The Sun.
London, England, 1861-04-01 00:00:00

CAREER OF A SWINDLER AND THIEF.

(From the North British Daily Mail.)
That "fact is stranger than fiction" has now passed into
a truism which few will attempt to deny; and of all the
"strange facts," probably that connected with crime is the
strangest. M`Levy, the Edinburgh detective, gave to the
ol i ,14y ie log "I:tei," wilich every
man of Liz, eLsl of any 1,7,-.:gtht.n,l. vxperieuen conic add lo
almost ad infinitum; and now we purpose to give a plain
recital of a few of the more prominent facts regarding a
man whose photograph is before us, who has earned for
himself the unenviable distinction of being a hypocritical
scoundrel, who is at present in durance vile in Greenock
prison, and which may serve to drive him into an honest
course of life, or make his continuance in nefarious prac-
tices uphill work. He is no common thief, but a successful
swindler; one who, under the garb and guise of a mission-
ary or clergyman, has succeeded in robbing many men of
their money and clothes, and a number of women of their
happiness, and in some instances of their virtue. A more
plausible fellow never oreathed, or one whose " melting"
story could more successfully draw a col', from the pocket.
Henry Thornton Hay—he has a number of aliases besides
—is about 40 years of age, middle size in height, speaks
with a slight English accent, and although possessing a
sinister eye, has a somewhat open countenance. In his
better dressed days—now he is miserably poverty-stri.lien
—one of his most common tales or dodges, whereby he
worked up on the credulity of unsuspecting good people, was
to the follewing effect :—Having got an ear to listen to him,
he began—" I was born in London in 1825. My father
was a curate of the Anglican Church, and sent me to Cam-
bridge University, where I was entered a pensioner at
Queen's College, and subsequently graduated there. In
the year 1843 (if he was addressing a Free Churchman, he
would say)—when your nr,ble Church made that giorinu
stand—the tide in my affairs occurred, which, as Shakspe) e
tells us,

' taken at the flood, leads on to fortune ;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.'
Mine, truly (here he would put his hand to his eyes), has
been bound in shallows and in miseries. My former com-
panion at Queen's College had a sister, and she was my
sweetheart. Having been driven from her home by the
cruelty of a stepfather, she walked down to Jambridge, a
distance of e 2 miles, and called upon me at the college.
What could be done? I consented to leave college, and
accompany her to her aunt's at Merthyr Tydvil, in Wales.
We set out next morning, but had only reached Brecon
when she bscame so ill from fatigue as to be unable to pro-
ceed further. She rallied a little, and as we had made the
acquaintance of the clergyman and doctor of the town,
things were looking bright again ; but as the sun went down
on the third day of our sojourn in Brecon she died in my
arms !" After such a tragic tale, does not the reader's
heart begin to soften towards the unfortunate man ; but
wait a lit le, only the half of the heart-rendering story is
told. " That sad event occurred in May, 1843, and it so
unhinged me that I could not settle, and so I rambled over
the country until the following August, when I found my-
self in Plymouth, and, not knowing what to do with my-
self, I enlisted in the 85th Foot, and was soon sent out to
North America. On the voyage thither I learned the trade
of a cooper, which stood me in good stead since. The re-
gimeat subsequently went to Barbadoes, and while there I
was transferred to the 3d West India Regiment, which
having mutinied, I assisted to quell, and was promoted to
be corporal and schoolmaster of the regiment. In 1847, the
71st Foot having been ordered home, I volunteered into
that regiment, and towards the end of the year arrived in
Glasgow. On the reduction of the army in 1849 I was dis-
charged from the service without a home, without a pro.
fession, and without an aim I" By this and similar tales
he has victimised many charitable people ; but before the
reader sends us half a sovereign for the poor unfortunate,
we advise him tq look on the other side of the picture,
which we are now about to trace after careful inquiry.
Thornton Hay, there is reason to believe, is the son of a
pobr English curate, and has certainly been a grief to his
parents as to many others He has received a tolerable
education, but was never an alumnus of Cambridge, so that
his tragic love•story may be discarded as having its founda-
tion only in his prolific brain. He enlisted under the name
of Thomas Watkins, proceeded with his regiment to the
West Indies, where he deserted and entered the 3d West
India Regiment. He was discovered, punished, and per-
mitted to come home in the 71st Regiment, arriving in
Glasgow in 1847. Soon after, his penchant for preaching
and deserting was exhibited in this city, and called forth
general attention.' He has always been "quite the ladies'
man," ar.d possessed of a peculiar knack of ingratiating
himself with the fair sex. In the end of 1847 ,he pulpit of
Greenhead quoad sacra Church was vacant, and accord-
ingly Thornton Hay, having obtained the confidence of a
female manager of the church, who kept the keys, he
preached four consecutive sabbaths, under the name of the
Rev. Mr Bertram. As he left; the pulpit, two sergeants
of the 71st Foot apprehended him as a deserter, and con-
veyed him through the streets in his white neckerchief,
&c., to the barracks, where he had left his wife, which
event caused some stir at the time, as many of our readers
will remember, He was tried by court-martial and pun-
is'ied. After his discharge from the army he returned to
Glasgow, and obtained a situation at the Theatre Royal,
where he continued four months. He now sought and
gained employment in a cooperage in Dunlop-street, where
he w ,rked a few months as a journeyman. and next trans-
ferred his coopering services to Kilsyth. He did not remain
long there, however, but returned to Glasgow, resumed
coopering, and sometlatag else. He got introduced to one
or two Free Church ministers, told his wonderful tale, and
so far imposed upon them that in December, 1854, he was
invited to a church soiree ,sat upon the platform, and de-
livered an address. He regularly attended a Free Church
in the centre of the city, pretended great holiness of life,
counterfeited the Christian character, and made a profes-
sion which paled the greater lights around him. By this
pseudo-sanctity he imposed upon many, chiefly the " weaker
vessels," and the consequences were wounded feelings, de-
stroyed prospects, and illegitimate children. The cool
audacity of the scoundrel was great. On one occasion he
invited two respectable girls, to whom he was at the time
paying his addresses, to his lodgings to tea, and then in-
troduced the one to the other as his sweetheart. He like-
wise, with the view of marrying another sweetheart, took a
house in South Portland-street, and had it furnished by one
of her rslations ; but fortunately his character was disco-
vered, and he had to make a hasty retreat. He next turned
up near London, and palmed himself off in a Roman Catho-
lic family as a greatly persecuted peor Roman Catholic
priest. Here he lived for some six weeks, but discovering
that the bishop of the diocese was coming that way, he
decamped. In London he now came out in the garb and
profession of a clergyman from Scotland, and succeeded in
defrauding several people out of considerable sums, amount-
ing to over £lOO, fur which he was duly punished by impri
sonment for a twelvemonth. In August, 185 e, he was dis•
charged from prison, and proceeded to Cambridge, where he
told part of his plausible tale, and obtained employment as a
cooper in Mr. Johnson's cooperage. After a few dabs he
procured an introduction to the teachers of the Wesleyan
Sabbath school, and in a week or so he addressed the chil-
dren. He alao preached subsequently in several of the vil-
lages in the neighbourhood. His next step was to impose
upon the fair sex. In a few weeks he had no less than half
; a-dozen sweethearts, from all of whom he borrowed money
under various pretences. One of them a poor but fine girl,
he greatly deceived. Her father, a labouring man, with a
small portion of land, he so duped by relating the false
history of his life, and other particulars, as to get him to
mortgage his crop, so as to lend him £5, under a promise
that he should marry his daughter. The wedding dress
was prepared, but before the nuptial day arrived the vaga-
bond decamped. This money enabled him to rig himself
out again in clerical garb, and to proceed to Glasgow,
where he arrived as a pretended agent of the London Mis-
sionary Sneinty, just arrived from India, In this character
he traversed the city and neighbourhood, addressing meet-
ings here and there; but although his speeches were quite
barren of new facts, and indeed disappointed the most un-
suspecting, still by his apparent great holiness of life and
uprightness of character, he insinuated himself most as-
tonishingly into the confidence of many good people. He
had, therefore, no difficulty in getting the loan of money,
especially as be was every day expecting his annual salary
from the Missionary Society, along with his travelling ex-
penses. By these means he made a pretty large haul in
Glasgow. He had not, however, uninterrupted success. In
the east end of the city there is a large Sabbath class, com-
posed of about 100 young men and women. To one of the

young men of that class he got introduced; aLd by his
plausible speeches, his ministerial appearance, and frank-
ness of manner, completely deceived him, pecuniarly also to
a small extent. He was in due course invited to the adult

class, and expressed a &sire that the missionary from India
should be permitted to hold forth for a short time. The
teacher, who is a shrewd, acute man, did not at once con-

cede to the modest request, as he invariably displays great
caution before permitting any one to occupy his proper
place. Hence he asked the missionary a few feeling qu,s..
tions about his missionary life and labours, how long he had
been in In &c The questions were answered rather im-
patiently, and one answer made the teacher stare—to the
effect that the missionary had just completed his term of
three years' service in India, and that he had now returned
home. D.aibtless the fellow, in his intercourse with the Wes-
leyans at Cambridge, had discovered that their preachers
were generally only three years in one place, and thus had
fallen into the error. The teacher, finding his statetnenis
would not hold water, suspected his true character. Hay
never again visited that cliss, remarking, in excuse to his
friend, that the teacher did not seem to like him. However.
the scoundrel was more successful in that quarter than he
ought to have been. He got introduced to one of the young
women, and became her suitor. She introduced him to her
minister, a highly respected U.P clergyman on the south
side of the river. In Dec., 18.56, their congregational soiree
was to be held, and the " missionary" was announced as a
speaker. The speech was delivered, but the general feeling
in regard to the "missionary„ was that the London -Mis-
sionary Society had not much credit by their "agent."
Having been invited to dinner by the worthy minister on
the following day, as he was leaving he borrowed S 3
from his reverend h st Thy also made love to anotta r
member of !hat Bible c ass, and about the sasae ;law 1,3
became a guest at a millowner's house in the east-en..,
rom whew wife he succeeded in getiii;:=2, It loan of X 5, The

money not coming back as promised, the U P. minister
made a few inquiries, which resulted in the discovery that
there was no such agent of the London Missionary Society
as Rev. Thornton Hay, and that, doubtless, he was an
impostor. Information was accordingly conveyed to the
police, but the " missionary" succeeded in getting off t 3
Liverpool. He was not again heard of by the Glasgow
police imtil about the middle of It.sr, a,,d wail he had
'p ,s std :la rf.a!,y krtuae. At the b?...
ginning of that year, on his arrival in Liverpool, he gained
the good opinion of several of the Established Churci clergy,
who opened to him their pulpits; and here hefleeced a num-
bar of people to the tune of £lOO at least. He next turned
up in Edinburgh, as a clergyman of the Anglican Church,
" taking a survey of the state of the Episcopal Church in
Scotland." He preached at the cast! the soldiers, and in
other places in that town, getting to keep up his
finances, which occasionally ran rather low. He subse-
quently repaired to London, and in coming back to Liver-
pool scraped acquaintance with a Glasgow gentleman, by
whom he expected to have made samething by calling at
the post .office in Glasgow, but was unsuccessful, and had to
make a hasty journey to Edinburgh, where he remained but
sho‘ tly. Passing through Haddington, he imposed upon
some of the descendants of the Scripture commentator of
that place, obtaining money which carried him to Sunder-
land. Here he made a narro w escape of condign punishment.
Having succeeded in obtaining £5 from a female member of
the Society of Friends, by using a forged letter iron a
Friend in Glasgow, the lady's husband detected the forger,'
in time to have him apprehended at the railway station as
he was about to proceed to Newcastle. On seeing he was
ietected, he hurriedly tore up into a hundred pieces two
letters strewing the station with the fragments. These
being carefully gathered and put together, showed that he
was bent on bu-ineAs inNewcastlAs an • esteemed brother."
The lett,-r,- purp eel tobo letter, of be roduetif .n from two
U.P. ministeri, it; Gi .szow to a U P minister in New-
castle, written in high fl,,wn lAnguage, and among other
things said—" The bearer is an esteemed brother, and a
great acquisition to-the arise of Dissent in England." 'Un-
fortunately, by some flaw in the evidence, he was acquitted
of his Sunderland fraud; but the police of Haddington
were in waiting for him, and thither he proceeded, and was
incarcerated for five weeks. As soon as his imprison-
ment at Haddington was past, he was waited upon by
a sheriff's officer from Glasgow, who brought him here,
and he was convicted 'before the sheriff and a jury of ob-
taining money under false pretences, and sentenced to six
months' imprisonment. Immediately on coming out of pri-
son, he had the aufacity and impudence to call upon the
15. P minister whom he had before so grossly cheated, and
informed him that now he had suffered for what he had
done, and that if the minister did not give him some assist-
ance he would be compelled to victimise some other body.
He also assured another of his dupes that rather than pay
his debt he would go back to prison. He was driven again
to the sad necessity of having to work for his bread, and got
employment in 1859 as a cooper in the Cowcaddens. In
December of that year he forged his employer's name to some
orders for provisions on various dealers in that quarter of
the city, and was again sent to prison for that crime for six
months. He was liberated at the end of' June in last year,
and made his appearance in Greenock early in August. He
was employed as a cooper with Messrs. Theme and Curtis;
worked by the piece at small casks far holding gunpowder,
and was a smart, worker. He went to lodge with a de-
cent man, a shopkeeper in Tobago-street, who was in
the habit of addressing religious meeting of the poorer
classes on Sabbath and other evenings ; and who, to use
this man's own words, " thought him a brother in Christ,"
and this probably led to Hay's introduction to him. He
stayed only about two months in this house, during which
he regularly conducted private worship, praying and sing-
ing psalms like a professional. He was a sober man all his
his life, and his stock of clothing, which was all on his
back, was extremely meagre. On Mondays after a pay he
would go to Glasgoe , and return the same evening with
empty pockets and no improvement in the spare ward-
robe. He was disposed to be communicative about his
past history—said he had written his lite once while in
prison, and tha, it was inserted in Fraser, which is not
the fact; said he belonged to Glasgow, that his father
was an Episcopalian clergyman, that his mother, who
had dis .weed him, was still living in a good position in
Edinburgh, sometimes he said London; that he had been
educated in Oxford to be a clergyman, had been abroad,
lost his wife there, had another wife alive ; and rumour
ad.ed that he had a third wife in Glasgow, who had a family
to him, and that it was to see her he went to Glasgow fie
tried to get ingratiated into the Methodist congregation in
Greenock, but a portion of his history had been forwarded
there from Newcastle, which frustrated this. He seemed
contrite, and frafikly admitted previous misconduct, and it
was believed that he had turned a leaf, and was willing to
do better in future, ttiough at times he spoke of being
haunted by some evil genius. He lett this first lodging, and
went to anot her in Ann-street—still getting provisions from
his first landlady—where a fellow-workman lodged, from
whom he borrowed a coat and trousers, and, dressed in these
borrowed clothes, he went out and preached a Ascourse to
a large crowd of listeners at the Mid Quay shed, consign-
ing evil doers to perdition in very eloquent language. He
wound up in Greenock by bolting, leaving one landlady
minus a grocery account, and another an account for lodg-
ing, and rewarded the benevolence of his fellow-workman
by running off with his coat. He came to Glasgow, stole a
cheese in Candleriggs, for which he was duly sent to prison
for 6 / days ; at the expiry of which the Greenock police
apprehended h'm, and he is now suffering for his Greenock
misbehaviour imprisonment for 30 days, which will expire
in about a week.

We trust he will now find it to his acivantawe to stick to
his trade; at all events, we should suppose it a rather diffi-
cult matter for him to impose upon anybody in this part of
the country.