Oxford Road, Saint Giles's, and Tottenham Court were, at various periods of his residence in town, inhabited by him.

At one place he carried on the business of greengrocer and small-coalman; in another, he was carpenter, undertaker, and lender of money to the poor; finally, he was a lodging-house keeper in the Oxford or Tyburn Road; but continued to exercise the last-named charitable profession.
Lending as he did upon pledges, and carrying on a pretty large trade, it was not for him, of course, to inquire into the pedigree of all the pieces of plate, the bales of cloth, swords, watches, wigs, shoe-buckles, etc.

that were confided by his friends to his keeping; but it is clear that his friends had the requisite confidence in him, and that he enjoyed the esteem of a class of characters who still live in history, and are admired unto this very day.

The mind loves to think that, perhaps, in Mr.Hayes's back parlour the gallant Turpin might have hob-and-nobbed with Mrs.Catherine; that here, perhaps, the noble Sheppard might have cracked his joke, or quaffed his pint of rum.

Who knows but that Macheath and Paul Clifford may have crossed legs under Hayes's dinner-table?
But why pause to speculate on things that might have been?
why desert reality for fond imagination, or call up from their honoured graves the sacred dead?
I know not: and yet, in sooth, I can never pass Cumberland Gate without a sigh, as I think of the gallant cavaliers who traversed that road in old time.