Anyone got any ideas about this? Any ballad collections that might cover this period? I'm getting curious about this song.

Here is a link to The Life of Charles Peace, John Jackson's hero.

According to this Charley Peace was not only a fiddler, but played a few other instruments - and his day job during much of his burgling life was described as "dealer in musical instruments", and there are a few examples of his verse - for example, when his sister died he wrote this, which could have come from a Carter Family song:

"I was so long with pain opprest
That wore my strength away;
It made me long for endless rest
Which never can decay."

Writes H.B.Irving, author of the life I linked to just there: "In Charley Peace alone is revived that good-humoured popularity which in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries fell to the lot of Claude Duval, Dick Turpin and Jack Sheppard."

One of us you might even say. So are there any ballads about him? "Peace songs" with a difference.