Chronicles of Newgate Vol 2 — Crime and Criminals part 2

Two deliberate cases of forging Bank of England notes about this time may be mentioned, although neither of the criminals passed through Newgate.

One was James Elliot, who suffered at Maidstone in 1777, the other Joshua Crompton, who was executed at Gangley Green, near Guildford, in 1778. The circulation of counterfeit paper was not the only kind of monetary fraud in vogue.

The coinage of the realm still suffered.

Clipping could not be quite put down by act of Parliament.

The punishment was still capital, and generally inflicted without hope of reprieve.

It was a crime affected more particularly by workers in the precious metals.

Thus John Clarke, in 1767, was a London watch-case maker of good repute, who was in the habit of working alone in a private closet.

His apprentice, jealously suspecting him to be engaged in some secret branch of his trade, bored a hole through the wainscot, and caught his master filing guineas.

The apprentice immediately informed; Clarke was arrested, convicted, and soon afterwards hanged.

Persons in a higher station, however, succumbed to special temptations.

William Guest was the son of a clergyman living at Worcester, who had sufficient interest to get him a clerkship in the Bank of England.

The constant handling of piles of gold was too much for Guest's integrity, and he presently resolved to turn his opportunities to account.

Taking a house in Broad Street Buildings, he devoted the upper part of it to his nefarious trade.

He abstracted guineas from his drawer in the Bank, carried them home, filed them, then remilled them in a machine he had designed for the purpose, and returned them--now light weight--to the Bank.

The filings he converted into ingots and disposed of to the trade.

No suspicion of his malpractices transpiring, he was in due course advanced to the post of teller.

But a fellow-teller having observed him one day picking out new guineas from a bag, watched him, and found that he did this constantly.

On another occasion he was seen to pay away guineas some of which, on examination, proved to have been recently filed.

They were weighed, and found short weight.

To test Mr. Guest still further, his money-bags were opened one night after hours, and the contents counted and examined.

The number was short, and several guineas found which appeared to have been recently filed, and which on weighing proved to be light.

A descent was forthwith made upon Guest's house, and in the upper rooms the whole apparatus for filing was laid bare.

In a nest of drawers were found vice, files, the milling machine, two bags of gold filings, and a hundred guineas.

A flap in front of the nest of drawers could be let down, and inside was a skin fastened to the back of the flap, with a hole in it to button on to the waistcoat, and equip the workman after the method of jewellers.

More evidence was soon forthcoming against Guest.

His fellow-teller had seen him in possession of a substantial bar of gold; jewellers and others swore to having bought ingots from him, and an assayer at Guest's trial deposed to their being of the same standard as the guinea coinage.

His guilt was clearly made out to the jury, and he was sentenced to death.

A petition signed by a number of influential persons was forwarded to the Crown, praying for mercy, but it was decided that the law ought to take its course.

As his crime amounted to high treason, he went to Tyburn on a sledge, but he suffered no other penalty than hanging.

The flagitious trade of coining was in a most flourishing condition during the last decades of the eighteenth and the early part of the nineteenth centuries.

The condition of the national coinage was at this time far from creditable to the Mint.

A great part of both the silver and copper money in circulation was much worn and defaced.

Imitation thus became much easier than with coins comparatively fresh and new.

Hence the nefarious practice multiplied exceedingly.

There were as many as forty or fifty private mints constantly at work, either in London or in the principal country towns.

The process was rapid, not too laborious, and extremely profitable.

A couple of hands could turn out in a week base silver coins worth nominally two or three hundred pounds.

The wages of a good workman were as much as a couple of guineas a day.

Much capital was invested by large dealers in the trade, who must have made enormous sums.

One admitted that his transactions in seven years amounted to the production of £200,000 in counterfeit half-crowns and other silver coins.

So systematic was the traffic, that orders for town and country were regularly executed by the various manufacturers.

Boxes and parcels of base coin were despatched every morning by coach and waggon to all parts of the kingdom, like any other goods.

The trade extended to foreign countries.

[9] The law, until it was rectified by the 37 Geo.

III.

cap.

126, did not punish the counterfeiting of foreign money, and French louis-d'or, Spanish dollars, German florins, and Turkish sequins were shipped abroad in great quantities.

Our Indian possessions even did not escape, and a manufactory of spurious gold or silver pagodas was at one time most active in London, whence they were exported to the East.

The number of persons employed in London as capitalists and agents for distribution alone amounted to one hundred and twenty at one time; and besides there was a strong force of skilful handicraftsmen, backed up by a whole army of "utterers" or "smashers," constantly busy in passing the base money into the currency.

The latter comprised hawkers, peddlers, market-women, hackney-coach drivers, all of whom attended the markets held by the dealers in the manufactured article, and bought wholesale to distribute retail by various devices, more particularly in giving change.

They obtained the goods at an advantage of about one hundred per cent.

When the base money lost its veneer, the dealers were ready to repurchase it in gross, and after a repetition of the treatment, issue it afresh at the old rates.

Gold coins were not so much counterfeited as silver and copper, but there were bad guineas in circulation.

The most dexterous method of coining them was by mixing a certain amount of alloy with the pure metal.

They were the proper weight, and had some semblance of the true ring, but their intrinsic value was not more than thirteen or fourteen shillings, perhaps only eight or nine.

The fabrication was, however, limited by the expense and the nicety required in the process.

To counterfeit silver was a simpler operation.

Of base silver money there were five kinds; viz.

flats, plated goods, plain goods, castings, and fig things.

The _flats_ were cut out of prepared flattened plates composed of silver and blanched copper.

When cut out the coins were turned in a lathe, stamped in a press with the proper die, and subjected to rubbing with various materials, including aquafortis to bring the silver to the surface, sand-paper, cork, cream of tartar, and last of all blacking to give the appearance of age.

_Plated goods_ were prepared from copper; the coins cut the proper size and plated, the stamping being done afterwards.

As these coins were most like silver, they generally evaded detection.

_Plain goods_ consisted of copper blanks the size of a shilling, turned out from a lathe, then given the colour and lustre of metal buttons, after which they were rubbed with cream of tartar and blacking.

_Castings_, as the word implies, were coins made of blanched copper, cast in moulds of the proper die; they were then silvered and treated like the rest.

It was very common to give this class of base money a crooked appearance, by which means they seemed genuine, and got into circulation without suspicion.

The _figs_, or _fig things_, were the lowest and meanest class, and was confined chiefly to sixpences.

Copper counterfeit money was principally of two kinds, stamped and plain, made out of base metal; the profit on them being about a hundred per cent.

They were mostly halfpennies; but farthings were also largely manufactured, the material being real copper, but the fraud was in their being of light weight, and very thin.

The prosecutions for coining were very numerous.

The register of the solicitor to the Mint recorded as many as 650 in a period of seven years.

The offence of making or uttering, till a very recent date, constituted petty treason, and met with the usual penalties.

These, in the case of female offenders, included hanging and burning at a stake.

The last woman who suffered in this way was burnt before the debtors' door, in front of Newgate, in 1788, having been previously strangled.

In the following year, as I have already said, the 30 Geo.

III.

cap.

48 was passed, which abolished the practice of burning women convicted of petty treason.

[10] Persons guilty of only selling or dealing in base money were more leniently dealt with.

The offence was long only a misdemeanour, carrying with it a sentence of imprisonment for a year and a day, which the culprit passed not unpleasantly in Newgate, while his friends or relations kept the business going outside, and supplied him regularly with ample funds.

There was as yet little security for life and property in town or country.

The streets of London were still unsafe; high roads and bye roads leading to it were still infested by highway robbers.

The protection afforded to the public by the police continued very inefficient.

It was still limited to parochial effort; the watchmen were appointed by the vestries, and received a bare pittance,--twelve and sixpence a week in summer, seventeen and sixpence in winter,--which they often eked out by taking bribes from the women of the town, or by a share in a burglar's "swag," to whose doings they were conveniently blind.

These watchmen were generally middle-aged, often old and feeble men, who were appointed either from charitable motives, to give them employment, or save them from being inmates of the workhouse and a burthen to the parish.

Their hours of duty were long, from night-fall to sunrise, during which, when so disposed, they patrolled the streets, calling the hour, the only check on their vigilance being the occasional rounds of the parish beadle, who visited the watchmen on their various beats.

In spite of this the watchmen were often invisible; not to be found when most wanted, and even when present, powerless to arrest or make head against disorderly or evilly-disposed persons.

Besides the watchmen there were the parish constables, nominated by the court of burgesses, or court leet.

The obligation of serving in the office of constable might fall upon any householder in turn, but he was at liberty to escape it by buying a substitute or purchasing a "Tyburn ticket," of which more directly.

The parish constables were concerned with pursuit rather than prevention, with crime after rather than before the fact.

In this duty they were assisted by the police constables, although there was no love lost between the two classes of officer.

The police constables are most familiar to us under the name of "Bow Street runners," but they were attached to all the police offices, and not to Bow Street alone.

They were nominated from Whitehall by the Secretary of State, the minister now best known as the Home Secretary.

The duties of the "runners" were mainly those of detection and pursuit, in which they were engaged in London and in the country, at home and abroad.

Individuals or public bodies applied to Bow Street, or some other office, for the services of a runner.

These officers took charge of poaching cases, of murders, burglaries, or highway robberies.

Some were constantly on duty at the Court, as depredations were frequently committed in the royal palaces, or the royal family were "teased by lunatics."

The runners were remunerated by a regular salary of a guinea a week; but special services might be recognized by a share in the private reward offered, or, in case of conviction, by a portion of the public parliamentary reward of £40, which might be granted by the bench.

[11] The policy of making these grants was considered questionable.

It tended to tempt officers of justice "to forswear themselves for the lucre of the reward," and the thirst for "blood-money," as it was called, was aggravated till it led many to sell the lives of their fellow-creatures for gain.

There were numerous cases of this.

Jonathan Wild was one of the most notorious of the dishonest thief-takers.

In 1755 several scoundrels of the same kidney were convicted of having obtained the conviction of innocent people, simply to pocket the reward.

Their offence did not give under penal statute, so they were merely exposed in the pillory, where, however, the mob pelted one to death and nearly killed another.

Again, in 1816, a police officer named Vaughan was guilty of inciting to crime, in order to betray his victims and receive the blood-money.

On the other hand, when conviction was doubtful the offender enjoyed long immunity from arrest.

Officers would not arrest him until he "weighed his weight," as the saying was, or until they were certain of securing the £40 reward.

Another form of remuneration was the bestowal on conviction of a "Tyburn ticket"; in other words, of an exemption from service in parish offices.

This the officer sold for what it would fetch, the price varying in different parishes from £12 or £14 to £30 or £40. It was not to be wondered at that a weak and inadequate police force, backed up by such uncertain and injudicious incentives to activity, should generally come off second-best in its struggles with the hydra-headed criminality of the day.

Robberies and burglaries were committed almost under the eyes of the police.

It was calculated that the value of the property stolen in the city in one month (_circa_ 1808) amounted to £15,000, and none of the parties were even known or apprehended, although sought after night and day.

[12] Such cases as the following were of frequent occurrence.

"Seven ruffians, about eight o'clock at night, knocked at the door of Mrs. Abercrombie in Charlotte Street, Rathbone Place, calling out 'Post!'

and on its being opened, rushed in and took from Mrs. A.

her jewels and fifty or sixty guineas in money, with all the clothes and linen they could get.

The neighbourhood was alarmed, and a great crowd assembled, but the robbers sallied forth, and with swords drawn and pistols presented, threatened destruction to any who opposed them.

The mob tamely suffered them to escape with their booty without making any resistance."

The officers of justice were openly defied.

There were streets, such as Duck Lane, Gravel Lane, or Cock Lane, in which it was unsafe for any one to venture without an escort of five or six of his fellows.

"They (the ruffians) would have cut him to pieces if he was alone."

Still more dastardly were the wanton outrages perpetrated upon unprotected females, often in broad daylight, and in the public streets.

These at one time increased to an alarming extent.

Ladies were attacked and wounded without warning, and apparently without cause.

The injuries were often most serious.

On one occasion a young lady was stabbed in the face by means of an instrument concealed in a bouquet of flowers which a ruffian had begged her to smell.

When consternation was greatest, however, it was reported that the cowardly assailant was in custody.

He proved to be one Renwick Williams, now generally remembered as "the monster."

The assault for which he was arrested was made in St. James's Street, about midnight, upon a young lady, Miss Porter, who was returning from a ball to her father's house.

Renwick struck at her with a knife, and wounded her badly through her clothes, accompanying the blow with the grossest language.

The villain at the time escaped, but Miss Porter recognized him six months later in St. James's Park.

He was followed by a Mr. Coleman to his quarters at No. 52, Jermyn Street, and brought to Miss Porter's house.

The young lady, crying "That is the wretch!"

fainted away at the sight of him.

The prisoner indignantly repudiated that he was "the monster" who was advertised for, but he was indicted at the Old Bailey, and the jury found him guilty without hesitation.

His sentence was two years' imprisonment in Newgate, and he was bound over in £400 to be of good behaviour.

Gentlemen, some of the highest station, going or returning from court, were often the victims of the depredations committed in the royal precincts.

In 1792 a gang of thieves dressed in court suits smuggled themselves into a drawing-room of St. James's Palace, and tried to hustle and rob the Prince of Wales.

The Duke of Beaufort, returning from a levee, had his "George," pendant to his ribbon of the Garter, stolen from him in the yard of St. James's Palace.

The order was set with brilliants, worth a very large sum of money.

The duke called out to his servants, who came up and seized a gentlemanly man dressed in black standing near.

The "George" was found in this gentleman's pocket.

He proved to be one Henry Sterne, commonly called Gentleman Harry,[13] who, being of good address and genteel appearance, easily got admission to the best company, upon whom he levied his contributions.

George Barrington, the notorious pickpocket, also found it to his advantage to attend levees and drawing-rooms.

Barrington, or Waldron, which was his real name, began crime early.

When one of a strolling company in Ireland, he recruited the empty theatrical treasury and supplemented meagre receipts by stealing watches and purses, the proceeds being divided among the rest of the actors.

He found thieving so much more profitable than acting that he abandoned the latter in favour of the former profession, and set up as a gentleman pickpocket.

Having worked Dublin well, his native land became too hot to hold him, and came to London.

At Ranelagh one night he relieved both the Duke of Leinster and Sir William Draper of considerable sums.

He visited also the principal watering places, including Bath, but London was his favourite hunting-ground.

Disguised as a clergyman, he went to court on drawing-room days, and picked pockets or removed stars and decorations from the breasts of their wearers.

At Covent Garden Theatre one night he stole a gold snuff-box set with brilliants, and worth £30,000, belonging to Prince Orloff, of which there had been much talk, and which, with other celebrated jewels, Barrington had long coveted.

The Russian prince felt the thief's hand in his pocket, and immediately seized Barrington by the throat, on which the latter slipped back the snuff-box.

But Barrington was arrested and committed for trial, escaping this time because Prince Orloff would not prosecute.

He was, however, again arrested for picking a pocket in Drury Lane Theatre, and sentenced to three years' hard labour on board the hulks in the Thames.

From this he was released prematurely through the good offices of a gentleman who pitied him, only to be reimprisoned, but in Newgate, not the hulks, for fresh robberies at the Opera House, Pantheon, and other places of public resort.

Once more released, he betook himself to his old evil courses, and having narrowly escaped capture in London, wandered through the northern counties in various disguises, till he was at length taken at Newcastle-on-Tyne.

Another narrow escape followed, through the absence of a material witness; but he was finally arrested for picking a pocket on Epsom Downs, and sentenced to seven years' transportation.

He made an affecting speech at his trial, urging, in extenuation of his offence, that he had never had a fair chance of earning an honest livelihood.

He may have been sincere, and he certainly took the first opportunity of trying to do well.

On the voyage out to New South Wales there was a mutiny on board the convict ship, which would have been successful but for Barrington's aid on the side of authority.

He kept the passage to the quarter-deck single-handed, and the mob of convicts at bay with a marline-spike, till the captain and crew were able to get arms and make head against the revolt.

As a reward for his conduct, Barrington was appointed to a position of trust, in charge of other prisoners at Paramatta.

Within a year or two he was advanced to the more onerous and responsible post of chief constable, and was complimented by the governor of the colony for his faithful performance of the duty.

He fell away in health, however, and retiring eventually upon a small pension, died before he was fifty years of age.

The gentlemen of the highway continued to harass and rob all travellers.

All the roads were infested.

Two or three would be heard of every morning; some on Hounslow Heath, some on Finchley Common, some on Wimbledon Common, some on the Romford Road.

Townshend, the Bow Street runner, declared that on arriving at the office of a morning people came in one after the other to give information of such robberies.

"Messrs. Mellish, Bosanquet, and Pole, merchants of the city," says a contemporary chronicle, "were stopped by three highwaymen on Hounslow Heath.

After robbing them, without resistance, of their money and their watches, one of the robbers wantonly fired into the chaise and mortally wounded Mr. Mellish."

The first successful effort made to put down this levying of blackmail upon the king's highway was the establishment of the police horse patrol in 1805. It was organized by the direction of the chief magistrate at Bow Street, then Sir Nathaniel Conant, and under the immediate orders of a conductor, Mr. Day.

This force consisted of mounted constables, who every night regularly patrolled all the roads leading into the metropolis.

They worked singly between two stations, each starting at a fixed time from each end, halting midway to communicate, then returning.

The patrol acted on any information received _en route_, making themselves known as they rode along to all persons riding horses or in carriages, by calling out in a loud tone "Bow Street Patrol."

They arrested all known offenders whom they met with, [Illustration] and were fully armed for their own and the public protection.

The members of this excellent force were paid eight-and-twenty shillings a week, with turnpike tolls and forage for their horses, which, however, they were obliged to groom and take care of.

Marked and immediate results obtained from the establishment of this patrol.

Highway robbery ceased almost entirely, and in the rare cases which occurred before it quite died out, the guilty parties were invariably apprehended.

There was as yet no very marked diminution in the number of executions, but other forms of punishment were growing into favour.

Already transportation beyond the seas had grown into a system.

Since the settlement of New South Wales as a penal colony in 1780, convicts were sent out regularly, and in increasingly large batches.

The period between conviction and embarkation was spent in Newgate, thus adding largely to its criminal population, with disastrous consequences to the health and convenience of the place.

Besides these, the most heinous criminals, there were other lesser offenders, for whom various terms of imprisonment was deemed a proper and sufficient penalty.

Hence gaols were growing much more crowded, Newgate more especially, as I shall presently show.

For the present I propose to give the reader some of the types of persons who became lodgers in Newgate, not temporarily, as in the case of all who passed quickly from the condemned cells to the gallows, but who remained there for longer periods, whether awaiting removal as transports, or working out a sentence of imprisonment in the course of law.

As London, increased in size and life, became more complex, chances multiplied for rogues and sharpers, who tried with chicane and stratagem to prey upon society.

Swindling was carried out more systematically and upon a wider scale than in the days of Jenny Diver or the sham German Princess.

[14] A woman named Robinson was arrested in 1801, who, under the pretence of being a rich heiress, had obtained goods fraudulently from tradesmen to the value of £20,000. Again, some years later, a gang resembling somewhat the "long firms" of modern days carried on a fictitious trade, and obtained goods from city merchants worth £50,000. There were many varieties of the professional swindler in those days.

Some did business under the guise of licensed and outwardly respectable pawnbrokers, who _sub rosâ_ were traffickers in stolen goods.

Others roamed the country as hawkers, general dealers, and peddlers, distributing exciseable articles which had been smuggled into the country, carrying on fraudulent raffles, purchasing stolen horses in one county and disposing of them in another.

The "duffer" went from door to door in the town, offering for sale smuggled tobacco, muslins, or other stuffs, and, if occasion served, passing forged notes or bad money as small change.

Where the swindler possessed such qualifications as a pleasing manner and a gentlemanly address, with a small capital to start with, he flew at higher game.

Alexander Day, alias Marmaduke Davenport, Esq.

, was one of the first of a long line of impostors who made a great show, in a fine house in a fashionable neighbourhood, with sham footmen in smart liveries, and a grand carriage and pair.

The latter he got in on approval, taking care while he used them to be driven to the Duke of Montague's and other aristocratic mansions.

In the carriage too he called on numbers of tradesmen and gave large orders for goods: yards of Spanish point-lace, a gold "equipage" or dinner-service, silks in long pieces, table and other linen enough to furnish several houses.

By clever excuses he postponed payment, or made off with the property by a second door.

Among other things ordered was a gold chain for his squirrel, which already wore a silver one.

The goldsmith recognized the silver chain as one he had recently sold to a lady, and his suspicions were aroused.

On reference to her she denounced Day as a swindler, who had cheated her out of a large sum of money.

Day was forthwith arrested and sent to Newgate.

At his trial he declared that he meant to pay for everything he had ordered, that he owned an estate in Durham worth £1200 a year, but that it was heavily mortgaged.

The case occupied some time, but in the end Day was sentenced to two years' imprisonment in Newgate, to stand twice in the pillory, find security for his good behaviour, and pay a fine of £200.