Bad Penny Blues

by Barrie Roberts

  When I got back, Sheila was in the kitchen. ‘That was pretty pointless,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, come on, Sheila. You knew that John couldn’t turn out the entire Central Midlands force over a dead cat. At least he’ll keep some kind of an eye on chubby Norman.’

  ‘Huh!’ she snorted and went off to her computer.

  She was back in minutes. ‘I’ve got an e-mail about another of my convicts,’ and she passed me a printout.

  A dealer in prints at Winchester had picked up her enquiries on the Internet and thought he had information. He had sold a Victorian broadsheet about John Smythe to a local man who claimed to be descended from Smythe. Would Sheila like to be put in touch?

  There was a graphics file attached to his e-mail. Once Sheila had unravelled it, she printed it out.

  ‘That’s crazy!’ she exclaimed, as the sheet emerged from the printer. ‘It’s the wrong man!’

  She showed me the print, a copy of a fairly ordinary Victorian broadside. It was headed, ‘The Execution of John Smythe who was sentenced at Winchester Assizes’.

  ‘But he was transported,’ I said.

  ‘That’s why he’s got the wrong man,’ she said. ‘And I was all enthusiastic, e-mailed him back to put me in touch with his client.’

  ‘Where did your John Smythe come from?’ I asked.

  She got out her copy of the convict file. ‘Well, that’s very odd,’ and she pointed.

  JOHN SMYTHE No 7229

  tried 22nd July 1865, arrived Fremantle Barracks March 1866.

  Born 21 February 1843

  Trade: Printer

  Height: 5 ft. 8 in.

  Complexn: Fair

  Head: Small

  Hair: Brown

  Whiskers: Moustache

  Visage: Long

  Forehead: High

  Eyebrows: Brown

  Eyes: Brown

  Nose: Medium

  Mouth: Wide

  Chin: rounded

  Remarks: Scar on back l. hand, no tattoos. Horiz. scar on r. ribs.

  Convict life transportation

  Tried at Winchester, transported for robbery

  Character: Good

  ‘Look,’ she said. This character was a printer as well and he was tried at Winchester five days before the bloke in the broadside was hanged.’

  THE EXECUTION OF JOHN SMYTHE, WHO WAS SENTENCED AT WINCHESTER ASSIZES FOR THE MURDER OF ALBERT LARNER

  with Full Particulars of the condemned Man’s last Dying Speech

  At Winchester Assizes last week John Smythe, a printer of Wherewell, was placed before the bar charged with the murder of Albert Larner an apprentice in the same printing works. Evidence was given that Mr Ingram, the printer, had left the two together on a night in May to complete an urgent piece of work. Returning in the morning he found Larner killed with a maul and Smythe absent A telegraph message led to the murderer’s apprehension at Southampton railway station.

  Before Mr Justice Fotheringhay the prisoner pleaded Not Guilty, saying that Lanier had been drunk and had attacked him so that in defending himself he had been forced to kill the youth, but he was able to call no witness in his defence and was found Guilty.

  On July 27th he was hanged at Winchester Gaol before a crowd of some ten thousand, walking to the gallows with a firm step and thanking the Chaplain and Mr Calcraft.

  Before being launched into eternity he said, “You see the effects of strong drink, that has taken the lives of two of us.”

  Ingram, Printer, Parchment Street.

  ‘Where did your Smythe come from? Where was he born?’

  She dug the copy birth certificate out of her folder. ‘Well I’m damned!’ she said. ‘Wherwell! Same as the bloke in the broadside.’

  ‘Wherwell’s a tiny place now,’ I said. ‘There can’t have been all that many John Smythes in it — all working for printers. You’re going to have to look at the Hampshire County Census returns for 1861 and 1871 to see if you can sort these two out.’

  She shook her head slowly. ‘It doesn’t make any kind of sense.’ She read the broadside copy again. ‘What’s a maul?’

  ‘It’s a wooden mallet. Letterpress printers used to use them for tapping the type down level on the bed of the big old presses.’

  ‘Who was Mr Calcraft? she asked.

  ‘He was the public hangman for years and years — well, one of them. Probably the most famous. He got taken to court himself for failing to support his aged mother and letting her become a charge on the parish. There was a broadside about that and afterwards the crowds at executions used to rag him about it and call out, “Who starved his mother, Billy?”

  ‘Do you know the history of every obscure crime in Britain?’ she asked.

  ‘Not really. I just had a misspent youth. My mother had a collection of old books on crime, things like Mysteries of Police and Crime and Lives of the Great Highwaymen. I couldn’t get enough of them. That’s how I ended up a penniless criminal lawyer, instead of a fat cat in company and property law.’

  The phone rang and Sheila went to answer it. She came back smiling. ‘Fancy a trip to Winchester?’ she said.

  ‘Why? Who was that?’

  ‘That was Captain Smythe, retired — the man who bought the broadside. He’s heard from the dealer and he rang up straightaway.’

  ‘So, did you tell him he’s descended from the wrong murderer?’

  ‘I tried to, but he wouldn’t have it. Said he could explain all that if I fancied travelling all the way to Hampshire.’

  ‘Beware,’ I said, ‘of ex-officers who use their rank in civilian life. A rough colonial like yourself wouldn’t appreciate the social subtlety, but pukka chaps don’t do it — only self-aggrandising twits whose greatest moment of glory was commanding the gascape store at Little Wittering in 1962.’

  ‘You could be right,’ she admitted. ‘He sounded a bit like that — all bluff and hearty — but nevertheless I’ve told him that I’d be delighted to travel all the way to Hampshire.’

  ‘We will travel all the way to Hampshire,’ I said. ‘You are not going anywhere alone at present let alone into the clutches of some military nutter who’s been trained at vast expense to kill with a bent spoon. Best police advice. You know it makes sense.’

  ‘Trouble is, we don’t have a car.’

  ‘There’s trains from Brum to Winchester. Anyway, at least it means that chubby Norman can’t steal it again.’

  In the event we booked a long weekend, travelling by train on Friday, having fixed an appointment with Captain Smythe for lunch on Sunday. We spent Friday evening and Saturday doing touristy things in Winchester, seeing the cathedral, having a pint in the oldest pub in England, viewing the several military museums and standing in the hall of the castle, where King Arthur’s fake Round Table hangs.

  ‘Should interest you, this place,’ I told her. ‘A measurable percentage of the kids you grew up with probably had ancestors who were sentenced here.’

  ‘Really?’ she said.

  ‘Really. In 1832 — after the agricultural riots — they sat a Special Commission here that handed out a hundred death sentences and six hundred sentences of transportation.’

  ‘My oath! A hundred for death and six hundred transports?’

  ‘That’s right, but they came over all merciful and remitted all but six of the capital sentences. They transported them instead.’

  ‘Wonderful,’ she said. ‘What made them change their minds?’

  ‘There was a bit of a fuss about the fact that only one person was killed in the riots and that was a bystander who got accidentally shot by a soldier.’

  Sunday morning, after a leisurely breakfast, we took a cab out along the Petersfield road, following Captain Smythe’s explicit directions. Half-way along the Meon valley we turned aside from the main road, climbed a hill and wove along some narrow, sunken lanes. At last we spotted an unpretentious wooden fingerpost pointing to Greyhanger Farm, the address we had.

  Greyhanger Farm was no
t my idea of a farm and its fingerpost was the only unpretentious thing about it. It was a gem of an eighteenth-century manor house, surrounded by immaculate lawns and stately old trees. Captain Smythe had evidently heard us coming and was waiting at the door, a tall, broad man with short grey hair and a military moustache, clad in cavalry twill slacks and a discreetly checked shirt with what I guessed to be the regimental tie.

  ‘Ah,’ he roared at Sheila, in that false hearty accent that seems to go with retained military ranks. The little lady from Australia, and this’ll be your fiancé. Come in, come in!’

  Once inside a hall set about with antique furniture (or at least good fakes), we were introduced in turn to Mrs Smythe (small, vague, tweedy and over-pearled), daughter Jennifer (twentyish, tall, blonde, attractive, posh accent) and son Simon (seventeen, fair, public school accent).

  ‘Jenny’s in television at Southampton,’ explained our host, ‘Simon’s still at school and my wife devotes her time to good works.’

  ‘And this is all your family?’ asked Sheila.

  ‘Well, there’s Stephen — he lives and works in London, can’t be here. He’s something arty, graphic designer or something.’

  ‘And what do you do, Captain?’ I asked.

  ‘Retired from investment consultancy,’ he said. Though I still place a bit of money here and there for chums. If you’ve got a few bob spare it’s my job to know where to put it. You’re a lawyer, aren’t you? Bet you chaps don’t go short of the readies.’

  ‘We do at my end of the market,’ I said. ‘Contrary to proverbial wisdom, crime doesn’t pay.’

  He laughed. ‘So you’re in the crime business,’ he said. ‘Which brings us back to business. The wife’ll rustle up a drink or two while I show you the original of that broadside about John Smythe and I can explain what’s bothering you, my dear.’

  People who address Sheila McKenna as ‘little lady’ and ‘my dear’ are risking getting bitten, but she only glowered slightly while our host ushered us into his study, a large room facing across the lawn at the rear of the house to well-kept flower beds.

  One wall of the study was hung from waist to ceiling in framed prints, documents and photographs. Many of the photographs were military men and several of them were Smythe himself. Once his wife had served drinks, Captain Smythe lifted down a frame.

  There it is,’ he said, ‘the broadside about the hanging of John Smythe.’

  ‘Yet you say he wasn’t hanged,’ said Sheila.

  ‘Quite right, my dear. There’s no doubt at all that you are right in your original information. John Smythe was shipped to Fremantle on the Lucy Collins.’

  ‘His sentence was commuted?’ I suggested.

  ‘Exactly! You see it says here that he said he had bashed Larner in self-defence. Well, after the sentence, people came forward who could testify that Larner had a bit of a reputation as a drunken lout. Smythe’s family weren’t entirely stony and they’d got a half-way decent lawyer, so he rushed about a bit, petitioned the Home Secretary and the sentence was commuted to transportation for life.’

  Sheila nodded. ‘I see,’ she said, ‘and you are sure that this John Smythe was the same one that sailed on the Lucy Collins?’

  ‘What’s your chappie’s date of birth?’ he asked, reaching into a drawer of his desk.

  ‘21st February 1843, at Wherwell in Hampshire, son of Martha Smythe formerly Fray and James Smythe, coach-builder,’ she recited, fumbling through her shoulder-bag for the copy.

  ‘Snap!’ he said as they both produced birth certificates which were identical.

  We all laughed. ‘Right-o,’ conceded Sheila. ‘He really is the same bloke. So how do we have here an account of his hanging “With Full Particulars of the Condemned Man’s Last Dying Speech”?’

  ‘Because,’ I intervened, ‘his boss, Mr Ingram the printer, saw an opportunity when his assistant was sentenced to the drop, and knocked out a broadsheet for the patterers to sell at the occasion. But those sheets had to be hot news, didn’t they? You couldn’t note the real scene and print the sheet up afterwards, so you imagined it and printed it up a day or so before, sold it to the patterers who hawked them at the execution and on the streets and cleaned up very nicely. I think the patterers’ expression was “pretty tidy browns” for a lot of pennies and halfpennies made selling a good sheet. Do you know that some sheets sold in the hundreds of thousands and a few topped a million?’

  ‘Fxactly!’ said Smythe. ‘Poor old Ingram must have been really dis-chuffed when John was reprieved, unless he’d already unloaded his stock on to the patterers. That’s why I wanted that sheet when I was told about it. Had to add that to my collection. Damned good joke, I thought. People come in here and see it and they ask me what relation of mine he was. You should see their faces when I tell them!’

  ‘What was the relationship?’ asked Sheila.

  ‘He was my great-grandfather, that’s what he was.’

  ‘So he married before he was transported?’ said Sheila, obviously looking for a candidate for recipient of the token.

  Smythe shook his head and grinned. ‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘Much more complicated than that. Tell you all about it over lunch.’

  He ushered us into the dining-room and we settled into one of those traditional English roast-beef Sunday lunches that are wonderful in winter and absolute hell on a scorching summer’s day. There was no dodging the column, though. From either end of the table the Captain and his wife pressed further helpings on us until I thought I would split down the middle. Sheila, on the other hand, was shaming me by putting it down like a navvy. It must be all those steak and egg breakfasts they eat.

  Apart from the weight of the meal, we were further burdened by Captain Smythe’s reminiscences. Born in 1940, he had managed to miss World War Two and Korea and had enjoyed an entirely safe military career that, if he was to be believed, had consisted almost entirely of jolly, drunken escapades in Hong Kong, Singapore and the Persian Gulf.

  He paused only when the food was cleared to suggest, ‘Coffee and a spot of something stronger on the terrace.’

  The stone-flagged terrace looked out across a large, well-kept garden and would have been a pleasant place to be on a hot day in other company. With the drinks, Mrs Smythe produced the family albums, releasing a new torrent from her husband, though this time at least some of it was relevant to Sheila’s interests.

  ‘You wanted to know about old John’s marriage,’ he said to Sheila and showed her a page of an album.

  It was a late Victorian or Edwardian family group — a solidly built man in his sixties, a younger wife holding a baby, a youth of about twenty in uniform, a teenage boy and a toddler. The resemblance of the father to Captain Smythe was evident.

  That was taken,’ he told us, ‘when Great-Uncle John came home from South Africa after the Boer do. That’s him in the uniform, his brothers, James and Arthur, and the baby’s Great-Aunt Alice. She only died in 1986. Lovely old dear, sharp as a tack right to the end.’

  ‘That wasn’t what you used to say when she was alive,’ his wife murmured.

  ‘Well, she could be a bit demanding, but she was a game old girl.’

  ‘So the father in this group is the John Smythe who wasn’t hanged?’ said Sheila.

  ‘Exactly!’ said Smythe. ‘He was sentenced to life, of course, and should have ended his days in Australia, but he was a useful sort of chappie. When he got out there he realised that an educated man who was also a skilled printer was useful and could make favours for himself. So when he’d done his convict term, as a prisoner, he started a business and, after a few years, he managed to get his sentence remitted so that he could come home.’

  ‘And that was when he married? After he came back?’ asked Sheila.

  ‘No, my dear. He brought her back with him. As you can see, she was a deal younger than him, and their last child — that’s Great-Aunt Alice in the photo there — was born in 1900.’

  He told us how his great-uncle Joh
n had stayed in the army after South Africa and had died in the Great War. His brothers, James and Arthur, had served in the war too, but only James had survived.

  ‘He had only one son,’ he explained. ‘Another John. That’s him in this picture.’

  The photograph showed a World War Two captain with a baby on his knee.

  ‘And the baby’s me. That’s me and my father. I was born just after the war started and that’s us the first time we met.’

  ‘Did he survive the war?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, yes. Made Colonel by the end. Died the same year as old Alice, 1986. So you see, we’ve become a military dynasty. If they’d topped old John at Winchester the country would have lost some good fighting men.’

  The warm afternoon wore on and the combination of Smythe’s reminiscences and repeatedly refreshed drinks turned it into a sunny blur for me. Pressed to stay for tea we couldn’t manage a convincing excuse for refusal but managed to break away afterwards with only a final visit to the display of pictures in the study. As we climbed into our cab, Smythe was warmly promising Sheila every co-operation and copies of any pictures she wanted.

  By the time we were on a train out of Winchester the alcohol had begun to wear off and I started to take notice. Sheila, sitting opposite, was scribbling notes.

  ‘You’re not trying,’ I said, ‘to get down all of Smythe’s ramblings, are you?’

  ‘Only the essentials,’ she said. ‘He’s promised to send me a family tree and anything I want. I thought the bit about the book was good.’

  ‘What bit about the book?’

  ‘I thought you were shickered,’ she said. ‘Smythe said that old John — my man, right? — when he came home went back into printing and in his old age he wrote a book about his experiences. Apparently it was called A Victim of the System and he printed it himself.’

  ‘And hasn’t Smythe got a copy?’

  ‘Yes, but it’s in London, being rebound. He’ll let me see it when it’s available.’