Diminution in certain kinds of crime—Fewer street robberies because people carried less cash about them—Corresponding increase in cases of fraud, forgeries, jewel and bullion robberies—Great commercial frauds—Offences against the person confined to murder and manslaughter, the character of which remained much the same—Another crime, that of attempt upon the sovereign—Other forms of treason—The Cato Street conspiracy—Thistlewood’s history—Discovery of the plot—The conspirators’ plan—How defeated—Their trial at the Old Bailey—The informer Edwards—Their sentence and execution—Attacks on the sovereign—Oxford fires at Queen Victoria—His attempt due to a craze for notoriety—“Young England”—Francis—Bean—Mr. Pate—Celebrated frauds and forgeries—Fauntleroy—The last execution for forgery—Captain Montgomery—Joseph Hunton the Quaker—Richard Gifford—Maynard—Sir Robert Peel’s bill to amend forgery laws—The Forgery Act—Latest cases of abduction—E. Gibbon Wakefield and Miss Turner—Big “jobs,” burglaries and other robberies, still perpetrated—Howard robs Mr. Mullay—Strange assault upon Mr. Gee—Thieves prosper through connivance of fences and receivers—Ikey Solomons—His escape from custody—He leaves the country, but returns, and is eventually sentenced to transportation—Large robbery of the Custom House—While still undiscovered, robbery of diamonds at the Custom House Quay—Leads to detection of both—The gold-dust robbery in 1839—How discovered—Done by Jews, who cheat each other all round—A few of the most remarkable murders of this epoch—Thurtell, Hunt, and Probert kill Mr. Weare—Burke and Hall—Their imitators, Bishop and Williams, in London, murder an Italian boy and sell the body—Greenacre and Mrs. Gale murder Hannah Brown—Horrible means of disposing of the corpse—Detection, trial, and sentence.
Diminution in certain kinds of crime—Fewer street robberies because people carried less cash about them—Corresponding increase in cases of fraud, forgeries, jewel and bullion robberies—Great commercial frauds—Offences against the person confined to murder and manslaughter, the character of which remained much the same—Another crime, that of attempt upon the sovereign—Other forms of treason—The Cato Street conspiracy—Thistlewood’s history—Discovery of the plot—The conspirators’ plan—How defeated—Their trial at the Old Bailey—The informer Edwards—Their sentence and execution—Attacks on the sovereign—Oxford fires at Queen Victoria—His attempt due to a craze for notoriety—“Young England”—Francis—Bean—Mr. Pate—Celebrated frauds and forgeries—Fauntleroy—The last execution for forgery—Captain Montgomery—Joseph Hunton the Quaker—Richard Gifford—Maynard—Sir Robert Peel’s bill to amend forgery laws—The Forgery Act—Latest cases of abduction—E. Gibbon Wakefield and Miss Turner—Big “jobs,” burglaries and other robberies, still perpetrated—Howard robs Mr. Mullay—Strange assault upon Mr. Gee—Thieves prosper through connivance of fences and receivers—Ikey Solomons—His escape from custody—He leaves the country, but returns, and is eventually sentenced to transportation—Large robbery of the Custom House—While still undiscovered, robbery of diamonds at the Custom House Quay—Leads to detection of both—The gold-dust robbery in 1839—How discovered—Done by Jews, who cheat each other all round—A few of the most remarkable murders of this epoch—Thurtell, Hunt, and Probert kill Mr. Weare—Burke and Hall—Their imitators, Bishop and Williams, in London, murder an Italian boy and sell the body—Greenacre and Mrs. Gale murder Hannah Brown—Horrible means of disposing of the corpse—Detection, trial, and sentence.
INchapter two of the present volume I brought down the record of crime to the second decade of the present century. I propose now to continue the subject, and to devote a couple of chapters to criminal occurrences of a more recent date, only premising that as accounts become more voluminous I shall be compelled to deal with fewer cases, taking in preference those which are typical and invested with peculiar interest. It is somewhat remarkable that a marked change soon comes over the Calendar. Certain crimes, those against the person especially, diminished gradually. They became less easy or remunerative. Police protection was better and more effective; the streets of London were well lighted, the suburbs were more populous and regularly patrolled. People, too, were getting into the habit of carrying but little cash about them, and no valuables but their watches or personal jewellery. Street robberies offered fewer inducements to depredators, and evil-doers were compelled to adopt other methods of preying upon their fellows. This led to a rapid and marked increase in all kinds of fraud; and prominent in the criminal annals of Newgate in these later years will be found numerous remarkable instances of this class of offence—forgeries committed systematically, and for long periods, as in the case of Fauntleroy, to cover enormous defalcations;the fabrication of deeds, wills, and false securities for the purpose of misappropriating funds or feloniously obtaining cash; thefts of bullion, bank-notes, specie, and gold-dust, planned with consummate ingenuity, eluding the keenest vigilance, and carried out with reckless daring; jewel-boxes cleverly stolen under the very noses of owners or care-takers. As time passed, the extraordinary extension of all commercial operations led to many entirely novel and often gigantic financial frauds. The credulity of investors, the unscrupulous dishonesty of bankers, the slackness of supervision over wholly irresponsible agents, produced many terrible monetary catastrophes, and lodged men like Cole, Robson, and Redpath in Newgate.
While the varying conditions of social life thus brought about many changes in the character of offences against property, those against the person became more and more limited to the most heinous, or those which menaced or destroyed life. There was no increase in murder or manslaughter; the number of such crimes remained pretty constant proportionately to population. Nor did the methods by which they were perpetrated greatly vary from those in times past. The causes also continued much the same. Passion, revenge, cupidity, sudden ebullitions of homicidal rage, the cold-blooded, calculating atrocity born of self-interest, were still the irresistible incentives to kill. The brutal ferocity of the wild beast once aroused, the same means, the same weapons were employed to do the dreadful deed, the same and happily oftenfutile precautions taken to conceal the crime. Pegsworth, and Greenacre, and Daniel Good merely reproduced types that had gone before, and that have since reappeared. Esther Hibner was as inhuman in her ill-usage of the parish apprentice she killed as Martha Brownrigg had been. Thurtell and Hunt followed in the footsteps of Billings, Wood, and Catherine Hayes. Courvoisier might have lived a century earlier. Hocker was found upon the scene of his crime, irresistibly attracted thither, as was Theodore Gardelle. Now and again there seemed to be a recurrence of a murder epidemic, as there had been before; as in the year 1849, a year memorable for the Rush murders at Norwich, the Gleeson Wilson murder at Liverpool, that of the Mannings in London, and of many more. Men like Mobbs, the miscreant known as “General Haynau” on account of his blood-thirstiness, still murdered their wives; or like Cannon the chimney-sweeper, who savagely killed the policeman.
A not altogether new crime, however, akin to murder, although happily never passing beyond dastardly attempts, cropped up in these times, and was often frequently repeated within a short interval. The present Queen very soon after her accession became the victim of the most cowardly and unmanly outrages, and the attempted murder of the sovereign by Oxford in 1840 was followed in the very next year by those of Francis and of Bean in two consecutive months, while in 1850 Her Majesty was the victim of anotheroutrage at the hands of one Pate. These crimes had their origin too often in the disordered brains of lunatics at large, like Captain Goode. Their perpetrators were charged with high treason, but met with merciful clemency as irresponsible beings. But at various dates treason more distinct and tangible came to the front: attempts to levy war against the State. The well-known Cato Street conspiracy, which grew out of disturbed social conditions after the last French war, amidst general distress, and when the people were beginning to agitate for a larger share of political power, was among the earliest, and to some extent the most desperate, of these. Its ringleaders, Thistlewood and the rest, were after capture honoured by committal as State prisoners to the Tower, but they came one and all to Newgate for trial at the Old Bailey, and remained there after conviction till they were hanged. Later on, the Chartists agitated persistently for the concession embraced in the so-called People’s Charter, many of which are by this time actually, and by more legitimate efforts, engrafted upon our Constitution. But the Chartists sought their ends by riot and rebellion, and gained only imprisonment for their pains. Some five hundred in all were arrested, but as only three of these were lodged in Newgate, I shall not recur to them in my narrative.
The Cato Street conspiracy would have been simply ridiculous but for the recklessness of the desperadoes who planned it. That some thirty or more needymen should hope to revolutionize England is a sufficient proof of the absurdity of their attempt. But they proceeded in all seriousness, and would have shrunk from no outrage or atrocity in furtherance of their foolhardy enterprise. The massacre of the whole of the Cabinet Ministers at one stroke was to be followed by an attack upon “the old man and the old woman,” as they styled the Mansion House and the Bank of England. At the former the “Provisional Government” was to be established, which under Thistlewood as dictator was to rule the nation, by first handing over its capital to fire and pillage. This Thistlewood had seen many vicissitudes throughout his strange, adventurous career. The son of a respectable Lincolnshire farmer, he became a militia officer, and married a woman with £10,000, in which, however, she had only a life interest. She died early, and Thistlewood, left to his own resources, followed the profession of arms, first in the British service, and then in that of the French revolutionary Government. It was during this period that he was said to have imbibed his revolutionary ideas. Returning to England, he found himself rich in a small landed property, which he presently sold to a man who became bankrupt before he had paid over the purchase money. After this he tried farming, but failed. He married again and came to London, where he soon became notorious as a reckless gambler and a politician holding the most extreme views. In this way he formed the acquaintance of Watson andothers, with whom he was arraigned for treasonable practices, and imprisoned. On his release he sent a challenge to Lord Sidmouth, the Home Secretary, and was again arrested and imprisoned. On his second release, goaded by his fancied wrongs, he began to plot a dark and dreadful revenge, and thus the conspiracy in which he was the prime mover took shape, and came to a head.
The Government obtained early and full information of the nefarious scheme. One of the conspirators, by name Edwards, made a voluntary confession to Sir Herbert Taylor one morning at Windsor; after which Thistlewood and his accomplices were closely watched, and measures taken to arrest them when their plans were so far developed that no doubt could remain as to their guilt. The day appointed for the murder and rising actually arrived before the authorities interfered. It was the day on which Lord Harrowby was to entertain his colleagues at dinner in Grosvenor Square. The occasion was considered excellent by the conspirators for disposal of the whole Cabinet at one blow, and it was arranged that one of their number should knock at Lord Harrowby’s door on the pretence of leaving a parcel, and that when it was opened the whole band should rush in. While a few secured the servants, the rest were to fall upon Lord Harrowby and his guests. Hand-grenades were to be thrown into the dining-room, and during the noise and confusion the assassination of the ministers was to be completed, the heads of Lord Castlereagh and Lord
The Stable &c. in Cato Street where the Conspirators met.The Stable &c. in Cato Street where the Conspirators met.
Sidmouth being carried away in a bag. Lord Harrowby’s dinner-party was postponed, but the conspirators knew nothing of it, and those who watched his house were further encouraged in their mistake by the arrival of many carriages, bound, as it happened, to the Archbishop of York’s. Meanwhile the main body remained at their headquarters, a ruined stable in Cato Street, Edgeware Road, completing their dispositions for assuming supreme power after the blow had been struck. Here they were surprised by the police, headed by a magistrate, and supported by a strong detachment of Her Majesty’s Guards. The police were the first to arrive on the spot, the Guards having entered the street at the wrong end. The conspirators were in a loft, approached by a ladder and a trap-door, access through which could only be obtained one by one. The first constable who entered Thistlewood ran through the body with a sword, but others quickly followed, the lights were extinguished, and a desperate conflict ensued. The Guards, headed by Lord Adolphus Fitz Clarence, now reinforced the police, and the conspirators gave way. Nine of the latter were captured, with all the war material, cutlasses, pistols, hand-grenades, and ammunition. Thistlewood and fourteen more succeeded for the moment in making their escape, but most of them were subsequently taken. Thistlewood was discovered next morning in a mean house in White Street, Moorfields. He was in bed with his breeches on (in the pockets of which were found a numberof cartridges), the black belt he had worn at Cato Street, and a military sash.
The trial of the conspirators came on some six weeks later, at the Old Bailey. Thistlewood made a long and rambling defence, the chief features of which were abuse of Lord Sidmouth, and the vilification of the informer Edwards. Several of the other prisoners took the same line as regards Edwards, and there seems to have been good reason for supposing that he was a greater villain than any of those arraigned. He had been in a state of abject misery, and when he first joined “the reformers,” as the Cato Street conspirators called themselves, he had neither a bed to lie upon nor a coat to his back. His sudden access to means unlimited was no doubt due to the profitablerôlehe soon adopted of Government informer and spy, and it is pretty certain that for some time he served both sides; on the one inveigling silly enthusiasts to join in the plot, and denouncing them on the other. The employment of Edwards, and the manner in which the conspirators were allowed to commit themselves further and further before the law was set in motion against them, were not altogether creditable to the Government. It was asserted, not without foundation, at these trials, that Edwards repeatedly incited the associates he was betraying to commit outrage, to set fire to houses, throw hand-grenades into the carriages of ministers; that he was, to use Thistlewood’s words, “a contriver, instigator, and entrapper.” The Government were probably not proud of their agent,for Edwards, after the conviction had been assured, went abroad to enjoy, it was said, an ample pension, so long as he did not return to England.
Five of the conspirators, Thistlewood, Ings, Brunt, Davidson, and Tidd, were sentenced to death, and suffered in the usual way in front of Newgate, with the additional penalty of decapitation, as traitors, after they had been hanged. A crowd as great as any known collected in the Old Bailey to see the ceremony, about which there were some peculiar features worth recording. The reckless demeanour of all the convicts except Davidson was most marked. Thistlewood and Ings sucked oranges on the scaffold; they with Brunt and Tidd scorned the ordinary’s ministrations, but Ings said he hoped God would be more merciful to him than men had been. Ings was especially defiant. He sought to cheer Davidson, who seemed affected, crying out, “Come, old cock-of-wax, it will soon be over.” As the executioner fastened the noose, he nodded to a friend he saw in the crowd; and catching sight of the coffins ranged around the gallows, he smiled at the show with contemptuous indifference. He roared out snatches of a song about Death or Liberty, and just before he was turned off, yelled out three cheers to the populace whom he faced. He told the executioner to “do it tidy,” to pull it tight, and was in a state of hysterical exaltation up to the very last. Davidson, who was the only one who seemed to realize his awful situation, listened patiently and with thankfulness to the chaplain, and died in a mannerstrongly contrasting with that of his fellows. After the five bodies had hung for half-an-hour, a man in a mask came forward to complete the sentence. Contemporary reports state that from the skilful manner in which he performed the decapitation, he was generally supposed to be a surgeon. Be this as it may, the weapon used was only an ordinary axe, which rather indicates that force, not skill, was employed. This axe is still in existence, and is preserved at Newgate with various other unpleasant curiosities, but is only an ordinary commonplace tool. These were the last executions for high treason, but not the last prisoners by many who passed through Newgate charged with sedition.
Attacks upon the sovereign, as I have said, became more common after the accession of the young Queen Victoria in 1838. It was a form of high treason not unknown in earlier reigns. In 1786 a mad woman, Margaret Nicholson, tried to stab George III. as he was alighting from his carriage at the gate of St. James’s Palace. She was seized before she could do any mischief, and eventually lodged in Bethlehem Hospital, where she died after forty years’ detention, at the advanced age of one hundred. Again, a soldier, by name Hatfield, who had been wounded in the head, and discharged from the army for unsoundness of mind, fired a pistol at George III. from the pit of Drury Lane theatre in 1800. William IV. was also the victim of a murderous outrage on Ascot race-course in 1832, when John Collins, “a person in thegarb of a sailor, of wretched appearance, and having a wooden leg,” threw a stone at the king, which hit him on the forehead, but did no serious injury. Collins, when charged, pleaded that he had lost his leg in action, that he had petitioned without success for a pension, and that, as he was starving, he had resolved on this desperate deed, feeling, as he said, that he might as well be shot or hanged as remain in such a state. He was eventually sentenced to death, but the plea of lunacy was allowed, and he was confined for life.
None of the foregoing attempts were, however, so dastardly or determined as that made by Oxford upon our present gracious Queen two years after she ascended the throne. The cowardly crime was probably encouraged by the fearless and confiding manner in which the Queen, secure as it seemed in the affections of her loyal people, freely appeared in public. Oxford, who was only nineteen at the time his offence was committed, had been born at Birmingham, but he came as a lad to London, and took service as a pot-boy to a publican. From this he was promoted to barman, and as such had charge of the business in various public-houses. He left his last situation in April 1840, and established himself in lodgings in Lambeth, after which he devoted himself to pistol practice in shooting-galleries, sometimes in Leicester Square, sometimes in the Strand, or the West End. His acquaintances often asked his object in this, but he kept his own counsel till the 10th June.On that day Oxford was on the watch at Buckingham Palace. He saw Prince Albert return there from a visit to Woolwich, and then passed on to Constitution Hill, where he waited till four p.m., the time at which the Queen and Prince Consort usually took an afternoon drive. About six p.m. the royal carriage, a low open vehicle drawn by four horses, ridden by postilions, left the palace. Oxford, who had been pacing backwards and forwards with his hands under the lapels of his coat, saw the carriage approach. He was on the right or north side of the road. Prince Albert occupied the same side of the carriage, the Queen the left. As the carriage came up to him Oxford turned, put his hand into his breast, drew a pistol, and fired at the Queen.
The shot missed, and as the carriage passed on, Oxford drew a second pistol and fired again. The Queen saw this second movement, and stooped to avoid the shot; the Prince too rose to shield her with his person. Again, providentially, the bullet went wide of the mark, and the royal party drove back to Clarence House, the Queen being anxious to give the first news of the outrage and of her safety to her mother, the Duchess of Kent. Meanwhile the pistol-shots had attracted the attention of the bystanders, of whom there was a fair collection, as usual, waiting to see the Queen pass. Oxford was seized by a person named Lowe, who was at first mistaken for the assailant. But Oxford at once assumed the responsibility for his crime, saying, “Itwas I. I did it. I’ll give myself up. There is no occasion to use violence. I will go with you.” He was taken into custody, and removed first to a police cell, thence committed to Newgate, after he had been examined before the Privy Council. Oxford expressed little anxiety or concern. He asked more than once whether the Queen was hurt, and acknowledged that the pistols were loaded with ball.
A craze for notoriety, to be achieved at any cost, was the one absorbing idea in young Oxford’s disordered brain. After his arrest he thought only of the excitement his attempt had raised, nothing of its atrocity, or of the fatal consequences which might have ensued. When brought to trial he hardly realized his position, but gazed with complacency around the crowded court, and eagerly inquired what persons of distinction were present. He smiled continually, and when the indictment was read, burst into loud and discordant fits of laughter. These antics may have been assumed to bear out the plea of insanity set up in his defence, but that there was madness in his family, and that he himself was of unsound mind, could not be well denied. His father, it was proved in evidence, had been at times quite mad; and Oxford’s mental state might be inferred from his own proceedings. Among his papers was found a curious document, purporting to be the rules of an association called “Young England,” which Oxford had evolved out of his own inflated self-conceit, and which had never any real corporeal existence. “YoungEngland” was a secret society, with no aim or object. Its sworn members, known only to Oxford, and all of them mere shadows, were bound to provide themselves with sword, rifle, dagger, and a pair of pistols; to wear a black crape mask, to obey punctually the orders of their commander-in-chief, and to assume any disguise, if required to go into the country on the business of the association.
The officers of the society were to be known only by “factitious (sic) names.” Thus, among the presidents were those of Gowrie, Justinian, Aloman, Colsman, Kenneth, and Godfrey; Hannibal and Ethelred were on the council; Anthony, Augustus, and Frederic were among the generals; Louis and Amadeus among the captains; and Hercules, Neptune, and Mars among the lieutenants of the association. The various grades were distinguished by cockades and bows of different colours. The society was supposed to meet regularly, and its proceedings, together with the speeches made, were duly recorded. With Oxford’s other papers were found letters from the secretary, written as it seemed by Oxford to himself, after the manner of Mr. Toots, all of which declared their approval of the commander-in-chief. One expressed pleasure that Oxford improved so much in speaking, and declared that his (Oxford’s) speech the last time “was beautiful.” This letter went on to say that a new member had been introduced by Lieut. Mars, “a fine, tall, gentlemanly young man, and it is said that he is a military officer, but his name has not yet transpired. Soonafter he was introduced we were alarmed by a violent knocking at the door; in an instant our faces were covered, we cocked our pistols, and with drawn swords stood waiting to receive the enemy. While one stood over the fire with the papers, another stood with lighted torch to fire the house. We then sent the old woman to open the door, and it proved to be some little boys who had knocked and ran away.” Another letter directed Oxford to attend an extraordinary meeting of “Young England” in consequence of having received some information of an important nature from Hanover. “You must attend; and if your master will not give you leave, you must come in defiance of him.”
No serious importance could be attached to these, the manifest inventions of a disordered intellect. The whole of the evidence pointed so strongly towards insanity, that the jury brought in a verdict of acquittal on that ground, and Oxford was ordered to be detained during Her Majesty’s pleasure. He went from Newgate first to Bethlehem, from which he was removed to Broadmoor on the opening of the great criminal lunatic asylum at that place. He was released from Broadmoor in 1878, and went abroad.
Within a couple of years a second attempt to assassinate the Queen was perpetrated in nearly the same spot, by a man named John Francis, who was arrested in the very act, just as he had fired one shot. His motives for thus imitating the dastardly crime of Oxford are shrouded in obscurity.He could not plead insanity like his predecessor, and no attempt was made at his trial to prove him of unsound mind. Here again probably it was partly the love of notoriety which was the incentive, backed possibly with the hope that, as in a much more recent case,[105]he would be in some way provided for, he having been for some time previously in abject circumstances. The deed was long premeditated, and would have been executed a day earlier had not his courage failed him at the last moment. A youth named Pearson had seen him present a pistol at the Queen’s carriage, but draw it back again, exclaiming presently, “I wish I had done it.” Pearson weakly allowed Francis to go off without securing his apprehension, but later he gave full information. The Queen was apprised of the danger, and begged not to go abroad; but she declared she would not remain a prisoner in her own palace, and next day drove out as usual in an open barouche. Nothing happened till Her Majesty returned to Buckingham Palace about six p.m., when, on descending Constitution Hill, with an equerry riding close on each side of her carriage, a man who had been leaning against the palace garden wall suddenly advanced, levelled a pistol at the Queen, and fired. He was so close to the carriage that the smoke of his pistol enveloped the face of Colonel Wylde, one of the equerries. The Queen was untouched, and at first, it is said, hardly realized the danger she hadescaped. Francis had already been seized by a policeman named Trounce, who saw his movement with the pistol, but too late to prevent its discharge. The prisoner was conveyed without delay to the Home Office, and there examined by the Privy Council, which had been hastily summoned for the purpose. On searching him the pistol was found in his pocket, the barrel still warm; also some loose powder and a bullet. There was some doubt as to whether the pistol when fired was actually loaded with ball, but the jury brought in a verdict of guilty of the criminal intent to kill. Francis was sentenced to be hanged, decapitated, and quartered, the old traitor’s doom, but was spared, and subsequently transported for life. The enthusiasm of the people at the Queen’s escape was uproarious, and her drive next day was one long triumphal progress. At the Italian Opera in the evening the audience, on the Queen’s appearance, greeted her with loud cheers, and called for the national anthem. This was in May 1842.
Undeterred by the well-merited punishment which had overtaken Francis, a third miscreant made a similar but far less serious attempt in the month of July following. As the Queen was driving from Buckingham Palace to the Chapel Royal, a deformed lad among the crowd was seen to present a pistol at Her Majesty’s carriage, in the Mall, about half-way between Buckingham and St. James’s Palaces. Only one person saw the movement, a lad named Dasset, who at once collared the cripple, and taking him up to two policemen,charged him with the offence. The policemen treated the matter as a hoax, and allowed the culprit to make off. Later on, however, Dasset was himself seized and interrogated, and on his information handbills were circulated, giving the exact description of the deformed youth, who had “a hump-back, and a long, sickly, pale face, with light hair;” his nose was marked with a scar or black patch, and he was altogether of a dirty appearance. It happened that a lad named Bean had absconded from his father’s home some weeks before, whose description, as given by his father to the police, exactly tallied with that of the deformed person “wanted” for the assault on the Queen. A visit to the father’s residence was followed by the arrest of the son, who had by this time returned. This son, John William Bean, was fully identified by Dasset, and presently examined by the Privy Council. He was eventually charged with a misdemeanour, the capital charge having been abandoned, and committed for trial. Much the same motives of seeking notoriety seem to have impelled Bean, who was perfectly sane, to his rash act; but it was proved that the pistol was not loaded with ball, and he was only convicted of an attempt “to harass, vex, and grieve the sovereign.” Lord Abinger sentenced him to eighteen months’ imprisonment in Newgate, but the place of durance was changed, to meet the existing law, to Millbank Penitentiary.
I shall mention briefly one more case, in which, however, there was no murderous intent, before I passon to other crimes. On June 1850 the Queen was once more subjected to cowardly outrage, the offender being a Mr. Pate, a gentleman by birth, who had borne the Queen’s commission, first as cornet, and then lieutenant, in the 10th Hussars. Pate was said to be an eccentric person, given to strange acts and antics, such as mixing whiskey and camphor with his morning bath-water, and walking for choice through prickly gorse bushes. He always kept the blinds down at his chambers in Jermyn Street; and as the St. James’s clock chimed quarter-past three, invariably went out in a cab, for which he always paid the same fare, nine shillings, all in shillings, and no other coin. But this was not sufficient to constitute lunacy, nor was his plea of “momentary uncontrollable impulse” deemed valid as any palliation of his offence. That offence was a brutal assault upon Her Majesty, whom he struck in the face with a small stick just as she was leaving Cambridge House. The blow crushed the bonnet and bruised the forehead of the Queen, who was happily not otherwise injured. Pate was found guilty, and sentenced to seven years’ transportation, the judge, Baron Alderson, abstaining from inflicting the penalty of whipping, which was authorized by a recent act, on account of Mr. Pate’s family and position in life.
I have already remarked that as violence was more and more eliminated from crimes against the person, frauds indicating great boldness, extensive design, and ingenuity became more prevalent. Theincrease of bank forgeries, and its cause, I referred to in a previous chapter.[106]At one session of the Old Bailey, in 1821, no less than thirty-five true bills were found for passing forged notes. But there were other notorious cases of forgery. That of Fauntleroy the banker, in 1824, caused much excitement at the time on account of the magnitude of the fraud, and the seeming probity of the culprit. Mr. Fauntleroy was a member of a banking firm, which his father had established in conjunction with a gentleman of the name of Marsh, and others. He had entered the house as clerk in 1800; in 1807, and when only twenty-two, he succeeded to his father’s share in the business. According to Fauntleroy’s own case, he found at once that the firm was heavily involved, through advances made to various builders, and that it could only maintain its credit by wholesale discounting. Its embarrassments were greatly increased by the bankruptcy of two of its clients in the building trade, and the bank became liable for a sum of £170,000. New liabilities were incurred to the extent of £100,000 by more failures, and in 1819, by the death of one of the partners, a large sum in cash had to be withdrawn from the bank to pay his heirs. “During these numerous and trying difficulties”—it is Mr. Fauntleroy who speaks—“the house was nearly without resources, and the whole burthen of management falling on me, ... I sought resources where I could;” in other words, he forged powers of attorney, and proceededto realize securities lodged in his bank under various names. Among the prisoner’s private papers, one was found giving full details of the stock he had feloniously sold out, the sum total amounting to some £170,000, with a declaration in his own handwriting to the following effect. “In order to keep up the credit of our house, I have forged powers of attorney for the above sums and parties, and sold out to the amount here stated, and without the knowledge of my partners. I kept up the payments of the dividends, but made no entries of such payments in my books. The bank began first to refuse our acceptances, and to destroy the credit of our house; the bank shall smart for it.”
Many stories were in circulation at the time of Fauntleroy’s trial with regard to his forgeries. It was said that he had by means of them sold out so large an amount of stock, that he paid £16,000 a year in dividends to escape detection. Once he ran a narrow risk of being found out. A lady in the country, who had £13,000 in the stocks, desired her London agent to sell them out. He went to the bank, and found that no stocks stood in her name. He called at once upon Fauntleroy, his client’s bankers, for an explanation, and was told by Mr. Fauntleroy that the lady had desiredhimto sell out, “which I have done,” added the fraudulent banker, “and here are the proceeds,” whereupon he produced exchequer bills to the amount. Nothing more was heard of the affair, although the lady declared thatshe had never instructed Fauntleroy to sell. On another occasion the banker forged a gentleman’s name while the latter was sitting with him in his private room, and took the instrument out to a clerk with the ink not dry. It must be added that the Bank of England, on discovering the forgeries, replaced the stock in the names of the original holders, who might otherwise have been completely ruined. A newspaper report of the time describes Fauntleroy as “a well-made man of middle stature. His hair, though gray, was thick, and lay smooth over his forehead. His countenance had an expression of most subdued resignation. The impression which his appearance altogether was calculated to make was that of the profoundest commiseration.”
The crime, long carried on without detection, was first discovered in 1820, when it was found that a sum of £10,000, standing in the name of three trustees, of whom Fauntleroy was one, had been sold out under a forged power of attorney. Further investigations brought other similar frauds to light, and fixed the whole sum misappropriated at £170,000, the first forgery dating back to 1814. A run upon the bank immediately followed, which was only met by a suspension of payment and the closing of its doors. Meanwhile public gossip was busy with Fauntleroy’s name, and it was openly stated in the press and in conversation that the proceeds of these frauds had been squandered in chambering, gambling, and debauchery. Fauntleroy was scouted as a
Fauntleroy in the Dock.Fauntleroy in the Dock.
licentious libertine, a deep and determined gamester, a spendthrift whose extravagance knew no bounds.[107]The veil was lifted from his private life, and he was accused of persistent immorality. In his defence he sought to rebut these charges, which indeed were never clearly made out, and it is pretty certain that his own account of the causes which led him into dishonesty was substantially true. He called many witnesses, seventeen in all, to speak of him as they had found him; and these, all respectable city merchantsand business men, declared that they had hitherto formed a high opinion of his honour, integrity, and goodness of disposition, deeming him the last person capable of a dishonourable action.
These arguments availed little with the jury, who after a short deliberation found Fauntleroy guilty, and he was sentenced to death. Every endeavour was used, however, to obtain a commutation of sentence. His case was twice argued before the judges on points of law, but the result in both cases was unfavourable. Appeals were made to the Home Secretary, and all possible political interest brought to bear, but without success. Fauntleroy meanwhile lay in Newgate, not herded with other condemned prisoners, as the custom was,[108]but in a separate chamber, that belonging to one of the warders of the gaol. I find in the chaplain’s journal, under date 1824, various entries relative to this prisoner. “Visited Mr. Fauntleroy. My application for books for him not having been attended, I had no prayer-book to give him.” “Visited Mr. Fauntleroy. The sheriffs have very kindly permitted him to remain in the turnkey’s room where he was originally placed; nor can I omit expressing a hope that this may prove the beginning of a better system of confinement, and that every description of persons who may be unfortunately under sentence of death will no longer be herded indiscriminately together.”[109]The kindlinessof the city authorities to Fauntleroy was not limited to the assignment of a separate place of durance.
As I have already said, they took the chaplain seriously to task for the bad taste shown in the condemned sermon preached before Fauntleroy. This was on the text, “Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall,” and was full of the most pointed allusions to the culprit. Fauntleroy constantly groaned aloud while the sermon proceeded, and contemporary reports declared that “he appeared to feel deeply the force of the reverend gentleman’s observations,” especially when the chaplain spoke “of the great magnitude of our erring brother’s offence, one of the most dangerous description in a trading community.” The sermon ended with an appeal to the dying man, exhorting him to penitence. This “personality,” and it can be called by no other name, is carefully excluded from prison pulpit utterances on the eve of an execution.
A very curious and, in its way, amusing circumstance in connection with this case was the offer of a certain Italian, Edmund Angelini, to take Fauntleroy’s place. Angelini wrote to the Lord Mayor to this effect, urging that Fauntleroy was a father, a citizen: “his life is useful, mine a burthen, to the State.” He was summoned to the Mansion House, where he repeated his request, crying, “Accordez moi cette grâce,” with much urgency. There were doubts of his sanity. He wrote afterwards to the effect that the moment he had offered himself, an unknownassassin came to aim a blow at him. “Let this monster give his name; I am ready to fight him. I am still determined to put myself in the place of Mr. Fauntleroy. If the law of this country can receive such a sacrifice, my death will render to heaven an innocent man, and to earth a repentant sinner.”
Fauntleroy was not entirely dependent upon the ordinary for ghostly counsel in his extremity. He was also attended by the Rev. Mr. Springett and the indefatigable Mr. Baker, whose name has already been mentioned.[110]When led out on the morning of his execution, these two last-named gentlemen each took hold of one of his arms, and so accompanied him to the scaffold. The concourse in front of Newgate was enormous, but much sympathy was evinced for this unfortunate victim to human weakness and ruthless laws. A report was, moreover, widely circulated, and the impression long prevailed, that he actually escaped death. It was said that strangulation had been prevented by the insertion of a silver tube in his wind-pipe, and that after hanging for the regulated time he was taken down and easily restored to consciousness. Afterwards, according to the common rumour, he went abroad and lived there for many years; but the story is not only wholly unsubstantiated, but there is good evidence to show that the body after execution was handed over to his friends and interred privately.
Some years were still to elapse before capital punishment ceased to be the penalty for forgery, and in the interval several persons were sentenced to or suffered death for this crime. There were two notable capital convictions for forgery in 1828. One was that of Captain Montgomery, who assumed the aliases of Colonel Wallace and Colonel Morgan. His offence was uttering forged notes, and there was strong suspicion that he had long subsisted entirely by this fraud. The act for which he was taken into custody was the payment of a forged ten-pound note for half-a-dozen silver spoons. Montgomery was an adept at forgery. He had gone wrong early. Although born of respectable parents, and gazetted to a commission in the army, he soon left the service and betook himself to dishonest ways. His first forgery was the marvellous imitation of the signature of the Hon. Mr. Neville, M.P., who wrote an extremely cramped and curious hand. He was not prosecuted for this fraud on account of the respectability of his family, and soon after this escape he came to London, where he practised as a professional swindler and cheat. For a long time justice did not overtake him for any criminal offence, but he was frequently in Newgate and in the King’s Bench for debt. After three years’ confinement in the latter prison he passed himself off as his brother, Colonel Montgomery, a distinguished officer, and would have married an heiress had not the imposture been discovered in time. He then took to forging bank-notes, and wasarrested as I have described above. Montgomery was duly sentenced to death, but he preferred suicide to the gallows. After sentence his demeanour was serious yet firm. The night previous to that fixed for his execution he wrote several letters, one of them being to Edward Gibbon Wakefield, a fellow-prisoner,[111]and listened attentively to the ordinary, who read him the well-known address written and delivered by Dr. Dodd previous to his own execution for forgery. But next morning he was found dead in his cell. In one corner after much search a phial was found labelled “Prussic acid,” which it was asserted he had been in the habit of carrying about his person ever since he had taken to passing forged notes, as an “antidote against disgrace.” This phial he had managed to retain in his possession in spite of the frequent searches to which he was subjected in Newgate.
The second conviction for forgery in 1828 was that of the Quaker Joseph Hunton, a man of previously the highest repute in the city of London. He had prospered in early life, was a slop-seller on a large scale at Bury St. Edmunds, and a sugar-baker in the metropolis. He married a lady also belonging to the Society of Friends, who brought him a large fortune, which, and his own money, he put into a city firm, that of Dickson and Co. He soon, however, became deeply involved in Stock Exchange speculations, and losing heavily, to meet the claims upon him he putout a number of forged bills of exchange or acceptances, to which the signature of one Wilkins of Abingdon was found to be forged. Hunton tried to fly the country on the detection of the fraud, but was arrested at Plymouth just as he was on the point of leaving England in the New York packet. He had gone on board in his Quaker dress, but when captured was found in a light-green frock, a pair of light-grey pantaloons, a black stock and a foraging cap. Hunton was put upon his trial at the Old Bailey, and in due course sentenced to death. His defence was that the forged acceptances would have been met on coming to maturity, and that he had no real desire to defraud. Hunton accepted his sentence with great resignation, although he protested against the inhumanity of the laws which condemned him to death. On entering Newgate he said, “I wish after this day to have communication with nobody; let me take leave of my wife, and family, and friends. I have already suffered an execution; my heart has undergone that horrible penalty.” He was, however, visited by and received his wife, and several members of the Society of Friends. Two elders of the meeting sat up with him in the press yard the whole of the night previous to execution, and a third, Mr. Sparks Moline, came to attend him to the scaffold. He met his death with unshaken firmness, only entreating that a certain blue handkerchief, to which he seemed fondly attached, should be used to bandage his eyes, which request was readily granted.
Hunton’s execution no doubt aroused public attention to the cruelty and futility of the capital law against forgery. A society which had already been started against capital punishment devoted its efforts first to a mitigation of the forgery statute, but could not immediately accomplish much. In 1829 the gallows claimed two more victims for this offence. One was Richard Gifford, a well-educated youth who had been at Christ’s Hospital, and afterwards in the National Debt Office. Unfortunately he took to drink, lost his appointment, and fell from bad to worse. Suddenly, after being at the lowest depths, he emerged, and was found by his friends living in comfort in the Waterloo Road. His funds, which he pretended came to him with a rich wife, were really the proceeds of frauds upon the Bank of England. He forged the names of people who held stock on the Bank books, and got the value of the stock; he also forged dividend receipts and got the dividends. He was only six-and-twenty when he was hanged. The other and the last criminal executed for forgery in this country was one Maynard, who was convicted of a fraud upon the Custom House. In conjunction with two others, one of whom was a clerk in the Custom House, and had access to the official records, he forged a warrant for £1973, and was paid the money by the comptroller general. Maynard was convicted of uttering the forged document, Jones of being an accessory; the third prisoner was acquitted. Maynard was the only one who suffered death.
This was on the last day of 1829. In the following session Sir Robert Peel brought in a bill to consolidate the acts relating to forgery. Upon the third reading of this bill Sir James Macintosh moved as an amendment that capital punishment should be abolished for all crimes of forgery, except the forgery of wills and powers of attorney. This amendment was strongly supported outside the House, and a petition in favour of its passing was presented, signed by more than a thousand members of banking firms. Macintosh’s amendment was carried in the Commons, but the new law did not pass the Lords, who re-enacted the capital penalty. Still no sentence of death was carried out for the offence, and in 1832 the Attorney-General introduced a bill to abolish capital punishment entirely for forgery. It passed the Commons, but opposition was again encountered in the Lords. This time they sent back the bill, re-enacting only the two penalties for will forging and the forging of powers of attorney; in other words, they had advanced in 1832 to the point at which the Lower House had arrived in 1830. There were at the moment in Newgate six convicts sentenced to death for forging wills. The question was whether the Government would dare to take their lives at the bidding of the House of Lords, and in defiance of the vote of the assembly which more accurately represented public opinion. It was indeed announced that their fate was sealed; but Mr. Joseph Hume pressed the Government hard, and obtained an assurance that the men shouldnot be executed. The new Forgery Act with the Lords’ amendment passed into law, but the latter proved perfectly harmless, and no person ever after suffered death for any variety of this crime.
I will include in this part of the present chapter almost one of the last instances[112]of a crime which in time past had invariably been visited with the death penalty, and which was of a distinctly fraudulent nature. The abduction of Miss Turner by the brothers Wakefield bore a strong resemblance to the carrying off and forcible marrying of heiresses as already described.[113]Miss Turner was a school-girl of barely fifteen, only child of a gentleman of large property in Cheshire, of which county he was actually high sheriff at the time of his daughter’s abduction. The elder brother, Edward Gibbon Wakefield, the prime mover in the abduction, was a barrister, not exactly briefless, but without a large practice. He had, it was said, a good private income, and was already a widower with two children at the time of his committing the offence for which he was subsequently tried. He had eloped with his first wife from school. While on a visit to Macclesfield he heard by chance of Miss Turner, and that she would inherit all her father’s possessions. He thereupon conceived an idea of carrying her off and marrying her willy nilly at Gretna Green. Thetwo brothers started at once for Liverpool, where Miss Turner was at school with a Mrs. Daulby. At Manchester,en route, a travelling carriage was purchased, which was driven up to Mrs. Daulby’s door at eight in the morning, and a servant hurriedly alighted from it, bearing a letter for Miss Turner. This purported to be from the medical attendant of Mr. Turner, written at Shrigley, Mr. Turner’s place of residence; and it stated that Mrs. Turner had been stricken with paralysis. She was not in immediate danger, but she wished to see her daughter, “as it was possible she might soon become incapable of recognizing any one.” Miss Turner, greatly agitated, accompanied the messenger who had brought this news, a disguised servant of Wakefield’s, who had plausibly explained that he had only recently been engaged at Shrigley. The road taken wasviâManchester, where the servant said a Dr. Hull was to be picked up to go on with them to Shrigley.
At Manchester, however, the carriage stopped at the Albion Hotel. Miss Turner was shown into a private room, where Mr. Wakefield soon presented himself. Miss Turner, not knowing him, would have left the room, but he said he came from her father, and she remained. Wakefield, in reply to her inquiries, satisfied her that her mother was well, and that the real reason for summoning her from school was the state of her father’s affairs. Mr. Turner was on the verge of bankruptcy. He was at that moment at Kendal, and wished her to join him there at once. Miss Turnerconsented to go on, and they travelled night and day towards the north. But at Kendal there was no Mr. Turner, and, to allay Miss Turner’s growing anxiety, Wakefield found it necessary to become more explicit regarding her father’s affairs. He now pretended that Mr. Turner was also on his way to the border, pursued by sheriffs’ officers. The fact was, Wakefield went on to say, an uncle of his had advanced Mr. Turner £60,000, which had temporarily staved off ruin. But another bank had since failed, and nothing could save Mr. Turner but the transfer of some property to Miss Turner, and its settlement on her, so that it might become the exclusive property of her husband, “whoever he might be.” Wakefield added that it had been suggested he should marry Miss Turner, but that he had laughed at the idea. Wakefield’s uncle took the matter more seriously, and declared that unless the marriage came off Mr. Turner must be sold up. Miss Turner, thus pressed, consented to go on to Gretna Green. Passing through Carlisle, she was told that Mr. Turner was in the town, but could not show himself. Nothing could release him from his trouble but the arrival of the marriage certificate from Gretna Green. Filial affection rose superior to all scruples, and Miss Turner, having crossed the border, was married to Wakefield by the blacksmith in the usual way. Returning to Carlisle, she now heard that her father had been set free, and had gone home to Shrigley, whither they were to follow him. They set out, but at Leeds Wakefield found himselfcalled suddenly to Paris; the other brother was accordingly sent on a pretended mission to Shrigley to bring Mr. Turner on to London, whither Wakefield and Miss Turner also proceeded. On arrival, Wakefield pretended that they had missed Mr. Turner, and must follow him over to France. The strangely-married couple thereupon pressed on to Dover, and crossed over to Calais.
The fact of the abduction did not transpire for some days. Then Mrs. Daulby learnt that Miss Turner had not arrived at Shrigley, but that she had gone to Manchester. Friends went in pursuit and traced her to Huddersfield and further north. The terror and dismay of her parents were soon intensified by the receipt of a letter from Wakefield, at Carlisle, announcing the marriage. Mr. Turner at once set off for London, where he sought the assistance of the police, and presently ascertained that Wakefield had gone to the Continent with his involuntary bride. An uncle of Miss Wakefield’s, accompanied by his solicitor and a Bow Street runner, at once went in pursuit. Meanwhile, a second letter turned up from Wakefield at Calais, in which he assured Mrs. Turner that Miss Turner was fondly attached to him, and went on to say, “I do assure you, madam, that it shall be the anxious endeavour of my life to promote her happiness by every means in my power.” The game, however, was nearly up. Miss Turner was met by her uncle on Calais pier as she was walking with Wakefield. The uncle claimed her. The husband resisted. M. leMaire was appealed to, and decided to leave it to the young lady, who at once abandoned Wakefield. As he still urged his rights over his wife, Miss Turner cried out in protest, “No, no, I am not his wife; he carried me away by fraud and stratagem, and forced me to accompany him to Gretna Green.... By the same forcible means I was compelled to quit England, and to trust myself to the protection of this person, whom I never saw until I was taken from Liverpool, and never want to see again.” On this Wakefield gave in. He surrendered the bride who had never been a wife, and she returned to England with her friends, while Wakefield went on alone to Paris.
Mr. William Wakefield was arrested at Dover, conveyed to Chester, and committed to Lancaster Gaol for trial at the next assizes, when indictments were preferred against both brothers “for having carried away Ellen Turner, spinster, then a maid and heir apparent unto her father, for the sake of the lucre of her substance; and for having afterwards unlawfully and against her will married the said Ellen Turner.” They were tried in March of the following year, Edward Wakefield having apparently given himself up, and found guilty, remaining in Lancaster Gaol for a couple of months, when they were brought up to the court of King’s Bench for judgment. The prosecution pressed for a severe penalty. Edward Wakefield pleaded that his trial had already cost him £3000. Mr. Justice Bayley, in summing up, spoke severely ofthe gross deception practised upon an innocent girl, and sentenced the brothers each to three years’ imprisonment, William Wakefield in Lancaster Gaol, and Edward Gibbon Wakefield in Newgate, which sentences were duly enforced. The marriage was annulled by an Act of Parliament, although Wakefield petitioned against it, and was brought from Newgate, at his own request, to oppose the second reading of the bill. He also wrote and published a pamphlet from the gaol to show that Miss Turner had been a consenting party to the marriage, and was really his wife. Neither his address nor his pamphlet availed much, for the bill for the divorce passed both Houses. That Mr. Wakefield was a shrewd critic and close observer of all that went on in the Newgate of those days, will be admitted by those who have read his book on “the punishment of death,” which was based on his gaol experiences, and of which I have availed myself in the last chapter.
After their release from Lancaster and Newgate respectively, both Wakefields went abroad. Mr. W. Wakefield served in a continental army, and rose to the rank of colonel, after which he went to New Zealand, and held an important post in that colony. Mr. E. G. Wakefield took part in the scheme for the colonization of North Australia, and for some years resided in that colony. Miss Turner subsequently married Mr. Legh of Lym Hall, Cheshire.
It must not be imagined that although highwayrobbery was now nearly extinct,[114]and felonious outrages in the streets were rare, that thieves or depredators were idle or entirely unsuccessful. Bigger “jobs” than ever were planned and attempted, as in the burglary at Lambeth Palace, when the thieves were fortunately disappointed, the archbishop having, before he left town, sent his plate-chests, eight in number, to the silversmith’s for greater security. The jewellers were always a favourite prey of the London thieves. Shops were broken into, as when that of Grimaldi and Johnson, in the Strand, was robbed of watches to the value of £6000. Where robbery with violence was intended, the perpetrators had now to adopt various shifts and contrivances to secure their victim. No more curious instance of this ever occurred than the assault made by one Howard upon a Mr. Mullay, with intent to rob him. The latter had advertised, offering a sum of £1000 to any one who would introduce him to some mercantile employment. Howard replied, desiring Mr. Mullay to call upon him in a house in Red Lion Square. Mr. Mullay went, and a second interview was agreed upon, when a third person, Mr. Owen, through whose interest an appointment under Government was to be obtained for Mullay, would be present. Mr. Mullay called again, taking with him £500 in cash. Howard discovered this, and his manner was very suspicious; there were weapons in the room—a long knife, a heavy trap-ball bat, anda poker. Mr. Mullay became alarmed, and as Mr. Owen did not appear, withdrew; Howard, strange to say, making no attempt to detain him; probably because Mullay promised to return a few days later, and to bring more money. On this renewed visit Mr. Owen was still absent, and Mr. Mullay agreed to write him a note from a copy Howard gave him. While thus engaged, Howard thrust the poker into the fire. Mullay protested, and then Howard, under the influence of ungovernable rage, as it seemed, jumped up, locked the door, and attacked Mullay violently with the trap-ball bat and knife. Mullay defended himself, and managed to break the knife, but not before he had cut himself severely. A life and death struggle ensued. Mullay cried “Murder!” Howard swore he would finish him, but proved the weaker of the two, and Mullay got him down on the floor. By this time the neighbours were aroused, and several people came to the scene of the affray. Howard was secured, given into custody, and committed to Newgate. The defence he set up was, that Mullay had used epithets towards him while they were negotiating a business matter, and that, being an irritable temper, he had struck Mullay, after which a violent scuffle took place. It was, however, proved that Howard was in needy circumstances, and that his proposals to Mr. Mullay could only have originated in a desire to rob him. He was found guilty of an assault with intent, and sentenced to transportation for fourteen years.
A more complicated and altogether most extraordinary case of assault, with intent to extort money, occurred a few years later. It was perpetrated upon a respectable country solicitor, Mr. Gee, of Bishop Stortford, who administered the estate of a certain Mr. Canning, deceased. This Mr. Canning had left his widow a life interest in £2000 so long as she remained unmarried. The money went after her to her children. Mr. Gee had invested £1200 of this, and was seeking how best to place the remaining £800, when he was asked to meet a Mr. Heath in London with regard to the sale of certain lands at Bishop Stortford. An appointment was made and kept by Mr. Gee, but on arrival he was met by a young sailor with a letter which begged Mr. Gee to go to Heath’s house, as the latter was not well. Mr. Gee went in the coach sent for him, and alighted at 27, York Street, West, Commercial Road. The coach immediately drove off; Mr. Gee entered the house, asked for Mr. Heath, was told he would find him in the back kitchen at breakfast. He was about to descend the stairs when three persons, one of them the young sailor, fell upon him, and in spite of his resistance carried him into a sort of den partitioned off at the end of the back kitchen. There he was seated on some sort of wooden bench and securely fastened. “A chain fixed to staples at his back passed round his chest under his arms, and was padlocked on the left side;” his feet were bound with cords and made fast to rings in the floor. Thusmanacled, one of the party, who pretended to be Mrs. Canning’s brother, addressed him, insisting that he should forthwith sign a cheque for the £800 of the Canning inheritance still uninvested, and write an order sufficient to secure the surrender of the other £1200. Mr. Gee at first stoutly refused. Then, as they warned him that he would be kept a prisoner in total darkness in this horrible den until he agreed to their demands, he gave in, and signed the documents thus illegally extorted. One was a cheque for £800 on his bankers, the other an order to Mr. Bell of Newport, Essex, requesting the surrender of a deed.
His captors having thus succeeded in their designs, left him, no doubt to realize the money. The door of his place of durance stood open, and Mr. Gee began to consider whether he might not escape. For three hours he struggled without success with his bonds, but at length managed to wriggle out of the chain which confined his body, and soon loosened the ropes round his feet. Thus free, he eluded the vigilance of two of the party, who were at dinner in the front kitchen, and creeping out into the garden at the back, climbed the wall, and got into the street. His first act was to send a messenger to stop the cheque and the order to Mr. Bell, his next to seek the help of the police. Two Bow Street runners were despatched to the house in York Street, which had evidently been taken on purpose for the outrage. There was no furniture in the place, and the den in the kitchen had been recently and specially constructed of boards ofimmense strength and thickness. It was a cell five feet by three, within another, the intervening being filled with rammed earth to deaden the sound. A fixed seat, two feet, was at one end, and a foot above it was a bar with a staple, to which hung the body chain.
On the arrival of the police the house was empty. The two men on guard had gone off immediately after Mr. Gee had escaped, but they returned later in the day, and were apprehended. Inquiries set on foot also elicited the suspicion that the person who had represented Mrs. Canning’s brother was a blind man named Edwards, who had taken this house in York Street, and who was known to be a frequent visitor at Mrs. Canning’s. A watch was set on him at her house, where he was soon afterwards arrested. Edwards, whom Mr. Gee easily identified with the others, at once admitted that he was the prime mover of the conspiracy. He had sought by all legal means to obtain possession of the £2000, but had failed, and had had recourse to more violent means. It turned out that he was really married to Mrs. Canning, both having been recognized by the clergyman who had performed the ceremony, and the assault had been committed to secure the money which Mrs. Canning had lost by re-marriage. All three men were committed for trial, although Edwards wished to exculpate the others as having only acted under his order. At the trial the indictment charging them with felony could not be sustained, but they were found guilty ofconspiracy and assault. Edwards was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment in Newgate, Weedon and Lecasser to twelve and six months respectively in Coldbath Fields.
At no period could thieves in London or elsewhere have prospered had they been unable to dispose of their ill-gotten goods. The trade of fence, or receiver, therefore, is very nearly as old as the crimes which it so obviously fostered.[115]One of the most notorious, and for a time most successful practitioners in this illicit trade, passed through Newgate in 1831. The name of Ikey Solomons was long remembered by thief and thief-taker. He began as an itinerant street vendor at eight, at ten he passed bad money, at fourteen he was a pickpocket and a “duffer,” or a seller of sham goods. He early saw the profits to be made out of purchasing stolen goods, but could not embark in it at first for want of capital. He was taken up when still in his teens for stealing a pocket-book, and was sentenced to transportation, but did not get beyond the hulks at Chatham. On his release an uncle, a slop-seller in Chatham, gave him a situation as “barker,” or salesman, at which he realized £150 within a couple of years. With this capital he returned to London and set up as a fence. He had such great aptitude for business, and such athorough knowledge of the real value of goods, that he was soon admitted to be one of the best judges known of all kinds of property, from a glass bottle to a five hundred guinea chronometer. But he never paid more than a fixed price for all articles of the same class, whatever their intrinsic value. Thus, a watch was paid for as a watch, whether it was of gold or silver; a piece of linen as such, whether the stuff was coarse or fine. This rule in dealing with stolen goods continues to this day, and has made the fortune of many since Ikey.
Solomons also established a system of provincial agency, by which stolen goods were passed on from London to the seaports, and so abroad. Jewels were re-set, diamonds re-faced; all marks by which other articles might be identified, the selvages of linen, the stamps on shoes, the number and names on watches, were carefully removed or obliterated after the goods passed out of his hands. On one occasion the whole of the proceeds of a robbery from a boot shop was traced to Solomons’; the owner came with the police, and was morally convinced that it was his property, but could not positively identify it, and Ikey defied them to remove a single shoe. In the end the injured bootmaker agreed to buy back his stolen stock at the price Solomons had paid for it, and it cost him about a hundred pounds to re-stock his shop with his own goods.
As a general rule Ikey Solomons confined his purchases to small articles, mostly of jewellery and plate,which he kept concealed in a hiding-place with a trap-door just under his bed. He lived in Rosemary Lane, and sometimes he had as much as £20,000 worth of goods secreted on the premises. When his trade was busiest he set up a second establishment, at the head of which, although he was married, he put another lady, with whom he was on intimate terms. The second house was in Lower Queen Street, Islington, and he used it for some time as a depot for valuables. But it was eventually discovered by Mrs. Solomons, a very jealous wife, and this, with the danger arising from an extensive robbery of watches in Cheapside, in which Ikey was implicated as a receiver, led him to think seriously of trying his fortunes in another land. He was about to emigrate to New South Wales, when he was arrested at Islington and committed to Newgate on a charge of receiving stolen goods. While thus incarcerated he managed to escape from custody, but not actually from gaol, by an ingenious contrivance which is worth mentioning. He claimed to be admitted to bail, and was taken from Newgate on a writ ofhabeasbefore one of the judges sitting at Westminster. He was conveyed in a coach driven by a confederate, and under the escort of a couple of turnkeys. Solomons, while waiting to appear in court, persuaded the turnkeys to take him to a public-house, where all might “refresh.” While there he was joined by his wife and other friends. After a short carouse the prisoner went into Westminster, his case was heard, bail refused, and he was ordered back toNewgate. But he once more persuaded the turnkeys to pause at the public, where more liquor was consumed. When the journey was resumed, Mrs. Solomons accompanied her husband in the coach. Half-way to Newgate she was taken with a fit. One turnkey was stupidly drunk, and Ikey persuaded the other, who was not much better, to let the coach change and pass Petticoat Laneen routeto the gaol, where the suffering woman might be handed over to her friends. On stopping at a door in this low street, Ikey jumped out, ran into the house, slamming the door behind him. He passed through and out at the back, and was soon beyond pursuit. By-and-by the turnkeys, sobered by their loss, returned to Newgate alone, and pleaded in excuse that they had been drugged.
Ikey left no traces, and the police could hear nothing of him. He had in fact gone out of the country, to Copenhagen, whence he passed on to New York. There he devoted himself to the circulation of forged notes. He was also anxious to do business in watches, and begged his wife to send him over a consignment of cheap “righteous” watches, or such as had been honestly obtained, and not “on the cross.” But Mrs. Solomons could not resist the temptation to dabble in stolen goods, and she was found shipping watches of the wrong category to New York. For this she received a sentence of fourteen years’ transportation, and was sent to Van Diemen’s Land. Ikey joined her at Hobart Town, where they set up ageneral shop, and soon began to prosper. He was, however, recognized, and ere long an order came out from home for his arrest and transfer to England, which presently followed, and he again found himself an inmate of Newgate, waiting trial as a receiver and a prison-breaker. He was indicted on eight charges, two only of which were substantiated, but on each of them he received a sentence of seven years’ transportation. At his own request he was reconveyed to Hobart Town, where his son had been carrying on the business. Whether Ikey was “assigned” to his own family is not recorded, but no doubt he succeeded to his own property when the term of servitude had expired.
No doubt, on the removal of Ikey Solomons from the scene, his mantle fell upon worthy successors. There was an increase rather than an abatement in jewel and bullion robberies in the years immediately following, and the thieves seem to have had no difficulty in disposing of their spoil. One of the largest robberies of its class was that effected upon the Custom House in the winter of 1834. A large amount of specie was nearly always retained here in the department of the Receiver of Fines. This was known to some clerks in the office, who began to consider how they might lay hands on a lot of cash. Being inexperienced, they decided to call in the services of a couple of professional housebreakers, Jordan and Sullivan, who at once set to work in a business-like way to obtain impressions of the keysof the strong room and chest. But before committing themselves to an attempt on the latter, it was of importance to ascertain how much it usually contained. For this purpose Jordan waited on the receiver to make a small payment, for which he tendered a fifty-pound note. The chest was opened to give change, and a heavy tray lifted out which plainly held some £4000 in cash. Some difficulty then arose as to gaining admission to the strong room, and it was arranged that a man, May, another Custom House clerk, should be introduced into the building, and secreted there during the night to accomplish the robbery. May was smuggled in through a window on the esplanade behind an opened umbrella. When the place was quite deserted he broke open the chest and stole £4700 in notes, with a quantity of gold and some silver. He went out next morning with the booty when the doors were re-opened, and attracted no attention. The spoil was fairly divided; part of the notes were disposed of to a travelling “receiver,” who passed over to the Continent and there cashed them easily.
This occurred in November 1834. The Custom House officials were in a state of consternation, and the police were unable at first to get on the track of the thieves. While the excitement was still fresh, a new robbery of diamonds was committed at a bonded warehouse in the immediate neighbourhood, on Custom House Quay. The jewels had belonged to a Spanish countess recently deceased, who had sent them toEngland for greater security on the outbreak of the first Carlist war. At her death the diamonds were divided between her four daughters, but only half had been claimed, and at the time of the robbery there were still £6000 worth in the warehouse. These were deposited in an iron chest of great strength on the second floor. The thieves it was supposed had secreted themselves in the warehouse during business hours, and waited till night to carry out their plans. Some ham sandwiches, several cigar ends, and two empty champagne bottles were found on the premises next day, showing how they had passed their time. They had had serious work to get at the diamonds. It was necessary to force one heavy door from its hinges, and to cut through the thick panels of another. The lock and fastenings of the chest were forced by means of a “jack,” an instrument known to housebreakers, which if introduced into a keyhole, and worked like a bit and brace, will soon destroy the strongest lock. The thieves were satisfied with the diamonds; they broke open other cases containing gold watches and plate, but abstracted nothing.