Episode
Episode 009: John Meff: The Housebreaker Who Could Not Stay Away
- Published
- Jul 13, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 361
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Summary
Send us your Feedback John Meff is the son of French Protestant refugees who fled persecution under Louis XIV, raised in London with great care and bound apprentice to a weaver. He serves faithfully, marries, and then finds himself unable to keep his family alive on honest wages; it is poverty, not wickedness, that first pushes him toward housebreaking, a trajectory recorded in Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals with the unsentimental clarity that makes it one of the earliest works of tru...