Darkie Hutton

Envoy Richard 'Darkie’ Hutton (1849 – 1921) was a reformed criminal and former member of the Charles Peace gang who spent 23 years in prison before he was converted and became an evangelist and Officer in The Salvation Army.

[1] His family life was troubled with an alcoholic father, and while still a child he ran away to sea where he travelled to Quebec, Bombay, Shanghai and Calcutta, among other destinations .

After being released from prison at the end of a six-month sentence for the theft of a gold pocket watch, Hutton was blackmailed into joining the notorious criminal gang ‘The Brotherhood of the Red Hand’.

[3][4] Upon his release from Dartmoor, where he had been treated harshly, Hutton returned to the Brotherhood of the Red Hand, quickly being ‘promoted’ to the gang's leader and deriving great pleasure from the notoriety and prestige that this position offered him.

By special permission of the Home Secretary Herbert Gladstone Hutton would wear his prison clothes, chains and leg irons to lead Salvation Army meetings.