MikhailT/lj-speech huggingface dataset:
On searching him the pistol was found in his pocket, the barrel still warm; also some loose powder and a bullet.
There was some doubt as to whether the pistol when fired was actually loaded with ball, but the jury brought in a verdict of guilty
of the criminal intent to kill.
Francis was sentenced to be hanged, decapitated, and quartered,
the old traitor's doom, but was spared, and subsequently transported for life.
The enthusiasm of the people at the Queen's escape was uproarious, and her drive next day was one long triumphal progress.
At the Italian Opera in the evening the audience, on the Queen's appearance, greeted her with loud cheers, and called for the national anthem.
This was in May 1842.
Undeterred by the well-merited punishment which had overtaken Francis,
a third miscreant made a similar but far less serious attempt in the month of July following.
As the Queen was driving from Buckingham Palace to the Chapel Royal,
a deformed lad among the crowd was seen to present a pistol at Her Majesty's carriage,
in the Mall, about half-way between Buckingham and St. James's Palaces.
Only one person saw the movement, a lad named Dasset, who at once collared the cripple, and taking him up to two policemen,
charged him with the offense.
The policemen treated the matter as a hoax, and allowed the culprit to make off.
Later on, however, Dasset was himself seized and interrogated,
and on his information handbills were circulated, giving the exact description of the deformed youth, who had a hump-back,
and a long, sickly, pale face, with light hair;
his nose was marked with a scar or black patch, and he was altogether of a dirty appearance.
It happened that a lad named Bean had absconded from his father's home some weeks before,
whose description, as given by his father to the police,
exactly tallied with that of the deformed person "wanted" for the assault on the Queen.
A visit to the father's residence was followed by the arrest of the son, who had by this time returned.
This son, John William Bean, was fully identified by Dasset, and presently examined by the Privy Council.
He was eventually charged with a misdemeanor, the capital charge having been abandoned, and committed for trial.
Much the same motives of seeking notoriety seem to have impelled Bean, who was perfectly sane, to his rash act;
but it was proved that the pistol was not loaded with ball,
and he was only convicted of an attempt "to harass, vex, and grieve the sovereign.
Lord Abinger sentenced him to eighteen months' imprisonment in Newgate,
but the place of durance was changed, to meet the existing law, to Millbank Penitentiary.
I shall mention briefly one more case, in which, however, there was no murderous intent, before I pass on to other crimes.
On June 1850 the Queen was once more subjected to cowardly outrage, the offender being a Mr. Pate, a gentleman by birth,
who had borne the Queen's commission, first as cornet, and then lieutenant, in the 10th Hussars.
Pate was said to be an eccentric person, given to strange acts and antics, such as mixing whiskey and camphor with his morning bath-water,
and walking for choice through prickly gorse bushes.
He always kept the blinds down at his chambers in Jermyn Street; and as the St. James's clock chimed quarter-past three,
invariably went out in a cab, for which he always paid the same fare,
nine shillings, all in shillings, and no other coin.
But this was not sufficient to constitute lunacy, nor was his plea of "momentary uncontrollable impulse"
deemed valid as any palliation of his offense.
That offense was a brutal assault upon Her Majesty, whom he struck in the face with a small stick just as she was leaving Cambridge House.
The blow crushed the bonnet and bruised the forehead of the Queen, who was happily not otherwise injured.
Pate was found guilty, and sentenced to seven years' transportation, the judge, Baron Alderson, abstaining from inflicting the penalty of whipping,
which was authorized by a recent act, on account of Mr. Pate's family and position in life.
I have already remarked that as violence was more and more eliminated from crimes against the person,
frauds indicating great boldness, extensive design, and ingenuity became more prevalent.
The increase of bank forgeries, and its cause, I referred to in a previous chapter.
At one session of the Old Bailey, in 1821, no less than thirty-five true bills were found for passing forged notes.
But there were other notorious cases of forgery.
That of Fauntleroy the banker, in 1824,
caused much excitement at the time on account of the magnitude of the fraud, and the seeming probity of the culprit.
Mr. Fauntleroy was a member of a banking firm, which his father had established in conjunction with a gentleman of the name of Marsh, and others.
He had entered the house as clerk in 1800;
in 1807, and when only twenty-two, he succeeded to his father's share in the business.
According to Fauntleroy's own case, he found at once that the firm was heavily involved,
through advances made to various builders, and that it could only maintain its credit by wholesale discounting.
Its embarrassments were greatly increased by the bankruptcy of two of its clients in the building trade,
and the bank became liable for a sum of £170,000.
New liabilities were incurred to the extent of £100,000 by more failures, and in 1819,
by the death of one of the partners, a large sum in cash had to be withdrawn from the bank to pay his heirs.
"During these numerous and trying difficulties" -- it is Mr. Fauntleroy who speaks --
the house was nearly without resources, and the whole burthen of management falling on me, I sought resources where I could;
in other words, he forged powers of attorney, and proceeded to realize securities lodged in his bank under various names.
Among the prisoner's private papers, one was found giving full details of the stock he had feloniously sold out,
the sum total amounting to some £170,000, with a declaration in his own handwriting to the following effect.
In order to keep up the credit of our house, I have forged powers of attorney for the above sums and parties,
and sold out to the amount here stated, and without the knowledge of my partners.
I kept up the payments of the dividends, but made no entries of such payments in my books.
The bank began first to refuse our acceptances, and to destroy the credit of our house; the bank shall smart for it.
The Chronicles of Newgate, Volume 2. By Arthur Griffiths. Section 14: Newgate notorieties, part 1
Many stories were in circulation at the time of Fauntleroy's trial with regard to his forgeries. It was said that he had by means of them
sold out so large an amount of stock, that he paid £16,000 a year in dividends to escape detection.
Once he ran a narrow risk of being found out.
A lady in the country, who had £13,000 in the stocks, desired her London agent to sell them out.
He went to the bank, and found that no stocks stood in her name. He called at once upon Fauntleroy, his client's bankers, for an explanation,
and was told by Mr. Fauntleroy that the lady had desired him to sell out, "which I have done," added the fraudulent banker, "and here are the proceeds,"
whereupon he produced exchequer bills to the amount.
Nothing more was heard of the affair, although the lady declared that she had never instructed Fauntleroy to sell.
and took the instrument out to a clerk with the ink not dry.
It must be added that the Bank of England, on discovering the forgeries,
replaced the stock in the names of the original holders, who might otherwise have been completely ruined.
A newspaper report of the time describes Fauntleroy as a well-made man of middle stature.
His hair, though gray, was thick, and lay smooth over his forehead.
His countenance had an expression of most subdued resignation.
The impression which his appearance altogether was calculated to make was that of the profoundest commiseration.
The crime, long carried on without detection, was first discovered in 1820,
when it was found that a sum of £10,000, standing in the name of three trustees, of whom Fauntleroy was one,
had been sold out under a forged power of attorney.
Further investigations brought other similar frauds to light,
and fixed the whole sum misappropriated at £170,000, the first forgery dating back to 1814.
A run upon the bank immediately followed, which was only met by a suspension of payment and the closing of its doors.
Meanwhile public gossip was busy with Fauntleroy's name,
and it was openly stated in the press and in conversation that the proceeds of these frauds had been squandered in chambering, gambling, and debauchery.
Fauntleroy was scouted as a licentious libertine, a deep and determined gamester, a spendthrift whose extravagance knew no bounds.
The veil was lifted from his private life, and he was accused of persistent immorality.
In his defense
he sought to rebut these charges, which indeed were never clearly made out, and it is pretty certain that his own account of the causes which led him into dishonesty
was substantially true
He called many witnesses, seventeen in all, to speak of him as they had found him; and these, all respectable city merchants and business men,
declared that they had hitherto formed a high opinion of his honor, integrity, and goodness of disposition,
deeming him the last person capable of a dishonorable action.
These arguments availed little with the jury, who after a short deliberation found Fauntleroy guilty, and he was sentenced to death.
Every endeavor was used, however, to obtain a commutation of sentence. His case was twice argued before the judges on points of law,
but the result in both cases was unfavorable.
Appeals were made to the Home Secretary, and all possible political interest brought to bear, but without success.
Fauntleroy meanwhile lay in Newgate, not herded with other condemned prisoners, as the custom was,
but in a separate chamber, that belonging to one of the warders of the jail.
I find in the chaplain's journal, under date 1824, various entries relative to this prisoner.
Visited Mr. Fauntleroy. My application for books for him not having been attended, I had no prayer-book to give him.
Visited Mr. Fauntleroy. The sheriffs have very kindly permitted him to remain in the turnkey's room where he was originally placed; nor can I omit expressing a hope
that this may prove the beginning of a better system of confinement, and that every description of persons who may be unfortunately under sentence of death
will no longer be herded indiscriminately together.
The kindliness of the city authorities to Fauntleroy was not limited to the assignment of a separate place of durance.
As I have already said, they took the chaplain seriously to task for the bad taste shown in the condemned sermon preached before Fauntleroy.
This was on the text,
Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall," and was full of the most pointed allusions to the culprit.
that he appeared to feel deeply the force of the reverend gentleman's observations, especially when the chaplain spoke of
the great magnitude of our erring brother's offense, one of the most dangerous description in a trading community.
The sermon ended with an appeal to the dying man, exhorting him to penitence.
This "personality," and it can be called by no other name, is carefully excluded from prison pulpit utterances on the eve of an execution.
A very curious and, in its way, amusing circumstance in connection with this case was the offer of a certain Italian,
Edmund Angelini, to take Fauntleroy's place.
Angelini wrote to the Lord Mayor to this effect,
urging that Fauntleroy was a father, a citizen: "his life is useful, mine a burthen, to the State."
He was summoned to the Mansion House, where he repeated his request, crying, "Accordez moi cette grâce," with much urgency.
There were doubts of his sanity.
He wrote afterwards to the effect that the moment he had offered himself, an unknown assassin came to aim a blow at him.
Let this monster give his name; I am ready to fight him. I am still determined to put myself in the place of Mr. Fauntleroy.
If the law of this country can receive such a sacrifice, my death will render to heaven an innocent man, and to earth a repentant sinner.
Fauntleroy was not entirely dependent upon the ordinary for ghostly counsel in his extremity.
He was also attended by the Rev. Mr. Springett and the indefatigable Mr. Baker, whose name has already been mentioned.
When led out on the morning of his execution, these two last-named gentlemen each took hold of one of his arms, and so accompanied him to the scaffold.
The concourse in front of Newgate was enormous, but much sympathy was evinced for this unfortunate victim to human weakness and ruthless laws.
A report was, moreover, widely circulated, and the impression long prevailed, that he actually escaped death.
It was said that strangulation had been prevented by the insertion of a silver tube in his wind-pipe,
and that after hanging for the regulated time he was taken down and easily restored to consciousness.
Afterwards, according to the common rumor, he went abroad and lived there for many years; but the story is not only wholly unsubstantiated,
but there is good evidence to show that the body after execution was handed over to his friends and interred privately.
Some years were still to elapse before capital punishment ceased to be the penalty for forgery, and in the interval
several persons were sentenced to or suffered death for this crime.
There were two notable capital convictions for forgery in 1828.
One was that of Captain Montgomery, who assumed the aliases of Colonel Wallace and Colonel Morgan.
His offense was uttering forged notes, and there was strong suspicion that he had long subsisted entirely by this fraud.
The act for which he was taken into custody was the payment of a forged ten-pound note for half-a-dozen silver spoons.
Montgomery was an adept at forgery. He had gone wrong early. Although born of respectable parents, and gazetted to a commission in the army,
he soon left the service and betook himself to dishonest ways.
His first forgery was the marvelous imitation of the signature of the Hon. Mr. Neville, M.P., who wrote an extremely cramped and curious hand.
He was not prosecuted for this fraud on account of the respectability of his family, and soon after this escape
he came to London, where he practiced as a professional swindler and cheat.
For a long time justice did not overtake him for any criminal offense, but he was frequently in Newgate and in the King's Bench for debt.
After three years' confinement in the latter prison he passed himself off as his brother, Colonel Montgomery,
a distinguished officer, and would have married an heiress had not the imposture been discovered in time.
He then took to forging bank-notes, and was arrested as I have described above.
Montgomery was duly sentenced to death, but he preferred suicide to the gallows. After sentence his demeanor was serious yet firm.
The night previous to that fixed for his execution he wrote several letters, one of them being to Edward Gibbon Wakefield, a fellow-prisoner,
and listened attentively to the ordinary, who read him the well-known address written and delivered by Dr. Dodd previous to his own execution for forgery.
But next morning he was found dead in his cell.
In one corner after much search a phial was found labeled "Prussic acid,"
which it was asserted he had been in the habit of carrying about his person ever since he had taken to passing forged notes, as an antidote against disgrace.
This phial he had managed to retain in his possession in spite of the frequent searches to which he was subjected in Newgate.
The second conviction for forgery in 1828 was that of the Quaker Joseph Hunton, a man of previously the highest repute in the city of London.
He had prospered in early life, was a slop-seller on a large scale at Bury St. Edmunds, and a sugar-baker in the metropolis.
He married a lady also belonging to the Society of Friends, who brought him a large fortune, which, and his own money, he put into a city firm,
that of Dickson and Co.
He soon, however, became deeply involved in Stock Exchange speculations,
and losing heavily, to meet the claims upon him he put out a number of forged bills of exchange or acceptances,
to which the signature of one Wilkins of Abingdon was found to be forged.
Hunton tried to fly the country on the detection of the fraud, but was arrested at Plymouth just as he was on the point of leaving England in the New York packet.
He had gone on board in his Quaker dress, but when captured was found in a light-green frock,
a pair of light gray pantaloons, a black stock and a foraging cap.
Hunton was put upon his trial at the Old Bailey, and in due course sentenced to death.
His defense was that the forged acceptances would have been met on coming to maturity, and that he had no real desire to defraud.
Hunton accepted his sentence with great resignation, although he protested against the inhumanity of the laws which condemned him to death.
On entering Newgate he said,
I wish after this day to have communication with nobody; let me take leave of my wife, and family, and friends. I have already suffered an execution;
my heart has undergone that horrible penalty.
He was, however, visited by and received his wife, and several members of the Society of Friends.
Two elders of the meeting sat up with him in the press yard the whole of the night previous to execution, and a third,
Mr. Sparks Moline, came to attend him to the scaffold.
He met his death with unshaken firmness, only entreating that a certain blue handkerchief,
to which he seemed fondly attached, should be used to bandage his eyes, which request was readily granted.
Hunton's execution no doubt aroused public attention to the cruelty and futility of the capital law against forgery.
A society which had already been started against capital punishment
devoted its efforts first to a mitigation of the forgery statute, but could not immediately accomplish much.
In 1829 the gallows claimed two more victims for this offense.
One was Richard Gifford, a well-educated youth who had been at Christ's Hospital, and afterwards in the National Debt Office.
Unfortunately he took to drink, lost his appointment, and fell from bad to worse.
Suddenly, after being at the lowest depths, he emerged, and was found by his friends living in comfort in the Waterloo Road.
His funds, which he pretended came to him with a rich wife, were really the proceeds of frauds upon the Bank of England.
He forged the names of people who held stock on the Bank books, and got the value of the stock;
he also forged dividend receipts and got the dividends. He was only six-and-twenty when he was hanged.
The other and the last criminal executed for forgery in this country was one Maynard, who was convicted of a fraud upon the Custom House.
In conjunction with two others, one of whom was a clerk in the Custom House,
and had access to the official records, he forged a warrant for one thousand nine-hundred seventy-three pounds and was paid the money by the comptroller general.
Maynard was convicted of uttering the forged document, Jones of being an accessory; the third prisoner was acquitted.
Maynard was the only one who suffered death.
This was on the last day of 1829. In the following session Sir Robert Peel brought in a bill to consolidate the acts relating to forgery.
Upon the third reading of this bill Sir James Macintosh moved as an amendment that capital punishment should be abolished for all crimes of forgery,
except the forgery of wills and powers of attorney.
This amendment was strongly supported outside the House, and a petition in favor of its passing was presented,
signed by more than a thousand members of banking firms.
Macintosh's amendment was carried in the Commons, but the new law did not pass the Lords, who re-enacted the capital penalty.
Still no sentence of death was carried out for the offense, and in 1832
the Attorney-General introduced a bill to abolish capital punishment entirely for forgery.
It passed the Commons, but opposition was again encountered in the Lords.
This time they sent back the bill, re-enacting only the two penalties for will forging and the forging of powers of attorney;
in other words, they had advanced in 1832 to the point at which the Lower House had arrived in 1830.
There were at the moment in Newgate six convicts sentenced to death for forging wills.
The question was whether the Government would dare to take their lives at the bidding of the House of Lords,
and in defiance of the vote of the assembly which more accurately represented public opinion. It was indeed announced that their fate was sealed;
but Mr. Joseph Hume pressed the Government hard, and obtained an assurance that the men should not be executed.
The new Forgery Act with the Lords' amendment passed into law, but the latter proved perfectly harmless,
and no person ever after suffered death for any variety of this crime.
I will include in this part of the present chapter almost one of the last instances of a crime which in time past
had invariably been visited with the death penalty, and which was of a distinctly fraudulent nature.
The abduction of Miss Turner by the brothers Wakefield bore a strong resemblance to the carrying off and forcible marrying of heiresses as already described.
Miss Turner was a school-girl of barely fifteen,
only child of a gentleman of large property in Cheshire, of which county he was actually high sheriff at the time of his daughter's abduction.
The elder brother,
Edward Gibbon Wakefield, the prime mover in the abduction, was a barrister, not exactly briefless, but without a large practice.
He had, it was said, a good private income, and was already a widower with two children at the time of his committing the offense for which he was subsequently tried.
He had eloped with his first wife from school.
While on a visit to Macclesfield he heard by chance of Miss Turner, and that she would inherit all her father's possessions.
He thereupon conceived an idea of carrying her off and marrying her willy nilly at Gretna Green.
The two brothers started at once for Liverpool, where Miss Turner was at school with a Mrs. Daulby.
At Manchester, en route, a traveling carriage was purchased, which was driven up to Mrs. Daulby's door at eight in the morning,
and a servant hurriedly alighted from it, bearing a letter for Miss Turner.
This purported to be from the medical attendant of Mr. Turner, written at Shrigley, Mr. Turner's place of residence;
and it stated that Mrs. Turner had been stricken with paralysis.
She was not in immediate danger, but she wished to see her daughter, "as it was possible she might soon become incapable of recognizing any one."
Miss Turner, greatly agitated, accompanied the messenger who had brought this news, a disguised servant of Wakefield's,
who had plausibly explained that he had only recently been engaged at Shrigley.
The road taken was via Manchester, where the servant said a Dr. Hull was to be picked up to go on with them to Shrigley.
At Manchester, however, the carriage stopped at the Albion Hotel.
Miss Turner was shown into a private room, where Mr. Wakefield soon presented himself.
Miss Turner, not knowing him, would have left the room, but he said he came from her father, and she remained.
Wakefield, in reply to her inquiries, satisfied her that her mother was well, and that the real reason for summoning her from school
was the state of her father's affairs.
Mr. Turner was on the verge of bankruptcy. He was at that moment at Kendal, and wished her to join him there at once.
Miss Turner consented to go on, and they traveled night and day towards the north.
But at Kendal there was no Mr. Turner, and, to allay Miss Turner's growing anxiety,
Wakefield found it necessary to become more explicit regarding her father's affairs.
He now pretended that Mr. Turner was also on his way to the border, pursued by sheriffs' officers.
The fact was, Wakefield went on to say, an uncle of his had advanced Mr. Turner £60,000, which had temporarily staved off ruin.
But another bank had since failed, and nothing could save Mr. Turner but the transfer of some property to Miss Turner, and its settlement on her,