MikhailT/lj-speech huggingface dataset:
There was an increase rather than an abatement in jewel and bullion robberies in the years immediately following,
and the thieves seem to have had no difficulty in disposing of their spoil.
One of the largest robberies of its class was that effected upon the Custom House in the winter of 1834.
A large amount of specie was nearly always retained here in the department of the Receiver of Fines.
This was known to some clerks in the office, who began to consider how they might lay hands on a lot of cash.
Being inexperienced, they decided to call in the services of a couple of professional housebreakers,
Jordan and Sullivan, who at once set to work in a business-like way to obtain impressions of the keys of the strong room and chest.
But before committing themselves to an attempt on the latter, it was of importance to ascertain how much it usually contained.
For this purpose Jordan waited on the receiver to make a small payment, for which he tendered a fifty-pound note.
The chest was opened to give change, and a heavy tray lifted out which plainly held some £4000 in cash.
Some difficulty then arose as to gaining admission to the strong room, and it was arranged that a man, May, another Custom House clerk,
should be introduced into the building, and secreted there during the night to accomplish the robbery.
May was smuggled in through a window on the esplanade behind an opened umbrella. When the place was quite deserted
he broke open the chest and stole £4700 in notes, with a quantity of gold and some silver.
He went out next morning with the booty when the doors were re-opened, and attracted no attention.
The spoil was fairly divided; part of the notes were disposed of to a traveling "receiver," who passed over to the Continent and there cashed them easily.
This occurred in November 1834. The Custom House officials were in a state of consternation,
and the police were unable at first to get on the track of the thieves.
While the excitement was still fresh, a new robbery of diamonds was committed at a bonded warehouse in the immediate neighborhood, on Custom House Quay.
The jewels had belonged to a Spanish countess recently deceased, who had sent them to England for greater security on the outbreak of the first Carlist war.
At her death the diamonds were divided between her four daughters, but only half had been claimed,
and at the time of the robbery there were still £6000 worth in the warehouse.
These were deposited in an iron chest of great strength on the second floor.
The thieves it was supposed had secreted themselves in the warehouse during business hours, and waited till night to carry out their plans.
Some ham sandwiches, several cigar ends, and two empty champagne bottles were found on the premises next day, showing how they had passed their time.
They had had serious work to get at the diamonds. It was necessary to force one heavy door from its hinges, and to cut through the thick panels of another.
The lock and fastenings of the chest were forced by means of a "jack," an instrument known to housebreakers,
which if introduced into a keyhole, and worked like a bit and brace, will soon destroy the strongest lock.
The thieves were satisfied with the diamonds; they broke open other cases containing gold watches and plate, but abstracted nothing.
The police were of opinion that these robberies were both the work of the same hand.
But it was not until the autumn that they traced some of the notes stolen from the Custom House to Jordan and Sullivan.
About this time also suspicion fell upon Huey, one of the clerks, who was arrested soon afterwards, and made a clean breast of the whole affair.
There was a hunt for the two well-known house-breakers, who were eventually heard of at a lodging in Kennington.
But they at once made tracks, and took up their residence under assumed names in a tavern in Bloomsbury.
The police lost all trace of them for some days, but at length Sullivan's brother was followed from the house in Kennington to the above-mentioned tavern.
Both the thieves were now apprehended, but only a small portion of the lost property was recovered,
notwithstanding a minute search through the room they had occupied.
After their arrest, Jordan's wife and Sullivan's brother came to the inn, and begged to be allowed to visit this room;
but their request, in spite of their earnest entreaties,
was refused, at the instigation of the police. A few days later a frequent guest at the tavern arrived, and had this same room allotted to him.
A fire was lit in it, and the maid in doing so threw a lot of rubbish, as it seemed, which had accumulated under the grate, on top of the burning coals.
By-and-by the occupant of the room noticed something glittering in the center of the fire, which, to inspect more closely, he took out with the tongs.
It was a large gold brooch set in pearls, but a portion of the mounting had melted with the heat.
The fire was raked out, and in the ashes were found seven large and four dozen small brilliants, also seven emeralds,
one of them of considerable size.
A part of the "swag" stolen from the bonded warehouse was thus recovered, but it was supposed that a number of the stolen notes had perished in the fire.
The condign punishment meted out to these Custom House robbers had no deterrent effect seemingly.
Within three months, three new and most mysterious burglaries were committed at the West End, all in houses adjoining each other.
One was occupied by the Portuguese ambassador, who lost a quantity of jewelery from an escritoire, and his neighbors lost plate and cash.
Not the slightest clue to these large affairs was ever obtained, but it is probable that they were "put up" jobs, or managed with the complicity of servants.
The next year twelve thousand sovereigns were cleverly stolen in the Mile End Road.
The gold-dust robbery of 1839, the first of its kind, was cleverly and carefully planned with the assistance of a dishonest employee.
A young man named Caspar, clerk to a steam-ship company,
learnt through the firm's correspondence that a quantity of gold-dust
brought in a man-of-war from Brazil had been transhipped at Falmouth for conveyance to London.
The letter informed him of the marks and sizes of the cases containing the precious metal,
and he with his father arranged that a messenger should call for the stuff with forged credentials, and anticipating the rightful owner.
The fraudulent messenger, by the help of young Caspar, established his claim to the boxes, paid the wharfage dues, and carried off the gold-dust.
Presently the proper person arrived from the consignees, but found the gold-dust gone.
The police were at once employed, and after infinite pains they discovered the person, one Moss, who had acted as the messenger.
Moss was known to be intimate with the elder Caspar,
father of the clerk to the steam-ship company, and these facts were deemed sufficient to justify the arrest of all three.
They also ascertained that a gold-refiner,
Solomons, had sold bar gold to the value of £1200 to certain bullion dealers.
Solomons was not straightforward in his replies as to where he got the gold, and he was soon placed in the dock with the Caspars and Moss.
Moss presently turned approver,
and implicated "Money Moses," another Jew, for the whole affair had been planned and executed by members of the Hebrew persuasion.
"Money Moses" had received the stolen gold-dust from Moss' father-in-law, Davis, or Isaacs, who was never arrested,
and passed it on to Solomons by his daughter, a widow named Abrahams.
Solomons was now also admitted as a witness, and his evidence, with that of Moss, secured the transportation of the principal actors in the theft.
In the course of the trial it came out that almost every one concerned except the Caspars had endeavored to defraud his accomplices.
Moss peached because he declared he had been done out of the proper price of the gold-dust; but it was clear that he had tried to appropriate the whole of the stuff,
instead of handing it or the price of it back to the Caspars.
"Money Moses" and Mrs. Abrahams imposed upon Moss as to the price paid by Solomons;
Mrs. Abrahams imposed upon her father by abstracting a portion of the dust and selling it on her own account;
Solomons cheated the whole lot by retaining half the gold in his possession, and only giving an I. O. U. for it,
which he refused to redeem on account of the row about the robbery.
Moses, it may be added, was a direct descendant of Ikey Solomons.
He was ostensibly a publican,
and kept the Black Lion in Vinegar Yard, Drury Lane, where secretly he did business as one of the most daring and successful fencers ever known in the metropolis.
His arrest and conviction cast dismay over the whole gang of receivers, and for a time seriously checked the nefarious traffic.
It may be added that prison life did not agree with "Money Moses"; a striking change came over his appearance while in Newgate.
Before his confinement he had been a sleek round person, addicted obviously to the pleasures of the table.
He did not thrive on prison fare,
now more strictly meager, thanks to the inspectors and the more stringent discipline, and before he embarked for Australia to undergo his fourteen years,
he was reported to have fallen away to a shadow.
Having brought down the records of great frauds, forgeries, and thefts from about 1825 to 1840,
I will now retrace my steps and give some account of the more remarkable murders during that period.
No murder has created greater sensation and horror throughout England than that of Mr. Weare by Thurtell, Hunt, and Probert.
As this was accomplished beyond the limits of the metropolis, and its perpetrators arraigned at Hertford,
where the principal actor suffered death, the case hardly comes within the limits of my subject.
But Probert, who turned king's evidence, and materially assisted conviction,
was tried at the Old Bailey the following year for horse-stealing, and hanged in front of Newgate.
The murder was still fresh in the memory of the populace, and Probert was all but lynched on his way to jail.
According to his statement, when sentenced to death, he had been driven to horse-stealing by the execration which had pursued him after the murder.
Every door had been closed against him, every hope of future support blasted.
Since the calamitous event," he went on, "that happened at Hertford, I have been a lost man."
The event which he styles calamitous we may well characterize as one of the most deliberately atrocious murders on record.
Thurtell was a gambler, and Weare had won a good deal of money from him.
Weare was supposed to carry a "private bank" about with him in a pocket in his under waistcoat.
To obtain possession of this, Thurtell with his two associates resolved to kill him.
The victim was invited to visit Probert's cottage in the country near Elstree.
Thurtell drove him down in a gig, "to be killed as he traveled," in Thurtell's own words.
The others followed, and on overtaking Thurtell, found he had done the job alone in a retired part of the road known as Gill's Hill Lane.
The murderer explained that he had first fired a pistol at Weare's head, but the shot glanced off his cheek.
Then he attacked the other's throat with a penknife, and last of all drove the pistol barrel into his forehead.
After the murder the villains divided the spoil, and went on to Probert's cottage, and supped off pork-chops brought down on purpose.
During the night they sought to dispose of the body by throwing it into a pond, but two days later had to throw it into another pond.
Meanwhile the discovery of pistol and knife spattered with human blood and brains
raised the alarm, and suspicion fell upon the three murderers, who were arrested.
The crime was brought home to Thurtell by the confession of Hunt,
one of his accomplices, who took the police to the pond, where the remains of the unfortunate Mr. Weare were discovered, sunk in a sack weighted by stones.
Probert was then admitted as a witness, and the case was fully proved against Thurtell, who was hanged in front of Hertford Jail.
Hunt, in consideration of the information he had given, escaped death, and was sentenced to transportation for life.
Widespread horror and indignation was evoked throughout the kingdom by the discovery of the series
of atrocious murders perpetrated in Edinburgh by the miscreants Burke and Hare,
the first of whom has added to the British language a synonym for illegal suppression.
The crimes of these inhuman purveyors to medical science do not fall within the limits of this work.
But Burke and Hare had their imitators further south,
and of these Bishop and Williams, who were guilty of many peculiar atrocities, ended their murderous careers in front of the debtors' door at Newgate.
Bishop, whose real name was Head, married a half-sister of Williams'. Williams was a professional resurrectionist, or body-snatcher,
a trade almost openly countenanced when "subjects" for the anatomy schools were only to be got by rifling graves, or worse.
Bishop was a carpenter, but having been suddenly thrown out of work, he joined his brother-in-law in his line of business.
After a little
Bishop got weary of the dangers and fatigues of exhumation, and proposed to Williams that instead of disinterring they should murder their subjects.
Bishop confessed that he was moved to this by the example of Burke and Hare.
They pursued their terrible trade for five years without scruple and without detection.
Eventually the law overtook them, but almost by accident.
They presented themselves about noon one day at the dissecting room of King's College Hospital, accompanied by a third man,
an avowed "snatcher" and habitué of the Fortune of War, a public-house in Smithfield frequented openly by men of this awful profession.
This man, May, asked the porter at King's College if "he wanted anything?" the euphemism for offering a body.
The porter asked what he had got, and the answer was, a male subject.
Reference was made to Mr. Partridge, the demonstrator in anatomy,
and after some haggling they agreed on a price, and in the afternoon the snatchers brought a hamper which contained a body in a sack.
The porter received it, but from its freshness became suspicious of foul play.
Mr. Partridge was sent for, and he with some of the students soon decided that the corpse had not died a natural death.
The snatchers were detained, the police sent for, and arrest followed as a matter of course.
An inquest was held on the body, which was identified as that of an Italian boy,
Carlo Ferrari, who made a living by exhibiting white mice about the streets,
and the jury returned a verdict of willful murder against persons unknown, expressing a strong opinion that Bishop,
Williams, and May had been concerned in the transaction.
Meanwhile, a search had been made at Nova Scotia Gardens, Bethnal Green, where Bishop and Williams lived.
At first nothing peculiar was found; but at a second search the back-garden ground was dug up,
and in one corner, at some depth, a bundle of clothes were unearthed, which, with a hairy cap,
were known to be what Ferrari had worn when last seen.
In another portion of the garden more clothing, partly male and partly female, was discovered,
plainly pointing to the perpetration of other crimes.
These facts were represented before the police magistrate
who examined Bishop and his fellows, and further incriminating evidence adduced, to the effect that the prisoners had bartered for a coach to carry "a stiff 'un";
they had also been seen to leave their cottage, carrying out a sack with something heavy inside. On this they were fully committed to Newgate for trial.
This trial came off in due course at the Central Criminal Court, where the prisoners were charged on two counts,
one that of the murder of the Italian boy, the other that of a boy unknown.
The evidence from first to last was circumstantial,
but the jury, after a short deliberation, did not hesitate to bring in a verdict of guilty, and all three were condemned to death.
Shortly before the day fixed for execution, Bishop made a full confession, the bulk of which bore the impress of truth,
although it included statements that were improbable and unsubstantiated.
He asserted that the victim was a Lincolnshire lad, and not an Italian boy, although the latter was fully proved.
According to the confession, death had been inflicted by drowning in a well, whereas the medical evidence all pointed to violence.
It was, however, pretty clear that this victim, like preceding ones, had been lured to Nova Scotia Gardens, and there drugged with a large dose of laudanum.
While they were in a state of insensibility the murder was committed.
Bishop's confession was endorsed by Williams, and the immediate result was the respite of May.
A very painful scene occurred in Newgate when the news of his escape from death was imparted to May.
He fainted, and the warrant of mercy nearly proved his death-blow. The other two looked on at his agitation with an indifference amounting to apathy.
The execution took place a week or two later, in the presence of such a crowd as had not been seen near Newgate for years.
I will close this chapter with a brief account of another murder,
the memory of which is still fresh in the minds of Londoners, although half a century has passed since it was committed.
The horror with which Greenacre's crime struck the town was unparalleled since the time when Catherine Hayes slew her husband.
There were many features of resemblance in these crimes.
The decapitation and dismemberment, the bestowal of the remains in various parts of the town, the preservation of the head in spirits of wine,
in the hope that the features might some day be recognized, were alike in both.
The murder in both cases was long a profound mystery. In this which I am now describing,
a bricklayer found a human trunk near some new buildings in the Edgeware Road, one morning in the last week of 1836.
The inquest on these remains, which medical examination showed to be those of a female,
returned a verdict of willful murder against some person unknown.
On the 7th July, 1837,
the lockman of "Ben Jonson lock," in Stepney Fields, found a human head jammed into the lock gates.
Closer investigation proved that it belonged to the trunk already discovered on the 2nd February.
A further discovery was made in an osier bed near Cold Harbor Lane, Camberwell,
where a workman found a bundle containing two human legs, in a drain.
These were the missing members of the same mutilated trunk,
and there was now evidence sufficient to establish conclusively that the woman thus collected piecemeal had been barbarously done to death.
But the affair still remained a profound mystery. No light was thrown upon it till, towards the end of March,
a Mr. Gay of Goodge Street came to view the head, and immediately recognized it as that of a widowed sister, Hannah Brown,
who had been missing since the previous Christmas Day.
The murdered individual was thus identified. The next step was to ascertain where and with whom she had last been seen.
This brought suspicion on to a certain James Greenacre,
whom she was to have married, and in whose company she had left her own lodgings to visit his in Camberwell.
The police wished to refer to Greenacre, but as he was not forthcoming,
a warrant was issued for his apprehension, which was effected at Kennington on the 24th March.
A woman named Gale, who lived with him, was arrested at the same time. The prisoners were examined at the Marylebone police court.
Greenacre, a stout, middle-aged man, wrapped in a brown greatcoat, assumed an air of insolent bravado;
but his despair must have been great, as was evident from his attempt to strangle himself in the station-house.
Suspicion grew almost to certainty as the evidence was unfolded.
Mrs. Brown was a washer-woman, supposed to be worth some money; hence Greenacre's offer of marriage.
She had realized all her effects, and brought them with her furniture to Greenacre's lodgings. The two when married were to emigrate to Hudson's Bay.
Whether it was greed or a quarrel that drove Greenacre to the desperate deed remains obscure.
They were apparently good friends when last seen together at a neighbor's, where they seemed "perfectly happy and sociable, and eager for the wedding day."
But Greenacre in his confession pretended that he and his intended had quarreled over her property or the want of it,
and that in a moment of anger he knocked her down.
He thought he had killed her, and in his terror began at once to consider how he might dispose of the body and escape arrest.
While she was senseless, but really still alive, he cut off her head, and dismembered the body in the manner already described.
It is scarcely probable that he would have gone to this extremity if he had had no previous evil intention,
and the most probable inference is that he inveigled Mrs. Brown to his lodgings with the set purpose of taking her life.
His measures for the disposal of the corpus delicti remind us of those taken by Mrs. Hayes and her associates,
or of Gardelle's frantic efforts to conceal his crime.
The most ghastly part of the story is that which deals with his getting rid of the head.
This, wrapped up in a silk handkerchief,
he carried under his coat-flaps through the streets, and afterwards on his cap in a crowded city omnibus.
It was not until he left the bus, and walked up by the Regent's Canal, that he conceived the idea of throwing the head into the water.
Another day elapsed before he got rid of the rest of the body,
all of which, according to his own confession, made no doubt with the idea of exonerating Mrs. Gale, he accomplished without her assistance.
On the other hand, it was adduced in evidence that Mrs. Gale had been at his lodgings the very day after the murder,
and was seen to be busily engaged in washing down the house with bucket and mop.
Greenacre, when tried at the Old Bailey, admitted that he had been guilty of manslaughter.
While conversing with Mrs. Brown, he declared the unfortunate woman was rocking herself to and fro in a chair;
as she leant back he put his foot against the chair, and so tilted it over.
Mrs. Brown fell with it, and Greenacre, to his horror, found that she was dead.
But the medical evidence was clear that the decapitation had been effected during life, and the jury, after a short deliberation,
without hesitation brought in a verdict of willful murder.
The woman Gale was also found guilty, but sentence of death was only passed on Greenacre.
The execution was, as usual, attended by an immense concourse, and Greenacre died amidst the loudest execrations.
The Chronicles of Newgate, Volume 2. By Arthur Griffiths. Section 16: Newgate notorieties continued, part 1.
As the century advanced crimes of fraud increased.
They not only became more numerous, but they were on a wider scale.
The most extensive and systematic robberies were planned and carried out so as long to escape detection.
One of the earliest of the big operators in fraudulent finance was Edward Beaumont Smith,
who was convicted in 1841 of uttering false exchequer bills to an almost fabulous amount.
A not entirely novel kind of fraud, but one carried out on a larger scale than heretofore,
came to light in this same year, 1841.
This was the willful shipwreck and casting away of a vessel which, with her supposed cargo, had been heavily insured.
The 'Dryad' was a brig owned principally by two persons named Wallace, one a seaman, the other merchant.
She was freighted by the firm of Zulueta and Co. for a voyage to Santa Cruz.
Her owners insured her for a full sum of £2000, after which the Wallaces insured her privily
with other underwriters for a second sum of £2000.
After this, on the faith of forced bills of lading, the captain, Loose by name,
being a party to the intended fraud, they obtained further insurances on goods never shipped.
It was fully proved in evidence that when the Dryad sailed she carried nothing but the cargo belonging to Zulueta and Co.
Yet the Wallaces pretended to have put on board quantities of flannels, cloths, cotton prints,
beef, pork, butter, and earthenwares, on all of which they effected insurances.
Loose had his instructions to cast away the ship on the first possible opportunity, and from the time of his leaving Liverpool