I was reading about the general lawlessness in England during the seventeenth century in general, and highwaymen in particular, when I asked myself: “I wonder if there were any highwaymen in colonial New England?” And then I immediately thought of New England’s most notorious highwayman, who of course has Salem ties: Captain Lightfoot! Born Michael Martin in Kilkenny County, Ireland, this colorful character served his brigand apprenticeship with John Doherty, aka Captain Thunderbolt, on the roads around Dublin before the situation became too hot and both emigrated to America. Martin arrived in Salem in June of 1819, spent a lengthy (for him—about a year) amount of time trying to earn an honest living working for Elias Hasket Derby, before returning to his life of crime on the roads of New England and bordering Canada. A brazen robbery in Medford, Massachusetts in the summer of 1821 led to a chase, his capture, trial, conviction, and execution under the newly-reinstated death penalty for highway robbery in December. In the months between his sentencing and execution, Martin offered up his “confessions” to Boston newspaperman Francis W. Waldo, and the result was a bestselling book, reprinted a century ago as the very first publication by George Francis Dow’s Wayside Press in Topsfield.

This book is a great read; I can understand why it was a bestseller. (You can read it yourself here,  and the woodcut illustrations in this post are all from this edition). Martin is unapologetic and even entertaining in his confessions: they read like a stream of consciousness. About half of the book is dedicated to his life as a highwayman in Ireland and Scotland, then he’s off to America. While he may come off as a bit of an Irish patriot in the old country, in the new he is just dissolute. In Salem he tries to go straight, and obviously has a great deal of respect for Mr. Derby, but he just can’t stop himself from squandering his hard-earned money on frequent “blow outs” and then he is back to square one. After losing his job, he tried brewing in Salem and Portsmouth for a spell, but then was back to a life of lifting and robbing.

Martin “earned” and lost his passage back to Ireland several times over the next year or so, never to return. Salem definitely had a hold on him, because it was the location of a small Irish community with which remained in contact. He returned in August of 1821, determined to lay low following several conspicuous robberies up north, but nevertheless frequenting the taverns. Somehow, in the midst of intermittent blow outs, he caught wind of an upcoming dinner down in Medford at the home of Governor John Brooks, and thought that “there might be some fat ones among [the attendees].” He took off for Medford, was interrupted in his mission briefly when he ran into another of his countrymen from Salem and had to get reacquainted at a tavern, and then held up Major John Bray and his wife, who were returning home from the Governor’s dinner. Martin presented the pistol to Major Bray, demanded his money or his life, but swore that it was not cocked or loaded. Another point he wanted to emphasize was that when Mrs. Bray “began to conceal her watch-chain, I told her not to be uneasy—-that I never robbed ladies.” Neither detail worked towards his favor after his arrest or during his trial, and he was sentenced to death in October and executed in December.

Captain Lightfoot’s confessions seem to be pursuit of a folkloric outlaw status that I’m not sure he obtained in America: there was just too many moral objections to his unbridled lifestyle and there was nothing remotely Robin Hoodish about him. In Ireland, he was more of a rebel with a cause, and that is the theme of the W.R. Burnett novel Captain Lightfoot (1954) and its screen adaptation released in the following year starring Rock Hudson as the title character. In his final days, Michael Martin expressed concerns for his reputation back home, and I think he would be pleased by these twentieth-century depictions.