THOMAS BOULTER 217 



the highwayman was hanged at Sahsbury in 1695, 

 and was not succeeded by any very distinguished 

 practitioner until Boulter appeared on the scene. 



The distinojuished Mr. Thomas Boulter was born 

 of poor but dishonest parents at Poulshot, near 

 Devizes, and ran a brief but brilliant and busy course 

 which ended on the gallows outside Winchester. Mr. 

 Boulter's parentage and the deeds that he did form 

 splendid evidence to help bolster up the doctrine of 

 heredity. He came of a very numerous clan of 

 Boulters and Bisses, whose names are even to this 

 day common at Chiverell and Market Lavington, on 

 the Plain. His father rented a grist mill at Poulshot, 

 stole grain for years, and was publicly whipped in 

 Devizes market-place for stealing honey from an old 

 woman's garden. Shortly after that unfortunate 

 incident, in 1775, on returning from Trowbridge, he 

 stole a horse, the property of a Mr. Hall, and riding 

 it over to Andover sold it for £6, although worth at 

 least £15. This injudicious deal aroused the suspicions 

 of the onlookers, so that he was arrested, and being 

 convicted was sentenced to death. But the Boulters 

 and the Bisses made interest for him, so that his 

 sentence was commuted to transportation for fourteen 

 years. 



Mrs. Boulter, the w^ife of this transported felon 

 and the mother of the greater hero, is said to have 

 also suffered a public whipping at the cart's tail, and 

 Isaac Blagden, his uncle, also did a little in the 

 footpad line on Salisbury Plain between the intervals 

 of agricultural labourino-. He never attained emi- 

 nence, having met in an early stage of his career 



