abandonment of all further search for the culprits. No why or wherefore
was given me in explanation of this abrupt and extraordinary decision. I
suspect the cause was an unwillingness to allow so palpable a sign of
administrative weakness at headquarters, and from the very centre to the
extreme circumference of the financial operations of the company, to be
trumpeted throughout the world. I have known much heavier losses quietly
submitted to for a like reason by joint-stock companies and by great
mercantile firms. When one of the oldest, wealthiest, and most highly
reputed discount-houses in the City of London discovered that its chief
acting partner had advanced a young firm of traders a vast sum of money
upon the security of forged dock-warrants, it determined not to
prosecute the scoundrels, because the defrauded gentlemen, knowing their
own importance, feared that if it should become known in Lombard Street
that they, the great, old, wealthy, and "knowing" house, had been so let
in, all the floating securities in the London markets would be
discredited, a panic would seize all the money-changers, metropolitan
bankers would be involved in trouble that might upset a lot of them, the
governor and company of the Bank of England would have to guard its
issues, limit to the minimum its credits, and, in fact, that through the
one gigantic fraud a radius of half a mile round the Royal Exchange
(where the potentates of gold, who are the arbiters and controllers of
manufacture all over England and beyond this Queendom, do congregate)
might become a scene of despair, ruin, or chaos. Am I overstating the
case? Let the reader who thinks so peruse the evidence given by Mr.
Chapman, of the well-known house of Overend, Gurney, and Company, at the
London Bankruptcy Court, and in the Central Criminal Court, in the
proceedings taken against Messrs. ----. Or, if he cannot readily learn
the particulars of this noted case, let him ask any friend who knows the
history of British banking and British trade during the last twenty
years, and that friend will supply him with at least as many instances
in which splendid swindles, forgeries, and frauds have not been
investigated--ay, or, being investigated and proved, have been secretly
condoned, for such reasons as my imagination assigns to the directors of
the ---- Railway Company for their decision in the present case. No man
of the world, no one who has had much experience in practical business,
will gainsay the probability of my suggested motive. I do not say that
the reason hinted at was the operative reason in this instance, but I
think it was, and I say that I think it was; and the intelligent reader
can form his own opinion as to the soundness or hollowness of my
hypothesis.
It may be satisfactory to further explain (as I have very much pleasure
in doing), that although not instructed to hunt down the perpetrators of
this crime, I was requested to assist the officials of the company in
framing such arrangements as would make it impossible to repeat a
robbery like that so successfully accomplished. With the aid of the
company's officers, I did this; and I have the satisfaction of knowing
that if any further designs of the same description were afterwards
conceived, they were never carried out. A survey of the obstacles to
their realisation must have warned off the conspirators.
The reader who desires to see poetical justice summarily inflicted on
every wrong-doer as soon as the wrong has been committed, may have been
grieved to learn that a gang of villains escaped their merits. I shared
that feeling. I do not believe that Wilson was in the fraud, although I
cannot undertake to say that the evidence of my faith is so perfect as I
could wish. He, however, was utterly and hopelessly ruined, by the
dismissal from his situation under circumstances of so grave suspicion;
and if his worst offence was negligence (as I suppose), he has been
terribly punished. The last time I saw him (not six months ago) he was
selling penny packets of "stationery for the million" on a stall in one
of the popular marts at the East End of London. The reader last
mentioned may obtain some proper comfort in the evidence I can supply as
to the ultimate vindication of justice upon the persons of the whole of
the gang concerned in this great "plant." I hunted down four of them not
long since, and one volunteered a statement of the facts of that case
(as each of the four did), in the hope of being admitted to the
privileges of what the Irish call an approver. During this conversation
(after he had completed his confession of the offence he was then
charged with) he also told me that he had taken part in this affair
along with all his present companions in crime,--who were the last of
the set who had up to that date eluded justice.
AN EPISODE OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE.
Some time ago a robbery was perpetrated in the mansion of Lord H----,
which is situated in one of the squares of Belgravia. The thieves made a
tolerably successful and remunerative haul. They cleared out the whole
of the plate, and also much of the jewelry, which chiefly belonged to
Lady H----, and was of enormous value.
How the thieves obtained access to the premises did not for a long while
seem at all clear. Appearances on the surface warranted a belief that
one or more of the servants of his lordship or her ladyship had aided
and abetted the robbery. But there was no scintilla of what is called
legal evidence to justify or warrant that suspicion. Nobody attached to
the household was therefore arrested on the charge; but a reward was
offered for the discovery of the offenders, and ordinary police
vigilance was exhausted in the endeavour to track the delinquents.
Weeks and months (about three months) rolled by, and nobody was brought
to justice.
His lordship was irritated beyond measure by this failure of justice. He
one day went to his solicitors, declaring that he would spend half his
fortune, if necessary, in order to secure the offender and his adequate
punishment.
What share in the production of this decision Lady H---- may have had I
do not know, but I have a notion that she had much to do with it; for it
is certain beyond all doubt that the loss of her jewelry preyed upon her
spirits, and exasperated her to the last pitch of intensity. Being
rather shrewishly inclined, she would, I verily believe, have inflicted
summary vengeance on the stoutest of the thieves if she could have
clutched him.
Lord H----'s solicitors were somewhat annoyed at the failure of the
police in the discovery of the criminals. They communicated with me upon
the subject, and I at length was employed.
It was a teasing and difficult job. It gave me ten times more trouble
than many a greater and more important business. Yet, having undertaken
it, I was determined to go through with it. I would not, I felt, be
baffled.
For a long while I could obtain no clue. At length I did get a scent of
my prey, and from that moment the result was certain, although it could
only be overtaken by a circuitous and uneven track.
I at length hunted down the principal delinquent.
The whole robbery had been effected by one man and one woman. The woman
fled as soon as the man was arrested. I might have secured her before,
but in doing so must have lost the man. Her arrest would have given him
notice of his peril; and, in truth, I was almost careless about the
female's escape if I could catch her companion.
Lord H---- was more exasperated than ever when he ascertained who the
criminal was; although he assured his solicitors, as they informed me,
that he had not the slightest knowledge of the man, nor did he suppose
the delinquent had any knowledge of him beyond that which all thieves of
London might have in common of a nobleman.
I suspected that some mysterious cause inspired this desire for
vengeance in his lordship, besides the natural influence of his loss
upon his mind. That was sufficient to account for much revengefulness,
but it did not appear to me an adequate motive for the sudden increase
of such an emotion since the disclosure of the identity of the criminal.
I do not, however, know that my suspicions were correct. It is possible
that they were incorrect.
The offender was brought before the magistrate, in the usual course, and
remand upon remand was applied for and obtained. The prisoner's attorney
resisted the application with all his argumentative power and force of
advocacy, but in vain. The prosecution was thought by the bench to be
entitled to every opportunity for discovering their property, and so
involving the prisoner in the evidence of his guilt as to render his
escape through the meshes of the law impossible.
At length the case was brought home with sufficient clearness to the
prisoner, not only to warrant his committal for trial, but to secure his
conviction when that trial took place. He was accordingly committed.
Next sessions a true bill was found against the prisoner by the grand
jury of the Central Criminal Court, and in due course the prisoner was
placed in the dock, to go through the great ordeal in connexion with
this case.
The court was somewhat crowded. The incidents of this robbery had
attracted public attention. The value of the plate, the rareness of the
gems, the neatness and completeness of the exploit, had all combined to
invest the case with an air of public importance.
In the court, awaiting the trial with greedy anxiousness, were Lord and
Lady H----.
In the gallery was a female, attired in costly raiment, enriched by here
and there a jewel of considerable value. She was, perhaps, one of the
handsomest women in London; and her beauty was of that order usually
denominated "sweet." There was an apparent gentleness and amiability of
expression underlying the traces of deep and painful emotion which
something then transpiring, or anticipated, had aroused.
The eyes of this elegantly attired and beautiful female rested entirely
upon Lord and Lady H----, who together occupied seats upon the bench on
the right hand, a short distance from the judge, and who were prominent
marks of observation for other persons beside this interesting female.
The case then before the court was a tedious trial for perjury, in which
there was a mass of conflicting evidence. The tasks of judge and jury
were rendered peculiarly difficult by the tangled mass of fact and
fiction which the skill of the prosecution and the dexterity of the
defence had laid before the court. To the parties interested in the next
case--that of the plate robbery--no doubt this protracted evidence was
very irksome, as well as to the man in the dock, whose liberty trembled
in the balance of this conflicting testimony, or the discrimination of
his fellows the jurymen.
Simultaneously with the latter portion of this trial for perjury, the
counsel for the defence, Mr. Sergeant Ponderous and Mr. Anthony
Stuffgown, were engaged in a consultation with Mr. Wheedle, the
prisoner's attorney.
A communication had been made to the latter "gentleman according to Act
of Parliament," the night before. It was a letter written by the fair
spectator in the gallery of the court, who had also had an interview
with Mr. Wheedle that morning.
The position she then occupied in court had been selected for her by the
prisoner's legal adviser. He had calculated with tolerable precision
where his lordship would sit, and he wished her to be within the range
of his vision, without being too prominent to the disinterested
spectator.
The prisoner's attorney had, in this consultation, explained to the
counsel his stratagem, or intended _coup de théatre_. The learned
sergeant and his learned junior considered the idea a good one, and may
be said to have approved it; although, as they explained, it was no part
of their professional duty to offer an opinion upon it. When the
consultation was ended, the counsel returned into court, one taking his
seat and the other hanging listlessly on the railing of the counsels'
boxes.
Mr. Wheedle was on the staircase of the court, watching its two modes
of egress, and awaiting the effect of his little stratagem.
An usher received a three-cornered note from the hands of somebody,
addressed to Lord H----, with a small gold coin, and a request that he
would put the half-sovereign in his own pocket, and hand the note to his
lordship unseen by her ladyship.
The note ran thus:
"_Gallery of the Old Bailey_,
"_July 19th, 185-_.
"MY LORD,--For Heaven's sake, don't prosecute my brother, and kill
your faithful CLARA!"
His lordship cast his eyes to the gallery, and for the first time in
that place he beheld the form and features of a lady not unknown to him,
but one he had very frequently met elsewhere. Those eyes, and the
recognition of the writer, were too much for the nobleman's delicate
sensibilities. His face became as pale as chalk. He trembled almost as
violently as a man attacked by St. Vitus's dance. He swooned immediately
after he had thrust the missive unseen into one of his pockets.
This event caused what the reporters for the daily journals described as
"a painful sensation" in court. His lordship was removed in his carriage
to his residence in ---- Square, Belgravia, without uttering more than
one sentence.
That sentence he so uttered was an instruction to his solicitor to get
the trial postponed.
The trial for perjury, after a short interval, was proceeded with, and
ended in the prisoner's acquittal.
Whereupon Mr. Keeneye, as one of the counsel for the prosecution, rose
after a conference with his learned brother retained for the defence,
and, addressing his lordship, begged that, owing to the sudden illness
of the prosecutor, the trial of the prisoner might be postponed. The
prisoner's counsel felt, they said, some difficulty in resisting the
application after what they had seen, but added, that they thought the
prisoner, who had done nothing to cause his lordship's illness, was
entitled to be liberated on bail. The judge, after glancing at the
depositions, said he did not see that the accused had any such claim,
and declined to attach that condition to the adjournment of the case, as
prayed for by the prosecution.
Clara, who from the gallery beheld all that had gone on, and who
devoured every word that had been uttered by the lawyers and the bench
with greedy ears, maintained a wonderful show of self-possession, but
was stirred by the intensest and most anxious thought. She left the
court when this decision had been arrived at in her brother's case; he
being, indeed, quite unconscious up to this moment as to what had taken
place in his absence, and, when it was explained to him, being left
ignorant for the time of its cause.
Next session the prisoner was again brought up for trial. His lordship
attended--but not her ladyship. She was induced to remain at home by the
solicitude of her husband, who apprehended the effect upon her of the
fetid atmosphere of the court. Although he had been up to the day first
appointed for the trial resolutely bent upon securing to the prisoner
the weightiest punishment he could get inflicted, he was now prepared to
recommend the prisoner to mercy.
The evidence, which in the briefs as originally delivered to counsel
disclosed a complete chain of proof, was remodelled. They now contained
a narrative which set forth the difficulties of the theory for the
prosecution, and went far towards explaining away the points against the
accused. The briefs for the defence, which as originally delivered set
forth no possible answer to the charge, now contained a theory which
reconciled the evidence as it stood, or was expected to stand, with a
possibility of the innocence of the accused.
A witness for the prosecution did not answer to his name when called;
and the reader may be informed that this witness had gone beyond the
jurisdiction of any English tribunal. The result was, that the
prosecution broke down, and the culprit was liberated.
The explanation of this miscarriage of justice is simple. Pretty Clara
was the mistress of the noble lord. He had indeed seduced her some years
before, and she had been living since then (unknown to his wife) under
his lordship's protection. She was the sister of the prisoner. She was
innocent of all participation in or knowledge of the robbery. For many
years she had not seen that brother. They were orphans. They had both
been thrown upon the world at a very early age to earn their own bread.
She, when not more than fourteen years of age, had been placed in one
of the West-End millinery houses, and had won a promotion to the counter
of a shop in Oxford Street. He had occupied a situation in a City
warehouse, but had never obtained a promotion by the exercise of any
industry or fidelity on his part.
Brother and sister had both diverged from the paths of virtue in
different ways and at different times, and had been for a period of six
years unknown to each other. Neither cared to let the other know his or
her whereabouts, pursuits, and mode of life. What had become of her, the
reader knows. Of him it is necessary to say, that he robbed his
employers, who forgave what they correctly believed to be a first
offence, but discharged him without a character. From step to step he
travelled deeper and deeper into the mazes of criminality, until he got
inextricably involved with associates in various cases of fraud,
larceny, and burglary.
The mode in which the robbery had been effected was very simple. The
prisoner had won over the affections of a servant in Lord H----'s
household, and used the information he thus obtained to effect, with her
connivance, if not her assistance, the crime for which he afterwards
stood charged at the Old Bailey. This, however, was not his first
appearance in that court. He had been there on a former occasion, and
had, as on this day, been acquitted by a flaw in the evidence against
him. The sister, through whose instrumentality he now escaped, became
acquainted with his last crime and peril by a newspaper, which, in
noticing the cases laid before the grand jury, mentioned, as a fact
discovered by the prosecution, the real name of the accused, and one or
two instances of his early career, sufficient to prove his identity with
her lost brother.
From the moment when Clara made this discovery, it had become impossible
for her to get access to his lordship. Her first thought was to throw
herself at his feet, and ask, as the only disinterested favour she had
sought at his hands, and as the highest reward for her dishonour--a
brother's liberty. Foiled in this, her woman's wit suggested a
communication with the attorney for the defence. She had no difficulty
in ascertaining who had that task allotted to him, and she met Mr.
Wheedle, who arranged with her the stratagem which proved so successful.
* * * * *
This little episode was followed by one or two circumstances that the
reader may be put in possession of. Lord H----, who was by no means a
strong-minded man, accepted the incident as a warning of Providence. He
would not for a trifle risk the enmity of her ladyship, to whom he was
somewhat attached, and he dreaded the notoriety of his own criminal
association with the prisoner's sister. He resolved to be virtuous, and
carried out that resolution by a financial arrangement with his
mistress, through the family lawyer. She, who had not been further
tainted by sin than in her illicit connexion with the prosecutor, used
the means now placed at her disposal in a way that enabled her to gain
an honest and creditable livelihood henceforth. Her brother tried to do
the same; but that wish was broken down by the constant interference
with his good resolutions from old associates. He also tried various
modes, like his sister, for obtaining an honest livelihood; but the
impossibility of maintaining an incognito rendered this impracticable.
Ever and anon he encountered former "friends," who reviled his
intentions, and frustrated them. It was a good joke, they told him, that
notion of his of working for a livelihood. "Did he," they asked
ironically, "really think of turning honest? What a funny idea!" they
exclaimed. They persecuted him in various modes. They would demand money
from him, and if he hesitated they would threaten to "split" or "peach"
upon him. He had to give them on such occasions all he had, and promise
more than he had or could perform as the price of their forbearance.
Dogged on every hand, and finding it impossible to earn an honest
livelihood in this country, he fled from it, with the aid of money
supplied him by his sister and brother-in-law (for by this time Clara
had become the wife of a good-natured, easy-going fellow, who held an
appointment in her Majesty's Customs); and I lost sight of him amid a
crowd of steerage passengers on board an emigrant ship bound for
Australia, where I hope he is now living as a creditable member of
society.
THE WORKHOUSE DOCTOR.
Of all scoundrels in society, there are none so bad as disreputable or
dishonest lawyers--unless it be unprincipled doctors. And I think that
the palm of villany, if there be such a thing, might be claimed by a few
of the latter class in any competition with the former. There is no
limit to the mischief, and no fathoming the depths of crime which a
surgeon may commit. Few men, perhaps, have also such ample opportunities
for eluding detection. It is fair to say that I believe the crime of
dishonesty, or malfeasance, is rare among that most honourable
profession of medicine and surgery; but the exceptions, although few,
are terrible.
"Doctor, you have been very good to me," said an old woman, "and I have
done wrong to you, and hope you will forgive me, and be kind to me; for
I am a poor lone old woman, with no friend in the world but you,
doctor."
The doctor smiled blandly at the compliment here paid him.
This old woman was a pauper patient. The doctor attended her by order of
the relieving-officer of the ---- Union; the locality of which, it is
enough for the reader to know, was on the south side of the metropolis.
The doctor had been many years a parish surgeon; and at this time he
was also the medical attendant at the workhouse of the union. He was
accounted a successful man. He was in large practice, but his gains were
not commensurate with the extent of his business; and owing to a
somewhat large family, with expensive habits of his own and his wife's,
he had not made, after all, very much way in the world. I think I may
describe him as a poor doctor, although he lived in a big house and kept
up a liberal establishment. Yes; I may call him poor. There were
unmistakable, although negative, signs of comparative poverty. He kept
no carriage, and had to trudge on foot from the beginning to the end of
his daily rounds. He rarely indulged in the luxury of a cab, which, I
take it, showed either an extreme prudence, not consistent with some
other habits I have mentioned, or very straitened circumstances.
"Yes, Goody, I hope I have been kind to you, and I will be kind, as I
know a doctor ought to be to all his patients, but especially to all the
poor and old ones."
I ought to have mentioned, incidentally, that the doctor had obtained a
reputation for his urbanity to all people, and his especial affection to
the poor.
"Doctor," she exclaimed; "ah, I have something on my mind. I don't think
I have acted properly by you. Will you forgive me?"
As she spoke these latter words her wretched crone-like features
betrayed a ghastliness which appalled the surgeon, and he could
scarcely, for several moments, answer her.
"You will forgive me, doctor, won't you?"
"Forgive you, Goody! What have I to forgive you?"
"Oh, it was very wrong to deceive you."
"But how have you deceived me?"
"Oh, it was very wicked."
"Why, what's the matter? What do you mean?"
As the doctor uttered this last interrogation, in soothing accents, he
drew a chair near to the old woman, and, in the extremeness of his
urbanity, or with the desire of a confessor to lighten the load that
weighed upon her conscience, as he so drew his chair by her side, he
actually took her lean and withered hand in his.
"Come, tell me all about it, Goody. In what way have you wronged me? In
what deceived me? In what respect acted as a poor woman should not?"
"Well, doctor," she stammered, in reply to this kind and confidential
inquiry, "indeed I have a fortune."
The doctor started.
"Pray don't expose me. I shall die if I am found out. Kill me, doctor,
if you won't forgive me."