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

Hocker's murder is in its way interesting, as affording another proof of the extraordinary way in which the culprit returned to the scene of his guilt.

The cries of his victim, a Mr. Delarue, brought passers-by and policemen to the spot, a lonely place near a dead wall beyond Belsize Hall, Hampstead, but too late to give substantial aid.

While the body lay there still warm, battered and bleeding from the cruel blows inflicted upon him by his cowardly assailant, a man came by singing.

He entered into conversation with the policemen, and learnt, as it seemed for the first time, what had happened.

His remark was, "It is a nasty job;" he took hold of the dead hand, and confessed that he felt "queer" at the shocking sight.

This sight was his own handiwork, yet he could not overcome the strange fascination it had for him, and remained by the side of the corpse till the stretcher came.

Even then he followed it as far as Belsize Lane.

It was here that the others engaged in their dismal office in removing the dead first got a good look at the stranger's face.

He wanted a light for a cigar, and got it from a lantern which was lifted up and fully betrayed his features.

It was noticed that he wore a mackintosh.

Next day the police, in making a careful search of the scene of the murder, picked up a coat-button, which afterwards played an important part in the identification of the murderer.

A letter, which afforded an additional clue, was also found in the pocket of the deceased.

Still it was many weeks before any arrest was made.

In the mean time the police were not idle.

It came out by degrees that the person who had been seen in Belsize Lane on the night the body was found was a friend of the deceased.

His name was Hocker; he was by trade a ladies' shoemaker; and it was also ascertained that after the day of the murder he was flush of money.

He was soon afterwards arrested on suspicion, and a search of his lodgings brought to light several garments saturated with blood; a coat among them much torn and stained, with three buttons missing, one of which corresponded with that picked up at Hampstead.

The letter found in the pocket of the deceased was sealed with a wafer marked F, and many of the same sort were found in the possession of the accused.

This was enough to obtain a committal, after several remands; but the case contained elements of doubt, and the evidence at the trial was entirely circumstantial.

A witness deposed to meeting Hocker, soon after the cries of murder were heard, running at a dog-trot into London, and others swore that they plainly recognized him as the man seen soon afterwards in the lane.

A woman whom he called on the same evening declared he had worn a mackintosh, his coat was much torn, there was a stain of blood on his shirt-cuff, and he was in possession, the first time to her knowledge, of a watch.

This was Delarue's watch, fully identified as such, which Hocker told his brother Delarue had given him the morning of the murder.

These were damnatory facts which well supported the prosecution.

The prisoner made an elaborate defence, in which he sought to vilify the character of deceased as the seducer of an innocent girl to whom he (Hocker) had been fondly attached.

When her ruin was discovered her brother panted for revenge.

Hocker, whose skill in counterfeiting handwriting was known, was asked to fabricate a letter making an assignation with Delarue in a lonely part of Hampstead.

Hocker and the brother went to the spot, where the latter left him to meet his sister's seducer alone.

Soon afterwards Hocker heard cries of "murder," and proceeding to where they came from, found Delarue dead, slain by the furious brother.

Hocker was so overcome, feeling himself the principal cause of the tragedy, that he rushed to a slaughter-house in Hampstead and purposely stained his clothes with blood.

Such an extravagant defence did not weigh with judge or jury; the first summed up dead against the prisoner, and the latter, after retiring for ten minutes, found him guilty.

Hocker's conduct in Newgate while under sentence of death was most extraordinary.

He drew up several long statements, containing narratives purely fictitious, imputing crimes to his victim, and repeating his line of defence, that Delarue had suffered by the hands of imaginary outraged brothers acting as the avengers of females deeply injured by him.

Hocker made several pretended confessions and revelations, all of which were proved to be absolutely false by the police on inquiry.

His demeanour was a strange compound of wickedness, falsehood, and deceit.

But at the fatal hour his hardihood forsook him, and he was almost insensible when taken out of his cell for execution.

Restoratives were applied, but he was in a fainting condition when tied, and had to be supported by the assistant executioner while Calcraft adjusted the noose.

There was an epidemic of murder in the United Kingdom about 1848-9. In November of the first-named year occurred the wholesale slaughter of the Jermys in their house, Stanfield Hall, by the miscreant Rush.

Soon afterwards, in Gloucestershire, a maidservant, Sarah Thomas, murdered her mistress, an aged woman, by beating out her brains with a stone.

Next year John Gleeson Wilson, at Liverpool, murdered a woman, Ann Henrichson, also a maidservant and two children; while in Ireland a wife dashed out her husband's brains with a hammer.

London did not escape the contagion, and prominent among the detestable crimes of the period stands that of the Mannings at Bermondsey.

These great criminals suffered at Horsemonger Lane Gaol, but they were tried at the Central Criminal Court, and were for some time inmates of Newgate.

Their victim was a man named Patrick O'Connor, a Custom-House gauger, who had been a suitor of Marie de Roux before she became Mrs. Manning.

Marie de Roux up to the time of her marriage had been in service as lady's-maid to Lady Blantyre, daughter of the Duchess of Sutherland, and Manning hoped to get some small Government appointment through his wife's interest.

He had failed in this as well as in the business of a publican, which he had at one time adopted.

After the marriage a close intimacy was still maintained between O'Connor and the Mannings.

He lived at Mile End, whence he walked often to call at 3, Minver Place, Bermondsey, the residence of his old love.

O'Connor was a man of substance.

He had long followed the profitable trade of a money-lender, and by dint of usurious interest on small sums advanced to needy neighbours, had amassed as much as £8000 or £10,000. His wealth was well known to "Maria," as he called Mrs. Manning, who made several ineffectual attempts to get money out of him.

At last this fiendish woman made up her mind to murder O'Connor and appropriate all his possessions.

Her husband, to whom she coolly confided her intention, a heavy brutish fellow, was yet aghast at his wife's resolve, and tried hard to dissuade her from her bad purpose.

In his confession after sentence he declared that she plied him well with brandy at this period, and that during the whole time he was never in his right senses.

Meanwhile this woman, unflinching in her cold, bloody determination, carefully laid all her plans for the consummation of the deed.

One fine afternoon in August, O'Connor was met walking in the direction of Bermondsey.

He was dressed with particular care, as he was to dine at the Mannings and meet friends, one a young lady.

He was seen afterwards smoking and talking with his hosts in their back parlour, and never seen again alive.

It came out in the husband's confession that Mrs. Manning induced O'Connor to go down to the kitchen to wash his hands, that she followed him to the basement, that she stood behind him as he stood near the open grave she herself had dug for him, and which he mistook for a drain, and that while he was speaking to her she put the muzzle of a pistol close to the back of his head and shot him down.

She ran upstairs, told her husband, made him go down to look at her handiwork, and as O'Connor was not quite dead, Manning gave the _coup de grâce_ with a crowbar.

After this Mrs. Manning changed her dress and went off in a cab to O'Connor's lodgings, which, having possessed herself of the murdered man's keys, she rifled from end to end.

Returning to her own home, where Manning meantime had been calmly smoking and talking to the neighbours over the basement wall, the corpse lying just inside the kitchen all the while, the two set to work to strip the body and hide it under the stones of the floor.

This job was not completed till the following day, as the hole had to be enlarged, and the only tool they had was a dust-shovel.

A quantity of quicklime was thrown in with the body to destroy all identification.

This was on a Thursday evening.

For the remainder of that week and part of the next the murderers stayed in the house, and occupied the kitchen, close to the remains of their victim.

On the Sunday Mrs. Manning roasted a goose at this same kitchen fire, and ate it with relish in the afternoon.

This cold-blooded indifference after the event was only outdone by the premeditation of this horrible murder.

The hole must have been excavated and the quicklime purchased quite three weeks before O'Connor met his death, and during that time he must frequently have stood or sat over his own grave.

Discovery of the murder came in this wise.

O'Connor, a punctual and well-conducted official, was at once missed at the London Docks.

On the third day his friends began to inquire for him, and at their request two police officers were sent to Bermondsey to inquire for him at the Mannings, with whom it was well known that he was very intimate.

The Mannings had seen or heard nothing of him, of course.

As O'Connor still did not turn up, the police after a couple of days returned to Minver Place.

The house was empty, bare and stripped of all its furniture, and its former occupants had decamped.

The circumstance was suspicious, and a search was at once made of the whole premises.

In the back kitchen one of the detectives remarked that the cement between certain stones looked lighter than the rest, and on trying it with a knife, he found that it was soft and new, while elsewhere it was set and hard.

The stones were at once taken up; beneath them was a layer of fresh mortar, beneath that a lot of loose earth, amongst which a stocking was turned up, and presently a human toe.

Six inches lower the body of O'Connor was uncovered.

He was lying on his face, his legs tied up to his hips so as to allow of the body fitting into the hole.

The lime had done its work so rapidly that the features would have been indistinguishable but for the prominent chin and a set of false teeth.

The corpse settled all doubts, and the next point was to lay hands upon the Mannings.

It was soon ascertained that the wife had gone off in a cab with a quantity of luggage.

Part of this she had deposited to be left till called for at one station, while she had gone herself to another, that at Euston Square.

At the first the boxes were impounded, opened, and found to contain many of O'Connor's effects.

At the second exact information was obtained of Mrs. Manning's movements.

She had gone to Edinburgh.

A telegraphic message, then newly adapted to the purposes of criminal detection, advised the Edinburgh police of the whole affair, and within an hour an answer was telegraphed, stating that Mrs. Manning was in custody.

She had been to brokers to negotiate the sale of certain foreign railway stock, with which they had been warned from London not to deal, and they had given information to the police.

Her arrest was planned, and, when the telegram arrived from London, completed.

An examination of her boxes disclosed a quantity of O'Connor's property.

Mrs. Manning was transferred to London and lodged in the Horsemonger Lane Gaol, where her husband soon afterwards joined her.

He had fled to Jersey, where he was recognized and arrested.

Each tried to throw the blame on the other; Manning declared his wife had committed the murder, Mrs. Manning indignantly denied the charge.

The prisoners were in due course transferred to Newgate, to be put upon their trial at the Central Criminal Court.

A great number of distinguished people assembled as usual at the Old Bailey on the day of trial.

The Mannings were arraigned together; the husband standing at one of the front corners of the dock, his wife at the other end.

Manning, who was dressed in black, appeared to be a heavy, bull-necked, repulsive-looking man, with a very fair complexion and light hair.

Mrs. Manning was not without personal charms; her face was comely, she had dark hair and good eyes, and was above the middle height, yet inclined to be stout.

She was smartly dressed in a plaid shawl, a white lace cap;

her hair was dressed in long _crêpe_ bands.

She had lace ruffles at her wrist, and wore primrose-coloured kid gloves.

The case rested upon the facts which have been already set forth, and was proved to the satisfaction of the jury, who brought in a verdict of guilty.

Manning, when sentence of death was passed on him, said nothing; but Mrs. Manning, speaking in a foreign accent, addressed the court with great fluency and vehemence.

She complained that she had no justice; there was no law for her, she had found no protection either from judges, the prosecutor, or her husband.

She had not been treated like a Christian, but like a wild beast of the forest.

She declared that the money found in her possession had been sent her from abroad; that O'Connor had been more to her than her husband, that she ought to have married him.

It was against common sense to charge her with murdering the only friend she had in the world; the culprit was really her husband, who killed O'Connor out of jealousy and revengeful feelings.

When the judge assumed the black cap Mrs. Manning became still more violent, shouting, "No, no, I will not stand it!

You ought to be ashamed of yourselves!"

and would have left the dock had not Mr. Cope, the governor of Newgate, restrained her.

After judgment was passed she repeatedly cried out Shame!

and stretching out her hand, she gathered up a quantity of the rue which, following ancient custom dating from the days of the gaol fever, was strewn in front of the dock, and sprinkled it towards the bench with a contemptuous gesture.

On being removed to Newgate from the court Mrs. Manning became perfectly furious.

She uttered loud imprecations, cursing judge, jury, barristers, witnesses, and all who stood around.

Her favourite and most often-repeated expression was, "D--n seize you all."

They had to handcuff her by force against the most violent resistance, and still she raged and stormed, shaking her clenched and manacled hands in the officers' faces.

From Newgate the Mannings were taken in separate cabs to Horsemonger Lane Gaol.

On this journey her manner changed completely.

She became flippant, joked with the officers, asked how they liked her "resolution" in the dock, and expressed the utmost contempt for her husband, whom she never intended to acknowledge or speak to again.

Later her mood changed to abject despair.

On reaching the condemned cell she threw herself upon the floor and shrieked in an hysterical agony of tears.

After this, until the day of execution, she recovered her spirits, and displayed reckless effrontery, mocking at the chaplain, and turning a deaf ear to the counsels of a benevolent lady who came to visit.

Now she abused the jury, now called Manning a vagabond, and through all ate heartily at every meal, slept soundly at nights, and talked with cheerfulness on almost any subject.

Nevertheless, she attempted to commit suicide by driving her nails, purposely left long, into her throat.

She was discovered just as she was getting black in the face.

Manning's demeanour was more in harmony with his situation, and the full confession he made elucidated all dark and uncertain points in connection with the crime.

The actual execution, which took place at another prison than Newgate, is rather beyond the scope of this work.

But it may be mentioned that the concourse was so enormous that it drew down the well-merited and trenchant disapproval of Charles Dickens, who wrote to the 'Times,' saying that he believed "a sight so inconceivably awful as the wickedness and levity of the immense crowd collected at the execution this morning could be imagined by no man, and presented by no heathen land under the sun.

The horrors of the gibbet, and of the crime which brought the wretched murderers to it, faded in my mind before the atrocious bearing, looks, and language of the assembled spectators.

When I came upon the scene at midnight, the shrillness of the cries and howls that were raised from time to time, denoting that they came from a concourse of boys and girls already assembled in the best places, made my blood run cold."

It will be in the memory of many that Mrs. Manning appeared on the scaffold in a black satin dress, which was bound tightly round her waist.

This preference brought the costly stuff into disrepute, and its unpopularity lasted for nearly thirty years.

I will briefly describe one or two of the more remarkable murders in the years immediately following, then pass on to another branch of crime.

Robert Marley at the time of his arrest called himself a surgical instrument maker.

It was understood also that he had served in the army as a private, and had, moreover, undergone a sentence of transportation.

But it was supposed that he had been once in a good position, well born, and well educated.

When lying under sentence of death in Newgate, he was visited by a lady, a gentlewoman in every sense of the word, who was said to be his sister.

His determined addiction to evil courses had led to his being cast off by his family, and he must have been at the end of his resources when he committed the crime for which he suffered.

His offence was the murder of Richard Cope, a working jeweller, shopman to a Mr. Berry of Parliament Street.

It was Cope's duty to stay in the shop till the last, close the shutters, secure the stock of watches and jewellery, then lock up the place and take on the keys to Mr. Berry's private house in Pimlico.

Cope, a small man, crippled, and of weakly constitution, was alone in the shop about 9. 30; the shutters were up, and he was preparing to close, when Marley entered and fell upon him with a life-preserver, meaning to kill him and rifle the shop.

The noise of the struggle was heard outside in the street, and bystanders peeped in through the shutters, but no one entered or sought to interfere in what seemed only a domestic quarrel.

A milliner's porter, Lerigo, was also attracted by the noise of the row, but after walking a few paces he felt dissatisfied, and returned to the spot.

Pushing the shop-door open, he saw Marley finishing his murderous assault.

Lerigo turned for assistance to take the man into custody.

Marley, disturbed, picked up a cigar and parcel from the counter, then ran out, pursued by Lerigo only.

Marley ran along the street, down into Cannon Row, then into Palace Yard, where the waterman of the cab-tank, in obedience to Lerigo's shouts, collared the fugitive.

Escorted by his two captors, Marley was taken back into Parliament Street to the jeweller's shop.

The policemen were now in possession; two of them supported Cope, who was still alive, although insensible, and Marley was apprehended.

The evidence against him was completed by his identification by Cope in Westminster Hospital, who survived long enough to make a formal deposition before Mr. Jardine, the police magistrate, that Marley was the man who had beaten him to death.

Marley at his trial was undefended, and the sheriffs offered him counsel; but he declined.

The witnesses against him all spoke the truth, he said; there was no case to make out; why waste money on lawyers for the defence?

His demeanour was cool and collected throughout; he seemed while in Newgate to realize thoroughly that there was no hope for him, and was determined to face his fate bravely.

After sentence, the Newgate officers who had special charge of him noticed that he slept well and ate well, enjoying all his meals.

One of them went into his cell just at dinner-time; the great clock of St. Sepulchre's close by was striking the hour, and Marley, who had his elbows on the table, with his head resting on his hands, looked up and observed calmly, "Go along, clock;

come along, gallows."

On the dread morning he came out to execution quite gaily, and tripped up the stairs to the scaffold.

His captors, it may be added (Lerigo and Allen), were warmly commended by the judge for their courage and activity.

The former was given a reward of twenty and the latter of ten pounds.

A murderous assault on a police constable, which so nearly ended fatally that the culprit was sentenced to death, although not executed, was perpetrated in 1852. The case was accompanied with the most shocking brutality.

Cannon, by trade a chimney-sweep, had long been characterized by the bitterest hatred of the police force, and had been repeatedly sentenced to imprisonment for most desperate and ferocious attacks upon various constables.

His last victim was Dwyer, a fine young officer who had been summoned to take Cannon into custody when the latter was drunk and riotous in front of a public-house.

Dwyer found Cannon bleeding profusely from a wound in the head, and persuaded him to go to a doctor's. They walked together quietly for some little distance, then Cannon, without the slightest warning, threw the constable on his back, and violently assaulted him by jumping on his chest and stomach, and by getting his hand inside Dwyer's stock, with the idea of strangling him.

Dwyer managed to overpower his assailant, and got to his feet; but Cannon butted at him with his head, and again threw him to the ground, after which he kicked his prostrate foe in the most brutal and cowardly manner, and until he was almost senseless, and bruised from head to foot.

Once more Dwyer got to his feet, and managed, by drawing his staff, to keep Cannon at bay until a second constable came to his aid.

All this time not one of a numerous body of bystanders offered to assist the policeman in his extremity.

On the contrary, many of them encouraged the brutal assailant in his savage attack.

To Cannon's infinite surprise, he was indicted for attempt to murder, and not for a simple assault, and found guilty.

The judge, in passing sentence of death, told him he richly deserved the punishment.

As Dwyer survived, Cannon escaped the death sentence, which was commuted to penal servitude for life.

A handsome sum was subscribed for the injured constable, who was disabled for life.

Only a few have vied with Cannon in fiendish cruelty and brutality.

One of these was Mobbs, who lived in the Minories, generally known by the soubriquet of "General Haynau," a name execrated in England about this time.

Mobbs systematically ill-used his wife for a long space of time, and at last cut her throat.

For this he was executed in front of Newgate in 1833. Emmanuel Barthelemy again, the French refugee, was a murderer of the same description, who despatched his victim with a loaded cane, after which, to secure his escape, he shot an old soldier who had attempted to detain him.

He was convicted and executed.

He died impenitent, declaring that he had no belief, and that it was idle to ask forgiveness of God.

"I want forgiveness of man; I want those doors (of the prison) opened."

Barthelemy was generally supposed to have been a secret agent of the French police.

I will now pass to grave but less atrocious crimes.

In 1850 occurred the first of a series of gigantic frauds, which followed each other at no long intervals, which had a strong family likeness, and originated all of them to make money easily, without capital, and at railroad speed.

Walter Watts was an inventor, a creator, who struck an entirely new and original line of crime.

Employed as a clerk in the Globe Assurance, he with unusual quickness of apprehension discovered and promptly turned to account an inexcusably lax system of management, which offered peculiar chances of profit to an ingenious and unscrupulous man.

It was the custom in this office to make the banker's pass-book the basis of the entries in the company's ledgers.

Thus, when a payment was made by the company, the amount disbursed was carried to account in the general books from its entry in the pass-book, and without reference to or comparison with the documents in which the payment was claimed.

This pass-book, when not at the bank, was in the exclusive custody of Watts.

The cheques drawn by the directors also passed through his hands; to him too they came back to be verified and put by, after they had been cashed by the bank.

In this way Watts had complete control over the whole of the monetary transactions of the company.

He could do what he liked with the pass-book, and by its adoption, as described as the basis of all entries, there was no independent check upon him if he chose to tamper with it.

This he did to an enormous extent, continually altering, erasing, and adding figures to correspond with and cover the abstractions he made of various cheques as they were drawn.

It seems incredible that this pass-book, which when produced in court was a mass of blots and erasures, should not have created suspicion of foul play either at the bank or at the company's board.

Implicit confidence appears to have been placed in Watts, who was the son of an old and trusted _employé_, and, moreover, a young man of plausible address.

Watts led two lives.

In the West End he was a man of fashion, with a town house, a house at Brighton, and a cellar full of good wine at both.

He rode a priceless hack in Rotten Row, or drove down to Richmond in a mail phaeton and pair.

He played high, and spent his nights at the club, or in joyous and dissolute company.

When other pleasures palled he took a theatre, and posed as a munificent patron of the dramatic art.

Under his auspices several "stars" appeared on the boards of the Marylebone theatre, and later he became manager of the newly rebuilt Olympic at Wych Street.

No one cared too closely to inquire into the sources of wealth.

Some said he was a fortunate speculator in stocks, others that he had had extraordinary luck as a gold-digger.

Had his West End and little-informed associates followed him into the city, whither he was taken every morning in a smart brougham, they would have seen him alight from it in Cornhill, and walk forward on foot to enter as a humble and unpretending _employé_ the doors of the Globe Assurance office.

His situation exactly described was that of check clerk in the cashier's department, and his salary was £200 a year.

Nevertheless, in this position, through the culpable carelessness which left him unfettered, he managed between 1844 and 1850 to embezzle and apply to his own purposes some £71,000. The detection of these frauds came while he was still prominently before the world as the lessee of the Olympic.

Rumours were abroad that serious defalcations had been discovered in one of the insurance offices, but it was long before the public realized that the fraudulent clerk and the great theatrical manager were one and the same person.

Watts's crime was discovered by the secretary of the Globe Company, who came suddenly upon the extensive falsification of the pass-book.

An inquiry was at once set on foot, and the frauds were traced to Watts.

The latter, when first taxed with his offence, protested his innocence boldly, and positively denied all knowledge of the affair; and he had so cleverly destroyed all traces that it was not easy to bring home the charge.

But it was proved that Watts had appropriated one cheque for £1400, which he had paid into his own bankers, and on this he was committed to Newgate for trial.

There were two counts in the indictment: one for stealing a cheque value £1400, the second for stealing a bit of paper value one penny.

The jury found him guilty of the latter only, with a point of law reserved.

This was fully argued before three judges, who decided that the act of stealing the bit of paper involved a much more serious offence, and told him they should punish him for what he had really done, and not for the slight offence as it appeared on the record.

The sentence of the court, one of ten years' transportation, struck the prisoner with dismay.

He had been led to suppose that twelve months' imprisonment was the utmost the law could inflict, and he broke down utterly under the unexpected blow.

That same evening he committed suicide in Newgate.

The details of the suicide were given at the inquest.

Watts had been in ill-health from the time of his first arrest.

In Giltspur Street Compter, where he was first lodged, he showed symptoms of delirium tremens, and admitted that he had been addicted to the excessive use of stimulants.

His health improved, but was still indifferent when he was brought up for sentence, and he was an occupant of the Newgate infirmary.

He returned from court in a state of gloomy dejection, and in the middle of the night one of the fellow-prisoners who slept in the same ward noticed that he was not in his bed.

This man got up to look for him, and found him hanging from the bars of a neighbouring room.

He had made use of a piece of rope cut out from the sacking of his bedstead, and had tied his feet together with a silk pocket-handkerchief.

The prison officers were called, but Watts was quite cold and stiff when he was cut down.

Strange to say, a second suicide occurred in Newgate the same night, that of a prize-fighter named Donovan, tried the same day, and convicted of manslaughter.

Sentence of death had been recorded against Donovan, who, like Watts, had seemingly been overcome with sudden despair.

In 1853 a second case of gigantic fraud alarmed and scandalized the financial world.

It outshone the defalcations of Watts.

Nothing to equal the excitement caused by the forgeries of Robert Ferdinand Pries had been known before in the city of London.

He was a corn merchant who operated largely in grain.

So enormous were his transactions, that they often affected the markets, and caused great fluctuations in prices.

These had been attributed to political action; some thought that the large purchases in foreign grains, effected at losing prices, were intended by the protectionists to depress the wheat market, and secure the support of the farmers at the forthcoming election; others, that Napoleon III.

, but recently proclaimed Emperor of the French, wished to gain the popularity necessary to secure the people.

Few realized that these mysterious operations were the "convulsive attempt" of a ruined and dishonest speculator to sustain his credit.

Pries, although enjoying a high reputation in the city, had long been in a bad way.

His extensive business had been carried on by fraud.

His method was to obtain advances twice over on the same bills of lading or corn warrants.

The duplicates were forged.

In this way he obtained vast sums from several firms, and one to which he was indebted upwards of £50,000 subsequently stopped payment.

Pries at length was discovered through a dishonoured cheque for £3000, paid over as an instalment of £18,000 owing for an advance on warrants.

Inquiries were instituted when the cheque was protested, which led to the discovery of the forgeries.

Pries was lodged in Newgate, tried at the Old Bailey, and transported for life.

Another set of frauds, which resembled those of Pries in principle, although not in practice, were soon afterwards discovered.

These were the forgeries of Joseph Windle Cole.

This clever but unscrupulous trader proposed to gain the capital he needed for business purposes by raising money on dock warrants for imported goods which had no real existence.

When such goods arrived they were frequently left at a wharf, paying rent until it suited the importer to remove them.

The dock warrant was issued by the wharfinger as certificate that he held the goods.

The warrant thus represented money, and was often used as such, being endorsed and passed from hand to hand as other negotiable bills.

Cole's plan was to have a wharf of his own, nominally occupied by a creature trading as Maltby and Co. Goods would be landed at this wharf; Maltby and Co. would issue warrants on them deliverable to the importer, and the goods were then passed to be stored in neighbouring warehouses.

The owners of the latter would then issue a second set of warrants on these goods, in total ignorance of the fact that they were already pledged.

Cole quickly raised money on both sets of warrants.

He carried on this game for some time with great success, and so developed his business that in one year his transactions amounted to a couple of millions of pounds.

He had several narrow escapes.

Once a warrant-holder sent down a clerk to view certain goods, and the clerk found that these goods had already a "stop" upon them, or were pledged.

Cole escaped by throwing the blame on a careless partner, and at once removed the "stop."

Again, some of the duplicate and fictitious warrants were held by a firm which suspended payment, and there was no knowing into whose hands they might fall.

Cole found out where they were, and redeemed them at a heavy outlay, thus obtaining business relations with the firm that held them, which were soon developed, much to that firm's subsequent anger and regret.

Last of all, the well-known bankers Overend and Gurney, whose own affairs created much excitement some years later, wishing to verify the value of warrants they held, and sending to Maltby and Co.' s wharf, found out half the truth.

These bankers, wishing for more specific information, asked Davidson and Gordon, a firm with which Cole was closely allied, whether the warrants meant goods or nothing.

They could not deny that the latter was the truth, and were forthwith stigmatized by Mr. Chapman, Overend and Gurney's representative, as rogues.

But Overend and Gurney took no steps to make the swindle public, and therefore, according to people of more rigid principle, became in a measure a party to the fraud.