Chronicles of Newgate Vol 2 — Newgate Notorieties part 2

In July 1864 occurred the murder of Mr. Briggs, a gentleman advanced in years and chief clerk in Robarts' bank.

As the circumstances under which it was perpetrated were somewhat novel,[126] and as some time elapsed before the discovery and apprehension of the supposed murderer, the public mind was greatly agitated by the affair for several months.

The story of the murder must be pretty familiar to most of my readers.

Mr. Briggs left the bank one afternoon as usual, dined with his daughter at Peckham, then returned to the city to take the train from Fenchurch Street home, travelling by the North London Railway.

He lived at Hackney, but he never reached it alive.

When the train arrived at Hackney station, a passenger who was about to enter one of the carriages found the cushions soaked with blood.

Inside the carriage was a hat, a walking-stick, and a small black leather bag.

About the same time a body was discovered on the line near the railway-bridge by Victoria Park.

It was that of an aged man, whose head had been battered in by a life-preserver.

There was a deep wound just over the ear, the skull was fractured, and there were several other blows and wounds on the head.

Strange to say, the unfortunate man was not yet dead, and he actually survived more than four-and-twenty hours.

His identity was established by a bundle of letters in his pocket, which bore his full address: "T. Briggs, Esq.

, Robarts & Co. , Lombard Street."

The friends of Mr. Briggs were communicated with, and it was ascertained that when he left home the morning of the murderous attack, he wore gold-rimmed eye-glasses and a gold watch and chain.

The stick and bag were his, but not the hat.

A desperate and deadly struggle must have taken place in the carriage, and the stain of a bloody hand marked the door.

The facts of the murder and its object, robbery, were thus conclusively proved.

It was also easily established that the hat found in the carriage had been bought at Walker's, a hatter's in Crawford Street, Marylebone; while within a few days Mr. Briggs' gold chain was traced to a jeweller's in Cheapside, Mr. Death, who had given another in exchange for it to a man supposed to be a foreigner.

More precise clues to the murderer were not long wanting; indeed the readiness with which they were produced and followed up showed how greatly the publicity and wide dissemination of the news regarding murder facilitate the detection of crime.

In little more than a week a cabman came forward and voluntarily made a statement which at once drew suspicion to a German, Franz Müller, who had been a lodger of his.

Müller had given the cabman's little daughter a jeweller's cardboard box bearing the name of Mr. Death.

A photograph of Müller shown the jeweller was identified as the likeness of the man who had exchanged Mr. Briggs' chain.

Last of all, the cabman swore that he had bought the very hat found in the carriage for Müller at the hatter's, Walker's of Crawford Street.

This fixed the crime pretty certainly upon Müller, who had already left the country, thus increasing suspicion under which he lay.

There was no mystery about his departure; he had gone to Canada, by the 'Victoria' sailing ship, starting from the London docks, and bound to New York.

Directly the foregoing facts were established, a couple of detective officers, armed with a warrant to arrest Müller, and accompanied by Mr. Death the jeweller and the cabman, went down to Liverpool and took the first steamer across the Atlantic.

This was the 'City of Manchester,' which was expected to arrive some days before the 'Victoria,' and did so.

The officers went on board the 'Victoria' at once, Müller was identified by Mr. Death, and the arrest was made.

In searching the prisoner's box, Mr. Briggs' watch was found wrapped up in a piece of leather, and Müller at the time of his capture was actually wearing Mr. Briggs' hat, cut down and somewhat altered.

The prisoner was forthwith extradited and sent back to England, which he reached with his escort on the 17th September the same year.

His trial followed at the next sessions of the Central Criminal Court, and ended in his conviction.

The case was one of circumstantial evidence, but, as Sir Robert Collyer the Solicitor-General pointed out, it was the strongest circumstantial evidence which had ever been brought forward in a murder case.

It was really evidence of facts which could not be controverted or explained away.

There was the prisoner's poverty, his inability to account for himself on the night of the murder, and his possession of the property of the murdered man.

An alibi was set up for the defence, but not well substantiated, and the jury without hesitation returned a verdict of guilty.

Müller protested after sentence of death had been passed upon him that he had been convicted on a false statement of facts.

He adhered to this almost to the very last.

His case had been warmly espoused by the Society for the Protection of Germans in this country, and powerful influence was exerted both here and abroad to obtain a reprieve.

Müller knew that any confession would ruin his chances of escape.

His arguments were specious and evasive when pressed to confess.

"Why should man confess to man?"

he replied; "man cannot forgive man, only God can do so.

Man is therefore only accountable to God."

But on the gallows, when the cap was over his eyes and the rope had been adjusted round his neck, and within a second of the moment when he would be launched into eternity, he whispered in the ear of the German pastor who attended him on the scaffold, "I did it."

While in the condemned cell he conversed freely with the warders in broken English or through an interpreter.

He is described as not a bad-looking man, with a square German type of face, blue eyes which were generally half closed, and very fair hair.

He was short in stature, his legs were light for the upper part of his body, which was powerful, almost herculean.

It is generally supposed that he committed the murder under a sudden access of covetousness and greed.

He saw Mr. Briggs' watch-chain, and followed him instantly into the carriage, determined to have it at all costs.

His crime under this aspect of it was less premeditated, and less atrocious therefore, than that of Lefroy.

One other curious murder may be added to the two foregoing.

Christian Sattler was by birth a German.

He had led a wild life; had left his native land and enlisted first in the French army in Algeria, afterwards in the British German Legion raised for the Crimean War.

At the disbandment of the force, as he was without resources, he turned his attention to hotel robberies, by which he lived for some years.

He at length stole a carpet-bag containing valuables, and fled to Hamburgh.

Thither he was pursued by a detective officer, Inspector Thain, who, being unable to obtain his extradition legally, had him inveigled on board an English steamer, where the arrest was made.

Sattler was ironed for safe custody, a proceeding which he vehemently resented, and begged that they might be removed, as the handcuffs hurt his wrists.

The inspector said that they could not be removed till he reached England.

This reply of his contained no promise of immediate release.

Sattler probably misunderstood, and he declared that the police officer had broken faith with him, having, moreover, stated that while at sea the captain of the ship was responsible for the security of the prisoner.

As Sattler brooded over his wrongs, his rage got the upper hand, and he resolved to wreak it upon Thain.

Although manacled, he managed to get a pistol from his chest and load it.

The next time Thain entered his cabin he fired at him point-blank, and lodged three bullets in his breast.

The unfortunate man survived till he landed, but died in Guy's Hospital.

Sattler was tried for murder and convicted; his defence being that he had intended to commit suicide, but that, on the appearance of this officer who had wronged him, he had yielded to an irresistible impulse to kill him.

Sattler was a very excitable although not an ill-tempered man.

While in Newgate awaiting trial he frequently tried to justify his murder by declaring that the police officer had broken faith with him.

He would shoot any man or any policeman like a dog, or any number of them, who had treated him in that way.

His demeanour immediately preceding his execution I have referred to in the last chapter.

Several cases of gigantic fraud, rivalling any already recorded, were brought to light between 1856 and 1873. I propose next to describe the leading features of the most important of these.

Another case of long-continued successful forgery was brought to light two years after the convictions of Saward and his accomplices.

This conspiracy was cleverly planned, but had scarcely so many ramifications as that of Saward.

Its originators were a couple of men, Wagner and Bateman, who had already been convicted of systematic forgery, and sentenced to transportation, but they had been released on ticket-of-leave in 1856. As a blind for their new frauds, they set up as law-stationers in York Buildings, Adelphi, and at once commenced their nefarious traffic.

Forged cheques and bills were soon uttered in great numbers, as well as base coin.

The police suspecting the house in York Buildings, put a watch on the premises, which they kept up for more than a year, and thus obtained personal knowledge of all who passed in and out, but without obtaining any direct evidence.

At length a man was caught in the act of passing a forged cheque at the Union Bank, and recognized as one of the frequenters of the bogus law-stationers.

His arrest led to that of others.

Among them was a man named Chandler, formerly a bill discounter by profession, who by degrees, to meet his extravagant expenditure, took to appropriating the bills intrusted to him, and so lost his business, after which he became a clerk to Messrs. Wagner and Bateman.

Chandler while in Newgate turned informer, and betrayed the whole conspiracy.

Besides his employers, a jeweller named Humphreys was in the "swim," at whose shop in Red Lion Square was discovered a quantity of base gold and silver coins, with all the latest appliances for coining, including those of electroplating; also a furniture dealer and one or two more commonplace rogues.

The arch villain was never taken into custody.

He, like Saward, was an artist in penmanship.

He was a German named Kerp, eighty years of age, who had spent his whole life in imitating other people's signatures, and had acquired the most consummate skill in the practice.

His copies were generally pronounced indistinguishable from and as good as the originals.

The aged but wary Kerp, the moment the plot was discovered, vanished, and was never more heard of.

Much the same plan was adopted by these forgers as by Saward to get their cheques cashed.

They advertised for clerks, and employed the most likely of the applicants by sending them to the bank.

It was one of these, Glendinning, who had allowed himself to be utilized for some time in this way, whose capture led to the breaking up of the gang.

The principals in this conspiracy, Wagner and Bateman, were sentenced to penal servitude for life, the others to twenty and ten years.

It was stated in evidence that the monies obtained by these forgeries amounted to £8000 or £10,000, and that the forged cheques which had been presented, but refused, amounted to double the sum.

Wagner, after conviction, offered to reveal, for a reward of £3000, a system which had long been in practice of defrauding the Exchequer of vast sums by means of forged stamps.

His offer was not, however, accepted.

A more elaborate plot in many ways, more secretly, more patiently prepared than the preceding, or indeed than any in the calendar, was the case of the forgeries upon the Bank of England discovered in 1863, but not before the forged paper had been put in circulation for more than a couple of years.

In 1861 a man named Burnett came with his wife and took up his residence at Whitchurch, Hampshire, at no great distance from Laverstock, where are Messrs. Portal's mills for the manufacture of bank-note paper.

Burnett had only just come out of gaol after completing a sentence of penal servitude.

His object in visiting Whitchurch was to undermine the honesty of some workman in the mills; and he eventually succeeded, his wife making the first overtures, in persuading a lad named Brown to steal some of the bank paper.

Brown took several sheets, and then was detected by Brewer, a fellow-workman of superior grade, who threatened to betray the theft.

But Brewer, either before or after this, succumbed to temptation, and stole paper on a much larger scale than Brown.

All that was taken was handed over to Burnett, or a "woman in black" whom Brown met by appointment at Waterloo station.

To facilitate his operations, Brewer obtained a false master key from Burnett, which gave him access to all parts of the mills, the packing-room included.

In this part of the mills a large quantity of bank-note paper was kept at the period of the robbery, and in the states known as "water-leaf" and "sized," which are the penultimate processes of manufacture.

One more remains, that of "glazing," without which no paper is issued for engraving.

None of the stolen paper was glazed, and this was an important clue to the subsequent discovery of the crime.

Some time in 1862 a large deficiency in the stock of bank paper unglazed was discovered at the mills.

Soon afterwards the inspectors of bank-notes at the Bank of England detected the presentation at the bank of spurious notes on genuine paper.

The two facts taken in conjunction led to the employment of the police, and the offer of a reward of £1500 for the detection of the offenders.

By this time Brown alone had stolen three or four hundred sheets, each containing two notes, many of the sheets suitable for engraving any kind of note from £1000 downwards.

The amount of Brewer's abstractions (who was eventually acquitted) was never exactly estimated.

Suspicion appears to have rested on Brown, who had left Laverstock, and he was soon approached by the police.

Almost directly he was questioned he made a clean breast of the whole affair.

The next step was to take the principals, and under such circumstances as would insure their conviction.

A watch was set on Burnett, who was followed to the shop of one Buncher, a butcher in Strutton Ground.

Buncher was then tracked to North Kent Terrace, New Cross, where a Mr. and Mrs. Campbell resided, with whom he did business in exchanging the false notes.

The police officers now taxed Mrs. Campbell with complicity, and frightened her into collusion.

With her assistance on a certain day a couple of bricks were taken out of the wall dividing her front and back parlours; the officers ensconced themselves in the latter, and waited for Buncher's expected visit.

He came to complete a sale of forged notes, and he wanted a couple of hundred pounds for what he had.

Mrs. Campbell offered him less, and there was an altercation, in the course of which Buncher became very violent, and at length, after using much intemperate language, he left the place in a huff.

In the course of his remarks, however, he said, "I am the man that has got all the bank paper; I have £30,000 now, and the Bank of England cannot stop it."

This was all the police wanted to know.

They next watched Buncher, and found that he paid frequent visits to Birmingham.

They also discovered that through the intermediacy of one Robert Cummings, well known as a reputed coiner, he had been introduced to a man named Griffiths, an engraver and copper-plate printer.

Griffiths was an unusually clever and skilful workman, who had devoted all his talent and all his energies for some seventeen years to the fabrication of false bank-notes.

On a certain day, the 27th October, 1862, the two were arrested simultaneously; Buncher in London, and Griffiths in Birmingham.

Nothing was found in Buncher's premises in Strutton Ground, which were thoroughly searched, but proofs of Griffiths' guilt were at once apparent on entering his work-room.

In one corner was a printing-press actually in use, and on it were twenty-one forged Bank of England notes, without date or signature.

On the bed were twenty forged ten-pound notes complete and ready for use, and twenty-five five-pound notes.

"Mother plates" for engraving the body of the notes lay about, and other plates for various processes.

More than this, Griffiths took the police to a field where, in a bank, a number of other plates were secreted.

Griffiths afterwards admitted that he had been employed in defrauding the bank since 1846, and the prominent part he played secured for him on conviction the heaviest sentence of the law.

This was penal servitude for life, Buncher's sentence being twenty-five, and Burnett's twenty years.

Cummings, who had introduced Buncher to Griffiths, was also tried for being in possession of stolen bank paper for improper purposes.

But as there was no independent corroboration of the informer's evidence, according to the custom of the British law, the case was considered not proved, and he was acquitted.

On his return to Newgate to be finally discharged, Cummings jumped up the stairs and fairly danced for joy.

But he was not long at large; he was too active an evil-doer, and was perpetually in trouble.

Commencing life as a resurrection man, when that trade failed through the change in the law, and no more bodies were to be bought, he devoted his energies to coining and forgery, and in the latter line was a friend and associate of Saward's. One narrow escape he had, however, before he abandoned his old business.

A Bow Street officer saw him leaving London in the evening by Camberwell Green, accompanied by two other men.

It was well known that they were resurrectionists, and a strict watch was kept at all the turnpike gates on the southern roads leading into London.

An officer was placed for this purpose at New Cross, Camberwell, and Kennington gates.

Presently "Old Bob" drove up to Camberwell Gate in the same cart in which he had been seen to start.

The officers rushed out to detain him.

"What have you got here?

We must search the cart," they cry.

"By all means," replies Bob, and a close investigation follows, without any detection of the corpse concealed.

Bob was therefore allowed to pass on.

But they had the body, all the same; it had been dressed up in decent clothes and made to stand upright in the cart.

With the police officers it had passed muster as a living member of the party.

Cummings was repeatedly "run in" for the offence of coining and uttering bad money, whether coin or notes.

His regular trade, followed before he took to the life of resurrectionist, was that of an engraver.

He was a notorious criminal, an habitual offender in his own particular line, one who would stick at no trifles to evade detection or escape capture.

It is told of "Bob" Brennan, an official specially employed for years by the Mint to watch and prosecute coiners, that he received information that coining was carried on by Cummings and others at a place in Westminster.

He went there with a posse of officers and forced his way upstairs to the first floor, where the coiners, unexpectedly disturbed, fell an easy prey.

But the police nearly paid the penalty of capture with their lives.

Proceeding cautiously down the stairs, they found that the flooring at the bottom had been taken up.

Where it had lain was a yawning gulf or trap sufficient to do for the whole body of police engaged in the capture.

Cummings was caught shortly afterwards.

He was a tall, slender man, with a long face and iron-gray hair.

The community of coiners of which he was so notorious a member were a low lot, the lowest among criminals except, perhaps, the 'smashers,' or those who passed the counterfeit money.

It was not easy to detect coiners, or bring home their guilt to them.

Those who manufactured and those who passed had no direct dealings with each other.

The false coin was bought by an agent from an agent, and dealings were carried on secretly at the "Clock House" in Seven Dials.

The annals of fraudulent crime probably contain nothing which in dramatic interest can compare with the conviction of William Roupell for forgery.

As the case must still be well remembered by the present generation, it will be necessary to give here only the briefest summary.

William Roupell was the eldest but illegitimate son of a wealthy man who subsequently married Roupell's mother, and had further legitimate issue.

William was brought up as an attorney, and became in due course his father's man of business.

As such he had pretty general control over his father's estates and affairs.

In 1855 he instructed certain solicitors to prepare a deed of gift as from his father, conveying to him estates near Kingston.

The old gentleman's signature to this deed of gift was a forgery, but upon this forged and false conveyance William Roupell, who had already embarked upon a career of wild extravagance, obtained a mortgage of £7000. In 1856 the father died.

It had been supposed up to this date that he had willed his property, amounting in all to upwards of £200,000, but after the funeral William Roupell produced another and a later will, leaving everything to the widow, and constituting William sole executor.

This will was a deliberate forgery.

Five or six years later, William Roupell minutely described how he had effected the fraud.

The day his father died he got the keys of his private bureau, opened it, and took out the authentic will.

After reading it, and finding this unfavourable to himself, he resolved to carry out his deliberate plan, namely, to suppress it and substitute another.

He himself prepared it on a blank form which he had brought with him on purpose.

To this fraudulent instrument he appended forged signatures, and in due course obtained probate.

As he possessed nearly unbounded influence over his mother, her accession to the property meant that William could dispose of it as he pleased.

He embarked forthwith in a career of the wildest extravagance, and ere long he had parted in his mother's name with most of the landed estates.

One large item of his expenditure was a contested election at Lambeth, which he gained at a cost of £10,000. No fortune could stand the inroads he made into his mother's money, and in 1862 he was obliged to fly the country, hopelessly and irretrievably ruined.

His disappearance gave colour and substance to evil reports already in circulation that the will and conveyance above referred to were fictitious documents.

His next brother, who should have inherited under the authentic will, forthwith brought an ejectment on the possessor of lands purchased on the authority of the forged conveyance and will.

The case was tried at Guildford Assizes, and caused intense excitement, the hardship to the holders of these lands being plain, should the allegations of invalidity be made good.

The effect of establishing the forgeries would be to restore to the Roupell family lands for which a price had already been paid in all good faith to another, but a criminal member of the family.

At first the case was contested hotly, but, to the profound astonishment of every one inside and outside the court, William Roupell himself was brought as a principal witness to clench the case by a confession altogether against himself.

He told his story with perfect coolness and self-possession, but in a grave and serious tone.

"Every word he uttered was said with consideration, and sometimes with a long pause, but at the same time with an air of the most entire truthfulness and candour."

He confessed himself a perjurer in having sworn to the false will, and a wholesale forger, having manufactured no less than ten false signatures to deeds involving on the whole some £350,000. For these crimes William Roupell was tried at the Central Criminal Court on the 24th September, 1862. He declined to plead, but a plea of "Not Guilty" was recorded.

The case was easily and rapidly disposed of.

Roupell made a long statement more in exculpation than in his defence.

He complained that he had at first been the dupe of others, and admitted that he had too readily fallen astray.

But while repudiating the charges made against him of systematic extravagance and immorality, he confessed that his whole life had been a gigantic mistake, and he was ready to make what atonement he could.

Mr. Justice Byles, in passing sentence, commented severely upon the commission of such crimes by a man in Roupell's position in life, and passed the heaviest sentence of the law, transportation for life.

Roupell received the announcement with a cheerful countenance, and left the dock with evident satisfaction and relief at the termination of a most painful ordeal.

Roupell was quiet and submissive while in Newgate, unassuming in manner, and ready to make the best of his position.

He carried this character with him into penal servitude, and after enduring the full severity of his punishment for several years, was at length advanced to the comparative ease of a post much coveted by convicts, that of hospital nurse.

His uniform good conduct gained him release from Portland on ticket-of-leave in 1882, just twenty years after his conviction.

A daring and cleverly-planned robbery of diamonds was that of the Tarpeys, man and wife, from an assistant of Loudon and Ryder's, the jewellers in Bond Street.

The trick was an old one.

The assistant called with the jewels on approbation at a house specially hired for the purpose in the West End, and was rendered insensible by chloroform, after which he was bound and the precious stones stolen.

Mrs. Tarpey was almost immediately captured and put on her trial, but she was acquitted on the plea that she had acted under the coercion of her husband.

Tarpey was caught through his wife, who was followed, disguised, and with her hair dyed black, to a house in the Marylebone Road, where she met her husband.

On Tarpey's defence it was stated that the idea of the theft had been suggested to him by a novel, at a time he had lost largely on the turf.

The first plot was against Mr. Harry Emmanuel, but he escaped, and the attempt was made upon Loudon and Ryder.

The last great case of fraud upon the Bank of England will fitly close this branch of the criminal records of Newgate.

This was the well and astutely devised plot of the brothers Bidwell, assisted by Macdonell and Noyes, all of them citizens of the United States, by which the bank lost upwards of £100,000. The commercial experience of these clever rogues was cosmopolitan.

Their operations were no less world-wide.

In 1871 they crossed the Atlantic, and by means of forged letters of credit and introduction from London, obtained large sums from continental banks, in Berlin, Dresden, Bordeaux, Marseilles, and Lyons.

With this as capital they came back to England _viâ_ Buenos Ayres, and Austin Bidwell opened a _bonâ fide_ credit in the Burlington or West End branch of the Bank of England, to which he was introduced by a well-known tailor in Saville Row.

After this the other conspirators travelled to obtain genuine bills and master the system of the leading houses at home and abroad.

When all was ready, Bidwell first "refreshed his credit" at the Bank of England, as well as disarmed suspicion, by paying in a genuine bill of Messrs. Rothschilds' for £4500, which was duly discounted.

Then he explained to the bank manager that his transactions at Birmingham would shortly be very large, owing to the development of his business there in the alleged manufacture of Pullman cars.

The ground thus cleared, the forgers poured in from Birmingham numbers of forged acceptances, all of which were discounted to the value of £102,217. The fraud was rendered possible by the absence of a check usual in the United States.

There such bills would be sent to the drawer to be initialled, and the forgery would have been at once detected.

It was the discovery of this flaw in the banking system which had encouraged the Americans to attempt this crime.

Time was clearly an important factor in the fraud, hence the bills were sent forward in quick succession.

Long before they came to maturity the forgers hoped to be well beyond arrest.

They had, moreover, sought to destroy all clue.

The sums obtained by Bidwell in the name of "Warren" at the Bank of England were lodged at once by drafts to "Horton," another alias, in the Continental Bank.

For these cash was obtained in notes; the notes were exchanged by one of the conspirators for gold at the Bank of England, and again the same day a second conspirator exchanged the gold for notes.

But just as all promised well, the frauds were detected through the carelessness of the forgers.

They had omitted to insert the dates in certain bills.

The bills were sent as a matter of form to the drawer to have the date added, and the forgery was at once detected.

Noyes was seized without difficulty, as it was a part of the scheme that he should act as the dupe, and remain on the spot in London till all the money was obtained.

Through Noyes the rest of the conspirators were eventually apprehended.

Very little if any of the ill-gotten proceeds, however, was ever recovered.

Large sums, as they were realized, were transmitted to the United States, and invested in various American securities, where probably the money still remains.

The prisoners, who were committed to Newgate for trial, had undoubtedly the command of large funds while there, and would have readily disbursed it to effect their enlargement.

A plot was soon discovered, deep laid, and with many ramifications, by which some of the Newgate warders were to be bribed to allow the prisoners to escape from their cells at night.

Certain friends of the prisoners were watched, and found to be in communication with these warders, to whom it was said £100 apiece had been given down as the price of their infidelity.

Further sums were to have been paid after the escape; and one warder admitted that he was to have £1000 more paid to him, and to be provided with a passage to Australia.

The vigilance of the Newgate officials, assisted by the city police, completely frustrated this plot.

A second was nevertheless set on foot, in which the plan of action was changed, and the freedom of the prisoners was to be obtained by means of a rescue from the dock during the trial.

An increase of policemen on duty sufficed to prevent any attempt of this kind.

Nor were these two abortive efforts all that were planned.

A year or two after, when the prisoners were undergoing their life sentences of penal servitude, much uneasiness was caused at one of the convict prisons by information that bribery on a large scale was again at work amongst the officials.

But extra precautions and close supervision have so far proved effectual, and the prisoners are still in custody after a lapse of ten years.

I propose to end at this point the detailed account of the more prominent criminal cases which lodged their perpetrators in Newgate.

The most recent affairs are still too fresh in the public mind to need more than a passing reference.

Few of the Newgate notorieties of late years show any marked peculiarities; their crimes follow in the lines of others already found, and often more than once, in the calendars.

Violent passions too easily aroused prompted the Frenchwoman Marguerite Dixblanc to murder her mistress, Madame Riel, in Park Lane, as Courvoisier, the Swiss, had been tempted to murder Lord William Russell.

Greed in the latter case was a secondary motive; it was the principal incentive with Kate Webster, that fierce and brutal female savage who took the life of her mistress at Richmond.

Webster, it may be mentioned here, was one of the worst prisoners ever remembered in Newgate--most violent in temper, and addicted to the most frightful language.

Webster's devices for disposing of the body of her victim will call to mind those of Theodore Gardelle, of Good, and Greenacre, and Catherine Hayes.

Greed in another form led the Stauntons to make away with Mrs. Patrick Staunton, murdering her with devilish cruelty by slow degrees.

The judge, Sir Henry Hawkins, in passing sentence characterized this as a crime more black and hideous than any in the criminal annals of the country.

But it was scarcely worse than that of Mrs. Brownrigg, or that of the Meteyards, both of whom did their helpless apprentices to death.

It was to effect the rupture of an irksome tie that led Henry Wainwright to murder Harriet Lane deliberately and in cold blood.

In this case the tie was unsanctified, but it was not more inconvenient than that which urged Greenacre to a similar crime.

In cold-blooded premeditation it rivalled that of the Mannings.

As in that case, the grave had been dug long in anticipation, and the chloride of lime purchased to destroy the corpse.

Henry Wainwright's attempt to get rid of the body was ingenious, but not original, and the circumstances which led to detection were scarcely novel proofs of the old adage that murder will out.

Henry Wainwright's impassioned denial of his crime, even after it had been brought fully home to him, has many parallels in the criminal records.

His disclaimer, distinct and detailed on every point, was intended simply for effect.

He might swear he was not the murderer, that he never fired a pistol in his life, and that, in spite of the verdict of the jury, "he left the dock with a calm and quiet conscience;" but there was no doubt of his guilt, as the Lord Chief Justice told him, while expressing great regret at his rash assertion.

Wainwright's demeanour after sentence has been described in the last chapter.

Doubts were long entertained whether Thomas Wainwright, who was convicted as an accessory after the fact, had not really taken an active part in the murder.

But a conversation overheard between the two brothers in Newgate satisfactorily exonerated Thomas Wainwright.

Poisoning has still its victims.

Christina Edmunds had resort to strychnia, the same lethal drug that Palmer used; her object being first to dispose of the wife of a man for whom she had conceived a guilty passion, then to divert suspicion from herself by throwing it on a confectioner, whose sweetmeats she bought, tampered with, and returned to the shop.

The trial of Miss Edmunds was transferred to the Central Criminal Court under Lord Campbell's Act, already referred to.

She was found guilty.

It will be remembered that she made a statement which led to the empanelling of a jury of matrons, who decided that there was no cause for an arrest of judgment.

Kate Webster followed the same course;

but these pleas of pregnancy are not common now-a-days.

Although sentence of death was passed on Edmunds, it was commuted to penal servitude for life; but she eventually passed into Broadmoor Lunatic Asylum, where she busies herself with water-colour drawing.

The still more recent cases of poisoning which have occurred were not connected with Newgate.

The mysterious Bravo case, that of Dr. Lamson, and that of Kate Dover unhappily show that society is more than ever at the mercy of the insidious and unscrupulous administration of poisonous drugs.

A case reproducing many of the features of the 'Flowery Land' occurred twelve years later, when the crew of the 'Lennie' mutinied, murdered the captain and mates, sparing the steward only on condition that he would navigate the ship to the Mediterranean.

The mutineers were of the same stamp as the crew of the 'Flowery Land'--foreigners, vindictive, reckless, and truculent ruffians, easily moved to murderous rage.

The 'Lennie's' men were all Greeks, except one known as French Peter, who was the ringleader, and who had long been an habitual criminal, a reputed murderer, and certainly an inmate more than once of a French _bagne_.

Conviction was obtained through the evidence of the steward and two of the least culpable of the crew.

In Newgate the 'Lennie' mutineers were extremely well behaved.

Resolute, determined-looking men, their courage broke down in confinement.

They paid close attention to the counsels of the archimandrite, and died quite penitent.

A story is told of one of them, "Big Harry," the wildest and most cut-throat looking of the lot, which proves that he could be grateful for kindness, and was not all bad.

He had steadfastly refused to eat meat on some religions scruples, and for the same reason would not touch soup.

He was glad, therefore, to get an extra allowance of bread, and to show his gratitude to the warder who procured this privilege for him, he made him a present.

It was his own handiwork--a bird pecking at a flower; the whole manufactured while in the condemned cell of the crumb of bread made into paste.

The flower had berries also of bread fixed on stems made from the fibre drawn from the stuffing of his mattrass, and the bird's legs were a couple of teeth broken off the prisoner's comb.

Of the lesser criminals, forgers, thieves, swindlers, Newgate continued to receive its full share up to the last.

But there were few cases so remarkable as the great ones already recorded.

Mr. Bamell Oakley made a rich harvest for a time, and was said at the time of his trial to have obtained as much as £40,000 by false and fraudulent pretences.

Messrs. Swindlehurst, Saffery, and Langley cleared a large profit by swindling the Artisans' Dwellings Company; and Madame Rachel passed through Newgate on her way to Millbank convicted of obtaining jewellery under the false pretence of making silly women "beautiful for ever."

The greatest _causes célèbre_, however, of recent times were the turf frauds by which the Comtesse de Goncourt was swindled out of large sums in sham sporting speculations.

The conviction of the principals in this nefarious transaction, Benson, the two Kurrs, Bale, and Murray, led to strange revelations of dishonest practices amongst the detective police, and was followed by the arraignment and conviction in their turn of Meiklejohn, Druscovich, Palmer, and Froggatt.

CHAPTER XI NEWGATE REFORMED.

Movement towards prison reform--Pentonville 'model' prison built--Extension of the movement--Opposing views as to _silence_ and _separation_--Widely different treatment of criminals in various prisons--Mr. Pearson's committee--His proposed system explained--Attention again attracted to Newgate--Most of the old evils still rampant, and scarcely any enforcement of discipline--Some attempt to exercise supervision, and minor improvements introduced--Scheme of reconstruction by Lord John Russell found impracticable, and Holloway selected for a new city prison--Subsequent reconstruction of Newgate on cellular principle--Committee of House of Lords inquire into whole subject of criminal treatment, and recommend extensive changes, with uniformity of system--Prison Act 1865 embodies most of these recommendations--Finally, an Act passed in 1877 transferring prisons to the Government, and Newgate closed.