Chronicles of Newgate Vol 2 — Newgate Notorieties part 1

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."