It was a rainy late spring day - not a car in the parking lot except a state cop car. You’re supposed to lock your bike in what (that day) was an empty, unmanned/guarded bike section. So I just wanted to see the ocean and quickly went through the tunnel under Ocean Parkway to get there and back.
The state cop car was still there and as the bike path runs alongside the parkway, he tailed me and lit the lights and blew the siren. Apparently he had a female rookie with him, and she took up the rear point position about 5 yards back with her hand on her holster while this cop asks me for my drivers license.
“I don’t carry that when I’m riding and have no ID”
“What’s your name and date of birth?” (I have a rare last name and he writes it down and goes back to his car to look me up for priors). The rookie kept me covered in case I made a break for it or pulled out my Navy Colt and made the day interesting.
He returns with some BS about that name not existing and threatening to arrest me as he apparently has has nothing else to do. It came down to not also giving him my middle name (which he knew). He wrote a $10 ticket but wrote the date of infraction after the court date. So today was May something, the court date was July something and date of infraction was August something.
Nothing better to do, I go to the State Court and ask for dismissal on grounds that it is not yet August. And I’d always thought the cop has to show up else a dismissal. Any ways, the Judge says the cop can refile etc something or other and I’d still have to return. Maybe State Cop Opie had 8x10 colour glossies as evidence. The stand-by Public Defender tells “plead it out and pay the fine” as Law & Order was at stake here.
Sorry nothing else. I have many Aunts/Uncles/cousins in Ireland and a bunch in Norway which we’ve established as the best. Yet cannot even claim any kicking out amongst the lot.