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.

The course of the swindlers was by no means smooth, but it was not till 1854 that suspicion arose that anything was wrong. A firm which held a lot of warrants suddenly demanded the delivery of the goods they covered. The goods having no existence, Cole of course could not deliver them. About this time Davidson and Gordon, the people above-mentioned, who had fraudulent warrants out of their own to the extent of £150,000, suspended payment and absconded. This affected Cole’s credit, and ugly reports were in circulation charging him with the issue of simulated warrants. These indeed were out to the value of £367,800. Cole’s difficulties increased more and more; warrant-holders came down upon him demanding to realize their goods. Cole now suspended payment. Maltby, who had bolted, was pursued and arrested, to end his life miserably by committing suicide in a Newgate cell. Cole too was apprehended, and in due course tried at the Central Criminal Court. He was found guilty, and sentenced to the seemingly inadequate punishment of four years’ transportation. Davidson and Gordon were also sentenced to imprisonment.

A more distressing case stands next on the criminal records—the failure and subsequent sentence of the bankers Messrs. Strahan, Paul, and Bates, for the fraudulent disposal of securities lodged in their hands. This firm was one of the oldest banking establishments in the kingdom, and dated back to the Commonwealth, when, under the title of Snow and Walton, it carried on business as pawnbrokers. The Strahan of the firm which came to grief was a Snow who changed his name for a fortune of £200,000; he was a man esteemed and respected in society and the world of finance, incapable as it was thought of a dishonest deed. Sir John Dean Paul had inherited a baronetcy from his father, together with an honoured name; he was himself a prominent member of the Low Church, of austere piety, active in all good works. Mr. Bates had been confidential managing clerk, and was taken into the firm not alone as a reward for long and faithful service, but that he might strengthen it by his long experience and known business capacity. The bank enjoyed an excellent reputation, it had a good connection, and was supposed to be perfectly sound. Moreover, the partners were sober, steady men, who paid unremitting attention to business. Yet even so early as the death of the first Sir John Paul, the bank was insolvent, and instead of starting on a fresh life with a new name, it should then and there have closed its doors. In December 1851 the balance sheet showed a deficiency of upwards of £70,000. The bank had been conducted on false principles; it had assumed enormous responsibilities—on one side by the ownership of the Mostyn collieries, a valueless property, and on the other by backing up an impecunious and rotten firm of contractors with vast liabilities and pledged to impossible works abroad. The engagements of the bank on these two heads amounting to nearly half a million of money, produced immediate embarrassment and financial distress.

The bank was already insolvent, and the partners had to decide between suspending payment or continuing to hold its head above water by flagitious processes. They chose, unhappily for themselves, the latter alternative. Money they must have, and money they raised to meet their urgent necessities upon the balances and securities deposited with them by their customers. This borrowing continued, and on such a scale that their paper was soon at a discount, and the various discount houses would not advance sufficient sums to relieve the necessities of the bank. Then it was that instead of merely pledging securities, the bank sold them outright, and thus passed the Rubicon of fraud. This went on for some time, and might never have been discovered had some good stroke of luck provided any of the partners with money enough to retrieve the position of the bank. But that passed from bad to worse; the firm’s paper went down further and further in value; an application to the Committee of Bankers for assistance was peremptorily refused, then came a run on the bank, and it was compelled to stop payment. Its debts amounted to three-quarters of a million, and the dividend it eventually paid was three and twopence in the pound. But worse than the bankruptcy was the confession made by the partners in the court. They admitted that they had made away with many of the securities intrusted to their keeping. Following this, warrants were issued for their arrest, the specific charge being the unlawful negotiation of Danish bonds and other shares belonging to the Rev. Dr. Griffiths of Rochester, to the value of £20,000.

Bates was at once captured in Norfolk Street, Strand. Police officers went down at night to Nutfield, near Reigate, and arrested Sir John Paul, but allowed the prisoner to sleep there. Next morning they only just saved the train to town, and left Sir John behind on the platform, but he subsequently surrendered himself. Mr. Strahan was arrested at a friend’s house in Bryanston Square. All three were tried at the Central Criminal Court, and sentenced to fourteen years’ transportation, passing some time in Newgate en route. Bates, the least guilty, was pardoned in 1858.

Two cases of extensive embezzlement which were discovered almost simultaneously, those of Robson and Redpath, will long be remembered both within and without the commercial world. They both reproduced many of the features of the case of Watts, already described, but in neither did the sums misappropriated reach quite the same high figure. But neither Robson nor Redpath would have been able to pursue their fraudulent designs with success had they not, like Watts, been afforded peculiar facilities by the slackness of system and the want of methodical administration in the concerns by which they were employed. Robson was of humble origin, but he was well educated, and he had some literary abilities. His proclivities were theatrical, and he was the author of several plays, one at least of which, ‘Love and Loyalty,’ with Wallack in a leading part, achieved a certain success. He began life as a law-writer, earning thereby some fifteen or eighteen shillings a week; but the firm he served got him a situation as clerk in the office of the Great Northern Railway, whence he passed to a better position under the Crystal Palace Company. He now married, although his salary was only a pound a week; but he soon got on. He had a pleasant address, showed good business aptitudes, and quickly acquired the approval of his superiors. Within a year he was advanced to the post of chief clerk in the transfer department, at a salary of £150 a year. His immediate chief was a Mr. Fasson, upon whose confidence he gained so rapidly, through his activity, industry, and engaging manners, that ere long the whole management of the transfer department was intrusted to him.

Some time elapsed before Robson succumbed to temptation. He was not the first man of loose morality and expensive tastes who preferred to risk his future reputation and liberty to the present discomfort of living upon narrow means. The temptation was all the greater because the chances of successful fraud lay ready to hand. Shares in the company were represented by certificates, which often enough never left the company’s, or more exactly Robson’s, hands. He conceived the idea of transferring shares, bogus shares from a person who held none, to any one who would buy them in the open market. He took it for granted that the certificates representing these bogus shares, and which practically did not exist, would never be called for. This ingenious method of raising funds he adopted and carried on without detection, till the defalcations from fraudulent transfers and fraudulent issues combined amounted to £27,000. With the proceeds of these flagitious frauds Robson feasted and made merry. He kept open house at Kilburn Priory; entertained literary, artistic, and dramatic celebrities; had a smart “turn out,” attended all the race-meetings, and dressed in the latest fashion. To his wife, poor soul, he made no pretence of fidelity, and she enjoyed only so much of his company as was necessarily spent in receiving guests at home, or could be spared from two rival establishments in other parts of the town. To account for his revenues he pretended to have been very lucky on the Stock Exchange, which was at one time true to a limited extent, and to have succeeded in other speculations. When his friends asked why he, a wealthy man of independent means, continued to slave on as a clerk on a pittance, he replied gaily that his regular work at the Crystal Palace office was useful as a sort of discipline, and kept him steady.

All this time his position was one of extreme insecurity. He was standing over a mine which at any moment might explode. The blow fell suddenly, and when least expected. One morning Mr. Fasson asked casually for certain certificates, whether representing real or fictitious shares does not appear; but they were certificates connected in some way with Robson’s long-practised frauds, and he could not produce them. His chief asked sternly where they were. Robson said they were at Kilburn Priory. “Let us go to Kilburn for them together,” said Mr. Fasson, growing suspicious. They drove there, and Robson on arrival did the honours of his house, rang for lunch to gain time, but at Mr. Fasson’s pressing demands went upstairs to fetch the certificates. He came back to explain that he had mislaid them. Mr. Fasson, more and more ill at ease, would not accept this subterfuge, and declared they must be found. Robson again left him, but only to gather together hastily all the money and valuables on which he could lay his hands, with which he left the house. Mr. Fasson waited and waited for his subordinate to re-appear, and at last discovered his flight. A reward was forthwith offered for Robson’s apprehension. Meanwhile the absconding clerk had coolly driven to a favourite dining-place in the West End, where a fish curry and a brace of partridges were set before him, and he discussed the latter with appetite, but begged that they would never give him curry again, as he did not like it. After dinner he went into hiding for a day or two, then, accompanied by a lady, not Mrs. Robson, he took steamer and started for Copenhagen. But the continental police had been warned to look out for him, and two Danish inspectors got upon his track, followed him over to Sweden, and arrested him at Helsingfors. Thence he was transferred to Copenhagen and surrendered in due course to a London police officer.

Little more remains to be said about Robson. He appears to have accepted his position, and to have at once resigned himself to his fate. When brought to trial he took matters very coolly, and at first pleaded “Not Guilty,” but subsequently withdrew the plea. Sergeant Ballantine, who prosecuted, paid him the compliment of describing him as “a young man of great intelligence, considerable powers of mind, and possessed of an education very much beyond the rank of life to which he originally belonged.” Robson was found guilty, and sentenced to two terms of transportation, one for twenty and one for fourteen years. Newgate officers who remember Robson still describe him as a fine young man, who behaved well as a prisoner, but who had all the appearance of a careless, thoughtless, happy-go-lucky fellow.

In many respects the embezzlement of which Leopold Redpath was guilty closely resembled that of Robson, but it was based upon more extended and audacious forgeries. Redpath’s crime arose from his peculiar and independent position as registrar of stock of the Great Northern Railway Company. This offered him great facilities for the creation of artificial stock, its sale from a fictitious holder, and transfer to himself. All the signatures in the transfer were forged. Not only did he thus transfer and realize “bogus” stock, but he bought bonâ fide amounts, and increased their value by altering the figures, by inserting say 1 before 500, and thus making it £1500, which larger amount was duly carried to his credit on the register, and entered upon the certificates of transfer. By these means Redpath misappropriated vast sums during a period extending over ten years. The total amount was never exactly made out, but the false stock created and issued by him was estimated at £220,000. Even when the bubble burst Redpath, who had lived at the rate of twenty thousand a year, had assets in the shape of land, house, furniture, pictures, and objets d’art to the value of £50,000.

He began in a very small way. First a lawyer’s clerk, he then got an appointment in the Peninsular and Oriental Company’s office; afterwards he set up as an insurance broker on his own account, but presently failed. His fault was generosity, an open-handed, unthinking charity which gave freely to the poor and needy the money which belonged to his creditors. After his bankruptcy he obtained a place as clerk in the Great Northern Railway office, from which he rose to be assistant registrar, with the special duties of transferring shares. He soon proved his ability, and by unremitting attention mastered the whole work of the office. Later on he became registrar, and in this more independent position developed to a colossal extent the frauds he had already practised as a subordinate. Now he launched out into great expenditure, took a house in Chester Terrace, and became known as a Mæcenas and patron of the arts. He had a nice taste in bric-à-brac, and was considered a good judge of pictures. Leading social and artistic personages were to be met with at his house, and his hospitality was far famed. The choicest wines, the finest fruits, peas at ten shillings a quart, five-guinea pines, and early asparagus were to be found on his table. But his chief extravagance, his favourite folly, was the exercise of an ostentatious benevolence. The philanthropy he had displayed in a small way when less prosperous became now a passion. His name headed every subscription list; his purse was always open. Not content with giving where assistance was solicited, he himself sought out deserving cases and personally afforded relief. When the crash came there were pensioners and other recipients of his bounty who could not believe that so good a man had really been for years a swindler and a rogue. Down at Weybridge, where he had a country place, his name was long remembered with gratitude by the poor. During the days of his prosperity he was a governor of Christ’s Hospital, of the St. Ann’s Society, and one of the supporters and managers of the Patriotic Fund. In his person he was neat and fastidious; he patronized the best tailors, and had a fashionable coiffeur from Hanover Square daily to curl his hair.

There was something dramatic in Redpath’s detection. Just after Robson’s frauds had agitated the minds of all directors of companies, the chairman of the Great Northern (Mr. Denison) was standing at a railway station talking to a certain well-known peer of the realm. Redpath passed and lifted his hat to his chairman; the latter acknowledged the salute. But the peer rushed forward and shook Redpath warmly by the hand. “What do you know of our clerk?” asked Mr. Denison of his lordship. “Only that he is a capital fellow, who gives the best dinners and balls in town.” Redpath had industriously circulated reports that he had prospered greatly in speculation; but the chairman of the Great Northern could not realize that a clerk of the company could honestly be in the possession of unlimited wealth. It was at once decided at the board to make a thorough examination of all his books. Redpath was called in and informed of the intended investigation. He tried to stave off the evil hour by declaring that everything was perfectly right; but finding he could not escape, he said he would resign his post, and leaving the board-room, disappeared.

The inquiry soon revealed the colossal character of the frauds. Warrants were issued for Redpath’s arrest, but he had flown to Paris. Thither police officers followed, only to find that he had returned to London. A further search discovered him at breakfast at a small house in the New Road. He was arrested, examined before a police magistrate, and committed to Newgate. Great excitement prevailed in the city and the West End when Redpath’s defalcations were made public. The Stock Market was greatly affected, and society, more especially that which frequents Exeter Hall, was convulsed. The Central Criminal Court, when the trial came on, was densely crowded, and many curious eyes were turned upon the somewhat remarkable man who occupied the dock. He is described by a contemporary account as a fresh-looking man of forty years of age, slightly bald, inclined to embonpoint, and thoroughly embodying the idea of English respectability. His manner was generally self-possessed, but his face was marked with “uneasy earnestness,” and he looked about him with wayward, furtive glances. When the jury found a verdict of guilty he remained unmoved. He listened without emotion to the judge’s well-merited censures, and received his sentence of transportation for life without much surprise. Redpath passed away into the outer darkness of a penal colony, where he was still living a year or two back. But his name lingers still in this country as that of the first swindler of his time, and the prototype of a class not uncommon in our later days—that of dishonest rogues who assume piety and philanthropy as a cloak for their misdeeds.

In Newgate Redpath is remembered by the prison officer as a difficult man to deal with. From the moment of his reception he gave himself great airs, as a martyr and a man heavily wronged. By-and-by, when escape seemed hopeless, and after sentence, he suddenly degenerated into the lowest stamp of criminal, and behaved so as to justify a belief that he had been a gaol-bird all his life.

It has been already remarked in these pages that with changed social conditions came a great change in the character of crimes. Highway robberies, for instance, had disappeared, if we except the spasmodic and severely repressed outbreak of “garotting,” which at one time spread terror throughout London. Thieves preferred now to use ingenuity rather than brute force. It was no longer possible to stop a coach or carriage, or rob the postman who carried the mail. The improved methods of locomotion had put a stop to these depredations. People travelled in company, as a rule; only when single and unprotected were they in any danger of attack, and that but rarely. There were still big prizes, however, to tempt the daring, and none appealed more to the thievish instinct than the custom of transmitting gold by rail. The precious metal was sent from place to place carefully locked up and guarded, no doubt; but were the precautions too minute, the vigilance too close to be eluded or overcome? This was the question which presented itself to the fertile brain of one Pierce, who had been concerned in various “jobs” of a dishonest character, and who for the moment was a clerk in a betting office. He laid the suggestion before Agar, a professional thief, who was of opinion it contained elements of success. But the collusion and active assistance of employés of the railway carriers were indispensable, and together they sounded one Burgess, a guard on the South-Eastern Railway, a line by which large quantities of bullion were sent to the Continent. Burgess detailed the whole system of transmission. The gold, packed in an iron-bound box, was securely lodged in safes locked with patent Chubbs. Each safe had three sets of double keys, all held by confidential servants of the company. One pair was with the traffic superintendent in London, another with an official in Folkestone, a third with the captain of the Folkestone and Boulogne boat. At the other side of the Channel the French railway authorities took charge.

The safes while on the line en route between London and Folkestone were in the guard’s van. This was an important step, and they might easily be robbed some day when Burgess was the guard, provided only that they could be opened. The next step was to get impressions and fabricate false keys. A new accomplice was now needed within the company’s establishment, and Pierce looked about long before he found the right person. At last he decided to enlist one Tester, a clerk in the traffic department, whom he thought would prove a likely tool. The four waited patiently for their opportunity, which came when the safes were sent to Chubbs’ to be repaired; and Chubbs sent them back, but only with one key, in such a way that Tester had possession of this key for a time. He lent it to Agar for a brief space, who promptly took an impression on wax. But the safes had a double lock; the difficulty was to get a copy of the second key. This was at length effected by Agar and Pierce. After hanging about the Folkestone office for some time, they saw at last that the key was kept in a certain cupboard. Still watching and waiting for the first chance, they seized it when the clerks left the office empty for a moment. Pierce boldly stepped in, found the cupboard unlocked; he removed the key, handed it to Agar outside, who quickly took the wax impression, handed it back to Pierce; Pierce replaced it, left the office, and the thing was done.

After this nothing remained but to wait for some occasion when the amount transmitted would be sufficient to justify the risks of robbery. It was Tester’s business, who had access to the railway company’s books, to watch for this. Meanwhile the others completed their preparations with the utmost care. A weight of shot was bought and stowed in carpet bags ready to replace exactly the abstracted gold. Courier bags were bought to carry the “stuff” slung over the shoulders; and last, but not least, Agar frequently travelled up and down the line to test the false keys he had manufactured with Pierce’s assistance. Burgess admitted him into the guard’s van, where he fitted and filed the keys till they worked easily and satisfactorily in the locks of the safe. One night Tester whispered to Agar and Pierce, “All right,” as they cautiously lounged about London Bridge. The thieves took first-class tickets, handed their bags full of shot to the porters, who placed them in the guard’s van. Just as the train was starting Agar slipped into the van with Burgess, and Pierce got into a first-class carriage. Agar at once got to work on the first safe, opened it, took out and broke into the bullion box, removed the gold, substituted the shot from a carpet bag, re-fastened and re-sealed the bullion box, and replaced it in the safe. At Redhill Tester met the train and relieved the thieves of a portion of the stolen gold. At the same station Pierce joined Agar in the guard’s van, and there were now three to carry on the robbery. The two remaining safes were attacked and nearly entirely despoiled in the same way as the first, and the contents transferred to the courier bags. The train was now approaching Folkestone, and Agar and Pierce hid themselves in a dark part of the van. At that station the safes were given out, heavy with shot, not gold; the thieves went on to Dover, and by-and-by, with Ostend tickets previously procured, returned to London without mishap, and by degrees disposed of much of the stolen gold.

The theft was discovered at Boulogne, when the boxes were found not to weigh exactly what they ought. But no clue was obtained to the thieves, and the theft might have remained a mystery but for the subsequent bad faith of Pierce to his accomplice Agar. The latter was ere long arrested on a charge of uttering forged cheques, convicted, and sentenced to transportation for life. When he knew that he could not escape his fate, he handed over to Pierce a sum of £3000, his own, whether rightly or wrongly acquired never came out, together with the unrealized part of the bullion, amounting in all to some £15,000, and begged his accomplice to invest it as a settlement on a woman named Kay, by whom he had had a child. Pierce made Kay only a few small payments, then appropriated the rest of the money. Kay, who had been living with Agar at the time of the bullion robbery, went to the police in great fury and distress, and disclosed all she knew of the affair. Agar too, in Newgate, heard how Pierce had treated him, and at once readily turned approver. As the evidence he gave incriminated Pierce, Burgess, and Tester, all three were arrested and committed to Newgate for trial. The whole strange story, the long incubation and the elaborate accomplishment of the plot, came out at the Old Bailey, and was acknowledged to be one of the most extraordinary on record.

Scarcely had the conviction of these daring and astute thieves been assured, than another gigantic fraud was brought to light. The series of boldly-conceived and cleverly-executed forgeries in which James Townshend Saward, commonly called “Jem the Penman,” was the prime mover, has probably no parallel in the annals of crime. Saward himself is a striking and in some respects an unique figure in criminal history. A man of birth and education, a member of the bar, and of acknowledged legal attainments, his proclivities were all downward. Instead of following an honourable profession, he preferred to turn his great natural talents and ready wits to the most nefarious practices. He was known to the whole criminal fraternity as a high-class receiver of stolen goods, a negotiator more especially of stolen paper, cheques and bills, of which he made a particular use. He dealt too in the precious metals, when they had been improperly acquired, and it was to him that Agar, Pierce, and the rest applied when seeking to dispose of their stolen bullion. But Saward’s operations were mainly directed to the fabrication and uttering of forged cheques. His method was comprehensive and deeply laid. Burglars brought him the cheques they stole from houses, thieves what they got in pocket-books. Cheques blank and cancelled were his stock-in-trade. The former he filled up by exact imitation of the latter, signature and all. When he could get nothing but the blank cheque, he set in motion all sorts of schemes for obtaining signatures, such as commencing sham actions, and addressing formal applications, merely for the reply. One stroke of luck which he turned to great account was the return from transportation of an old “pal” and confederate, who brought with him some bills of exchange.

Saward’s method of negotiating the cheques was equally well planned. Like his great predecessor Old Patch,[118] he never went to a bank himself, nor did any of his accomplices. The bearer of the cheque was always innocent and ignorant of the fraudulent nature of the document he presented. In order to obtain messengers of this sort, Saward answered advertisements of persons seeking employment, and when these presented themselves, intrusted them as a beginning with the duty of cashing cheques. A confederate followed the emissary closely, not only to insure fair play and the surrender of the proceeds if the cheque was cashed, but to give timely notice if it was not, so that Saward and the rest might make themselves scarce. As each transaction was carried out from a different address, and a different messenger always employed, the forgers always escaped detection. But fate overtook two of the gang, partly through their own carelessness, when transferring their operations to Yarmouth. One named Hardwicke assumed the name of Ralph, and, to obtain commercial credit in Yarmouth, paid in £250 to a Yarmouth bank as coming from a Mr. Whitney. He forgot to add that it was to be placed to Ralph’s credit, and when he called as Ralph, he was told it was only at Mr. Whitney’s disposal, and that it could be paid to no one else. Hardwicke, or “Ralph,” appealed to Saward in his difficulty, and that clever schemer sent an elaborate letter of instructions how to ask for the money. But while Hardwicke was in communication with Saward, the bank was in communication with London, and the circumstances were deemed sufficiently suspicious to warrant the arrest of the gentlemen at Yarmouth on a charge of forgery and conspiracy.

Saward’s letter to Hardwicke fell into the hands of the police and compromised him. While Hardwicke and Atwell were in Newgate awaiting trial, active search was made for Saward, who was at length taken in a coffee-shop near Oxford Street, under the name of Hopkins. He resisted at first, and denied his identity, but on being searched, two blank cheques of the London and Westminster Bank were found in his pocket. He then confessed that he was the redoubtable Jem Saward, or Jem the Penman, and was conveyed to a police-court, and thence to Newgate. At his trial Atwell and Hardwicke, two of his chief allies and accomplices, turned approvers, and the whole scheme of systematic forgery was laid bare. The evidence was corroborated by that of many of the victims who had acted as messengers, and others who swore to the meetings of the conspirators and their movements. Saward was found guilty, and the judge, in passing sentence on him of transportation for life, expressed deep regret that “the ingenuity, skill, and talent, which had received so perverted and mistaken direction, had not been guided by a sense of virtue, and directed to more honourable and useful pursuits.” The proceeds of these forgeries amounted, it was said, to some thousands per annum. Saward spent all his share at low gaming houses, and in all manner of debaucheries. He was in person a short, square-built man of gentlemanly address, sharp and shrewd in conversation and manner. He was fifty-eight at the time of his conviction, and had therefore enjoyed a long innings.

CHAPTER IX.

LATER RECORDS.

THE old notion always prevailed that Newgate was impregnable, so to speak, from within, and that none of its inmates could hope to escape from its secure precincts. Yet the gaol, in spite of its fortress-like aspect, was by no means really safe. Year after year prisoners determined to get free, and occasionally succeeded in their efforts. The inspectors’ reports mention many cases of evasion accomplished. There were others less successful. Charles Thomas White, awaiting execution for arson, made a desperate effort to escape from Newgate in 1827. He had friends and auxiliaries inside the gaol and out. The cell he occupied was near the outer wall, and had he but been able to remove its iron bars, he might have descended into Newgate Street by means of a rope ladder. The ladder was actually made, of black sewing-thread firmly and closely interwoven. But White could not remove the bars; the instruments needed for the purpose never reached him. It was noticed that he was most anxious to receive a pair of shoes for which he had asked, and when they arrived they were closely examined. Sewn in between the upper and lower leathers several spring saws were found, which would have easily cut through any bars. White, when taxed with his attempt, admitted that the accusation was true, and spoke “with pride and satisfaction of the practicability of his scheme.”

There is an attempt at escape mentioned in Mr. Wakefield’s book, which might have been an intended suicide. John Williams, a young fellow only twenty-three years of age, awaited execution in 1827 for stealing in a dwelling-house. On the very morning on which he was to suffer he eluded the vigilance, such as it was, of his officers, and climbed up the pipe of a cistern in the corner of the press yard; some thought with the idea of drowning himself. He never reached the cistern, but fell back into the yard, injuring his legs severely. Although his execution was imminent, a surgeon attended to his wounds, and he was carried more dead than alive to the scaffold. A harrowing scene followed; the wounds broke open and bled profusely while the last dread penalty was being performed, to the manifest excitement and indignation of the crowd.

A more daring and skilful escape was effected in 1836 by the chimney-sweep Henry Williams, who, while detained in the press-yard as a capital convict, under sentence of death for burglary, managed to get away in the very same spot where his namesake had nine years before so miserably failed. Escape seemed absolutely hopeless, and would certainly have been impossible to any one less nimble than a chimney-sweep, trained under the old system to ascend the most intricate flues. Even after Williams had got out, persons were disposed to disbelieve that the escape had been accomplished in the manner indicated; they preferred to credit it to carelessness or collusion from officers of the gaol. Yet from the circumstantial account given by Williams after recapture, there can be little doubt that he got away as will be described. Williams as a capital convict was lodged in the press-yard or condemned ward. He had access to the airing yard, and there was for hours no kind of supervision. In one corner of the airing yard stood a cistern at some height from the ground; the wall beneath and above it was “rusticated,” in other words, the granite surface had become roughened, and offered a sort of foothold. About fifty feet from the ground level, and above the cistern, a revolving chevaux-de-frise of iron was fixed, with only a short interval between it and the wall, supported by a horizontal iron railing with upright points; in the wall above the chevaux-de-frise projected a series of iron spikes sharp enough to forbid further ascent. Williams surveyed these formidable obstacles to evasion, and calmly proceeded to surmount them. His first task was to gain the top of the cistern; this he effected by keeping his back to one side of the angle, and working with his hands behind him, while he used his bare feet like claws upon the other side of the wall angle. The condition of the stone surface just mentioned assisted him in this, and he managed to get beyond the cistern to the railing below the chevaux-de-frise. The least slip now would have been fatal to him. But he could not thrust his body in through the narrow space left by the chevaux-de-frise, and was compelled to work along the railing round three-quarters of the square of the yard, and at length reached a point opposite the top of the building containing the condemned wards. This had been a perilous and painful task; the spikes of the railing penetrated his flesh and made progression slow and difficult. But the worst part of the business was to jump from this irksome foothold of the iron grating on to the top of the building just mentioned, a distance of eight or nine feet. He had here completed his ascent. His next job was to descend outside Newgate. Clambering along the roof, he passed to the top of the ordinary’s residence, hoping to find an open sky-light by which he might enter and so work downstairs. If the worst came to the worst, he intended to have gone down some chimney, as he had often done before in the way of business. But he did not like the risk of entering a room by the fireplace, and the chances of detection it offered.

He traversed vainly all the roofs in Newgate Street, running a great risk of discovery as he passed by a lot of workmen at Tyler’s manufactory in Warwick Square, which had formerly been the College of Physicians. As his coat was an incumbrance, he left it on the top of the third house in Newgate Street, and thus in shirt-sleeves, barefoot and bareheaded, he worked along to the roofs in Warwick Lane. Here he came upon a woman on the leads hanging out clothes to dry. Williams concealed himself behind a chimney till she had re-entered her garret, and then following her down a step ladder into the house, told his story, appealed to and won her compassion. She suffered him to pass downstairs. Below he met another woman and a girl, both of whom were terrified at his appearance, but when he explained that he was running away from the gallows they left him the road clear. To walk out into the street was an easy affair, and he was now free, with one and fourpence in his pocket and a shirt and trousers for all his clothing. Denied admission everywhere as a ragged, half-naked beggar, he tramped across London Bridge to Wandsworth, where he refreshed himself with a pint of strong ale, the first sustenance he had taken since his escape, and continued his march to Kingston, where he slept soundly under a hedge till next morning. Entering a town, he obtained employment at once as a chimney-sweep from a widow woman, who gave him “bub and grub,” or food and one-and-sixpence, for every nine days’ work. Dissatisfied with this remuneration, he again took to the road, and tramped into Hampshire, where he presently committed a burglary at Lymington, was caught, and lodged in Winchester Gaol. Mr. Cope, the governor of Newgate, having been communicated with, proceeded to Winchester, where he at once identified Williams.

The success, although very short-lived, which attended him, no doubt inspired other inmates of Newgate to follow his example. It was for some time after this a constant practice to go up the chimneys in the hopes of escaping by the flue. Even then, however, irons across barred the ascent after a certain distance, and in no one case did a fugitive get clear away. A man named Lears, under sentence of transportation for an attempt at murder on board ship, got up part of the way, but had to come down again covered with soot and filth just as the officers entered the ward. Lears was rewarded by being obliged to wear cross irons on his legs, a punishment rarely inflicted in Newgate, and probably one of the few cases of a recurrence, but under proper safeguards and limitations, to the old system of chains. On another occasion Mr. Cope the governor came in and missed a man. The ward was one short of its number. What had become of the fellow? No one would answer. It was summer-time, and the grate was empty, but the governor promptly ordered a fire to be lighted. The effect was nearly instantaneous; the fugitive, uncomfortably ensconced in the flue, came down of his own accord, like Colonel Colt’s racoon. After this great iron guards, just as are to be seen in lunatic asylums, were fixed over the fireplaces, and the prisoners had no longer access to the chimneys.

Among the escapes still remembered was one in 1849, accomplished by a man who had been employed working at the roof of the chapel on the female side. He was engaged in whitewashing and cleaning; the officer who had him in charge left him on the stairs leading to the gallery. Taking advantage of being unobserved, he got out through the roof on to the leads, and travelled along them towards No. 1, Newgate Street. This was a public-house. He stepped in at a garret window, coolly walked downstairs, and entered the bar. They asked him how he had cut his hand, which was bleeding, and he said he had done it while working up on the roof. No further notice was taken of him; no one seemingly suspected that he was a prisoner, and he was suffered to walk off without let or hindrance.

In 1853 three men escaped in company from one of the wards in the middle yard. They were penal servitude men, their names Bell, Brown, and Barry, and they were awaiting transfer to Leicester, which with Wakefield was utilized as a receptacle for convicts not going to Western Australia, or any of the new establishments at home, at Portland, Dartmoor, or elsewhere. These men managed to cut a hole in the ceiling of the ward near the iron cage[119] on the landing, and so got access to the roof. At that time rope mats were still used as beds. One of the three, shamming ill, remained all day in his ward, where he employed himself unravelling the rope from the sleeping-mats. By evening he manufactured a good long length, and after all was quiet the three got on to the roof through the hole, and so on to Tyler’s manufactory close by, whence they let themselves down into the street by the rope. These men were all in prison dress at the time of their escape, but one of their number, Bell, sent back his clothes a few days later by parcel’s delivery, with a civil note to the governor, saying he had no further use for them. All three fugitives were recaptured, Brown almost at once; then Barry, who was taken at the East End in a public-house where he had arranged to meet a pal. The Newgate officers obtained information of this, and went to the spot, where they effected the capture, but not till they had had an exciting chase down the street. The third, Bell, remained longest at large. He too was run into at a lodging in the Kingsland Road. The officers dropped on to him while he was still in bed, but as they came upstairs he jumped up and hid in a cupboard. All three after recapture passed on, as originally intended, to Leicester, where they did their “bit”[120] and were released; but only to be taken soon afterwards for a fresh offence, and again pass through Newgate with sentences of penal servitude.

A later case was still more remarkable, as it was effected after the alteration of the prison and its reconstruction on the newest lines. A sailor, Krapps by name, occupied one of the upper cells in the new block. The doors, through incomplete knowledge of prison needs, were not, as now, sheeted with iron. The prisoner had nothing to deal with but wooden panels, and by dint of cutting and chopping he got both the lower panels out. Through the aperture he crept out on to the landing at the dead of night, and so down into the central space of the building. Under superior orders all the doors and gates of this block were left open at night, to allow the night watchman to pass freely to all parts. This was considered safer than intrusting him with keys. Krapps walked at once into the yard and across to the female side, where he found some of the washing still hanging out to dry. He made a strong rope with several of the sheets; then, returning to the male yard, got hold of the step ladder used in lighting the gas, and which under our more careful supervision would have been, as now-a-days, chained up. Cutting the cord which fastened the two legs of the step ladder, he opened them out and made one long length; with this, placed against the wall near the chevaux-de-frise, he made an escalade. The top of the wall was gained without difficulty. Along this Krapps crawled, and then dropped down on to the cook-house. He now put in requisition the rope made of the sheets, and with its help lowered himself into the street. Down below were market-carts waiting for daylight, and among them Krapps found a refuge and friends. The first intimation of his escape was afforded by the police, who informed the prison authorities next day that a rope was hanging down from the cook-house roof. Nothing more was heard of Krapps. The curious thing in his case was that his offence was a trifling one; he was still untried, but would almost certainly have escaped with a minor penalty, say of three or four months’ imprisonment. There is, however, no explanation of the motives which prompt prisoners to attempt escapes. Cases well authenticated have been known of men who had all but completed their sentences, and for whom the prison gates would open within a few days, who yet faced extraordinary risks to advance their enlargement by only a few hours. On the other hand, at the great convict establishments, such is the moral restraint of a systematic discipline, that numbers of men, “lifers,” and others with ten, fourteen, or twenty years to do, can be trusted to work out of doors without bolts and bars at a distance from the prison.

The last escape from Newgate was only three years ago, and occurred just before the final closing of the prison. No report of it was made public, as the man was almost immediately recaptured. He was at work under the supervision of the artisan warder of the prison, who permitted him to go up on to the roof of the old wards, in order to throw water for flushing purposes down a shoot. He was out of sight while so employed, and remained so long absent that the warder, becoming uneasy, went in search of him. He had disappeared. Encouraged by the shouts and signals of some workmen employed on a building outside, the prisoner made one of the most marvellous jumps on record, from the building he was on to a distant wall, with a drop of sixty feet between. Then he ran along the coping of the wall towards its angle with Tyler’s manufactory, and dropped down on to the gridiron below. This was not strong enough to carry him, and he fell through.

Suicides and executions were, however, always the most effectual methods of making exit from durance. Suicides at Newgate were numerous enough, but they seldom possessed any novel or unusual features; prison suicides seldom do, except as regards ingenuity and determination. Only great resolution indeed, persisted in to the bitter end, would make death a certainty, so limited and imperfect are the means generally available. When a bit of rope carefully secreted, braces, shoe-strings, shirt torn into strips are the only instruments, and a bar or small hook at no elevation affords the only drop, strangulation would seldom supervene but for the resolution of the miserable felo de se. One curious instance of a suicide carried out under the most adverse and extraordinary circumstances may be quoted. It was that of a “Long Firm” swindler, by name Johnson, who contrived to hang himself from a hammock hook only eighteen inches from the ground. The noose was one of his hammock straps, which he buckled round his throat. Having carefully spread out a blanket on the floor just below the hammock as it lay suspended, he fastened one end of the strap above mentioned to the hook, and then fell down. He might have saved himself at any moment by merely extending an arm; but he lay there patiently till death supervened. When discovered next morning, quite dead, it was found that the strap actually did not touch his throat; three fingers might have been inserted between it and the flesh; the pressure was all on the arteries behind the ears, and surgical opinion stated that the stoppage of circulation was the cause of death. Probably dissolution came as easily and almost without pain.

A laudable desire to invest executions with more and more solemnity and decorum gained ground as they became more rare. As more humane principles were introduced into prison management, greater attention was paid to the capital convicts, and the horrors of their situation while awaiting sentence were as far as possible mitigated and toned down. But there was little improvement in the ceremony itself. There were still untoward accidents occasionally at executions, and even the chief practitioner of recent times, Calcraft, was not always to be trusted to do his fell work efficiently.

Having mentioned Calcraft’s name, I may be permitted to digress for a moment to give a few particulars concerning the last officially appointed hangman of the city of London. After Calcraft’s resignation no successor was really appointed. Marwood, whose name is so familiar with the present generation, had no official status, and was merely an operator selected by the Corporation, and who, on the strength of it, contracted with sheriffs and conveners to work by the job. But Calcraft regularly succeeded Foxen, who followed Botting, and Dennis, the actor in the 1780 riots. Calcraft was born at Baddow, in Essex, in 1800; he was a shoemaker by trade, and settled in London after his marriage in 1825. The story goes, that about 1828 his attention was drawn early one morning to a man who leant against a lamp-post in Finsbury Square, coughing violently. Calcraft, who, in spite of the dreadful calling he subsequently followed, was always reputed a kindly man, invited the man with the cough to enter a neighbouring house and try a little peppermint for it. The other accepted, and they got into conversation. He told Calcraft that he was Foxen the executioner, and that he was that moment on his way to Newgate to hang a man, but that his cough was getting so much the master of him that he feared he would not be able to carry on his duties much longer. “I have no idea who the sheriffs will get to do the work after me,” said Foxen, adding that his assistant, Tom Cheshire, was given to drink, and not to be trusted. “I think I could do that sort of job,” said Calcraft, on the spur of the moment. Foxen asked him his name and address, and went away. Calcraft thought no more of what had occurred till the next sessions at the Old Bailey, when the sheriffs sent for him, and offered him the post of executioner for the city of London and Middlesex. He accepted, having at first Tom Cheshire as his assistant, then for a time, when Cheshire was dismissed for drunkenness, a man named Osborne. After that he worked alone.

I cannot find that Calcraft was sworn in when appointed, or any exact information when the old forbidding ceremony ceased to be practised. It was customary to make the executioner take the Bible in his hand, and swear solemnly that he would despatch every criminal condemned to die, without favouring father or mother or any other relation or friend. When he had taken the oath he was dismissed with the words, “Get thee hence, wretch!”

Calcraft’s emoluments were a guinea per week, and an extra guinea for every execution. He got besides half-a-crown for every man he flogged, and an allowance to provide cats or birch rods. For acting as executioner of Horsemonger Lane Gaol he received a retaining fee of £5 5s., with the usual guinea for each job; he was also at liberty to engage himself in the country, where he demanded and was paid £10 on each occasion. It was not always easy to get a hangman so cheap, as I have already indicated on a previous page. The onus and responsibility of carrying out the sentence is personal to the sheriff. A good story is told illustrating this. Some wags in Scotland seized Calcraft and kept him in durance the night before the execution. Meanwhile the convener or sheriff was in despair, expecting that, failing the executioner, he would have to do the job himself. But, fortunately for him, just at the last moment Calcraft was set free.

Calcraft’s salary was more than the proverbial “thirteenpence halfpenny—hangman’s wages.” The origin of this expression dates, it is said, from the time when the Scottish mark, a silver coin bearing the same relation to the Scottish pound that an English shilling does to an English pound, was made to pass current in England. The mark was valued at thirteenpence halfpenny, or rather more than the shilling, which from time immemorial had been the hangman’s wages. That very ancient perquisite the convict’s clothes was never claimed by Calcraft, and it may be doubted whether he was entitled to it. On one particular occasion, however, he got them. A gentleman whose sins brought him to the gallows at Maidstone wished to do Calcraft a good turn, and sent to his London tailor for a complete new suit, in which he appeared at his execution. He expressly bequeathed them to Calcraft, who was graciously pleased to accept them. On another occasion an importunate person begged Calcraft eagerly to claim his right to the clothes, and give them to him. Calcraft consented, got and bestowed the clothes, only to find that the person he had obliged exhibited them publicly. It may be added that of late years the clothes in which a convict has suffered are invariably burnt. Capital convicts go to the gallows in their own clothing, and not in prison dress, unless the former is quite unfit to be worn.

Calcraft shared the odium which his office, not strangely, has always inspired. But he was admitted into the gaol, which his predecessors were not, and who were paid their wages over the gate to obviate the necessity for letting them enter. To this curious etiquette was due the appointment of an official whose office has long since disappeared, “the yeoman of the halter,” whose business it was to provide the rope and do the pinioning, and who was paid a fee of five shillings. They did not dislike Calcraft, however, at Newgate. He was an illiterate, simple-minded man, who scarcely remembered what executions he had performed. He kept no record of them, and when asked questions, referred to the officers of the gaol. His nature must have been kindly. When he came to the prison for his wages his grand-children often accompanied him, affectionately clinging to his hands; and he owned a pet pony which would follow him about like a dog. In his own profession he was not unskilful, but he proceeded entirely by rule of thumb, leaving the result very much to chance and the strength of the rope. He was so much in favour of short drops that his immediate successor, Marwood, stigmatized him as a “short-drop” man; Marwood being, on the other hand, in favour of giving a man as much rope as possible. With Calcraft’s method there were undoubtedly many failures, and it was a common custom for him to go below the gallows “just to steady their legs a little;” in other words, to add his weight to that of the hanging bodies. Marwood till latterly seemed to have done his work more effectually, and has been known to give as much as six feet fall. This generally produces instantaneous death, although cases where complete fracture of the spinal cord occurred are said to be rare.

Calcraft served the city of London till 1874, when he was pensioned at the rate of twenty-five shillings per week. The last execution at which he acted was that of Godwin, on the 25th May, 1874.

Marwood, who succeeded him, and who died while these sheets were in the press, was a Lincolnshire man, a native of Horncastle, who first took to the work from predilection, and the idea of being useful in his generation, as he himself assured the writer of these pages. Until the time of his death he kept a small shop close to the church in Horncastle. Over the door, in gilt letters, were the words “Crown Office”; in the window was a pile of official envelopes, ostentatiously displayed, while round about were shoe-strings, boot-laces, and lasts. Marwood, strange to say, followed the same trade as Calcraft. Marwood was proud of his calling, and when questioned as to whether his process was satisfactory, replied that he heard “no complaints.” The strange competition amongst hundreds to succeed Marwood is a strange fact too recently before the public to need mention here. It may, however, be remarked that the wisdom of appointing any regular hangman is very open to question, and must be strongly deprecated on moral grounds, as tending to the utter degradation of one individual. Possibly such changes may be introduced into the method of execution that the ceremony may be made more mechanical, thus rendering the personal intervention of a skilled functionary unnecessary.

Executions long continued to be in public, in spite of remonstrance and reprobation. The old prejudices, such as that which enlisted Dr. Johnson on the side of the Tyburn procession, still lingered and prevented any change. It was thought that capital punishment would lose its deterrent effect if it ceased to be public, and the raison d’être of the penalty, which in principle so many opposed, would be gone. This line of argument prevailed over the manifest horrors of the spectacle. These increased as time passed. The graphic and terrible account given by Charles Dickens of the awful scene before Horsemonger Lane Gaol, at the execution of the Mannings, has already been quoted. Again, the concourse of people collected in front of Newgate to witness the execution, simultaneously, of the five pirates, part of the mutinous crew of the ‘Flowery Land,’ was greater than on any previous occasion. It was a callous, careless crowd of coarse-minded, semi-brutalized folk, who came to enjoy themselves. Few, if any, showed any feeling of terror, none were impressed with the solemnity, or realized the warning which the sight conveyed. The upturned faces of the eager spectators resembled those of the ‘gods’ at Drury Lane on Boxing Night; the crowd had come to witness a popular and gratuitous public performance—better than a prize-fight or a play. No notion that they were assisting at a vindication of the law filled the minds of those present with dread. On the contrary, the prevailing sentiment was one of satisfaction at the success of the spectacle. The remarks heard amongst the crowd were of coarse approval. “S’help me, ain’t it fine?” one costermonger was heard to exclaim to his companion. “Five of them, all darkies in a row!” The reply evinced equal satisfaction, and the speaker, with a profane oath, declared that he would like to act as Jack Ketch to the whole lot.

To the disgrace of the better-educated and better-bred public, executions could still command the attendance of curious aristocrats from the West End. At Müller’s execution there was great competition for front seats, and the windows of the opposite houses, which commanded a good view, as usual fetched high prices. As much as £25 was paid for a first-floor front on this occasion. Never, indeed, had an execution been more generally patronized. This is proved by contemporary accounts, especially one graphic and realistic article which appeared in the ‘Times,’ and which contributed in no small degree to the introduction of private executions. A great crowd was expected, and a great crowd came. They collected over night in the bright light of a November moon. “There were well-dressed and ill-dressed, old men and lads, women and girls.” Rain fell heavily at intervals, but did not thin the concourse. “Till three o’clock it was one long revelry of songs and laughter, shouting, and often quarrelling, though, to do them mere justice, there was at least till then a half-drunken ribald gaiety among the crowd that made them all akin.” There were preachers among the crowd, but they could not get a patient hearing. Then one struck up the hymn of the Promised Land, and the refrain was at once taken up with a mighty chorus—