The London Guide and Stranger's Safeguard/Chapter 6
CONSPIRATORS AND INFORMERS.
In times very remote we are told, from pretty good authority, men sacrificed by wholesale the lives of others to their mad ambition, or the resentment of injuries,—real or supposed. But that we should live in times when the persons employed in the detection of crime (for which we pay them) should perfidiously assist in its perpetration; and not only so, but that subsequently thereto they should bring the offending wretches to an ignominious death, and that too under the semblance of justice,—is really too much for ns to think of, without pain and grief. Moderately as we wish to bring ourselves to the subject, in order to view with calmness the atrocious deeds daily passing under our eyes, a deep indignation, crying for vengeance, swells our bosom, and almost suffocates the whisperings of deliberative retribution. The ardour of the soul outstrips the chastened mind, in the pursuit of criminals, such as those we contemplate, and asks the cool and enquiring hand of justice to lay on without delay its unsparing vengeance.
Until very lately we had thought the case of Jonathan Wild and the officers of 1788, the only instance in England of employed men bartering in blood for money. We knew and often witnessed the too much avidity of officers to convict capitally; and we have seen and heard with proper feelings, pretended corrobations of the chain of facts adduced against murderers, brought up for no other purpose under heaven than to have "a finger in the pye," and to come in for a share of "the reward,"—that bane and antidote of great offences. We have witnessed executions of several men, who were convicted "according to the evidence," to be sure; but what sort of evidence? Were there any officers in it? And if there were, what is the conclusion?
N.B. Whoever has occasion to prosecute a criminal, let him above all things turn a deaf ear to the advice of an officer, as to modelling his evidence;—more especially if the charge amounts to a capital one, or is likely to do so by such modelling. The unknowing reader can scarcely imagine what arts and finesse are used in this way: at times the directions given what to say, are at once pointed, rude, and cruel.
But it remained to these times for us to contemplate the officers immediately employed in detection of offenders, actually subornating others, and assisting them in the commission of crime, with no other view on earth, than through conviction to receive the reward, which by statute they are entitled to, who bring capitals to justice. Here we maintain, that they are not culprits themselves who have been set at work by others to commit offences, but those only are so who set them to work. It is no more our inclination than our business here to discuss the abstract question of right and wrong; but, neither in this or on any other occasion, shall we refrain from maintaining what we conceive to be right through fear that we should possibly be wrong. Therefore, it is, we insist that Kelly and Spicer, the two boys, ordered for execution for having passed bad notes, are not guilty, morally (every one will allow), nor say we, are they guilty legally. For the youths would not have committed the crime imputed to them, but for the persuasions of Finney; that is very certain. And Finney again would have been most careful how he dealt in this sacrifice of human life,with which he meant to purchase impunity for his own forfeit life by the favour of Tom Limbrick,—had it not been for the well-known favour bestowed on Vaughan, Johnson, Brock, Pelham, and Power,[1] instead of those halters they so richly deserved, and had taken so much pains to obtain! and were disappointed. The cry of the blood of immolated victims was before the judgment seat; but so much of state policy and of feverish management, and overweening care, hath marked the two administrations of Lord Sidmouth, from the time of Despard and the Tinman of Plymouth, to that of the Derby row and William Hone, that we should not wonder the least to see the last four named "hellish scoundrels"[2] for they are qualified, advanced to some Post or office in the gift of the state.
Mr. Vaughan received his appointment to office a year ago, as inner turnkey of a yard in Cold Bath fields prison, and the pardon of Brock, Pelham, and Power, and of Ben Johnson and Donnelly, was known sixmonths before their liberation took place. And when did it take place, think you, gentle reader? I will tell you: at a time the most mal apropos for a thinking mind to reflect upon, that the darkest, revolting, solicitude could have chosen; namely, the very moment that the warrants for hanging Kelly and Spicer arrived at Newgate, saw also come to hand the order to liberate those four villains, who had contributed by their example,—but more by their impunity,—to induce that equally graceless villain, Finney, to take away the two boys (17 and 15 respectively) by the same species of villainy as they had practised.
When the keeper of Newgate opened the six pieces of paper which contained his directions respecting the disposal of the six men under his care, he must have resembled much the drawer of the state lottery, "just two blanks to a prize;" only the fortune he unfolded was of deeper interest, and replete with more painful sensations of grief, national shame, disgust and horror, at every turn up, whether these were the blanks or prizes of the unseemly envelopes which contained—death to the innocent, or life to the guilty.
Let us ask ourselves a question.—What would have been the conduct of Limbrick, if one or more of the five hellish scoundrels had undergone the sentence of the law? Would he have kept in tow this new scoundrel Finney? When the latter was known to him as a passer of bad notes for many months, did nothing pass upon the subject? Yes, most assuredly; and we might venture to predict the words of the conversation, which terminated with "I dont want you; shew me the others." Mark the plural, reader! Two are better than one at any time. So Spicer was added to Kelly, and both delivered up as sacrifices to secure impunity to the greater rogue. Else why not take him along with the other two? "I had reasons for it," said Limbrick. These reasons are so apparent, so repugnant to our feelings, and so appalling to humanity,, that we forbear to enlarge further, than by concentrating the whole essence of his murderous "reasons" in two words; viz. MORE BLOOD!!!
Our readers, who are "strange to the ways of town," will naturally enough desire to be informed of the precise points upon which those five hellish villains were convicted, and of those grave "reasons," which obtained for them their pardon, and accomplished their enlargement. These it is our duty to give. We shall come, at the conclusion, to this advice: never engage in any thing unlawful, though your employer be ever so generous; fall not into habits of intimacy with strange or doubtful characters (first ascertain who and what they are)—do not let any one dodge your heels at night or by day. These precautions are deemed necessary for the decent and respectable part of the community; for, although the chief part of the wretches who have been entrapped into the commission of crimes, were poor,—yet we have reason to think, the blood hounds will take other grounds, and seek for higher victims. What, for example, is a decent and respectable man (however innocent) to do, when pounced upon and searched, there is found in his pockets a quantity of forged notes, or false coin? No matter how they came there; whether they were dropped into his pocket in the street, or in the public house (while perhaps he was a little drunk);—or whether the base imitations were concealed in the officer's hand, and pretended (upon oath) that they were found in his pockets,—his good character, his innocence, will stand him in no stead; but he must, under the present administration of our criminal code, suffer the law, and the officer pockets the money, which is the price and the reward of his villainy!
Two boys were served in this manner on Towerhill, a few years ago, by one of the five hellish villains named above: that they were not hanged was through no omission of his, nor did his soul receive any consolation probably from that circumstance; for immediately after that we find him prosecuting a young man, a banker's clerk, for an abominable offence. The officer was the only evidence, and the clerk was pilloried opposite Princes Street, Mansion house. We know not whether the clerk is dead or alive; nor whether his condemnation and punishment has undergone the same revision as some others: Bill Soames's for instance; he was convicted on the evidence of Vaughan, and that of a man (gentleman!) never heard of before or since; but the enquiry terminated in the remission of the punishment, which shows how little reliance was to be had upon the latter evidence when deprived of the support of the former's. The sweep boy who picked up the pocket book (an empty one!) knew not who threw it away, and his evidence went to nothing more than the mere fact of picking up.
Every one knows how guilty Soames was of numerous other robberies, but no one would say that he ought to be punished upon a false charge, or an entrapped crime. If this were proper and right, why not, with the confession of the Attofney General before us, that the five men "deserved to be hanged," hang them all at once in the face of a legal quibble? We every day see men at large, who ought to have been hanged years ago; and yet it would answer the end of no honest man to step up to one of them, and clapping a noose round his neck, run him up at the next lamp post. But if the same culprit were taken up and tried and found guilty of the fact that subjected him to be hanged, what signifies it, the law term that is besiowed upon his crime? There is too much disposition to quibble in our lawyers: common sense and common honesty are oft forgotten in that hateful propensity.
Vaughan was convicted of having, by means of one Davies, a lame petty officer of the navy, induced four youths to break open the house of a woinan with whom Davies cohabited. Their hearts failed them at the door of the premises, and they left the tools behind which Vaughan had furnished to Davies. However, the devoted boys were caught nearly in the fact, not quite; for they had not yet made a breach. This disappointment was foreseen by the wary Vanghan, and a ring belonging to Davies's woman was by him slipped into the pocket of one of the victims; upon which incontrovertible corrobation of the other parts of the evidence the prisoners were found guilty, and they would have received sentence of death, but for the explosion of the plot occasioned by Davies's splitting.
Ben Johnson's offence was in like manner house-breaking. With aggravated circumstances he induced his victim to rob a friend's house, and betrayed him before hand; ordering the usual watchman, who would have prevented the robbery, from interfering. This was the second victim he avers that he had so convicted; and boasting to the surviving relations of the first man that such was the fact, he seemed to glory in the crime he had committed and exulted over the wounds which he thus opened afresh. Just as we are writing these incoherencies, the caitiff, who is the subject of them, struts past our view, and exhibits in his gait the improved manners of an unchained felon. He was assisted by one Donelly, who was convicted of the same offence.
Brock, Pelham, and Power, were more complex in their attempt upon three labourers from the sister island, one of whom could speak none but his native Irish. Going to the Cheapside stand, whereon Monday mornings labourers offer themselves by scores, these villains agreed with one Renorden and his two countrymen, for a job of work which should be pointed out to them. This was no other than to prepare round pieces of metal, resembling shillings, by polishing, filing, and colouring them; the room in Moor lane having been previously hired, and the materials prepared by the conspirators. In this miserable hole, after a few hours labour, the three innocent men were set upon by persons they had not before seen, conveyed to prison, and in a very few days were arraigned for treason in imitating the coin of the realm, for which the sentence is to be hung, drawn, and quartered.
Enjoying this horrid sight, so congenial to his feelings, wishes, and views, was Pelham,—one of the conspirators who had hired the three victims in Cheapside,—recognised, as he attended at the press yard of the Old Bailey, by a labourer who was present at the hiring; after a struggle, and a hunt, Mr. Pelham was secured, and the plot, by the exertions of the lord Mayor (Wood), was laid bare.
All those six fellows were indicted by the city, for being accessory, before the facts, to the crimes imputed to their respective victims; upon the clearest evidence imaginable they were found guilty and received sentence of death; but after little more than a year's imprisonment we are struck aghast upon hearing they are to escape upon a quibble or less than a quibble. We are alarmed at the state of society which is doomed to receive again, in these our days, such a pestilence into its bosom, to contaminate entire masses of its most unprotected members;—those who look up for help, for advice, and assistance to the higher classes, and the higher powers are thus exposed to the cold-hearted callous-souled creators of crime, the murder-manufacturers of these sad times. We feel national shame, and express in weak terms our individual sorrow.
N.B. Since rewards upon conviction cannot be taken away (in sound policy) as has been proposed, the mode of distributing them must be altered; and also in the first place the power to dispense justice must be taken out of the hands of the officers altogether. What can be thought of the anxiety of an officer to convict capitally, arriving at that pitch as to employ a counsel, and pay the fees himself toinduce a jury to bring in a capital verdict, which might possibly have taken a milder turn? Yet this has happened, frequently where the prosecutor has evinced signs of clemency towards the accused.
The least guilty blood-hounds, are those who permit the escape of prisoners for lighter crimes, in order that they may be induced to commit those of blacker hue,—rewardable by statute; to say nothing of the hints, the put ups, the sneers at justice, the proposed good understanding, the jeering at prosecutors, and a thousand other arts, that smoothen crimes, and render even punishment more palatable. These keep their eyes on a given number of culprits, whose movements and haunts they watch with cat-like assiduity, and whom they catch as often as they want spoil.
A very circumstantial and lucid account of the base attempt of a Blood hound upon the life of a gentleman under temporary distress, is given in the twenty-second chapter of the "Life of Mr. Jeremy Foresight," lately printed. Although highly entertaining, and strictly elucidatory of our subject, the revolting narrative is too long for insertion here, and we refer the reader to that gentleman's own well 'written account of his complicated affair, and narrow escape.
THE END.
W. Flint, Printer, Old Bailey, London.