The Sun.
London, England, 1862-08-20 00:00:00

TEE SUN.

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 20, 1862,

Thousands in London have, during the last few
years, known perfectly well by sight a young and
handsome man, of gentlemanly appearance, known
as WILLIAM BOUTELL, of Aspen House, in the
county of Surrey, Esq., and, until recently, M.P.
Lambeth. Now a prisoner in
for the borough of
one of her MAJESTY'S pots, having been yester-
day formally committed for trial upon a charge of
felony—a self-acknowleged Thief, Forger, and

Perjurer.
It is a dark and startling narrative in every way,
the story which has only become public property
within the last two days, Monday, the 18th, and
Tuesday, the 19th of August, 1862, down at Guild-
ford—the story of WILLIAM RourELL's high
crimes and misdemeanours. It will always retain a
most conspicuous place among the gloomy record
of causes celebres. ROUPELL'S name has already
been coupled—and not by any means extrava-
gantly—with the names of SADLEIR and FA.UNT-
LEROY. Not extravagantly—for neither SADLEIR,
the arch swindler, nor yet FAUNTLEROY, forger
though he was, ever approached in cool and
deliberate atrocity the evil doings perpetrated by
this gay
young man of fashion. For such WILLIAM
RoupELL
affected to be, while occupying a seat in
the House of Commons during several sessions as
one of the members of the Radical constituency of
Lambeth.

Complicated and 11111110T0115 though the crimes
now ccnfessed to 133,-vir
ROUPELL have been,
which they arose
may
the way in readily be told.
His father was one of that not very exceptional
class known in this "untlY as self-made men.
RICHARD PALMER ROUPELL was the name of this
father. He died at the age of
seventy-four on the
12th of September, 1856.
He had amassed, before f
his death, a very considerable fortune—a fortune
half a 11
million Ster,.n
g.
not far short in value of
He had dealt to an enormous extent in lead, acti
any alchemist on
had—more successfully than
record—contrived to turn his lead into gold. At the
period of his demise his personalty alone was sworn
under £200,000: but he had residences and lands in
abundance, besides all his goods and chattels, plate,
wines, horses, carriages, &c., houses all about Lon-
don, whole streets belonging to him, and estates in
several counties. Besides leaving all this property
behind him at his death, RICHARD PALMER
ROUPELL left five children. All five children by
the same mother—the four elder illegitimate, how-
ever—the youngest only legitimate. For the deceased
itictiAßD ROUPELL had cohabited with the
woman afterwards known as his wife, and
still surviving as his widow, during many years be-
fore their marriage. When this one legitimate
child, a son, called, after his father, RICHARD,
vas born, the father was already fifty-eight years
Of age. When that father died in 1856 RICHARD,
now heir at law to the ROUPELL Property, was yet
a boy at school. His elder brother WILLIAM—(one
of the four illegitimate children, by the same mother)
—Was then a young man
g of scarcely three-and-
twenty. Young in years, but old in criminality.
Clever, comely, accomplished, WILLIAM, among all
the children, appears to have been especially the old
.man's favourite. JOHN, the eldest eon and the first
born of the bastard family, had some time
previously turned out to be so much
of a scape-
grace that he was summarily sent not only

away from from home, but out of the country,
as a sort of hopeless ne'er-do-well. WILLIAM,
the second son, though the third of the ille-
gitimate offspring, coming between two daughters,
also both of them illegitimate—was kept more at
i home, more within view of the worthy old father,
who freighted this favourite son's fortunes with
high hopes, counting confidently upon WILLIAM
ROUPELL achieving greatness ! As he has done,
indeed—though of a very deplorable character.
Half a dozen years have not elapsed since the death

of Old ROUPELL, in the September of 1856, and

already—nay, the work was " done" about
a year or two since—WILLIAM ROUPELL, having
fraudulently obtained possession of the whole
property, has run through it, has got rid of
all the estates, valued at from £300,000 to
£400,000 altogether ! And having squandered
these ill-gotten goods— that never by right be-
longed to him—he comes back from abroad where
he has been living for a while, ruined, but in safety
—he voluntarily comes back from abroad to acknow-
ledge himself guilty of robbery by wholesale, of
forgery again and again repeated, of perjury as
black and heinous as could be, of perjury the most
wilful and the most deliberate !

On Monday he stood for the first time in the
witness-box in open court at Guildford, and there
frankly and quite explicitly, before Baron MARTIN
and a jury of his fellow-countrymen, and in the

midst of the breathless silence of hundreds who

had gone down there to listen to him, formally
and upon his oath, made a deliberate confession
of his guilt. Confessed himself guilty of the crimes
of theft, of forgery, and of perjury, so monstrous
many of them in the mere manner of their perpetra-
tion as to be almost beyond belief. The the
crime of all, as we may venture to call it--the
proved in the winter of 1856-1857 by this natural
son (we should rather say by this unnatural son)
shortly after the death of RICIII.ED ROUPELL the
EIder—WILLIAM ROVPELL, late M.P. for Lambeth,
now acknowledges to have been forged by his own
hand. It bequeathed the whole of the large property
of the deceased to his widow—thereby placing the
whole property at the mercy of WILLIAM ROUPELL.
A veritable will there was, leaving the bulk of the
property to the only legitimate child, RICHARD,
then a mere school-boy. This veritable will having

had a last codicil added to it, a codicil confirming,
in every way, the intentions expressed in the body
of the will—a codicil dated only within a fort-
night previously to the old man's decease. The last
day of August, 1856, being the date of the codicil,
and the death of old Mr. RourELL occurring, as
we have already mentioned, on the 12th of the fol-
lowing September. That bona fide Will, found by
WILLIAM ROIJPELL in an escritoire of his deceased

father, but a few hours after the old
man had breathed his last having been
first secreted has been since destroyed.
WILLIAM ROUPELL acknowledging that it was in
the presence of the dead body of his father that he
determined—with a view to conceal all his previous
forgeries and embezzlements, and to get the rest of
the property inte his possession—to forge a new
Will to the effect already mentioned. The Will,
eventually " proved"—dated 2d Sept., 1856 (the
codicil to the true Will being dated, remember, only
two days previously !)—the Will now " proved,"
however, to be a Forgery. When that climax of his
secret crimes had been perpetrated—and perpe-
trated so skilfully as to defy detection--WILLIAM
RouPELL was, as we have seen, but barely three-
and-twenty ! So skilled in his wicked craft had he
become thus prematurely by the daring forgeries
and embezzlements he had already been guilty of
(throughout with complete success I) during his
unsuspecting and confiding father's lifetime.
The consummate coolness, tact, and deliberation
with which the young man set about the forgery
of this remarkable Will, but for the atrocity of the
deed would almost wring from us an unwilling
admiration. In order to obtain a likely signature
to attest the Will—he bethinks him of an old
servant of his father's, an old fellow then nearly
90 years of age, named MUGGERIDGE. To
MUGGERIDGE he takes a £5 note as
coming from Mrs. ROUFELL, the widowed
mother, as a little souvenir of the old man's dead
master, to enable MUGGERIDGE to buy some
mourning clothes. Pretending thus to bring the
money from. Mrs. ROUPELL, the Forger obtains
a receipt for it from MUGGERIDGE. This being,
in fact, all he wanted. When obtained, how-
ever—the old man's signature turns out to be
rather a puzzler ! Its difficulty in imitation is
nevertheless conquered at last. The cunningly
meditated crime is completed- " I wrote my father's
signature," says WILLIAM ROUPELL with exem-
plary candour—" I wrote my father's signature with
his own pen—a short quill pen, and also that
of MUGGERIDGE. My own I wrote with my
gold pen, and as lightly as I could, to make the
contrast as strong as possible with the others."
The forged Will being proved, WILLIAM
Boum'. becomes master of the whole Pro-
perty. It is a property altogether in its value
a quarter of a million sterling. He himself
is but twenty-three years, of age when he comes
into possession of it. Yet four years are enough,
as events proved, to see it all melt away in his
grasp. He has already before his father's death
mortgaged and fooled and swindled away seventy
thousand pounds. After his father's death WM.
Rournfs progress along the downward
course is accelerated. Apparently he is rising
first of all, rather than sinking. He lives in
great splendour. He enters Parliament as
M.P. for Lambeth. He is no Silent Member, either,
when he gets there, but takes an apparently suitable
place among the metropolitan representatives.
Four years have scarcely rolled by after his father's
death, however, when the bubble bursts. The
wealthy member for Lambeth is reported to have
become seriously involved. He resigns his seat. He
goes abroad; is under a cloud—that people think, for
awhile, may prove only a temporary embarrassment.
but months slip by, and at length, in the course of
trial
that comes on at Guildford on Monday, and
is closed on the following day (yesterday)—not by
a verdict,
but by Plaintiff, and,
andtle
a purchaser Dt
oenvf ei nte hsdtaaontonetf:
I coming to understanding—the whole frightful
truth comes elit. WILLIAM ROUPELL makes—we
can hardly say a clean breast of it, the truth is so
foul and black that he has
in the case is his wronged Iv._
to tell ! The plaintiff
younger brother RICHARD
a"
wronged
such, heir-at-
law.stetathteues:
sterlint,.
ROUPELL, the legitimate
the v.nrb.
The
one of the defendant
Lt
sold to this deceived purcihnabsoeernedf eoirnn les olesoeoo
What has been done
deluded purchaser Wig'with all
Meanwhile the self
the rest of them. -eon_
erjurer, lately /4 a,
victed forger, thief, and p
for Lambeth is himself taken into custody
from the witness-box, and is formally committed for
trial upcn a charge of felony. Thirty-one years
have as yet barely passed over his head : and already
it is as plain as can be, that the rest of his existence
will for certain be passed by him in the grey dress
of a convict ! Undergoing
all inflicted upon criminals, the worst punishment of
save the extreme penalty
of death, namely, the terrible sentence of penal ser-
vitude for life. A few years ago and WILLIAM
ROUPELL, late M.P. for Lambeth, would as cer-