MikhailT/lj-speech huggingface dataset:
that his transactions at Birmingham would shortly be very large, owing to the development of his business there in the alleged manufacture of Pullman cars.
The ground thus cleared, the forgers poured in from Birmingham numbers of forged acceptances,
all of which were discounted to the value of £102,217.
The fraud was rendered possible by the absence of a check usual in the United States.
There such bills would be sent to the drawer to be initialed, and the forgery would have been at once detected.
It was the discovery of this flaw in the banking system which had encouraged the Americans to attempt this crime.
Time was clearly an important factor in the fraud, hence the bills were sent forward in quick succession.
Long before they came to maturity the forgers hoped to be well beyond arrest. They had, moreover, sought to destroy all clue.
The sums obtained by Bidwell in the name of "Warren" at the Bank of England
were lodged at once by drafts to "Horton," another alias, in the Continental Bank.
For these cash was obtained in notes; the notes were exchanged by one of the conspirators for gold at the Bank of England, and again the same day
a second conspirator exchanged the gold for notes. But just as all promised well, the frauds were detected through the carelessness of the forgers.
They had omitted to insert the dates in certain bills.
The bills were sent as a matter of form to the drawer to have the date added, and the forgery was at once detected.
Noyes was seized without difficulty, as it was a part of the scheme that he should act as the dupe, and remain on the spot in London till all the money was obtained.
Through Noyes the rest of the conspirators were eventually apprehended. Very little if any of the ill-gotten proceeds, however, was ever recovered.
Large sums, as they were realized, were transmitted to the United States, and invested in various American securities,
where probably the money still remains.
The prisoners, who were committed to Newgate for trial,
had undoubtedly the command of large funds while there, and would have readily disbursed it to effect their enlargement.
A plot was soon discovered,
deep laid, and with many ramifications, by which some of the Newgate warders were to be bribed to allow the prisoners to escape from their cells at night.
Certain friends of the prisoners were watched, and found to be in communication with these warders,
to whom it was said £100 apiece had been given down as the price of their infidelity.
Further sums were to have been paid after the escape;
and one warder admitted that he was to have £1000 more paid to him, and to be provided with a passage to Australia.
The vigilance of the Newgate officials, assisted by the city police, completely frustrated this plot.
A second was nevertheless set on foot,
in which the plan of action was changed, and the freedom of the prisoners was to be obtained by means of a rescue from the dock during the trial.
An increase of policemen on duty sufficed to prevent any attempt of this kind.
Nor were these two abortive efforts all that were planned.
A year or two after, when the prisoners were undergoing their life sentences of penal servitude,
much uneasiness was caused at one of the convict prisons by information that bribery on a large scale was again at work amongst the officials.
But extra precautions and close supervision have so far proved effectual, and the prisoners are still in custody after a lapse of ten years.
I propose to end at this point the detailed account of the more prominent criminal cases which lodged their perpetrators in Newgate.
The most recent affairs are still too fresh in the public mind to need more than a passing reference.
Few of the Newgate notorieties of late years show any marked peculiarities;
their crimes follow in the lines of others already found, and often more than once, in the calendars.
Violent passions too easily aroused prompted the Frenchwoman Marguerite Dixblanc
to murder her mistress, Madame Riel, in Park Lane, as Courvoisier, the Swiss, had been tempted to murder Lord William Russell.
Greed in the latter case was a secondary motive;
it was the principal incentive with Kate Webster, that fierce and brutal female savage who took the life of her mistress at Richmond.
Webster, it may be mentioned here, was one of the worst prisoners ever remembered in Newgate
most violent in temper, and addicted to the most frightful language.
Webster's devices for disposing of the body of her victim will call to mind those of Theodore Gardelle,
of Good, and Greenacre, and Catherine Hayes.
Greed in another form led the Stauntons to make away with Mrs. Patrick Staunton, murdering her with devilish cruelty by slow degrees.
characterized this as a crime more black and hideous than any in the criminal annals of the country.
But it was scarcely worse than that of Mrs. Brownrigg, or that of the Meteyards, both of whom did their helpless apprentices to death.
It was to effect the rupture of an irksome tie that led Henry Wainwright to murder Harriet Lane deliberately and in cold blood.
In this case the tie was unsanctified, but it was not more inconvenient than that which urged Greenacre to a similar crime.
In cold-blooded premeditation it rivaled that of the Mannings.
As in that case, the grave had been dug long in anticipation, and the chloride of lime purchased to destroy the corpse.
Henry Wainwright's attempt to get rid of the body was ingenious, but not original,
and the circumstances which led to detection were scarcely novel proofs of the old adage that murder will out.
Henry Wainwright's impassioned denial of his crime, even after it had been brought fully home to him, has many parallels in the criminal records.
His disclaimer, distinct and detailed on every point, was intended simply for effect.
He might swear he was not the murderer, that he never fired a pistol in his life,
and that, in spite of the verdict of the jury, "he left the dock with a calm and quiet conscience;"
but there was no doubt of his guilt, as the Lord Chief Justice told him, while expressing great regret at his rash assertion.
Wainwright's demeanor after sentence has been described in the last chapter.
Doubts were long entertained whether Thomas Wainwright,
who was convicted as an accessory after the fact, had not really taken an active part in the murder.
But a conversation overheard between the two brothers in Newgate satisfactorily exonerated Thomas Wainwright.
Poisoning has still its victims.
Christina Edmunds had resort to strychnia, the same lethal drug that Palmer used;
her object being first to dispose of the wife of a man for whom she had conceived a guilty passion,
then to divert suspicion from herself by throwing it on a confectioner, whose sweetmeats she bought,
tampered with, and returned to the shop.
The trial of Miss Edmunds was transferred to the Central Criminal Court under Lord Campbell's Act, already referred to.
It will be remembered that she made a statement which led to the empaneling of a jury of matrons, who decided that there was no cause for an arrest of judgment.
Kate Webster followed the same course; but these pleas of pregnancy are not common now-a-days.
Although sentence of death was passed on Edmunds, it was commuted to penal servitude for life;
but she eventually passed into Broadmoor Lunatic Asylum, where she busies herself with watercolor drawing.
The still more recent cases of poisoning which have occurred were not connected with Newgate.
The mysterious Bravo case, that of Dr. Lamson, and that of Kate Dover
unhappily show that society is more than ever at the mercy of the insidious and unscrupulous administration of poisonous drugs.
mutinied, murdered the captain and mates, sparing the steward only on condition that he would navigate the ship to the Mediterranean.
The mutineers were of the same stamp as the crew of the 'Flowery Land'
foreigners, vindictive, reckless, and truculent ruffians, easily moved to murderous rage.
The 'Lennie's' men were all Greeks, except one known as French Peter,
who was the ringleader, and who had long been an habitual criminal, a reputed murderer, and certainly an inmate more than once of a French bagne.
Conviction was obtained through the evidence of the steward and two of the least culpable of the crew.
In Newgate the 'Lennie' mutineers were extremely well behaved.
Resolute, determined-looking men, their courage broke down in confinement.
They paid close attention to the counsels of the archimandrite, and died quite penitent. A story is told of one of them, "Big Harry,"
the wildest and most cut-throat looking of the lot, which proves that he could be grateful for kindness, and was not all bad.
He had steadfastly refused to eat meat on some religions scruples, and for the same reason would not touch soup.
He was glad, therefore, to get an extra allowance of bread,
and to show his gratitude to the warder who procured this privilege for him, he made him a present.
It was his own handiwork -- a bird pecking at a flower;
the whole manufactured while in the condemned cell of the crumb of bread made into paste.
The flower had berries also of bread fixed on stems made from the fiber drawn from the stuffing of his mattress,
and the bird's legs were a couple of teeth broken off the prisoner's comb.
Of the lesser criminals, forgers, thieves, swindlers, Newgate continued to receive its full share up to the last.
But there were few cases so remarkable as the great ones already recorded.
Mr. Bamell Oakley made a rich harvest for a time, and was said at the time of his trial
to have obtained as much as £40,000 by false and fraudulent pretenses.
Messrs. Swindlehurst, Saffery, and Langley cleared a large profit
by swindling the Artisans' Dwellings Company; and Madame Rachel passed through Newgate on her way to Millbank
convicted of obtaining jewelery under the false pretense of making silly women "beautiful for ever."
The greatest causes célèbre, however, of recent times were the turf frauds by which the Comtesse de Goncourt was swindled
out of large sums in sham sporting speculations. The conviction of the principals in this nefarious transaction,
Benson, the two Kurrs, Bale, and Murray, led to strange revelations of dishonest practices amongst the detective police,
The Chronicles of Newgate, Volume 2. By Arthur Griffiths. Section 22. Newgate Reformed.
The time at length approached when a radical and complete change was to come over the old city jail.
It was impossible for Newgate to escape for ever the influences pressing so strongly towards prison reform.
Elsewhere the spirit had been more or less active, although not uniformly or always to the same extent.
There had been a pause in legislation, except of a permissive kind. The 2nd and 3rd Victoria, cap. 56
laid it down that individuals might be confined separately and apart in single cells.
By other acts local authorities were empowered to construct new jails or hire accommodation in the district;
but no steps had been taken in Parliament to enforce a better system of discipline,
or to insist upon the construction of prisons on the most approved plan.
As regards the first, however, Sir James Graham, when Home Secretary in 1843,
had appointed a committee of prison inspectors, presided over by the Under Secretary of State, to draw up rules and dietaries,
which were then recommended to and generally adopted by the visiting justices all over the kingdom.
As regards the second, the Government had set a good example, and in deciding upon the erection of Pentonville prison
had embarked on a considerable expenditure in order to provide a model prison for general imitation.
The first stone of Pentonville prison was laid on the 10th April, 1840, by the Marquis of Normanby,
then Home Secretary, and the prison, which contained five hundred and twenty cells, was occupied on the 21st December, 1842.
This building was a costly affair. The site was uneven, and had to be leveled;
moreover, the gross expenditure was increased "partly from its being considered necessary, as it was a national prison,
to make a great archway, and to make the character of it more imposing than if it had been situated in the country, and had been an ordinary prison.
Up to the 21st December, 1842,
with the additions made to that date, the total expenditure amounted to nearly £90,000, or about £180 per cell.
On the other hand, it must be admitted
that this was an experimental construction, and that too strict a limitation of outlay would have militated seriously against the usefulness of the building.
Nor must it be overlooked that this, the first model prison, although obtained at a considerable cost, became actually what its name implied.
Pentonville has really been the model on which all subsequent prison construction has been based. All prisons at home and abroad are but variations,
of course with the added improvements following longer experience, of the pattern originated by the architectural genius of Sir Joshua Jebb.
The internal arrangements of the new model were carefully supervised by a body of distinguished men, among which were many peers, Lord John Russell,
Mr. Shaw-Lefevre, the Speaker of the House of Commons, Sir Benjamin Brodie,
Major Jebb, R.E., and the two prison inspectors, Messrs. Crawford and Russell, with whose names the reader is already familiar.
Major, afterwards Sir Joshua Jebb,
was the moving spirit among these commissioners, and he is now generally recognized as the originator of modern prison architecture.
The movement thus laudably initiated by the Government soon spread to the provinces.
Some jurisdictions, greatly to their credit, strove at once to follow the lead of the central authority.
Within half-a-dozen years no less than fifty-four new prisons were built on the Pentonville plan, others were in progress,
and the total number of separate cells provided amounted to eleven thousand odd.
This list included Wakefield, Leeds, Kirkdale, Manchester, Birmingham, and Dublin.
Liverpool was building a new prison with a thousand cells, the county of Surrey one with seven hundred.
The cost in each varied considerably, the general average being from £120 to £130 per cell.
At Pentonville the rate was higher, but there the expense had been increased by the site,
the difficulty of access, and the admitted necessity of giving architectural importance to this the national model prison.
Other jurisdictions were less prompt to recognize their responsibilities, the city of London among the number, as I shall presently show at length.
These were either satisfied with a makeshift, and modified existing buildings, without close regard to their suitability, or for a long time did nothing at all.
Among the latter were notably the counties of Cheshire, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Nottinghamshire, the East and North Ridings of Yorkshire.
The south and west of England were also very laggard, and many years were still to elapse before the prisons in these parts were properly reconstituted.
Not less remarkable than this diverse interpretation of a manifest duty
was the variety of views as regards the discipline to be introduced in these new prisons. The time was one
when thoughtful people who concerned themselves closely with social questions were greatly exercised as to the best system of treating the inmates of a jail.
A new and still imperfectly understood science had arisen,
the principles of which were debated by disputants of widely opposite opinions with an earnestness that sometimes bordered upon acrimony.
One school were strongly in favor of the continuous separation of prisoners,
the other supported the theory of labor in association, but under a stringent rule of silence, with isolation only at night.
Both systems came to us from the United States. The difference was really more in degree than in principle,
and our modern practice has prudently tried to steer between the two extremes, accepting as the best system a judicious combination of both.
But about 1850 the two sides were distinctly hostile, and the controversy ran high.
High authorities were in favor of continuous separation.
Colonel Jebb preferred it; Messrs. Crawford and Whitworth Russell were convinced that the complete isolation of criminals from one another
was the true basis of a sound system of prison discipline.
Prison chaplains of experience and high repute, such as Messrs. Field, Clay, Kingsmill, Burt, and Osborne, also advocated it.
It was claimed for it that it was more deterrent;
that in districts where it was the rule, evil-doers especially dreaded coming under its irksome conditions.
Another argument was, that it afforded more hope of the reformation of criminals.
The system of associated labor in silence had also its warm supporters,
who maintained that under this system prisoners were more industrious and more healthy
that their condition was more natural, and approximated more nearly to that of daily life.
Better industrial results were obtained from it, and instruction in trades was easier, and prisoners were more likely to leave jail
with the means of earning an honest livelihood if so disposed.
The opposing champions were not slow to find faults and flaws in the system they condemned.
Separation was injurious to health, mental or physical, said one side; men broke down when subjected to it for more than a certain period,
and it was unsafe to fix this limit above twelve months, although some rash advocates were in favor of eighteen months, some indeed of two years.
The other side retorted that the system of associated labor was most costly, so many officers being required to maintain the discipline of silence;
moreover, it was nearly impossible to prevent communication and mutual contamination.
It is scarcely necessary to follow the controversy further. I have only introduced the subject as showing how little as yet the State
was impressed with the necessity for authoritative interference.
The legislature was content to let local jurisdictions experimentalize for themselves; with the strange, anomalous result,
that a thief or other criminal might be quite differently treated according as he was incarcerated on one side or another of a border line.
This variety was often extended to all branches of prison economy.
There was an absolute want of uniformity in dietaries; in some prisons it was too liberal, in others too low.
The amount of exercise varied from one or two hours daily to half the working day.
The cells inhabited by prisoners were of very varying dimensions;
some were not sufficiently ventilated, others were warmed artificially, and were unwholesomely close.
The use of gas or some other means of lighting might be adopted, but more often was dispensed with.
In a great number of prisons no provision was made for the education of prisoners, in some others there was a sufficient staff of schoolmasters and instructors.
The discipline also varied greatly, from the severely penal to the culpably lax.
The greatest pains might be taken to secure isolation,
the prisoners might be supervised and watched at every step, and made liable to punishment for a trifling breach of an irksome code of regulations,
or they might herd together or communicate freely as in the old worst days. They might see each other when they liked, and converse sotto voce,
or make signs; or the chances of recognizing or being recognized were reduced to a minimum by the use of a mask.
There was no general rule of employment. Hard labor was often not insisted upon in separate confinement;
sometimes it embraced the tread-wheel or the newly-invented instruments known as cranks, which ground air.
The alternative between labor or idleness, or the selection of the form of labor,
were mere matters of chance, and decided according to the views of the local magistracy.
They were approved of and employed at some prisons, at others objected to because they were unproductive,
and because the machine was often so imperfect that the amount of effort could not be exactly regulated.
Opinions differed greatly with regard to the tread-wheel; some authorities advocated it as a very severe and irksome punishment,
which was yet under full control, and might be made to work corn-mills or prove otherwise productive;
other authorities as strongly condemned it as brutalizing, unequal in its operation, and altogether a "deplorable invention."
This want of uniformity in prison discipline became ere long an acknowledged evil pressing for some remedy,
and the question was once more taken up in the House of Commons. In 1849 Mr. Charles Pearson, M.P.,
moved for a committee to report upon the best means of securing some uniform system which should be "punitive, reformatory, and self-supporting;"
but the session was far advanced, and the matter was relegated to the following year.
In 1850 Sir George Grey brought forward a new motion to the same effect,
which was promptly carried, with the additional instruction to the committee to suggest any improvements.
The latter had reference more especially to a proposal emanating from Mr. Charles Pearson himself.
That gentleman had come to the conclusion that the ordinary and hackneyed methods of treatment were practically inefficacious,
and that a new system of prison discipline should be introduced.
His plan was to devote the whole labor of prisoners sentenced to any term between three months and four years to agriculture.
District prisons were to be established for this purpose, each of which would be in the heart of a farm of a thousand acres.
The prisoners were to cultivate the land and raise sufficient produce for their own support.
Mr. Pearson backed up his recommendations by many sound arguments.
Field labor, he urged, and with reason, was a very suitable employment;
healthful, easily learnt, and well adapted to the circumstances of unskilled laborers.
Such excellent returns might be counted upon, that a margin of profit would be left after the cost of the prisons had been defrayed.
The scheme was no doubt fascinating, and in many respects feasible;
but Mr. Pearson overlooked some points in which a more practical mind would have foreseen difficulty, and perhaps forecasted failure.
In his proposal he dwelt much upon the humanizing effects of healthful open-air toil,
anticipating the best results from a system which made earnings, and indeed release, dependent upon the amount of work done.
That industry might thus be stimulated and encouraged was probable enough,
and later experience has fully proved the advantage of a judicious system of gratuities for labor;
but Mr. Pearson hardly considered the converse sufficiently, and
omitted the fact that he might have to deal with that persistent idleness which is not an unknown characteristic of the criminal class.
The hope of reward might do much, but no system of penal discipline is complete unless it can also count upon the fear of punishment.
Mr. Pearson seems to have taken for granted that all prisoners would behave well in his district prisons.
On that account he made no provision to insure safe custody,
thinking perhaps that prisoners so well disposed would cheerfully remain in jail of their own accord.
But an open farm of a thousand acres would have offered abundant chances of escape, which some at least would have attempted, probably with success.
The creation of an expensive staff for supervision,
or the still more costly process of walling in the whole farm, would have greatly added to the charges of these establishments.
I have lingered too long perhaps over Mr. Pearson's proposal, but some reference was indispensable to a scheme
which marked the growth of public interest in prison affairs, and which was the germ of the new system
since admirably developed in the convict prisons of this country.
Mr. Pearson and the committee of 1850 have the more claim on our consideration, because,
in the inquiry which followed, attention was again attracted to Newgate.
The condition of that prison in 1850 may be gathered from the pages of the report. Not much had been done to remedy the old defects;
radical improvement was generally considered impossible. The great evil, however, had been sensibly diminished.
There was no longer, or at worst but rarely, and for short periods, the same overcrowding.