Chronicles of Newgate Vol 2 — Newgate Notorieties (continued) part 1

As the century advanced crimes of fraud increased.

They not only became more numerous, but they were on a wider scale.

The most extensive and systematic robberies were planned and carried out so as long to escape detection.

One of the earliest of the big operators in fraudulent finance was Edward Beaumont Smith, who was convicted in 1841 of uttering false exchequer bills to an almost fabulous amount.

A not entirely novel kind of fraud, but one carried out on a larger scale than heretofore, came to light in this same year, 1841. This was the wilful shipwreck and casting away of a vessel which, with her supposed cargo, had been heavily insured.

The 'Dryad' was a brig owned principally by two persons named Wallace, one a seaman, the other merchant.

She was freighted by the firm of Zulueta and Co. for a voyage to Santa Cruz.

Her owners insured her for a full sum of £2000, after which the Wallaces insured her privily with other underwriters for a second sum of £2000. After this, on the faith of forced bills of lading, the captain, Loose by name, being a party to the intended fraud, they obtained further insurances on goods never shipped.

It was fully proved in evidence that when the 'Dryad' sailed she carried nothing but the cargo belonging to Zulueta and Co. Yet the Wallaces pretended to have put on board quantities of flannels, cloths, cotton prints, beef, pork, butter, and earthenwares, on all of which they effected insurances.

Loose had his instructions to cast away the ship on the first possible opportunity, and from the time of his leaving Liverpool he acted in a manner which excited the suspicions of the crew.

The larboard pump was suffered to remain choked up, and the long-boat was fitted with tackles and held ready for use at a moment's notice.

The ship, however, met with exasperatingly fine weather, and it was not until the captain reached the West India Islands that he got a chance of accomplishing his crime.

At a place called the Silver Keys he ran the ship on the reef.

But another ship, concluding that he was acting in ignorance, rendered him assistance.

The 'Dryad' was got off, repaired, and her voyage renewed to Santa Cruz.

He crept along the coast close in shore, looking for a quiet spot to cast away the ship, and at last, when within fifteen miles of port, with wind and weather perfectly fair, he ran her on to the rocks.

Even then she might have been saved, but the captain would not suffer the crew to act.

Nearly the whole of the cargo was lost as well as the ship.

The captain and crew, however, got safely to Jamaica, and so to England; the captain dying on the voyage home.

The crime soon became public.

Mate, carpenter, and crew were eager to disavow complicity, and voluntarily gave information.

The Wallaces were arrested, committed to Newgate, and tried at the Old Bailey.

The case was clearly proved against them, and both were sentenced to transportation for life.

While lying in Newgate, awaiting removal to the convict ship, both prisoners made full confessions.

According to their own statements the loss of the 'Dryad' was only one of six intentional shipwrecks with which they had been concerned.

The crime of fraudulent insurance they declared was very common, and the underwriters must have lost great sums in this way.

The merchant Wallace said he had been led into the crime by the advice and example of a city friend who had gone largely into this nefarious business; this Wallace added that his friend had made several voyages with the distinct intention of superintending the predetermined shipwrecks.

The other Wallace, the sailor, also traced his lapse into crime to evil counsel.

He was an honest sea-captain, he said, trading from Liverpool, where once he had the misfortune to be introduced to a man of wealth, the foundations of which had been laid by buying old ships on purpose to cast them away.

This person made much of Wallace, encouraged his attentions to his daughter, and tempted him to take to fraudulent insurance as a certain method of achieving fortune.

Wallace's relations warned him against his Liverpool friend, but he would not take their advice, and developing his transactions, ended as we have seen.

A clergyman nearly a century later followed in the steps of Dr. Dodd, but did not under more humane laws lose his life.

The Rev. W.

Bailey, LL. D.

, was convicted at the Central Criminal Court, in February 1843, of forgery.

A notorious miser, Robert Smith, had recently died in Seven Dials, where he had amassed a considerable fortune.

But among the charges on the estate he left was a promissory note for £2875, produced by Dr. Bailey, and purporting to be signed by Smith.

The executors to the estate disputed the validity of this document.

Miss Bailey, the doctor's sister, in whose favour the note was said to have been given, then brought an action against the administrators, and at the trial Dr. Bailey swore that the note had been given him by Smith.

The jury did not believe him, and the verdict was for the defendants.

Subsequently Bailey was arrested on a charge of forgery, and after a long trial found guilty.

His sentence was transportation for life.

A gigantic conspiracy to defraud was discovered in the following year, when a solicitor named William Henry Barber, Joshua Fletcher a surgeon, and three others were charged with forging wills for the purpose of obtaining unclaimed stock in the funds.

There were two separate affairs.

In the first a maiden lady, Miss Slack, who was the possessor of two separate sums in consols, neglected through strange carelessness on her own part and that of her friends to draw the dividends on more than one sum.

The other, remaining unclaimed for ten years, was transferred at the end of that time to the commissioners for the reduction of the National Debt.

Barber, it was said, became aware of this, and that he gained access to Miss Slack on pretence of conveying to her some funded property left her by an aunt.

By this means her signature was obtained;

a forged will was prepared bequeathing the unclaimed stock to Miss Slack; a note purporting to be from Miss Slack was addressed to the governor of the Bank of England, begging that the said stock might be handed over to her, and a person calling herself Miss Slack duly attended at the bank, where the money was handed over to her in proper form.

A second will, also forged, was propounded at Doctors Commons as that of a Mrs. Hunt of Bristol.

Mrs. Hunt had left money in the funds which remained unclaimed, and had been transferred, as in Miss Slack's case.

Here again the money, with ten years' interest, was handed over to Barber and another calling himself Thomas Hunt, an executor of the will.

It was shown that the will must be a forgery, as its signature was dated 1829, whereas Mrs. Hunt actually died in 1806. A third similar fraud to the amount of £2000 was also brought to light.

Fletcher was the moving spirit of the whole business.

It was he who had introduced Barber to Miss Slack, and held all the threads of these intricate and nefarious transactions.

Barber and Fletcher were both transported for life, although Fletcher declared that Barber was innocent, and had no guilty knowledge of what was being done.

Barber was subsequently pardoned, but was not replaced on the rolls as an attorney till 1855, when Lord Campbell delivered judgment on Barber's petition, to the effect that "the evidence to establish his (Barber's) connivance in the frauds was too doubtful for us to continue his exclusion any longer."

Banks and bankers continued to be victimized.

In 1844 the Bank of England was defrauded of a sum of £8000 by one of its clerks, Burgess, in conjunction with an accomplice named Elder.

Burgess fraudulently transferred consols to the above amount, standing in the name of Mr. Oxenford, to another party.

A person, Elder of course, who personated Oxenford, attended at the bank to complete the transfer and sell the stock.

Burgess, who was purposely on leave from the bank, effected the sale, which was paid for with a cheque for nearly the whole amount on Lubbock's Bank.

Burgess and Elder proceeded in company to cash this, but as they wanted all gold, the cashier gave them eight Bank of England notes for £1000 each, saying that they could get so much specie nowhere else.

Thither Elder went alone, provided with a number of canvas and one large carpet-bag.

But when the latter was filled with gold it was too heavy to lift, and Elder had to be assisted by two bank porters, who carried it for him to a carriage waiting near the Mansion House.

The thieves, for Elder was soon joined by Burgess, drove together to Ben Caunt's, the pugilist's, public-house in St. Martin's Lane, where the cash was transferred from the carpet-bag to a portmanteau.

The same evening both started for Liverpool, and embarking on board the mail steamer 'Britannia,' escaped to the United States.

Burgess' continued absence was soon noticed at the bank.

Suspicions were aroused when it was found that he had been employed in selling stock for Mr. Oxenford, which developed into certainty as soon as that gentleman was referred to.

Mr. Oxenford having denied that he had made any transfer of stock, the matter was at once put into the hands of the police.

A smart detective, Forrester, after a little inquiry, established the fact that the man who had personated Mr. Oxenford was a horse-dealer named Joseph Elder, an intimate acquaintance of Burgess'.

Forrester next traced the fugitives to Liverpool, and thence to Halifax, whither he followed them, accompanied by a confidential clerk from the bank.

At Halifax Forrester learnt that the men he wanted had gone on to Boston, thence to Buffalo and Canada, and back to Boston.

He found them at length residing at the latter place, one as a landed proprietor, the other as a publican.

Elder, the former, was soon apprehended at his house, but he evaded the law by hanging himself with his pocket-handkerchief.

The inn belonging to Burgess was surrounded, but he escaped through a back door on to the river, and rowed off in a boat to a hiding-place in the woods.

Next day a person betrayed him for the reward, and he was soon captured.

The proceeds of the robbery were lodged in a Boston bank, but four hundred sovereigns were found on Elder, while two hundred more were found in Burgess' effects.

Burgess was eventually brought back to England, tried at the Central Criminal Court, and sentenced to transportation for life.

Within a month or two the bank of Messrs. Rogers and Co. , Clement's Lane, was broken into.

Robberies as daring in conception as they were boldly executed were common enough.

One night a quantity of plate was stolen from Windsor Castle; another time Buckingham Palace was robbed.

Of this class was the ingenious yet peculiarly simple robbery effected at the house of Lord Fitzgerald in Belgrave Square.

The butler, on the occasion of a death in the family, when the house was in some confusion, arranged with a burglar to come in, and with another carry off the plate-chest in broad daylight, and as a matter of business.

No one interfered or asked any questions.

The thief walked into the house in Belgrave Square, and openly carried off the plate-chest, deposited it in a light cart at the door, and drove away.

Howse, the steward, accused the other servants, but they retorted, declaring that he had been visited by the thief the day previous, whom he had shown over the plate closet.

Howse and his accomplice were arrested; the former was found guilty and sentenced to fifteen years, but the latter was acquitted.

Stealing plate was about this period the crime of a more aristocratic thief.

The club spoons and other articles of plate were long a source of profitable income to a gentleman named Ashley, who belonged to five good London clubs--the Junior United Service, the Union, Reform, Colonial, and Erecthæum clubs.

When one of these clubs was taken in at the Army and Navy, that establishment also suffered.

Suspicion fell at length upon Ashley, who was seen to handle the forks and spoons at table in a strange manner.

A watch was set on his house, in Allington Street, Pimlico, and one day a police constable tracked him to a silversmith's in Holborn Hill, where Ashley produced four silver spoons, and begged that his initials might be engraved upon them.

Ashley was arrested as he left the shop; the spoons were impounded, and it was found that the club monogram had been erased from them.

On a search of the prisoner's lodgings in Allington Street, a silver fork was found, a number of pawnbrokers' duplicates, and three small files.

It was proved at the trial that Ashley had asked his landlady for brick-dust and leather, and it was contended that these with the files were used to alter the marks on the plate.

At most of the clubs the servants had been mulcted to make good lost plate, which had no doubt been stolen by the prisoner.

Several pawnbrokers were subpoenaed and obliged to surrender plate, to the extent in some cases of a couple of dozen of spoons or forks, which the various club secretaries identified as the property of their respective clubs.

Ashley was the son of an army agent and banker, and many witnesses were brought to attest to his previous good character, but he was found guilty and sentenced to seven years' transportation.

A robbery of a somewhat novel kind was executed in rather a bungling fashion by Ker, a sea-captain, whose ship brought home a mixed cargo from Bahia and other ports.

Part of the freight were four hundred rough diamonds valued at £4000. These packages were consigned to Messrs. Shroeder of London; and as it was known that they were to arrive in Ker's ship, one of the owners had met her at Deal, but the captain had already absconded with the packages of precious stones in his pocket.

Ker came at once to London, and, by the help of the landlord of a public-house in Smithfield and others, disposed of the whole of the diamonds.

A Jew named Benjamin effected the sale to certain merchants named Blogg and Martin, who declared that the rough diamond market was in such a depressed condition that they could only afford to give £1750 for stones worth £4000. The circumstances of this purchase of brilliants from a stranger at such an inadequate price was strongly commented upon at Ker's trial.

The moment it was discovered that the diamonds had disappeared, the affair was taken up by the police.

Forrester, the detective who had pursued and captured Burgess at Boston,[117] tracked Ker to France, and following him there, eventually captured him at Montreuil.

He was arraigned at the Old Bailey, and the case fully proved.

His sentence was seven years' transportation.

The gravest crimes continued at intervals to inspire the town with horror, and concentrate public attention upon the gaol of Newgate, and the murderers immured within its walls.

Courvoisier's case made a great stir.

There was unusual atrocity in this murder of an aged, infirm gentleman, a scion of the ducal house of Bedford, by his confidential valet and personal attendant.

Lord William Russell lived alone in Norfolk Street, Park Lane.

He was a widower, and seventy-three years of age.

One morning in May his lordship was found dead in his bed with his throat cut.

The fact of the murder was first discovered by the housemaid, who, on going down early, was surprised to find the dining-room in a state of utter confusion; the furniture turned upside down, the drawers of the escritoire open and rifled, a bundle lying on the floor, as though thieves had been interrupted in the act.

The housemaid summoned the cook, and both went to call the valet, Courvoisier, who came from his room ready dressed, a suspicious circumstance, as he was always late in the morning.

The housemaid suggested that they should see if his lordship was all right, and the three went to his bed-room.

While Courvoisier opened the shutters, the housemaid, approaching the bed, saw that the pillow was saturated with blood.

[Illustration: COURVOISIER.

] The discovery of the murdered man immediately followed.

The neighbourhood was alarmed, the police sent for, and a close inquiry forthwith commenced.

That Lord William Russell had committed suicide was at once declared impossible.

It was also clearly proved that no forcible entry had been made into the house; the fresh marks of violence upon the door had evidently been made inside, and not from outside; moreover, the instruments, poker and chisel, by which they had no doubt been effected, were found in the butler's pantry, used by Courvoisier.

The researches of the police soon laid bare other suspicious facts.

The bundle found in the dining-room contained, with clothes, various small articles of plate and jewellery which a thief would probably have put into his pocket.

Upstairs in the bed-room a _rouleaux_ box for sovereigns had been broken open, also the jewel-box and note-case, from the latter of which was abstracted a ten-pound note known to have been in the possession of the deceased.

His lordship's watch was gone.

Further suspicion was caused by the position of a book and a wax candle by the bedside.

The latter was so placed that it could throw no light on the former, which was a 'Life of Sir Samuel Romilly.'

The intention of the real murderer to shift the crime to burglars was evident although futile, and the police, feeling convinced that the crime had been committed by some inmate of the house, took Courvoisier into custody, and placed the two female servants under surveillance.

The valet's strange demeanour had attracted attention from the first.

He had hung over the body in a state of dreadful agitation, answering no questions, and taking no part in the proceedings.

Three days later a close search of the butler's pantry produced fresh circumstantial evidence.

Behind the skirting board several of his lordship's rings were discovered; near it was his Waterloo medal, and the above-mentioned ten-pound note.

Further investigation was rewarded by the discovery in the pantry of a split gold ring, used by Lord William to carry his keys on; next, and in the same place, a chased gold key; and at last his lordship's watch was found secreted under the leads of the sink.

All this was evidence sufficient to warrant Courvoisier's committal for trial; but still he found friends, and a liberal subscription was raised among the foreign servants in London to provide funds for his defence.

Courvoisier, when put on his trial, pleaded not guilty; but on the second day the discovery of fresh evidence, more particularly the recovery of some of Lord William's stolen plate, induced the prisoner to make a full confession of his crime to the lawyers who defended him.

This placed them in a position of much embarrassment.

To have thrown up their brief would have been to have secured Courvoisier's conviction.

Mr. Phillips, who led in the case, went to the other extreme, and in an impassioned address implored the jury not to send an innocent man to the gallows.

It will be remembered that the question whether Mr. Phillips had not exceeded the limits usually allowed to counsel was much debated at the time.

The jury without hesitation found Courvoisier guilty, and he was sentenced to death.

The prisoner's demeanour had greatly changed during the trial.

Coolness amounting almost to effrontery gave way to hopeless dejection.

On his removal to Newgate after sentence, he admitted that he had been justly convicted, and expressed great anxiety that his fellow-servants should be relieved from all suspicion.

Later in the day he tried to commit suicide by cramming a towel down his throat, but was prevented.

Next morning he made a full confession in presence of his attorney, and the governor, Mr. Cope.

In this he gave as the motives of his crime a quarrel he had with his master, who threatened to discharge him without a character.

Lord William, according to the valet, was of a peevish, difficult temper; he was annoyed with his man for various small omissions and acts of forgetfulness, and on the night of the murder had taken Courvoisier to task rather sharply.

Finally, on coming downstairs after bed-time, Lord William had found Courvoisier in the dining-room.

"What are you doing here?"

asked his lordship.

"You can have no good intentions; you must quit my service to-morrow morning."

This seems to have decided Courvoisier, who took a carving-knife from the sideboard in the dining-room, went upstairs to Lord William's bed-room, and drew the knife across his throat.

"He appeared to die instantly," said the murderer, in conclusion.

His account of his acts and movements after the deed varied so considerably in the several documents he left behind, that too much reliance cannot be placed upon his confession.

His last statement contains the words, "The public now think I am a liar, and they will not believe me when I say the truth."

This was no doubt the case, but this much truth his confession may be taken to contain: that Courvoisier was idle, discontented, ready to take offence, greedy of gain; that he could not resist the opportunity for robbery offered him by his situation at Lord William Russell's; that when vexed with his master he did not shrink from murder, both for revenge and to conceal his other crimes.

Courvoisier wished to commit suicide in Newgate, but was prevented by the vigilant supervision to which he was subjected while in gaol.

The attempt was to have been made by opening a vein and allowing himself to bleed to death.

The Sunday night before his execution he would not go to bed when ordered.

The governor insisted, but Courvoisier showed great reluctance to strip.

The order was, however, at length obeyed, and the whole of the prisoner's clothes were minutely searched.

In the pocket of the coat Mr. Cope, the governor, found a neatly-folded cloth, and asked what it was for.

Courvoisier admitted that he had intended to bind it tightly round his arm and bleed himself to death in the night.

The next inquiry was how he hoped to open a vein.

"With a bit of sharpened stick picked out of the ordinary firewood."

"Where is it?"

asked the governor.

The prisoner replied that he had left it in the mattress of which he had just been deprived.

The bed was searched, but no piece of sharpened wood was found.

It was thought that it might have been lost in changing the mattresses.

The cloth above referred to belonged to the inner seam of his trousers, which he had managed to tear out.

There is nothing to show that Courvoisier really contemplated self-destruction.

A murder which reproduced many of the features of that committed by Greenacre soon followed, and excited the public mind even more than that of Courvoisier's. Daniel Good's crime might have remained long undiscovered but for his own careless stupidity.

He was coachman to a gentleman at Roehampton.

One day he went into a pawnbroker's at Wandsworth, and bought a pair of breeches on credit.

At the same time he was seen to steal and secrete a pair of trousers.

The shop-boy gave information.

Good was followed to his stables by a policeman, but obstinately denied the theft.

The policeman insisted on searching the premises, at which Good displayed some uneasiness.

This increased when the officer, accompanied by two others, a neighbour and a bailiff, entered one of the stables.

Good now offered to go to Wandsworth and satisfy the pawnbroker.

Just at this moment, however, the searchers found concealed under two trusses of hay a woman's headless and dismembered trunk.

At the constable's cry of alarm Good rushed from the stable and locked the door behind him.

Some time elapsed before the imprisoned party could force open the doors, and by then the fugitive had escaped.

Medical assistance having been summoned, it was ascertained how the dismemberment had been effected.

At the same time an overpowering odour attracted them to the adjoining harness-room, where the missing remains were raked out half consumed in the ashes of a wood fire.

In the same room a large axe and saw were found covered with blood.

Inquiry into the character of Good exposed him as a loose liver, who "kept company" with several women.

One called his sister, but supposed to be his wife, had occupied a room in South Street, Manchester Square, with a son of Good's by a former wife.

Another wife, real or fictitious, existed in Spitalfields, and evidence was given of close relation between Good and a third woman, a girl named Butcher, residing at Woolwich.

The victim was the first of these three.

Good had told her, much to her perturbation, that she was to move from South Street to Roehampton, and one day he fetched her.

They were seen together on Barnes Common, and again in Putney Park Lane, where they were talking loud and angrily.

The poor creature was never seen again alive.

The actual method of the murder was never exactly ascertained.

Good himself remained at large for some weeks.

He had tramped as far as Tunbridge, where he obtained work as a bricklayer's labourer; he there gave satisfaction for industry, but he was taciturn, and would hold no converse with his fellows.

The woman where he lodged noticed that he was very restless at night, moaning and sighing much.

Detection came unexpectedly.

He was recognized by an ex-policeman who had known him at Roehampton, and immediately arrested.

In his effects were found the clothes he had on at the time of his escape from the stables, and under the jacket he was wearing was a piece of a woman's calico apron stained with blood, which he had used to save the pressure on his shoulder by the hod.

Good was committed to Newgate, and tried at the Central Criminal Court before a crowded court.

He made a rambling defence, ending by saying, "Good ladies and gentlemen all, I have a great deal more to say, but I am so bad I cannot say it."

The case was clearly proved against him, and he was condemned, sentenced, and duly executed.