MikhailT/lj-speech huggingface dataset:
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 boardroom, 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 jail-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 traveled 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 employees 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 traveled 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 honorable 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 pocketbooks.
Cheques blank and canceled 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, 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, entrusted them as a beginning with the duty of cashing cheques.
A confederate followed the emissary closely,
not only to ensure 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 honorable 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.
The Chronicles of Newgate, Volume 2. By Arthur Griffiths. Section 19: 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 jail, 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 jail 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 jail.
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 encumbrance, 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 Jail.
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?
the fugitive, uncomfortably ensconced in the flue, came down of his own accord, like Colonel Colt's raccoon.
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 traveled 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 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 unraveling 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,