Murder & Crime in London
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In the early evening of 17 October 1678, two regulars of the White House Inn at Lower Chalcott (present day Chalk Farm), accompanied by the landlord, the constable of the parish of Marylebone and a group of others, walked to a drainage ditch on the south side slope of Primrose Hill. There, among the brambles, lay the body of a man of substance, face down, a sword run through the body and his coat thrown over his head. His belongings were strewn about the ground.
Chalk Farm.
The body, sword withdrawn, was carried back to the inn and the authorities informed. It was only then that the body was identified as Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey, knight, late magistrate of the King and a successful City merchant.
On Friday 18 October the Coroner of Middlesex, John Cooper, empanelled a jury at the White House Inn. Sir Edmund’s brother, Michael, and two surgeons, Zachariah Skillard and Cambridge, were in attendance. The surgeons’ evidence created questions rather than answered them:
His sword was thrust through him, but no blood was on his clothes or about him; his shoes were clean; his money was in his pocket, but nothing was about his neck (although when he went from home, he had a large lace band on), and a mark was all around it, an inch broad, which showed he had been strangled. His breast was likewise all over marked with bruises, and his neck was broken; and it was visible he was first strangled, then carried to that place, where his sword was run through his dead body.
The ditch was dry – no blood marks in it – his shoes were clean and everything but his pocket book was found. The pocket book was one he used as a magistrate. Spots of white wax, an item he never used, but used by noblemen and priests, were scattered over his clothes.
The conclusion was that he had been killed by Roman Catholics. His murder would prove a very useful tool for the bigot, the scaremonger and the state!
Edmund Berry Godfrey (1621-1678) was one of eighteen children of a prominent Kent family. His career in London followed the usual pattern of the younger sons – trade or a profession. He followed law, but then chose to go into business as a wood and coal merchant, with premises in Green Lane (beneath Charing Cross Station) then in Hartshorn Lane (Northumberland Avenue) and various properties including the Swan Tavern in King Street, Hammersmith. He was made a Justice of the Peace for the Court quarter of London. His conduct during the Great Plague in 1664-5 (in one instance, on the refusal of his men to enter a pest-house to apprehend a man who had stolen winding sheets from the dead to re-sell, he went in himself and arrested him) earned him a knighthood. He was a respected magistrate who had had plans for the beggars of London – he was to set them to work!
Godfrey, although an Anglican, was known for his moderate views, and was friends to Anglicans and Catholics alike. He mixed in the Court circles and was known to the Lord Treasurer Lord Danby. He had last been seen alive some time after 2 p.m. on 12 October, in the fields near the White House on Primrose Hill – a walk he was known to take on a regular basis. Another sighting had placed Godfrey in the Strand and Lincoln’s Inn. What was definitely known was that Godfrey was frightened for himself after the swearing of secret documents shown to him by a certain Dr Titus Oates, and he had left his home early on 12 October.
Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey.
The Roman Catholic problem was a very real one; that is, in the minds of the people. The fear of Roman Catholicism was founded on the sixteenth-century Elizabeth’s accession and the defeat of the Armada, with the added bonus of the 1605 Gunpowder Plot. Roman Catholics were deemed to be capable of any action to reinstall Roman Catholicism in England, not helped by a very tolerant atmosphere at Court. Added to which there was a high proportion of Catholics in London, freedom of worship and the fact that James Duke of York, a Catholic convert, openly expressed his religious beliefs.
Titus Oates.
‘Doctor’ Titus Oates was a very strange man indeed. He was the son of a Protestant preacher who openly detested him. He was physically repellent: he had convulsions, a runny nose and slavered at the mouth. He had a limp, a red face, a bull neck and an enormous chin. His harsh, loud voice was perfect for preaching, and this he did in his craving for acceptance, with a very liberal dose of fantasy added. His life had been one of a fight against the natural repulsion people felt on seeing him and the very real need for his few talents to be recognised. One talent was convincing people, in this particular case convincing them of the power of Roman Catholicism, a fear which his spurious doctorate in divinity coupled with the assistance of Dr Israel Tonge, ensured he would have his fifteen minutes of fame!
Oates and Tonge had been trying to convince Court officials that there was a very real danger from the Catholics. Their premise was that there was a ‘Popish Plot’ which included murdering the King and replacing him with the Duke of York, the murder of the entire Privy Council, the wholesale massacre of Protestants, and a French invasion of Ireland. The Treasurer, Lord Danby and the Secretary of State, Sir Joseph Williamson, had refused to see them, and to have their ‘plot’ brought out into the open they had to have their deposition sworn by a magistrate. A man of probity, with Court connections, was Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey. It took them a few days to convince the magistrate that there was indeed a very real danger. Godfrey duly took their sworn statements. He also confided in his Catholic friend Edward Coleman, a servitor to the Duke of York. The Duke then insisted that the Privy Council know of this.
The Privy Council summoned the fabricators of the Popish Plot on 27 September. Neither Danby nor York attended, which was a pity as they would have voiced some reason at the proceedings. The guards were doubled at the palace and Oates, rewarded with £40 per month, was charged with rooting out the perpetrators of this fiendish plot. Godfrey was conveniently murdered and warrants were issued for the arrest of twenty-six innocent people, who were imprisoned in the Tower and executed. The innocent magistrate, it was rumoured, had been lured to Somerset House on the pretext of stopping a quarrel, strangled with his twisted kerchief, then skewered with his sword by a Jesuit and transported to the suitably remote Primrose Hill.
The murder of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey at Somerset House.
Godfrey’s murder has never been satisfactorily explained; was it the Catholics or Oates’ supporters who killed him because he knew it was a fabrication, or the Whigs because they understood how much Godfrey knew about the plot, or even suicide? Another possible contender is Philip Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, who might have taken his revenge for having been prosecuted for murder some time earlier by Godfrey.
A £500 reward was offered for any information, and, on the strength of the statement of a Catholic goldsmith, Miles Prance, and an ex-serviceman, William Bledloe, three clerks at Somerset House – Green, Berry and Hill – were arrested, tried and executed, despite their protestations of innocence.
Godfrey, meanwhile, was buried in state. His body was carried by eight knights, all JPs, and was followed by all the City aldermen and seventy-two clergymen to St Martin’s Church to be buried. A tablet to his memory was erected in the east cloister of Westminster Abbey.
Medals commemorating the magistrate’s death.
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HE THAT SHEDDETH MAN’S BLOOD,
BY MAN SHALL HIS BLOOD BE SHED
England has witnessed one regicide and one assassination of a Prime Minister. The Chief Minister of the Crown was only officially called ‘Prime Minister’ from the early twentieth century. Until then the Crown’s first Minister was the First Lord of the Treasury and was only called ‘Prime Minister’ as a joke by colleagues.
Just before quarter past five on the afternoon of Monday, 11 May 1812, the MP William Smith had stopped to speak to a colleague in the half-empty lobby of the House of Commons when he heard a shot in the room. A crowd of people swarmed by the door as a man, clutching his left breast, tottered towards Smith and crashed to the floor. Smith called for help and he and another lifted the man up, only recognising him as he did so. It was Mr Spencer Perceval, the First Lord of the Treasury.
Per
ceval (1762-1812) was a younger son of a large brood and a lawyer by training. He had an acute mind hampered by the fact that he opposed Catholic emancipation and the reform of Parliament. A devout Christian and family man (he had twelve children), Perceval was to head an unpopular and weak ministry from 1809 until his death, and pursued the Peninsula War to a successful end.
Together, Smith and his colleague carried the diminutive Perceval into the Speaker’s secretary’s office, laying him on the desk, his feet on two chairs. Perceval made a few gasps and was dead within minutes. Mr William Lynn, a surgeon, checked for any signs of life, also looking for the wound. A large, almost bloodless hole was found just above Perceval’s left breast. The shot had pierced his heart.
Perceval being shot.
Henry Burgess, a solicitor, was also in the lobby. On hearing the shot from the entrance he too had seen Spencer Perceval, clutching his breast, stagger to one of the pillars, mouth something and fall backwards. Cries and fingers pointed to a man sitting on a bench, ashen-faced and shaking, his right hand holding a pistol. Burgess walked towards him and calmly took the still-warm pistol from him. He then asked the murderer why he had done this. The laconic answer was that the man had been ill-used and wanted a redress of grievance from the Government. After a brief pause, Burgess asked the man if he had another pistol about his person and when he answered yes another at the scene, Lieutenant General Isaac Gascoyne, who seemed to know the man, searched his pockets and took another loaded pistol out, as well as a sheaf of papers tied up in a red ribbon. The papers were taken by another MP, Joseph Hume.
Smith comes to the assistance of Mr Perceval.
The Leader of the House of Commons was dead! The perpetrator was held until Bow Street Runners arrived to take him to Newgate. What, though, had made this well-dressed man of obvious education take the life of another, let alone Spencer Perceval?
The assassin was John Bellingham, of 9 New Milman Street. Nothing was yet known about him except for his grievances against the current administration. The Bow Street Runner, John Vickrey, was dispatched to his address to search the premises. He found a pair of pistol bags, a small powder flask, a pistol key and a quantity of letters and papers (among them a receipt for two half-inch calibre pistols purchased from W. Beckwith, gunsmith of Skinner Street on 20 April), as well as a mould and some balls that fitted the pistols in custody. The papers taken by Lieutenant General Gascoyne also gave an idea as to why the man had resorted to such an extreme measure.
The urgency of the matter dictated that the trial and sentence be carried out with the least of delays. The trial was set for Wednesday 13 May before Sir James Mansfield, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, the Attorney General William Garrow and the Marquis Wellesley.
John Bellingham explained his reasons for killing Perceval:
… if I am the man that I am supposed to be, to go and deliberately shoot Mr Perceval without malice, I should consider myself a monster, and not fit to live in this world or the next; the unfortunate lot had fallen upon him as the leading member of that administration which had repeatedly refused me any reparation for the unparalleled injuries I had sustained in Russia for eight years with the cognizance and sanction of the minister of the country at the court of St Petersburg.
It was, he claimed, in 1804 that this ‘unhappy affair’ started, when he was sent to Russia on business. He took his young pregnant wife with him. A Russian ship, the Soleure, was lost in the White Sea and the underwriters at Lloyds, advised by an anonymous letter that the ship was deliberately sunk, refused to pay the owners. The rankled owners, suspicious that Bellingham was the instigator of the letter and aware that he was a guarantor of one of their debtors, accused him of the debt. He was refused an exit pass on the strength of this and the embittered ship owner convinced the local Governor, the Governor of Archangel, to have him imprisoned.
John Bellingham.
Bellingham petitioned the British Consul and the then British Ambassador, Lord Granville Leveson Gower. The Governor refused to have him freed as he was imprisoned for a legal reason and could not, or would not, pursue this matter further. Bellingham was shunted from prison to prison for two years, enduring privations unimaginable in England, until he managed to gain freedom on his own cognizance. During this time his wife returned to England.
Once free he got a judgement of false imprisonment against the Governor, without the assistance of the British authorities, but was subsequently accused of an alleged 2,000 roubles debt. This he refuted because acceptance would mean imprisonment. He was imprisoned instead for being an alleged bankrupt.
The Russian laws dictated that a bankrupt could be discharged if creditors did not apply for restitution within eighteen months. This was the case for Bellingham. He was then handed over to the College of Commerce and advised that he still owed the 2,000 roubles. Despite representation, the British Consul and the British Ambassador both said they were powerless to help and suggested he should pay the money. This he refused on the grounds that he had never owed it!
On the arrival of the Marquis of Douglas in Russia, Bellingham asked him to intercede on his behalf. Unfortunately, the only effect this had was that the Russian authorities asked him to either pay the full amount or a token amount to admit culpability. This he couldn’t do as to admit culpability would be to admit the case against the Governor of Archangel to be false and to admit his debt to the shipping company that had started the whole matter.
His bitterness towards the British authorities in Russia was exacerbated by the successful representation of a British captain of a merchant ship who had been asked for a large bribe by a local Russian captain, and refused. The British Ambassador had successfully interceded on behalf of the British captain. Why couldn’t the British authorities do the same for him?
Eventually he was granted leave to go in 1809 and returned to England to demand some compensation from the British Government. His family had pleaded with him to let the matter drop. He started work in London, at the same time making representations to the government. He had even been advised by a civil servant that he could take whatever measure he thought proper!
Unfortunately, the British Government had broken off diplomatic relations with Russia in 1808. He concluded with:
I laid a statement of my grievances before the Marquis Wellesley, accompanied by authentic documents, and claiming some redress for the injuries I had sustained through the British minister in Russia, which injuries it was impossible I should have suffered, if they had not been sanctioned by that minister. The Marquis is now in Court, and could contradict my statement if false, but I represent the circumstances as they really were and not as personally concerning myself but as involving the honour of the British Government. I was referred by the Marquis to the Privy Council, and from the Privy Council to the Treasury; and thus baffled from one party to another, I applied to Mr Perceval, during the session 1811, but received for answer, from his secretary, that the time for presenting private petitions was gone by, and that Mr Perceval could not encourage my hopes, that he would recommend my claims to the House of Commons.
This left him with no other alternative.
Despite the defence entering a plea of insanity, backed up by witnesses but not supported by the accused, the jury, after fourteen minutes of deliberation, pronounced him guilty. Bellingham was hanged in public on 18 May. He apologised to the crowd beforehand and his body, as was the custom for murderers, was handed over to surgeons for dissection.
The Maréchal de Camp, René-Martin Pillet, a prisoner of war attending the execution, claimed that the assembled crowd said:
farewell poor man, you owe satisfaction to the laws of your country, but God bless you! You have rendered an important service to your country, you have taught ministers that they should do justice, and grant audience when it is asked of them.
While this is an admirable sentiment, there is some doubt it was ever said, as Pillet was an Anglophobe to the core!
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br /> MONEY, MONEY, MONEY
In 1800 England, 200 crimes were punishable by death. The progressive democratisation of society put pressure on successive governments to abolish the death penalty, let alone reduce the amount of crimes punishable by death. Several notable persons of the age questioned this seeming callousness of the justice system. One of these was Jeremy Bentham, the philanthropist. The crime of fraud was one of those that earned the death sentence. The following story is an example of this.
The London Bank of Marsh, Sibbald & Co., of Berners Street, was a respected, middling size one. It had been set up in 1792 by William Marsh, a victualler and naval agent, and James (later Sir James) Sibbald of Sittwood Park, Berkshire. The managing partner, once clerk of Barclays, was William Fauntleroy, a respected and upstanding City merchant. They were joined in 1796 By Mr (later Sir) Josias Stracey, husband of Sibbald’s niece.
Fauntleroy’s son, Henry, became a clerk at the bank in 1800 and upon his father’s unexpected death, aged 57, in 1807, he was offered a partnership.
Henry Fauntleroy (1784-1824) was neat, elegant and industrious – he inspired confidence. He was, moreover, charming and friendly with a supreme belief in himself. His ego was such that he often likened himself to his hero Napoleon Bonaparte, whose bust he kept on the mantelpiece in the family home next to the bank. Within a short time Fauntleroy became the only working partner in the business and virtual master of financing.