Of the circumstances that first led Peace to the commission of
crime we know nothing. How far enforced idleness, bad
companionship, according to some accounts the influence of a
criminally disposed mother, how far his own daring and
adventurous temper provoked him to robbery, cannot be determined
accurately. His first exploit was the stealing of an old
gentleman's gold watch, but he soon passed to greater things. On
October 26, 1851, the house of a lady living in Sheffield was
broken into and a quantity of her property stolen. Some of it
was found in the possession of Peace, and he was arrested. Owing
no doubt to a good character for honesty given him by his late
employer Peace was let off lightly with a month's imprisonment.

After his release Peace would seem to have devoted himself for a
time to music, for which he had always a genuine passion. He
taught himself to play tunes on a violin with one string, and at
entertainments which he attended was described as "the modern
Paganini." In later life when he had attained to wealth and
prosperity the violin and the harmonium were a constant source of
solace during long winter evenings in Greenwich and Peckham. But
playing a one-stringed violin at fairs and public-houses could
not be more than a relaxation to a man of Peace's active temper,
who had once tasted what many of those who have practised it,
describe as the fascination of that particular form of nocturnal
adventure known by the unsympathetic name of burglary. Among the
exponents of the art Peace was at this time known as a "portico-
thief," that is to say one who contrived to get himself on to the
portico of a house and from that point of vantage make his
entrance into the premises. During the year 1854 the houses of a
number of well-to-do residents in and about Sheffield were