NEWGATE NOTORIETIES.
Latest records of crimes--Poisoning, revived and more
terrible--Palmer's case--His trial at the Central Criminal Court,
and demeanour in Newgate--His imitators--Dove--Dr.
Smethurst--Catherine Wilson--Dr. Taylor's opinion that poisoning
very prevalent--Piracy and murder--The 'Flowery Land'--Arrest of
the mutineers--Their trial and sentence--Details of their behaviour
while in Newgate--Murder of Mr. Briggs in a railway carriage--How
brought home to Müller--Pursuit of murderer and his arrest in New
York--Müller's conviction--His protest against justice of
sentence--Confesses guilt when rope is actually round his
neck--Christian Sattler murders a police Inspector--Latest frauds
and robberies--The forgeries of Wagner, Bateman, and
others--Principal forger, an aged man, Kerp, escapes
arrest--Robbery of Bank of England bank-note paper at
Tavistock--Reward offered--Arrests made, followed by expressions
which lead to capture of whole gang--Buncher and Griffiths
sentenced--Cummings acquitted: his delight--Cummings an adroit and
inveterate coiner.
As these records draw to a close, the crimes I chronicle become so much
more recent in date that they will be fresh in the memory of most of my
readers. Nevertheless, in order to give completeness to the picture I
have attempted to draw of crime in connection with Newgate, from first
to last, I must make some mention, in this my penultimate chapter, of
some of the most heinous offences of modern times.
The crime of poisoning has always been viewed with peculiar loathing and
terror in this country. It will be remembered that as far back as the
reign of Henry VIII. a new and most cruel penalty was devised for the
punishment of the Bishop of Rochester's cook, who had poisoned his
master and many of his dependents. Sir Thomas Overbury was undoubtedly
poisoned by Lord Rochester in the reign of James I., and it is hinted
that James himself nearly fell a victim to a nefarious attempt of the
Duke of Buckingham. But secret poisoning on a wholesale scale such as
was practised in Italy and France was happily never popularized in
England. The well-known and lethal aqua Toffania, so called after its
inventress, a Roman woman named Toffana, and which was so widely adopted
by ladies anxious to get rid of their husbands, was never introduced
into this country. Its admission was probably checked by the increased
vigilance at the custom houses, the necessity for which was urged by Mr.
Addison, when Secretary of State, in 1717. The cases of poisoning in the
British calendars are rare, nor indeed was the guilt of the accused
always clearly established. It is quite possible that Catherine Blandy,
who poisoned her father at the instigation of her lover, was ignorant of
the destructive character of the powders, probably arsenic, which she
administered. Captain Donellan, who was convicted of poisoning his
brother-in-law, Sir Theodosius Broughton, and executed for it, would
probably have had the benefit in these days of the doubts raised at his
trial. A third case, more especially interesting to us as having passed
through Newgate, was that of Eliza Fenning, who was convicted of an
attempt to poison a whole family by putting arsenic in the dumplings she
had prepared for them. The charge rested entirely on circumstantial
evidence, and as Fenning, although convicted and executed, protested her
innocence in the most solemn manner to the last, the justice of the
sentence was doubted at the time. Yet it was clearly proved that the
dumplings contained arsenic, that she, and she alone, had made the
dough, that arsenic was within her reach in the house, that she had had
a quarrel with her mistress, and that the latter with all others who
tasted the dumplings were similarly attacked, although no one died.
The crime of poisoning is essentially one which will be most prevalent
in a high state of civilization, when the spread of scientific knowledge
places nefarious means at the disposal of many, instead of limiting
them, as in the days of the Borgias and Brinvilliers, to the specially
informed and unscrupulously powerful few. The first intimation conveyed
to society of the new terror which threatened it was in the arrest and
arraignment of William Palmer, a medical practitioner, charged with
doing to death persons who relied upon his professional skill. The case
contained elements of much uncertainty, and yet it was so essential, in
the interests and for the due protection of the public, that the fullest
and fairest inquiry should be made, that the trial was transferred to
the Central Criminal Court, under the authority of an Act passed on
purpose, known as the Trial of Offences Act, and sometimes as Lord
Campbell's Act. That the administration of justice should never be
interfered with by local prejudice or local feeling is obviously of
paramount importance, and the powers granted by this Act have been
frequently put in practice since. The trial of Catherine Winsor, the
baby farmer, was thus brought to the Central Criminal Court from Exeter
assizes, and that of the Stauntons from Maidstone.
Palmer's trial caused the most intense excitement. The direful
suspicions which surrounded the case filled the whole country with
uneasiness and misgiving, and the deepest anxiety was felt that the
crime, if crime there had been, should be brought home to its
perpetrator. The Central Criminal Court was crowded to suffocation.
Great personages occupied seats upon the bench; the rest of the
available space was allotted by ticket, to secure which the greatest
influence was necessary. People came to stare at the supposed
cold-blooded prisoner; with morbid curiosity to scan his features and
watch his demeanour through the shifting, nicely-balanced phases of his
protracted trial. Palmer, who was only thirty-one at the time of his
trial, was in appearance short and stout, with a round head covered
rather scantily with light sandy hair. His skin was extraordinarily
fair, his cheeks fresh and ruddy; altogether his face, though
commonplace, was not exactly ugly; there was certainly nothing in it
which indicated cruel cunning or deliberate truculence. His features
were not careworn, but rather set, and he looked older than his age.
Throughout his trial he preserved an impassive countenance, but he
clearly took a deep interest in all that passed. Although the strain
lasted fourteen days, he showed no signs of exhaustion, either physical
or mental. On returning to gaol each day he talked freely and without
reserve to the warders in charge of him, chiefly on incidents in the
day's proceedings. He was confident to the very last that it would be
impossible to find him guilty; even after sentence, and until within a
few hours of execution, he was buoyed up with the hope of reprieve. The
conviction that he would escape had taken so firm a hold of him, that he
steadily refused to confess his guilt, lest it should militate against
his chances. In the condemned cell he frequently repeated, "I go to my
death a murdered man." He made no distinct admissions even on the
scaffold; but when the chaplain at the last moment exhorted him to
confess, he made use of the remarkable words, "If it is necessary for my
soul's sake to confess this murder,[125] I ought also to confess the
others: I mean my wife and my brother's." Yet he was silent when
specifically pressed to confess that he had killed his wife and his
brother.
Palmer was ably defended, but the weight of evidence was clearly with
the prosecution, led by Sir Alexander Cockburn, and public opinion at
the termination of the trial coincided with the verdict of the jury.
Originally a doctor in practice at Rugeley, in Staffordshire, he had
gradually withdrawn from medicine, and devoted himself to the turf; but
his sporting operations did not prosper, and he became a needy man,
always driven to desperate straits for cash. To meet his liabilities, he
raised large sums on forged bills of acceptance drawn upon his mother, a
woman of some means, whose signature he counterfeited. In 1854 he owed a
very large sum of money, but he was temporarily relieved by the death of
his wife, whose life he had insured for £13,000. There is every reason
to suppose that he poisoned his wife to obtain possession of this sum
upon her death. His brother was supposed to have been his next victim,
upon whose life he had also effected an insurance for another £13,000.
The brother too died conveniently, but the life office took some
exception to the manner of the death, and hesitated to disburse the
funds claimed by Palmer. After this Palmer tried to get a new insurance
on the life of a hanger-on, one Bates, but no office would accept it, no
doubt greatly to Bates's longevity.
Meanwhile the bill discounters who held the forged acceptances, with
other promissory notes, began to clamour for payment, and talk of
issuing writs. Palmer, alive to the danger he ran of a prosecution for
forgery, should the fraud he had committed be brought to light, sought
about for a fresh victim to supply him with funds. He fixed upon a
sporting friend, Mr. John Parsons Cook, who had been in luck at
Shrewsbury races, both as a winner and a backer, whom he persuaded to go
and stay at Rugeley in an hotel just opposite his own house. It was
there that Cook was first taken ill with violent retchings and
vomitings, all dating from visits of Palmer, who brought him medicines
and food. Palmer's plan was to administer poison in quantities
insufficient to cause death, but enough to produce illness which would
account for death. For this purpose he gave, or there was the strongest
presumption that he gave, antimony, which caused Cook's constant
sickness. Quantities of antimony were found in the body after death.
While Cook lay ill, Palmer in his name pocketed the proceeds of the
Shrewsbury settling, and so got the money for which he was prepared to
barter his soul. The last act now approached, and in order to avoid the
detection of this last fraud, Palmer laid his plans for disposing of
Cook. He decided to use strychnia, or the vegetable poison otherwise
known as _nux vomica_; and one of the many links in the long chain of
evidence was an entry in a book of Palmer's to the effect that
"strychnia kills by causing tetanic fixing of the respiratory muscles."
The purchase by Palmer of strychnia was proved. The night he bought it,
Cook, who had been taking certain pills under medical advice, not
Palmer's, was seized with violent convulsions. He had swallowed his
pills as usual, at least Palmer had administered them--whether the
ordinary or his own pills will never be known, except as may be inferred
from the results, which indicate that he had taken the latter. Cook
recovered this time; it was probably Palmer's intention that he should
recover, wishing to encourage the supposition that Cook was in a bad
way. Next night Cook had a second and a more violent attack. That day
Palmer had bought more strychnia, and had called in a fresh doctor. The
second attack was fatal, and ended in Cook's death from tetanus. This
tetanus, according to the prosecution, was produced by strychnia, and
followed the administration of pills by Palmer prescribed nominally by
the fresh doctor, for which Palmer had substituted his own. Cook's death
was horrible--fearful paroxysms and cramps, ending in suffocation by the
tetanic rigour which caught the muscles of the chest.
After Cook's death his stepfather, who was much attached to him, came to
Rugeley. He was struck with the appearance of the corpse, which was not
emaciated, as after a long disease ending in death; while the muscles of
the fingers were tightly clenched, not open, as usual in a corpse. He
said nothing, but began to feel uneasy when he found that Cook's
betting-book was missing, and that Palmer put it forward that his friend
had died greatly embarrassed, with bills to the amount of £4000 out in
his name. Palmer too showed an indecent haste in preparing the body for
interment, and in obtaining the usual certificate. After this the
step-father insisted upon a post-mortem, which was conducted somewhat
carelessly. The intestines were, however, preserved and sent for
analysis, but it was proved that Palmer tried hard to get possession of
the jar containing them, and even sought to upset the vehicle by which
they were being conveyed a part of the way to London. The examination of
the stomach betrayed the presence of antimony in large quantities, but
no strychnia, and it was on the entire absence of the latter that the
defence was principally based when Palmer was brought to trial. All the
circumstances were so suspicious that he could not escape the criminal
charge. He had already been arrested on a writ issued at the instance of
the money-lenders, and an action had been commenced against Mrs. Palmer
on her acceptances. It came out at once that these had been forged, and
the whole affair at once took the ugliest complexion. A government
prosecution was instituted, and Palmer was brought to Newgate for trial
at the Central Criminal Court. There was not much reserve about him when
there. He frequently declared before and during the trial that it would
be impossible to find him guilty. He never actually said that he was not
guilty, but he was confident he would not be convicted. He relied on the
absence of the strychnia. But the chain of circumstantial evidence was
strong enough to satisfy the jury, who agreed to their verdict in an
hour. At the last moment Palmer tossed a bit of paper over to his
counsel, on which he had written, "I think there will be a verdict of
Not Guilty." Even after the death sentence had been passed upon him he
clung to the hope that the Government would grant him a reprieve. To
the last, therefore, he played the part of a man wrongfully convicted,
and did not abandon hope even when the high sheriff had told him there
was no possibility of a reprieve, and within a few hours of execution.
He suffered at Stafford in front of the gaol.
Palmer speedily found imitators. Within a few weeks occurred the Leeds
poisoning case, in which the murderer undoubtedly was inspired by the
facts made public at Palmer's trial. Dove, a fiendish brute, found from
the evidence in that case that he could kill his wife, whom he hated,
with exquisite torture, and with a poison that would leave, as he
thought, no trace. In the latter hope he was happily disappointed. But
as this case is beyond my subject, I merely mention it as one of the
group already referred to. Three years later came the case of Dr.
Smethurst, presenting still greater features of resemblance with
Palmer's, for both were medical men, and both raised difficult questions
of medical jurisprudence. In both the jury had no doubt as to the guilt
of the accused, only in Smethurst's case the then Home Secretary, Sir
George Cornewall Lewis, could not divest his mind of serious doubt, and
of which the murderer got the benefit. Smethurst's escape may have
influenced the jury in the Poplar poisoning case, which followed close
on its heels, although in that the verdict of "Not Guilty" was
excusable, as the evidence was entirely circumstantial. There was no
convincing proof that the accused had administered the poison, although
beyond question that poison had occasioned the death.
Dr. Smethurst was long an inmate of Newgate, and was tried at the
Central Criminal Court. He had all the characteristics of the
poisoner--the calm deliberation, the protracted dissimulation, as with
unshrinking, relentless wickedness the deadly work is carried on to the
end. Smethurst's victim was a Miss Bankes, with whom he had contracted a
bigamous marriage. He had met her at a boarding-house, where he lived
with his own wife, a person of "shady" antecedents, and whom he left
without scruple to join Miss Bankes. The latter seems to have succumbed
only too willingly to his fascinations, and to have as readily agreed to
marry him, in spite of the existence of the other Mrs. Smethurst.
Probably the doctor had told her the story he brought forward when tried
for bigamy, namely, that Mrs. Smethurst had no right to the name, but
had a husband of her own, one Johnson, alive--a story subsequently
disproved. Miss Bankes seems to have counted upon some species of
whitewashing, no less than the repudiation of the other marriage, and
told her sister as much when they last met. For some months Smethurst
and Miss Bankes lived together as man and wife, first in London, and
then at Richmond. She had a little fortune of her own, some £1700 or
£1800, and a life-interest in £5000, a fact on which Smethurst's counsel
dwelt with much weight, as indicating a motive for keeping her alive
rather than killing her. But probably the lump sum was the bait, or
perhaps Smethurst wished to return to his temporarily deserted first
wife. Whatever the exact cause which impelled him to crime, it seems
certain that he began to give her some poison, either arsenic or
antimony, or both, in small quantities, with the idea of subjecting her
to the irritant poison slowly but surely until the desired effect,
death, was achieved. As she became worse and worse, Smethurst called in
the best medical advice in Richmond, but was careful to prime them with
his facts and lead them if possible to accept his diagnosis of the case.
Smethurst was found guilty by the jury, and sentenced to death. But a
long public discussion followed, and in consequence he was reprieved.
The Home Secretary, in a letter to the Lord Chief Baron, stated that
"although the facts are full of suspicion against Smethurst, there is
not absolute and complete evidence of his guilt." Smethurst was
therefore given a free pardon for the offence of murder, but he was
subsequently again tried for bigamy, and sentenced to twelve months'
imprisonment.
Catherine Wilson was a female poisoner who did business wholesale. She
was tried in April 1862 on suspicion of having attempted to poison a
neighbour with oil of vitriol. The circumstances were strange. Mrs.
Wilson had gone to the chemist's for medicine, and on her return had
administered a dose of something which burnt the mouth badly, but did
not prove fatal. Wilson was acquitted on this charge, but other
suspicious facts cropped up while she was in Newgate. It appeared that
several persons with whom she was intimate had succumbed suddenly. In
all cases the symptoms were much the same, vomiting, violent retching,
purging, such as are visible in cholera, and all dated from the time
when she knew a young man named Dixon, who had been in the habit of
taking colchicum for rheumatism. Mrs. Wilson heard then casually from a
medical man that it was a very dangerous medicine, and she profited by
what she had heard. Soon afterwards Dixon died, showing all the symptoms
already described. Soon afterwards a friend, Mrs. Atkinson, came to
London from Westmoreland, and stayed in Mrs. Wilson's house. She was in
good health on leaving home, and had with her a large sum of money.
While with Mrs. Wilson she became suddenly and alarmingly ill, and died
in great agony. Her husband, who came up to town, would not allow a
post-mortem, and again Mrs. Wilson escaped. Mrs. Atkinson's symptoms had
been the same as Dixon's. Then Mrs. Wilson went to live with a man named
Taylor, who was presently attacked in the same way as the others, but,
thanks to the prompt administration of remedies, he recovered. After
this came the charge of administering oil of vitriol, which failed, as
has been described. Last of all Mrs. Wilson poisoned her landlady, Mrs.
Soames, under precisely the same conditions as the foregoing.
Here, however, the evidence was strong and sufficient. It was proved
that Mrs. Wilson had given Mrs. Soames something peculiar to drink, that
immediately afterwards Mrs. Soames was taken ill with vomiting and
purging, and that Mrs. Wilson administered the same medicine again and
again. The last time Mrs. Soames showed great reluctance to take it, but
Wilson said it would certainly do her good. This mysterious medicine
Wilson kept carefully locked up, and allowed no one to see it, but its
nature was betrayed when this last victim also died. The first
post-mortem indicated death from natural causes, but a more careful
investigation attributed it beyond doubt to over-doses of colchicum. Dr.
Alfred Taylor, the great authority and writer on medical jurisprudence,
corroborated this, and in his evidence on the trial fairly electrified
the court by declaring it his opinion that many deaths, supposed to be
from cholera, were really due to poison. This fact was referred to by
the judge in his summing up, who said that he feared it was only too
true that secret poisoning was at that time very rife in the metropolis.
Wilson was duly sentenced to death, and suffered impenitent, hardened,
and without any confession of her guilt.
Although murder by insidious methods had become more common, cases where
violence of the most deadly and determined kind was offered had not
quite disappeared. I will mention two cases of this class, one
accompanied with piracy on the high seas, the other perpetrated in a
railway-carriage, and showing the promptitude with which criminals
accept and utilize altered conditions of life, more particularly as
regards locomotion.
The first case was that of the 'Flowery Land,' which left London for
Singapore on the 28th July, 1863, with a cargo of wine and other goods.
Her captain was John Smith; the first and second mates, Karswell and
Taffir; there were two other Englishmen on board, and the rest of the
crew were a polyglot lot, most of them, as was proved by their
subsequent acts, blackguards of the deepest dye. Six were Spaniards, or
rather natives of Manilla, and men of colour; one was a Greek, another a
Turk; there were also a Frenchman, a Norwegian (the carpenter), three
Chinamen, a "Sclavonian," and a black on board. Navigation and
discipline could not be easy with such a nondescript crew. The captain
was kindly but somewhat intemperate, the first mate a man of some
determination, and punishment such as rope's-ending and tying to the
bulwarks had to be applied to get the work properly done. The six
Spaniards, the Greek, and the Turk were in the same watch, eight
truculent and reckless scoundrels, who, brooding over their fancied
wrongs, and burning for revenge, hatched amongst them a plot to murder
their officers and seize the ship. The mutiny was organized with great
secrecy, and broke out most unexpectedly in the middle of the night. A
simultaneous attack was made upon the captain and the first mate. The
latter had the watch on deck. One half of the mutineers fell upon him
unawares with handspikes and capstan-bars. He was struck down, imploring
mercy, but they beat him about the head and face till every feature was
obliterated, and then, still living, flung him into the sea. Meanwhile
the captain, roused from his berth, came out of the cabin, was caught
near the 'companion' by the rest of the mutineers, and promptly
despatched with daggers. His body was found lying in a pool of blood in
a night-dress, stabbed over and over again in the left side. The
captain's brother, a passenger on board the 'Flowery Land,' was also
stabbed to death and his body thrown overboard.
The second mate, who had heard the hammering of the capstan-bars and the
handspikes, with the first mate's and captain's agonized cries, had come
out, verified the murderers, and then shut himself up in his cabin. He
was soon summoned on deck, but as he would not move, the mutineers came
down and stood in a circle round his berth. Leon, or Lyons, who spoke
English, when asked said they would spare his life if he would navigate
the ship for them to the River Plate or Buenos Ayres. Taffir, the second
mate, agreed, but constantly went in fear of his life for the remainder
of the voyage; and although the mutineers spared him, they ill-treated
the Chinamen, and cut one badly with knives. Immediately after the
murder cases of champagne, which formed part of the cargo, were brought
on deck and broached; the captain's cabin ransacked, his money and
clothes divided amongst the mutineers, as well as much of the
merchandise on board. Leon wished to make every one on board share and
share alike, so as to implicate the innocent with the guilty; but
Vartos, or Watto, the Turk, would not allow any but the eight mutineers
to have anything. The murders were perpetrated on the 10th September,
and the ship continued her voyage for nearly three weeks, meeting and
speaking one ship only. On the 2nd October they sighted land, ten miles
distant; the mutineers took command of the ship, put her about till
night-fall, by which time they had scuttled her, got out the boats, and
all left the ship. The rest of the crew were also permitted to embark,
except the Chinamen, one of whom was thrown into the water and drowned,
while the other two were left to go down in the ship, and were seen
clinging to the tops until the waters closed over them.
The boats reached the shore on the 4th October. Leon had prepared a
plausible tale to the effect that they belonged to an American ship from
Peru bound to Bordeaux, which had foundered at sea; that they had been
in the boats five days and nights, but that the captain and others had
been lost. The place at which they landed was not far from the entrance
to the River Plate. A farmer took them in for the night, and drove them
next day to Rocha, a place north of Maldonado. Taffir, the mate, finding
there was a man who could speak English at another place twenty miles
off, repaired there secretly, and so gave information to the Brazilian
authorities. The mutineers were arrested, the case inquired into by a
naval court-martial, and the prisoners eventually surrendered to the
British authorities, brought to England, and lodged in Newgate. Their
trial followed at the Central Criminal Court. Eight were arraigned at
the same time: six Spaniards, Leon, Blanco, Duranno, Santos, and
Marsolino; Vartos the Turk, and Carlos the Greek. Seven were found
guilty of murder on the high seas, and one, Carlos, acquitted. Two of
the seven, Santos and Marsolino, were reprieved, and their sentences
commuted to penal servitude for life; the remaining five were executed
in one batch. They were an abject, miserable crew, cowards at heart; but
some, especially Lopez, continued bloodthirsty to the last. Lopez took a
violent dislike to the officer of the ward in charge of them, and often
expressed a keen desire to do for him. They none of them spoke much
English except Leon, commonly called Lyons. After condemnation, as the
rules now kept capital convicts strictly apart, they could not be lodged
in the two condemned cells, and they were each kept in an ordinary
separate cell of the newly-constructed block, with the "traps," or
square openings in the cell door, let down. A full view of them was thus
at all times obtainable by the officers who, without intermission, day
and night patrolled the ward. On the morning of execution the noise of
fixing the gallows in the street outside awoke one or two of them.
Lyons asked the time, and was told it was only five. "Ah!" he remarked,
"they will have to wait for us then till eight." Lopez was more
talkative. When the warder went in to call him he asked for his clothes.
He was told he would have to wear his own. "Not give clothes? In Russia,
Italy, always give chaps clothes." Then he wanted to know when the
policemen would arrive, and was told none would come. "The soldiers
then?" No soldiers either. "What, you not afraid let us go all by
ourselves? Not so in Russia or Spain." The convicts were pinioned one by
one and sent singly out to the gallows. As the first to appear would
have some time to wait for his fellows, a difficult and painful ordeal,
the seemingly most courageous was selected to lead the way. This was
Duranno; but the sight of the heaving mass of uplifted, impassioned
faces was too much for his nerves, and he so nearly fainted that he had
to be seated in a chair. The execution went off without mishap.
In July 1864 occurred the murder of Mr. Briggs, a gentleman advanced in
years and chief clerk in Robarts' bank. As the circumstances under which
it was perpetrated were somewhat novel,[126] and as some time elapsed
before the discovery and apprehension of the supposed murderer, the
public mind was greatly agitated by the affair for several months. The
story of the murder must be pretty familiar to most of my readers. Mr.
Briggs left the bank one afternoon as usual, dined with his daughter at
Peckham, then returned to the city to take the train from Fenchurch
Street home, travelling by the North London Railway. He lived at
Hackney, but he never reached it alive. When the train arrived at
Hackney station, a passenger who was about to enter one of the carriages
found the cushions soaked with blood. Inside the carriage was a hat, a
walking-stick, and a small black leather bag. About the same time a body
was discovered on the line near the railway-bridge by Victoria Park. It
was that of an aged man, whose head had been battered in by a
life-preserver. There was a deep wound just over the ear, the skull was
fractured, and there were several other blows and wounds on the head.
Strange to say, the unfortunate man was not yet dead, and he actually
survived more than four-and-twenty hours. His identity was established
by a bundle of letters in his pocket, which bore his full address: "T.
Briggs, Esq., Robarts & Co., Lombard Street."
The friends of Mr. Briggs were communicated with, and it was ascertained
that when he left home the morning of the murderous attack, he wore
gold-rimmed eye-glasses and a gold watch and chain. The stick and bag
were his, but not the hat. A desperate and deadly struggle must have
taken place in the carriage, and the stain of a bloody hand marked the
door. The facts of the murder and its object, robbery, were thus
conclusively proved. It was also easily established that the hat found
in the carriage had been bought at Walker's, a hatter's in Crawford
Street, Marylebone; while within a few days Mr. Briggs' gold chain was
traced to a jeweller's in Cheapside, Mr. Death, who had given another in
exchange for it to a man supposed to be a foreigner. More precise clues
to the murderer were not long wanting; indeed the readiness with which
they were produced and followed up showed how greatly the publicity and
wide dissemination of the news regarding murder facilitate the detection
of crime. In little more than a week a cabman came forward and
voluntarily made a statement which at once drew suspicion to a German,
Franz Müller, who had been a lodger of his. Müller had given the
cabman's little daughter a jeweller's cardboard box bearing the name of
Mr. Death. A photograph of Müller shown the jeweller was identified as
the likeness of the man who had exchanged Mr. Briggs' chain. Last of
all, the cabman swore that he had bought the very hat found in the
carriage for Müller at the hatter's, Walker's of Crawford Street.
This fixed the crime pretty certainly upon Müller, who had already left
the country, thus increasing suspicion under which he lay. There was no
mystery about his departure; he had gone to Canada, by the 'Victoria'
sailing ship, starting from the London docks, and bound to New York.
Directly the foregoing facts were established, a couple of detective
officers, armed with a warrant to arrest Müller, and accompanied by Mr.
Death the jeweller and the cabman, went down to Liverpool and took the
first steamer across the Atlantic. This was the 'City of Manchester,'
which was expected to arrive some days before the 'Victoria,' and did
so. The officers went on board the 'Victoria' at once, Müller was
identified by Mr. Death, and the arrest was made. In searching the
prisoner's box, Mr. Briggs' watch was found wrapped up in a piece of
leather, and Müller at the time of his capture was actually wearing Mr.
Briggs' hat, cut down and somewhat altered. The prisoner was forthwith
extradited and sent back to England, which he reached with his escort on
the 17th September the same year. His trial followed at the next
sessions of the Central Criminal Court, and ended in his conviction. The
case was one of circumstantial evidence, but, as Sir Robert Collyer the
Solicitor-General pointed out, it was the strongest circumstantial
evidence which had ever been brought forward in a murder case. It was
really evidence of facts which could not be controverted or explained
away. There was the prisoner's poverty, his inability to account for
himself on the night of the murder, and his possession of the property
of the murdered man. An alibi was set up for the defence, but not well
substantiated, and the jury without hesitation returned a verdict of
guilty.
Müller protested after sentence of death had been passed upon him that
he had been convicted on a false statement of facts. He adhered to this
almost to the very last. His case had been warmly espoused by the
Society for the Protection of Germans in this country, and powerful
influence was exerted both here and abroad to obtain a reprieve. Müller
knew that any confession would ruin his chances of escape. His arguments
were specious and evasive when pressed to confess. "Why should man
confess to man?" he replied; "man cannot forgive man, only God can do
so. Man is therefore only accountable to God." But on the gallows, when
the cap was over his eyes and the rope had been adjusted round his neck,
and within a second of the moment when he would be launched into
eternity, he whispered in the ear of the German pastor who attended him
on the scaffold, "I did it." While in the condemned cell he conversed
freely with the warders in broken English or through an interpreter. He
is described as not a bad-looking man, with a square German type of
face, blue eyes which were generally half closed, and very fair hair. He
was short in stature, his legs were light for the upper part of his
body, which was powerful, almost herculean. It is generally supposed
that he committed the murder under a sudden access of covetousness and
greed. He saw Mr. Briggs' watch-chain, and followed him instantly into
the carriage, determined to have it at all costs. His crime under this
aspect of it was less premeditated, and less atrocious therefore, than
that of Lefroy.
One other curious murder may be added to the two foregoing. Christian
Sattler was by birth a German. He had led a wild life; had left his
native land and enlisted first in the French army in Algeria, afterwards
in the British German Legion raised for the Crimean War. At the
disbandment of the force, as he was without resources, he turned his
attention to hotel robberies, by which he lived for some years. He at
length stole a carpet-bag containing valuables, and fled to Hamburgh.
Thither he was pursued by a detective officer, Inspector Thain, who,
being unable to obtain his extradition legally, had him inveigled on
board an English steamer, where the arrest was made. Sattler was ironed
for safe custody, a proceeding which he vehemently resented, and begged
that they might be removed, as the handcuffs hurt his wrists. The
inspector said that they could not be removed till he reached England.
This reply of his contained no promise of immediate release. Sattler
probably misunderstood, and he declared that the police officer had
broken faith with him, having, moreover, stated that while at sea the
captain of the ship was responsible for the security of the prisoner. As
Sattler brooded over his wrongs, his rage got the upper hand, and he
resolved to wreak it upon Thain. Although manacled, he managed to get a
pistol from his chest and load it. The next time Thain entered his cabin
he fired at him point-blank, and lodged three bullets in his breast. The
unfortunate man survived till he landed, but died in Guy's Hospital.
Sattler was tried for murder and convicted; his defence being that he
had intended to commit suicide, but that, on the appearance of this
officer who had wronged him, he had yielded to an irresistible impulse
to kill him.
Sattler was a very excitable although not an ill-tempered man. While in
Newgate awaiting trial he frequently tried to justify his murder by
declaring that the police officer had broken faith with him. He would
shoot any man or any policeman like a dog, or any number of them, who
had treated him in that way. His demeanour immediately preceding his
execution I have referred to in the last chapter.
Several cases of gigantic fraud, rivalling any already recorded, were
brought to light between 1856 and 1873. I propose next to describe the
leading features of the most important of these. Another case of
long-continued successful forgery was brought to light two years after
the convictions of Saward and his accomplices. This conspiracy was
cleverly planned, but had scarcely so many ramifications as that of
Saward. Its originators were a couple of men, Wagner and Bateman, who
had already been convicted of systematic forgery, and sentenced to
transportation, but they had been released on ticket-of-leave in 1856.
As a blind for their new frauds, they set up as law-stationers in York
Buildings, Adelphi, and at once commenced their nefarious traffic.
Forged cheques and bills were soon uttered in great numbers, as well as
base coin. The police suspecting the house in York Buildings, put a
watch on the premises, which they kept up for more than a year, and thus
obtained personal knowledge of all who passed in and out, but without
obtaining any direct evidence. At length a man was caught in the act of
passing a forged cheque at the Union Bank, and recognized as one of the
frequenters of the bogus law-stationers. His arrest led to that of
others. Among them was a man named Chandler, formerly a bill discounter
by profession, who by degrees, to meet his extravagant expenditure, took
to appropriating the bills intrusted to him, and so lost his business,
after which he became a clerk to Messrs. Wagner and Bateman. Chandler
while in Newgate turned informer, and betrayed the whole conspiracy.
Besides his employers, a jeweller named Humphreys was in the "swim," at
whose shop in Red Lion Square was discovered a quantity of base gold and
silver coins, with all the latest appliances for coining, including
those of electroplating; also a furniture dealer and one or two more
commonplace rogues. The arch villain was never taken into custody. He,
like Saward, was an artist in penmanship. He was a German named Kerp,
eighty years of age, who had spent his whole life in imitating other
people's signatures, and had acquired the most consummate skill in the
practice. His copies were generally pronounced indistinguishable from
and as good as the originals. The aged but wary Kerp, the moment the
plot was discovered, vanished, and was never more heard of. Much the
same plan was adopted by these forgers as by Saward to get their cheques
cashed. They advertised for clerks, and employed the most likely of the
applicants by sending them to the bank. It was one of these,
Glendinning, who had allowed himself to be utilized for some time in
this way, whose capture led to the breaking up of the gang. The
principals in this conspiracy, Wagner and Bateman, were sentenced to
penal servitude for life, the others to twenty and ten years. It was
stated in evidence that the monies obtained by these forgeries amounted
to £8000 or £10,000, and that the forged cheques which had been
presented, but refused, amounted to double the sum. Wagner, after
conviction, offered to reveal, for a reward of £3000, a system which had
long been in practice of defrauding the Exchequer of vast sums by means
of forged stamps. His offer was not, however, accepted.
A more elaborate plot in many ways, more secretly, more patiently
prepared than the preceding, or indeed than any in the calendar, was the
case of the forgeries upon the Bank of England discovered in 1863, but
not before the forged paper had been put in circulation for more than a
couple of years. In 1861 a man named Burnett came with his wife and took
up his residence at Whitchurch, Hampshire, at no great distance from
Laverstock, where are Messrs. Portal's mills for the manufacture of
bank-note paper. Burnett had only just come out of gaol after completing
a sentence of penal servitude. His object in visiting Whitchurch was to
undermine the honesty of some workman in the mills; and he eventually
succeeded, his wife making the first overtures, in persuading a lad
named Brown to steal some of the bank paper. Brown took several sheets,
and then was detected by Brewer, a fellow-workman of superior grade, who
threatened to betray the theft. But Brewer, either before or after this,
succumbed to temptation, and stole paper on a much larger scale than
Brown. All that was taken was handed over to Burnett, or a "woman in
black" whom Brown met by appointment at Waterloo station. To facilitate
his operations, Brewer obtained a false master key from Burnett, which
gave him access to all parts of the mills, the packing-room included. In
this part of the mills a large quantity of bank-note paper was kept at
the period of the robbery, and in the states known as "water-leaf" and
"sized," which are the penultimate processes of manufacture. One more
remains, that of "glazing," without which no paper is issued for
engraving. None of the stolen paper was glazed, and this was an
important clue to the subsequent discovery of the crime.
Some time in 1862 a large deficiency in the stock of bank paper unglazed
was discovered at the mills. Soon afterwards the inspectors of
bank-notes at the Bank of England detected the presentation at the bank
of spurious notes on genuine paper. The two facts taken in conjunction
led to the employment of the police, and the offer of a reward of £1500
for the detection of the offenders. By this time Brown alone had stolen
three or four hundred sheets, each containing two notes, many of the
sheets suitable for engraving any kind of note from £1000 downwards. The
amount of Brewer's abstractions (who was eventually acquitted) was never
exactly estimated. Suspicion appears to have rested on Brown, who had
left Laverstock, and he was soon approached by the police. Almost
directly he was questioned he made a clean breast of the whole affair.
The next step was to take the principals, and under such circumstances
as would insure their conviction. A watch was set on Burnett, who was
followed to the shop of one Buncher, a butcher in Strutton Ground.
Buncher was then tracked to North Kent Terrace, New Cross, where a Mr.
and Mrs. Campbell resided, with whom he did business in exchanging the
false notes. The police officers now taxed Mrs. Campbell with
complicity, and frightened her into collusion. With her assistance on a
certain day a couple of bricks were taken out of the wall dividing her
front and back parlours; the officers ensconced themselves in the
latter, and waited for Buncher's expected visit. He came to complete a
sale of forged notes, and he wanted a couple of hundred pounds for what
he had. Mrs. Campbell offered him less, and there was an altercation, in
the course of which Buncher became very violent, and at length, after
using much intemperate language, he left the place in a huff. In the
course of his remarks, however, he said, "I am the man that has got all
the bank paper; I have £30,000 now, and the Bank of England cannot stop
it." This was all the police wanted to know.
They next watched Buncher, and found that he paid frequent visits to
Birmingham. They also discovered that through the intermediacy of one
Robert Cummings, well known as a reputed coiner, he had been introduced
to a man named Griffiths, an engraver and copper-plate printer.
Griffiths was an unusually clever and skilful workman, who had devoted
all his talent and all his energies for some seventeen years to the
fabrication of false bank-notes. On a certain day, the 27th October,
1862, the two were arrested simultaneously; Buncher in London, and
Griffiths in Birmingham. Nothing was found in Buncher's premises in
Strutton Ground, which were thoroughly searched, but proofs of
Griffiths' guilt were at once apparent on entering his work-room. In one
corner was a printing-press actually in use, and on it were twenty-one
forged Bank of England notes, without date or signature. On the bed were
twenty forged ten-pound notes complete and ready for use, and
twenty-five five-pound notes. "Mother plates" for engraving the body of
the notes lay about, and other plates for various processes. More than
this, Griffiths took the police to a field where, in a bank, a number of
other plates were secreted. Griffiths afterwards admitted that he had
been employed in defrauding the bank since 1846, and the prominent part
he played secured for him on conviction the heaviest sentence of the
law. This was penal servitude for life, Buncher's sentence being
twenty-five, and Burnett's twenty years.
Cummings, who had introduced Buncher to Griffiths, was also tried for
being in possession of stolen bank paper for improper purposes. But as
there was no independent corroboration of the informer's evidence,
according to the custom of the British law, the case was considered not
proved, and he was acquitted. On his return to Newgate to be finally
discharged, Cummings jumped up the stairs and fairly danced for joy. But
he was not long at large; he was too active an evil-doer, and was
perpetually in trouble. Commencing life as a resurrection man, when that
trade failed through the change in the law, and no more bodies were to
be bought, he devoted his energies to coining and forgery, and in the
latter line was a friend and associate of Saward's. One narrow escape he
had, however, before he abandoned his old business. A Bow Street officer
saw him leaving London in the evening by Camberwell Green, accompanied
by two other men. It was well known that they were resurrectionists, and
a strict watch was kept at all the turnpike gates on the southern roads
leading into London. An officer was placed for this purpose at New
Cross, Camberwell, and Kennington gates. Presently "Old Bob" drove up to
Camberwell Gate in the same cart in which he had been seen to start. The
officers rushed out to detain him. "What have you got here? We must
search the cart," they cry. "By all means," replies Bob, and a close
investigation follows, without any detection of the corpse concealed.
Bob was therefore allowed to pass on. But they had the body, all the
same; it had been dressed up in decent clothes and made to stand upright
in the cart. With the police officers it had passed muster as a living
member of the party.
Cummings was repeatedly "run in" for the offence of coining and uttering
bad money, whether coin or notes. His regular trade, followed before he
took to the life of resurrectionist, was that of an engraver. He was a
notorious criminal, an habitual offender in his own particular line, one
who would stick at no trifles to evade detection or escape capture. It
is told of "Bob" Brennan, an official specially employed for years by
the Mint to watch and prosecute coiners, that he received information
that coining was carried on by Cummings and others at a place in
Westminster. He went there with a posse of officers and forced his way
upstairs to the first floor, where the coiners, unexpectedly disturbed,
fell an easy prey. But the police nearly paid the penalty of capture
with their lives. Proceeding cautiously down the stairs, they found that
the flooring at the bottom had been taken up. Where it had lain was a
yawning gulf or trap sufficient to do for the whole body of police
engaged in the capture. Cummings was caught shortly afterwards. He was a
tall, slender man, with a long face and iron-gray hair. The community of
coiners of which he was so notorious a member were a low lot, the
lowest among criminals except, perhaps, the 'smashers,' or those who
passed the counterfeit money. It was not easy to detect coiners, or
bring home their guilt to them. Those who manufactured and those who
passed had no direct dealings with each other. The false coin was bought
by an agent from an agent, and dealings were carried on secretly at the
"Clock House" in Seven Dials.
The annals of fraudulent crime probably contain nothing which in
dramatic interest can compare with the conviction of William Roupell for
forgery. As the case must still be well remembered by the present
generation, it will be necessary to give here only the briefest summary.
William Roupell was the eldest but illegitimate son of a wealthy man who
subsequently married Roupell's mother, and had further legitimate issue.
William was brought up as an attorney, and became in due course his
father's man of business. As such he had pretty general control over his
father's estates and affairs. In 1855 he instructed certain solicitors
to prepare a deed of gift as from his father, conveying to him estates
near Kingston. The old gentleman's signature to this deed of gift was a
forgery, but upon this forged and false conveyance William Roupell, who
had already embarked upon a career of wild extravagance, obtained a
mortgage of £7000. In 1856 the father died. It had been supposed up to
this date that he had willed his property, amounting in all to upwards
of £200,000, but after the funeral William Roupell produced another and
a later will, leaving everything to the widow, and constituting William
sole executor. This will was a deliberate forgery.
Five or six years later, William Roupell minutely described how he had
effected the fraud. The day his father died he got the keys of his
private bureau, opened it, and took out the authentic will. After
reading it, and finding this unfavourable to himself, he resolved to
carry out his deliberate plan, namely, to suppress it and substitute
another. He himself prepared it on a blank form which he had brought
with him on purpose. To this fraudulent instrument he appended forged
signatures, and in due course obtained probate. As he possessed nearly
unbounded influence over his mother, her accession to the property meant
that William could dispose of it as he pleased. He embarked forthwith in
a career of the wildest extravagance, and ere long he had parted in his
mother's name with most of the landed estates. One large item of his
expenditure was a contested election at Lambeth, which he gained at a
cost of £10,000. No fortune could stand the inroads he made into his
mother's money, and in 1862 he was obliged to fly the country,
hopelessly and irretrievably ruined.
His disappearance gave colour and substance to evil reports already in
circulation that the will and conveyance above referred to were
fictitious documents. His next brother, who should have inherited under
the authentic will, forthwith brought an ejectment on the possessor of
lands purchased on the authority of the forged conveyance and will. The
case was tried at Guildford Assizes, and caused intense excitement, the
hardship to the holders of these lands being plain, should the
allegations of invalidity be made good. The effect of establishing the
forgeries would be to restore to the Roupell family lands for which a
price had already been paid in all good faith to another, but a criminal
member of the family. At first the case was contested hotly, but, to the
profound astonishment of every one inside and outside the court, William
Roupell himself was brought as a principal witness to clench the case by
a confession altogether against himself. He told his story with perfect
coolness and self-possession, but in a grave and serious tone. "Every
word he uttered was said with consideration, and sometimes with a long
pause, but at the same time with an air of the most entire truthfulness
and candour." He confessed himself a perjurer in having sworn to the
false will, and a wholesale forger, having manufactured no less than ten
false signatures to deeds involving on the whole some £350,000.
For these crimes William Roupell was tried at the Central Criminal Court
on the 24th September, 1862. He declined to plead, but a plea of "Not
Guilty" was recorded. The case was easily and rapidly disposed of.
Roupell made a long statement more in exculpation than in his defence.
He complained that he had at first been the dupe of others, and admitted
that he had too readily fallen astray. But while repudiating the
charges made against him of systematic extravagance and immorality, he
confessed that his whole life had been a gigantic mistake, and he was
ready to make what atonement he could. Mr. Justice Byles, in passing
sentence, commented severely upon the commission of such crimes by a man
in Roupell's position in life, and passed the heaviest sentence of the
law, transportation for life. Roupell received the announcement with a
cheerful countenance, and left the dock with evident satisfaction and
relief at the termination of a most painful ordeal. Roupell was quiet
and submissive while in Newgate, unassuming in manner, and ready to make
the best of his position. He carried this character with him into penal
servitude, and after enduring the full severity of his punishment for
several years, was at length advanced to the comparative ease of a post
much coveted by convicts, that of hospital nurse. His uniform good
conduct gained him release from Portland on ticket-of-leave in 1882,
just twenty years after his conviction.
A daring and cleverly-planned robbery of diamonds was that of the
Tarpeys, man and wife, from an assistant of Loudon and Ryder's, the
jewellers in Bond Street. The trick was an old one. The assistant called
with the jewels on approbation at a house specially hired for the
purpose in the West End, and was rendered insensible by chloroform,
after which he was bound and the precious stones stolen. Mrs. Tarpey was
almost immediately captured and put on her trial, but she was acquitted
on the plea that she had acted under the coercion of her husband. Tarpey
was caught through his wife, who was followed, disguised, and with her
hair dyed black, to a house in the Marylebone Road, where she met her
husband. On Tarpey's defence it was stated that the idea of the theft
had been suggested to him by a novel, at a time he had lost largely on
the turf. The first plot was against Mr. Harry Emmanuel, but he escaped,
and the attempt was made upon Loudon and Ryder.
The last great case of fraud upon the Bank of England will fitly close
this branch of the criminal records of Newgate. This was the well and
astutely devised plot of the brothers Bidwell, assisted by Macdonell and
Noyes, all of them citizens of the United States, by which the bank lost
upwards of £100,000. The commercial experience of these clever rogues
was cosmopolitan. Their operations were no less world-wide. In 1871 they
crossed the Atlantic, and by means of forged letters of credit and
introduction from London, obtained large sums from continental banks, in
Berlin, Dresden, Bordeaux, Marseilles, and Lyons. With this as capital
they came back to England _viâ_ Buenos Ayres, and Austin Bidwell opened
a _bonâ fide_ credit in the Burlington or West End branch of the Bank of
England, to which he was introduced by a well-known tailor in Saville
Row. After this the other conspirators travelled to obtain genuine bills
and master the system of the leading houses at home and abroad. When all
was ready, Bidwell first "refreshed his credit" at the Bank of England,
as well as disarmed suspicion, by paying in a genuine bill of Messrs.
Rothschilds' for £4500, which was duly discounted. Then he explained to
the bank manager that his transactions at Birmingham would shortly be
very large, owing to the development of his business there in the
alleged manufacture of Pullman cars. The ground thus cleared, the
forgers poured in from Birmingham numbers of forged acceptances, all of
which were discounted to the value of £102,217. The fraud was rendered
possible by the absence of a check usual in the United States. There
such bills would be sent to the drawer to be initialled, and the forgery
would have been at once detected. It was the discovery of this flaw in
the banking system which had encouraged the Americans to attempt this
crime.
Time was clearly an important factor in the fraud, hence the bills were
sent forward in quick succession. Long before they came to maturity the
forgers hoped to be well beyond arrest. They had, moreover, sought to
destroy all clue. The sums obtained by Bidwell in the name of "Warren"
at the Bank of England were lodged at once by drafts to "Horton,"
another alias, in the Continental Bank. For these cash was obtained in
notes; the notes were exchanged by one of the conspirators for gold at
the Bank of England, and again the same day a second conspirator
exchanged the gold for notes. But just as all promised well, the frauds
were detected through the carelessness of the forgers. They had omitted
to insert the dates in certain bills. The bills were sent as a matter of
form to the drawer to have the date added, and the forgery was at once
detected. Noyes was seized without difficulty, as it was a part of the
scheme that he should act as the dupe, and remain on the spot in London
till all the money was obtained. Through Noyes the rest of the
conspirators were eventually apprehended. Very little if any of the
ill-gotten proceeds, however, was ever recovered. Large sums, as they
were realized, were transmitted to the United States, and invested in
various American securities, where probably the money still remains.
The prisoners, who were committed to Newgate for trial, had undoubtedly
the command of large funds while there, and would have readily disbursed
it to effect their enlargement. A plot was soon discovered, deep laid,
and with many ramifications, by which some of the Newgate warders were
to be bribed to allow the prisoners to escape from their cells at night.
Certain friends of the prisoners were watched, and found to be in
communication with these warders, to whom it was said £100 apiece had
been given down as the price of their infidelity. Further sums were to
have been paid after the escape; and one warder admitted that he was to
have £1000 more paid to him, and to be provided with a passage to
Australia. The vigilance of the Newgate officials, assisted by the city
police, completely frustrated this plot. A second was nevertheless set
on foot, in which the plan of action was changed, and the freedom of
the prisoners was to be obtained by means of a rescue from the dock
during the trial. An increase of policemen on duty sufficed to prevent
any attempt of this kind. Nor were these two abortive efforts all that
were planned. A year or two after, when the prisoners were undergoing
their life sentences of penal servitude, much uneasiness was caused at
one of the convict prisons by information that bribery on a large scale
was again at work amongst the officials. But extra precautions and close
supervision have so far proved effectual, and the prisoners are still in
custody after a lapse of ten years.
I propose to end at this point the detailed account of the more
prominent criminal cases which lodged their perpetrators in Newgate. The
most recent affairs are still too fresh in the public mind to need more
than a passing reference. Few of the Newgate notorieties of late years
show any marked peculiarities; their crimes follow in the lines of
others already found, and often more than once, in the calendars.
Violent passions too easily aroused prompted the Frenchwoman Marguerite
Dixblanc to murder her mistress, Madame Riel, in Park Lane, as
Courvoisier, the Swiss, had been tempted to murder Lord William Russell.
Greed in the latter case was a secondary motive; it was the principal
incentive with Kate Webster, that fierce and brutal female savage who
took the life of her mistress at Richmond. Webster, it may be mentioned
here, was one of the worst prisoners ever remembered in Newgate--most
violent in temper, and addicted to the most frightful language.
Webster's devices for disposing of the body of her victim will call to
mind those of Theodore Gardelle, of Good, and Greenacre, and Catherine
Hayes. Greed in another form led the Stauntons to make away with Mrs.
Patrick Staunton, murdering her with devilish cruelty by slow degrees.
The judge, Sir Henry Hawkins, in passing sentence characterized this as
a crime more black and hideous than any in the criminal annals of the
country. But it was scarcely worse than that of Mrs. Brownrigg, or that
of the Meteyards, both of whom did their helpless apprentices to death.
It was to effect the rupture of an irksome tie that led Henry Wainwright
to murder Harriet Lane deliberately and in cold blood. In this case the
tie was unsanctified, but it was not more inconvenient than that which
urged Greenacre to a similar crime. In cold-blooded premeditation it
rivalled that of the Mannings. As in that case, the grave had been dug
long in anticipation, and the chloride of lime purchased to destroy the
corpse. Henry Wainwright's attempt to get rid of the body was ingenious,
but not original, and the circumstances which led to detection were
scarcely novel proofs of the old adage that murder will out. Henry
Wainwright's impassioned denial of his crime, even after it had been
brought fully home to him, has many parallels in the criminal records.
His disclaimer, distinct and detailed on every point, was intended
simply for effect. He might swear he was not the murderer, that he
never fired a pistol in his life, and that, in spite of the verdict of
the jury, "he left the dock with a calm and quiet conscience;" but there
was no doubt of his guilt, as the Lord Chief Justice told him, while
expressing great regret at his rash assertion. Wainwright's demeanour
after sentence has been described in the last chapter. Doubts were long
entertained whether Thomas Wainwright, who was convicted as an accessory
after the fact, had not really taken an active part in the murder. But a
conversation overheard between the two brothers in Newgate
satisfactorily exonerated Thomas Wainwright.
Poisoning has still its victims. Christina Edmunds had resort to
strychnia, the same lethal drug that Palmer used; her object being first
to dispose of the wife of a man for whom she had conceived a guilty
passion, then to divert suspicion from herself by throwing it on a
confectioner, whose sweetmeats she bought, tampered with, and returned
to the shop. The trial of Miss Edmunds was transferred to the Central
Criminal Court under Lord Campbell's Act, already referred to. She was
found guilty. It will be remembered that she made a statement which led
to the empanelling of a jury of matrons, who decided that there was no
cause for an arrest of judgment. Kate Webster followed the same course;
but these pleas of pregnancy are not common now-a-days. Although
sentence of death was passed on Edmunds, it was commuted to penal
servitude for life; but she eventually passed into Broadmoor Lunatic
Asylum, where she busies herself with water-colour drawing. The still
more recent cases of poisoning which have occurred were not connected
with Newgate. The mysterious Bravo case, that of Dr. Lamson, and that of
Kate Dover unhappily show that society is more than ever at the mercy of
the insidious and unscrupulous administration of poisonous drugs.
A case reproducing many of the features of the 'Flowery Land' occurred
twelve years later, when the crew of the 'Lennie' mutinied, murdered the
captain and mates, sparing the steward only on condition that he would
navigate the ship to the Mediterranean. The mutineers were of the same
stamp as the crew of the 'Flowery Land'--foreigners, vindictive,
reckless, and truculent ruffians, easily moved to murderous rage. The
'Lennie's' men were all Greeks, except one known as French Peter, who
was the ringleader, and who had long been an habitual criminal, a
reputed murderer, and certainly an inmate more than once of a French
_bagne_. Conviction was obtained through the evidence of the steward and
two of the least culpable of the crew. In Newgate the 'Lennie' mutineers
were extremely well behaved. Resolute, determined-looking men, their
courage broke down in confinement. They paid close attention to the
counsels of the archimandrite, and died quite penitent. A story is told
of one of them, "Big Harry," the wildest and most cut-throat looking of
the lot, which proves that he could be grateful for kindness, and was
not all bad. He had steadfastly refused to eat meat on some religions
scruples, and for the same reason would not touch soup. He was glad,
therefore, to get an extra allowance of bread, and to show his gratitude
to the warder who procured this privilege for him, he made him a
present. It was his own handiwork--a bird pecking at a flower; the whole
manufactured while in the condemned cell of the crumb of bread made into
paste. The flower had berries also of bread fixed on stems made from the
fibre drawn from the stuffing of his mattrass, and the bird's legs were
a couple of teeth broken off the prisoner's comb.
Of the lesser criminals, forgers, thieves, swindlers, Newgate continued
to receive its full share up to the last. But there were few cases so
remarkable as the great ones already recorded. Mr. Bamell Oakley made a
rich harvest for a time, and was said at the time of his trial to have
obtained as much as £40,000 by false and fraudulent pretences. Messrs.
Swindlehurst, Saffery, and Langley cleared a large profit by swindling
the Artisans' Dwellings Company; and Madame Rachel passed through
Newgate on her way to Millbank convicted of obtaining jewellery under
the false pretence of making silly women "beautiful for ever." The
greatest _causes célèbre_, however, of recent times were the turf frauds
by which the Comtesse de Goncourt was swindled out of large sums in sham
sporting speculations. The conviction of the principals in this
nefarious transaction, Benson, the two Kurrs, Bale, and Murray, led to
strange revelations of dishonest practices amongst the detective police,
and was followed by the arraignment and conviction in their turn of
Meiklejohn, Druscovich, Palmer, and Froggatt.