Northern Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1857-12-02 00:00:00

EX 112 tiORDIITARY CASE OF I NIP OSTURE.

At the adjourned sessions at Stafford, on Thursday last,
an old man, who had attained the aga of 63 years. and who
assented to the name of Thomas Beardmore, alias John
Mobley, pleaded guilty to two charges of obtaining money
and goods by false pretences at Leek and Stone. The cir-
cumstances under which the frauds were practised are so
extraordinary, that we give a brief outline of the filets,
which would have been more fully ditctosed, if the charges
had been investigated by a jury. The prisoner, whose real
name is John Mobley, is a native of Weston fravil, near
Aylesbury. For some time he has resorted to a series of
impostures, his favourite character being that of a returned
convict, and in this personification ho is described in the
Police Gazelle of September tad, as having imposed upon
an old woman of the name of Hannah Duckworth, of
Burnley, Lancashire, by representing himself as her son.
At a later date, at Leek, Staffordshire, he represented him •
self to be a man named Frederick Cox, who had been
transported about nineteen years previously. In conse-
quence of the plausible tale he told, and his accurate
knowledge of events which had transpired before Cox's
transportation, he was kept for nearly a month at the house
jof a married daughter of the convict. Cox's wife, suppos-
ng her husband to have been dead, had married again ; and
although it is scarcely creditble, the silty old woman was
so completely convinced that the prisoner was her long lost
partner, that she left the man whom she had marriel, and
went to live with the prisoner. He told her that he was
possessed of £1,700, part or all of which he had put in the
bank : and upon this statement being questioned, he took
the daughter of the old woman to the bank, left her at the
door, and on returning assured her it was all right, and that
he had drawn £l5O on account. The same afternoon he
accompanied her to several shops in Leek, where he order-
ed goods; but the deception being shortly afterwards dis-
covered, Beardmore, fearing the consequences, conveyed
himself away from the locality. He was soon afterwards
found at Stone, where he introduced himself to Lydia
Hawkins, representing that he was her husband, who had
been transported 30 years before. The same kind of aston-
ishing credulity which induced Mrs Cox to take him as
her husband. operated with Mrs Hawkins, and as he told
her of the £l,BOO he had in the batik, which he had got
as a gold digger, she believed the lapse of time might have
altered his features, and for the space of five weeks he
lived with her, during which period she gave him money
and several articles of clothing. At the end of this period
some grave doubts were aroused in her mind with reference
to his identity, and the money he professed to have, and
finding the place becoming too warm for him, he quietly
left and did not return. He then palmed off a similar im-
position at Tean, where he represented himself to be a
returned convict named Thomas Beardmore, who 25 years
previously had been banished, and he so effectually carried
on the deception, that not only Beardmore's re'atives, bat
many of the inhabitants were imposed on, his altered
appearance being attributed to the hardships he had under-
gone.—On Friday morning, (sentence having been defer-
red), the prisoner was again placed in the dock, and sen-
tenced to 12 calendar mouths in gaol to hard labour.