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

NOTICE.

Ail remittanc►°s are, henceforth, to be made to
Mr. JOHN CHAPLIN, at The Sun office, 112,
strand, who has been appointed, by the Lord
Chancellor, Receiver and Manager of The Sun
newspaper, and the outstanding debts (Its in
respect thereof.

HIGH WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.
THIS DAY.—Morning, 9h. 33m.—AftErnoon, 10h. 12m,
'.l'o-moßnow.-Morning, 10a. 56r.f..—A:ernoct. 11h. 33m,

4..,_.
, _w-
, A_
~..1,... .
.4..."\gi' ''
h',`- ~.-7.-',,c'' ' -4.. . ,:' • ::: '...-, 1.- :'-'-',' C--"``'`—‘*;.,
.;,'.(c",
1,,
~,,,i7;,.!?.-!'• kt r , P,0.,.4i,,,, `•._s_ , _ , , , t ' -
...-,,
~,, ' - st.., • D/:(1V, ~

THE SUN.

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 20, 1862,

Thousands in London have, u`uring the last few
years, known perfectly well by sigLA a young and
handsome man, of gentlemanly appearOnool known

as WILLIAM ROUPELL, of Aspen Honoe, in the

county of Surrey, Esq., and, until recently, M.P.
for the borough of Lambeth. Now a prisoner in

one of her MAJESTY'S gaols, 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 ROUPELL'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 FAUNT-
I'F'IIOY. 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
t ais 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 numerous though the crimes
now confessed to by WILLIAM RotiPELL have been,
the .--;;;y in which they arose
may readily be told.
His father was one of that not very exceptional
class known in this country an
self-made men.
RICHARD PALMER ROUPELL was the -
--- name of this
I
father. He died at the age of seventy
four on the
12th of September, 1856. He bad amassed, before
hi 3 death, a very considerable fortune—, tortune
not far short in value of half a million sterling.
He had dealt to an enormous extent in lead, and
alchemist on
had—more successfully than any
record—contrived to turn his lead into gold. At th
sWorne
period of his demise his personalty alone wa
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
RICHARD ROUPELL bad cohabited with the
woman afterwards known as his wife, and
stilt surviving as his widow, during many years be-
fore their morriagc. When this one legitimate
child, a 80n, called, after his father, RICHARD,
was born, thc... father was already fifty-eight years
01 agt'• When that father died in 1856 RICHARD,
now heir ne hi.w to the ROUPELL Property, was yet
a boy at school. His elder brother WILLIAM—(one
of the four illctitimate children, by the same mother)
_was then a young man of scarcely three-and-
twenty. Young in sears, but old in crithinality.
plished, WILLIAM, among all
Clever, comely, accom
the children, appears to have been especially the old
man's favourite. /MDT, the eldest son and the first
born of the bastard family, had some time
previously turned out to be so much 0- f
a scape-
grace that he was summarily sent not ;only

away 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
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—WILLIAN RourELL, 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 crowning
crime of all, as we may venture to call it—the Will
proved in the winter of 1856-1857 by this natural
son (we should rather say by this unnatural son)
shortly after the death of RICHARD ROUPELL the
EIder—WILLIAM ROIIPELL, 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. ROUPELL occurring, as
we have already mentioned, on the 12th of the fol-
lowing September. That bona fide Will, found by
WILLIAM ROUPELL 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 into 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—WlLLlAM
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 !) 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. ROUPELL, 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
ROUPELL 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.
ROWELL'S 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
I
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
\
awhlle,mey prove only a temporary embarrassment.
Bat months slip by, and at length, in the course of
a trial that
comes on at Guildford on Monday, and
is closed
~,, the following day (yesterday)—not by
a verdict, but
breast -
16,04:013,terling•
by Plaintiff and Defendant
coming to an understanding—the whole frightful
truth comes out. WILLIAM ROUPELL makes—we
say a clean
foul and black that he Las of it, the truth is so
to tell ! The plaintiff
in the case is his wronged you_
can hardly
' °ger brother RICHARD
estate,
' as such, heir-at-
tea
lRa
w 0 U. P EILhLe,
purchaser of
the
defendantlegitimate
is
tshoee ,viara:t:
one of the ROUPELL estates, the iato,b,
What has been done in one instance with sold to this deceived purchaser for 1
' one
done also with
deluded purchaser may be all
the rest of them. Meanwhile the self-"n.
urer
ilately NIT:
victed forger, thief, and Per.]
for Lambeth is himself taken into custody
med for
from the witness-box, and is formally com let
trial upcn a charge of felony. Thirty-on 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 the worst punishment of
all inflicted upon criminals,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-