CHAPTER VII.

NEWGATE NOTORIETIES.

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.

In chapter 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

often futile 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

another outrage 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

needy men 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 and

others, 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

[Illustration: 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 number of 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 profitable _rôle_ he 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 manner strongly 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 the garb 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, "It was 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. "Young England" 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 "f_a_ctitious

(_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. Soon after 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 had escaped.

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 pass on 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. The increase 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 proceeded to 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 desired _him_ to 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 that she 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

[Illustration: 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 merchants and 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 kindliness of 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 unknown assassin

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 was arrested 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 put

out 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 should not 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. The two 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 was _viâ_

Manchester, 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 Turner

consented 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 himself called

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. le Maire 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 of the 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 highway robbery 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, and a 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. Thus manacled, 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 of immense 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 of conspiracy 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 a

thorough 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 of _habeas_ before 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 to Newgate.

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 Lane _en route_ to 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 a

general 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 keys of 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 to England 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.

The police were of opinion that these robberies were both the work of

the same hand. But it was not until the autumn that they traced some of

the notes stolen from the Custom House to Jordan and Sullivan. About

this time also suspicion fell upon Huey, one of the clerks, who was

arrested soon afterwards, and made a clean breast of the whole affair.

There was a hunt for the two well-known house-breakers, who were

eventually heard of at a lodging in Kennington. But they at once made

tracks, and took up their residence under assumed names in a tavern in

Bloomsbury. The police lost all trace of them for some days, but at

length Sullivan's brother was followed from the house in Kennington to

the above-mentioned tavern. Both the thieves were now apprehended, but

only a small portion of the lost property was recovered, notwithstanding

a minute search through the room they had occupied. After their arrest,

Jordan's wife and Sullivan's brother came to the inn, and begged to be

allowed to visit this room; but their request, in spite of their earnest

entreaties, was refused, at the instigation of the police. A few days

later a frequent guest at the tavern arrived, and had this same room

allotted to him. A fire was lit in it, and the maid in doing so threw a

lot of rubbish, as it seemed, which had accumulated under the grate, on

top of the burning coals. By-and-by the occupant of the room noticed

something glittering in the centre of the fire, which, to inspect more

closely, he took out with the tongs. It was a large gold brooch set in

pearls, but a portion of the mounting had melted with the heat. The fire

was raked out, and in the ashes were found seven large and four dozen

small brilliants, also seven emeralds, one of them of considerable size.

A part of the "swag" stolen from the bonded warehouse was thus

recovered, but it was supposed that a number of the stolen notes had

perished in the fire.

The condign punishment meted out to these Custom House robbers had no

deterrent effect seemingly. Within three months, three new and most

mysterious burglaries were committed at the West End, all in houses

adjoining each other. One was occupied by the Portuguese ambassador, who

lost a quantity of jewellery from an escritoire, and his neighbours lost

plate and cash. Not the slightest clue to these large affairs was ever

obtained, but it is probable that they were "put up" jobs, or managed

with the complicity of servants. The next year twelve thousand

sovereigns were cleverly stolen in the Mile End Road.

The gold-dust robbery of 1839, the first of its kind, was cleverly and

carefully planned with the assistance of a dishonest _employé_. A young

man named Caspar, clerk to a steam-ship company, learnt through the

firm's correspondence that a quantity of gold-dust brought in a

man-of-war from Brazil had been transhipped at Falmouth for conveyance

to London. The letter informed him of the marks and sizes of the cases

containing the precious metal, and he with his father arranged that a

messenger should call for the stuff with forged credentials, and

anticipating the rightful owner. The fraudulent messenger, by the help

of young Caspar, established his claim to the boxes, paid the wharfage

dues, and carried off the gold-dust. Presently the proper person arrived

from the consignees, but found the gold-dust gone. The police were at

once employed, and after infinite pains they discovered the person, one

Moss, who had acted as the messenger. Moss was known to be intimate with

the elder Caspar, father of the clerk to the steam-ship company, and

these facts were deemed sufficient to justify the arrest of all three.

They also ascertained that a gold-refiner, Solomons, had sold bar gold

to the value of £1200 to certain bullion dealers. Solomons was not

straightforward in his replies as to where he got the gold, and he was

soon placed in the dock with the Caspars and Moss. Moss presently turned

approver, and implicated "Money Moses," another Jew, for the whole

affair had been planned and executed by members of the Hebrew

persuasion. "Money Moses" had received the stolen gold-dust from Moss'

father-in-law, Davis, or Isaacs, who was never arrested, and passed it

on to Solomons by his daughter, a widow named Abrahams. Solomons was now

also admitted as a witness, and his evidence, with that of Moss, secured

the transportation of the principal actors in the theft. In the course

of the trial it came out that almost every one concerned except the

Caspars had endeavoured to defraud his accomplices. Moss peached because

he declared he had been done out of the proper price of the gold-dust;

but it was clear that he had tried to appropriate the whole of the

stuff, instead of handing it or the price of it back to the Caspars.

"Money Moses" and Mrs. Abrahams imposed upon Moss as to the price paid

by Solomons; Mrs. Abrahams imposed upon her father by abstracting a

portion of the dust and selling it on her own account; Solomons cheated

the whole lot by retaining half the gold in his possession, and only

giving an I. O. U. for it, which he refused to redeem on account of the

row about the robbery.

Moses, it may be added, was a direct descendant of Ikey Solomons.[116]

He was ostensibly a publican, and kept the Black Lion in Vinegar Yard,

Drury Lane, where secretly he did business as one of the most daring and

successful fencers ever known in the metropolis. His arrest and

conviction cast dismay over the whole gang of receivers, and for a time

seriously checked the nefarious traffic. It may be added that prison

life did not agree with "Money Moses"; a striking change came over his

appearance while in Newgate. Before his confinement he had been a sleek

round person, addicted obviously to the pleasures of the table. He did

not thrive on prison fare, now more strictly meagre, thanks to the

inspectors and the more stringent discipline, and before he embarked for

Australia to undergo his fourteen years, he was reported to have fallen

away to a shadow.

Having brought down the records of great frauds, forgeries, and thefts

from about 1825 to 1840, I will now retrace my steps and give some

account of the more remarkable murders during that period. No murder

has created greater sensation and horror throughout England than that of

Mr. Weare by Thurtell, Hunt, and Probert. As this was accomplished

beyond the limits of the metropolis, and its perpetrators arraigned at

Hertford, where the principal actor suffered death, the case hardly

comes within the limits of my subject. But Probert, who turned king's

evidence, and materially assisted conviction, was tried at the Old

Bailey the following year for horse-stealing, and hanged in front of

Newgate. The murder was still fresh in the memory of the populace, and

Probert was all but lynched on his way to gaol. According to his

statement, when sentenced to death, he had been driven to horse-stealing

by the execration which had pursued him after the murder. "Every door

had been closed against him, every hope of future support blasted. Since

the calamitous event," he went on, "that happened at Hertford, I have

been a lost man." The event which he styles calamitous we may well

characterize as one of the most deliberately atrocious murders on

record. Thurtell was a gambler, and Weare had won a good deal of money

from him. Weare was supposed to carry a "private bank" about with him in

a pocket in his under waistcoat. To obtain possession of this, Thurtell

with his two associates resolved to kill him. The victim was invited to

visit Probert's cottage in the country near Elstree. Thurtell drove him

down in a gig, "to be killed as he travelled," in Thurtell's own words.

The others followed, and on overtaking Thurtell, found he had done the

job alone in a retired part of the road known as Gill's Hill Lane. The

murderer explained that he had first fired a pistol at Weare's head, but

the shot glanced off his cheek. Then he attacked the other's throat with

a penknife, and last of all drove the pistol barrel into his forehead.

After the murder the villains divided the spoil, and went on to

Probert's cottage, and supped off pork-chops brought down on purpose.

During the night they sought to dispose of the body by throwing it into

a pond, but two days later had to throw it into another pond. Meanwhile

the discovery of pistol and knife spattered with human blood and brains

raised the alarm, and suspicion fell upon the three murderers, who were

arrested. The crime was brought home to Thurtell by the confession of

Hunt, one of his accomplices, who took the police to the pond, where the

remains of the unfortunate Mr. Weare were discovered, sunk in a sack

weighted by stones. Probert was then admitted as a witness, and the case

was fully proved against Thurtell, who was hanged in front of Hertford

Gaol. Hunt, in consideration of the information he had given, escaped

death, and was sentenced to transportation for life.

Widespread horror and indignation was evoked throughout the kingdom by

the discovery of the series of atrocious murders perpetrated in

Edinburgh by the miscreants Burke and Hare, the first of whom has added

to the British language a synonym for illegal suppression. The crimes of

these inhuman purveyors to medical science do not fall within the

limits of this work. But Burke and Hare had their imitators further

south, and of these Bishop and Williams, who were guilty of many

peculiar atrocities, ended their murderous careers in front of the

debtors' door at Newgate. Bishop, whose real name was Head, married a

half-sister of Williams'. Williams was a professional resurrectionist,

or body-snatcher, a trade almost openly countenanced when "subjects" for

the anatomy schools were only to be got by rifling graves, or worse.

Bishop was a carpenter, but having been suddenly thrown out of work, he

joined his brother-in-law in his line of business. After a little Bishop

got weary of the dangers and fatigues of exhumation, and proposed to

Williams that instead of disinterring they should murder their subjects.

Bishop confessed that he was moved to this by the example of Burke and

Hare. They pursued their terrible trade for five years without scruple

and without detection. Eventually the law overtook them, but almost by

accident. They presented themselves about noon one day at the dissecting

room of King's College Hospital, accompanied by a third man, an avowed

"snatcher" and _habitué_ of the Fortune of War, a public-house in

Smithfield frequented openly by men of this awful profession. This man,

May, asked the porter at King's College if "he wanted anything?" the

euphemism for offering a body. The porter asked what he had got, and the

answer was, a male subject. Reference was made to Mr. Partridge, the

demonstrator in anatomy, and after some haggling they agreed on a price,

and in the afternoon the snatchers brought a hamper which contained a

body in a sack. The porter received it, but from its freshness became

suspicious of foul play. Mr. Partridge was sent for, and he with some of

the students soon decided that the corpse had not died a natural death.

The snatchers were detained, the police sent for, and arrest followed as

a matter of course.

An inquest was held on the body, which was identified as that of an

Italian boy, Carlo Ferrari, who made a living by exhibiting white mice

about the streets, and the jury returned a verdict of wilful murder

against persons unknown, expressing a strong opinion that Bishop,

Williams, and May had been concerned in the transaction. Meanwhile, a

search had been made at Nova Scotia Gardens, Bethnal Green, where Bishop

and Williams lived. At first nothing peculiar was found; but at a second

search the back-garden ground was dug up, and in one corner, at some

depth, a bundle of clothes were unearthed, which, with a hairy cap, were

known to be what Ferrari had worn when last seen. In another portion of

the garden more clothing, partly male and partly female, was discovered,

plainly pointing to the perpetration of other crimes. These facts were

represented before the police magistrate who examined Bishop and his

fellows, and further incriminating evidence adduced, to the effect that

the prisoners had bartered for a coach to carry "a stiff 'un"; they had

also been seen to leave their cottage, carrying out a sack with

something heavy inside. On this they were fully committed to Newgate for

trial. This trial came off in due course at the Central Criminal Court,

where the prisoners were charged on two counts, one that of the murder

of the Italian boy, the other that of a boy unknown. The evidence from

first to last was circumstantial, but the jury, after a short

deliberation, did not hesitate to bring in a verdict of guilty, and all

three were condemned to death.

Shortly before the day fixed for execution, Bishop made a full

confession, the bulk of which bore the impress of truth, although it

included statements that were improbable and unsubstantiated. He

asserted that the victim was a Lincolnshire lad, and not an Italian boy,

although the latter was fully proved. According to the confession, death

had been inflicted by drowning in a well, whereas the medical evidence

all pointed to violence. It was, however, pretty clear that this victim,

like preceding ones, had been lured to Nova Scotia Gardens, and there

drugged with a large dose of laudanum. While they were in a state of

insensibility the murder was committed. Bishop's confession was endorsed

by Williams, and the immediate result was the respite of May. A very

painful scene occurred in Newgate when the news of his escape from death

was imparted to May. He fainted, and the warrant of mercy nearly proved

his death-blow. The other two looked on at his agitation with an

indifference amounting to apathy. The execution took place a week or two

later, in the presence of such a crowd as had not been seen near Newgate

for years.

I will close this chapter with a brief account of another murder, the

memory of which is still fresh in the minds of Londoners, although half

a century has passed since it was committed. The horror with which

Greenacre's crime struck the town was unparalleled since the time when

Catherine Hayes slew her husband. There were many features of

resemblance in these crimes. The decapitation and dismemberment, the

bestowal of the remains in various parts of the town, the preservation

of the head in spirits of wine, in the hope that the features might some

day be recognized, were alike in both. The murder in both cases was long

a profound mystery. In this which I am now describing, a bricklayer

found a human trunk near some new buildings in the Edgeware Road, one

morning in the last week of 1836. The inquest on these remains, which

medical examination showed to be those of a female, returned a verdict

of wilful murder against some person unknown. On the 7th July, 1837, the

lockman of "Ben Jonson lock," in Stepney Fields, found a human head

jammed into the lock gates. Closer investigation proved that it belonged

to the trunk already discovered on the 2nd February. A further discovery

was made in an osier bed near Cold Harbour Lane, Camberwell, where a

workman found a bundle containing two human legs, in a drain. These

were the missing members of the same mutilated trunk, and there was now

evidence sufficient to establish conclusively that the woman thus

collected piecemeal had been barbarously done to death. But the affair

still remained a profound mystery. No light was thrown upon it till,

towards the end of March, a Mr. Gay of Goodge Street came to view the

head, and immediately recognized it as that of a widowed sister, Hannah

Brown, who had been missing since the previous Christmas Day.

The murdered individual was thus identified. The next step was to

ascertain where and with whom she had last been seen. This brought

suspicion on to a certain James Greenacre, whom she was to have married,

and in whose company she had left her own lodgings to visit his in

Camberwell. The police wished to refer to Greenacre, but as he was not

forthcoming, a warrant was issued for his apprehension, which was

effected at Kennington on the 24th March. A woman named Gale, who lived

with him, was arrested at the same time. The prisoners were examined at

the Marylebone police court. Greenacre, a stout, middle-aged man,

wrapped in a brown greatcoat, assumed an air of insolent bravado; but

his despair must have been great, as was evident from his attempt to

strangle himself in the station-house. Suspicion grew almost to

certainty as the evidence was unfolded. Mrs. Brown was a washer-woman,

supposed to be worth some money; hence Greenacre's offer of marriage.

She had realized all her effects, and brought them with her furniture to

Greenacre's lodgings. The two when married were to emigrate to Hudson's

Bay. Whether it was greed or a quarrel that drove Greenacre to the

desperate deed remains obscure. They were apparently good friends when

last seen together at a neighbour's, where they seemed "perfectly happy

and sociable, and eager for the wedding day." But Greenacre in his

confession pretended that he and his intended had quarrelled over her

property or the want of it, and that in a moment of anger he knocked her

down. He thought he had killed her, and in his terror began at once to

consider how he might dispose of the body and escape arrest. While she

was senseless, but really still alive, he cut off her head, and

dismembered the body in the manner already described. It is scarcely

probable that he would have gone to this extremity if he had had no

previous evil intention, and the most probable inference is that he

inveigled Mrs. Brown to his lodgings with the set purpose of taking her

life.

His measures for the disposal of the _corpus delicti_ remind us of those

taken by Mrs. Hayes and her associates, or of Gardelle's frantic efforts

to conceal his crime. The most ghastly part of the story is that which

deals with his getting rid of the head. This, wrapped up in a silk

handkerchief, he carried under his coat-flaps through the streets, and

afterwards on his cap in a crowded city omnibus. It was not until he

left the 'bus, and walked up by the Regent's Canal, that he conceived

the idea of throwing the head into the water. Another day elapsed before

he got rid of the rest of the body, all of which, according to his own

confession, made no doubt with the idea of exonerating Mrs. Gale, he

accomplished without her assistance. On the other hand, it was adduced

in evidence that Mrs. Gale had been at his lodgings the very day after

the murder, and was seen to be busily engaged in washing down the house

with bucket and mop.

Greenacre, when tried at the Old Bailey, admitted that he had been

guilty of manslaughter. While conversing with Mrs. Brown, he declared

the unfortunate woman was rocking herself to and fro in a chair; as she

leant back he put his foot against the chair, and so tilted it over.

Mrs. Brown fell with it, and Greenacre, to his horror, found that she

was dead. But the medical evidence was clear that the decapitation had

been effected during life, and the jury, after a short deliberation,

without hesitation brought in a verdict of wilful murder. The woman Gale

was also found guilty, but sentence of death was only passed on

Greenacre. The execution was, as usual, attended by an immense

concourse, and Greenacre died amidst the loudest execrations. Gale was

sentenced to penal servitude for life.