Murder & Crime in London
Page 3
The bank lent money to building contractors, mostly in Marylebone. The state of the country’s finances following the Napoleonic Wars hit the City and its banking houses, one of which was Marsh, Sibbald & Co. To shore up the finances of the business and prove his integrity, Fauntleroy married Susannah Young in 1809, daughter of John Young, a naval officer and landowner in St Kitts. A son was born shortly afterwards. The marriage lasted barely a year.
The young businessman then plunged into a series of expensive affairs with high-class prostitutes such as ‘Mrs Bang’, otherwise known as Miss Kent, and the infamous Harriet Wilson. Much of his time was spent in his splendid villa in Brighton. He took up with Maria Forbes in 1819 and settled her in Lambeth – he had two children by her.
The losses on advances to developers amounted to £60,000 in 1810, covered by the Bank of England. A further £100,000 losses caused Fauntleroy to adopt desperate measures, especially when the Bank of England refused Marsh, Sibbald & Co.’s acceptances in 1815, at a time when that Bank was totally committed to the financing of development of the Portman Estate in Marylebone and was in dire financial straits.
Clients placed shares and securities with Marsh, Sibbald & Co. Fauntleroy hit on the idea of forging Powers of Attorney for navy loans, annuities and consols (government bonds/annuities) and selling them at the Bank of England, but dividends were paid to the owners and entered into the bank’s ledgers. His eventual fraud amounted to around £360,000. He was always worried he would be found out – there were some narrow escapes! He was at the Bank of England once, handling a Power of Attorney to a clerk when the owner of the stock came in. He stopped the transaction and walked out with the victim.
In September 1824, J.D. Hulme, a custom house official and trustee of an estate with Marsh, Sibbald & Co., visited the Bank of England only to find £10,000 in consols missing. The stock had been sold by Marsh, Sibbald & Co. with Fauntleroy forging the trustees’ signatures. Freshfield, the Bank of England solicitor, arranged a warrant for the arrest of Fauntleroy.
Early in the morning of 10 September, PC Samuel Plante arrested Fauntleroy as he walked into the bank. He was immediately committed to Coldbath Prison. The bank stopped trading, a police court examination on 18 September ensured that he was charged and sent to Newgate Prison on the 19th. Accusations and gossip maintained that Fauntleroy had lived beyond his means and had been profligate with his clients’ money – accusations seized on and embellished by the papers. There was no doubt that he had misappropriated funds for Marsh, Sibbald & Co.’s benefit, and also for his own pleasures.
The trial was held on 30 September at a packed Old Bailey. The entrance fee was one guinea. James Harmer was the solicitor for the defence and John Gurney the barrister. Justice Park, Baron Garrow and the Attorney General Sir John Copley presided.
Henry Fauntleroy’s professionalism convicted him. A box found in Berners Street had his confession, dated 7 July 1816:
In order to keep up the credit of our house I have forged powers of attorney, and have thereupon sold out all these sums, without the knowledge of my partners. I have given credit for the accounts when the interest became due. The Bank of England began first to refuse our acceptances, and thereby destroy the credits of our house; they shall smart for this.
James Harmer, Fauntleroy’s defence lawyer.
Henry Fauntleroy in the dock.
Ever the diligent clerk, he also made a ledger of the fraudulent transactions, footnoted with:
…in order to keep up the credit of our house, I have forged powers of attorney for the above sums and parties, and sold out to the amount here stated, and without the knowledge of my partners. I kept up the payments of the dividends, but made no entries of such payments in our books.
The jury took fifteen minutes to reach a verdict – Guilty. The sentence of death was pronounced on 2 November and despite the case being argued twice on points of law before judges and petitions presented to the Home Secretary, Robert Peel, Fauntleroy was hanged before a huge crowd outside Newgate Prison on 30 November 1824.
Fauntleroy was the last forger to hang in England, as capital punishment for forgery was abolished in 1832.
A newspaper account of Fauntleroy’s execution.
five
HONESTY IS THE BEST POLICY
The early 1800s saw a massive shift in population to the cities as whole village communities sought work in the progressively industrialised towns. London was no exception. In 1801 it had a population of just under a million and by the middle of the century that had doubled.
The immediate surroundings of the West End were the first to be built up by the developers, with large estates such as the Portman estate being developed and the gradual urbanisation of the land adjacent to the Edgware Road. The public house, the Hero of Maida, was opened shortly after the Battle of Maida in Southern Italy in 1806 and the area began to be developed, with a string of select houses and villas that were to become the suburb of Maida Vale. The area, though, retained its rural atmosphere with stag hunts continuing to at least 1829. In the same year, the entrepreneur George Shillibeer introduced a French invention, the omnibus, on to the new road from Paddington to the City.
In the mid-1830s a new row of detached houses, Canterbury Villas, was built across from Edgware Road, from Pineapple Place parallel to what is now Sutherland Avenue. This quiet, leafy area was ideal for the emerging professional classes. Its very seclusion, though, was the stage for the most blood-curdling crime of the century – that is until Jack the Ripper.
At about midday on a cold 28 December 1836, a labourer, Robert Bond, was walking to work via the Pineapple Toll Gate when he spied a large hessian sack tied up at the top outside one of the Canterbury villas. Intrigued, he opened the sack and recoiled in horror, for inside was the torso of a woman. PC Samuel Pegler of ‘S’ Division was walking his beat when the breathless Bond rushed up to him, explained what he had found and took him back to the sack.
The torso was conveyed to Paddington police station in Hermitage Street, sealed in vinegar and an inquest was held at the White Lion Inn, Edgware Road. There were no identifying marks and despite extensive newspaper coverage no one came forward. ‘Wilful Murder against a person or persons unknown’, however, was established. One potential clue lay in the wood shavings and rags at the bottom of the bag.
It was not until 6 January 1837 that the papers had more to report. On that day a bargeman, ‘Berkham Bob’ Tomlin, was trying to close the Ben Johnson lock gates on one of the stretches of the Regent’s Canal near Stepney. They just wouldn’t budge. He and the lock-keeper used a hitcher (a long pole with a hook at the end) to remove the obstruction. Finally they managed to dislodge it and pulled the pole up to find a woman’s head with only one eye, a fractured jawbone and a slit ear, perched at the end!
The head was brought back to Paddington police station where the police surgeon, Mr Girdwood, examined both torso and head, determining that the head and trunk were part of the same body. It was preserved in alcohol and put on display for people to see. The papers advertised the fact, just in case a member of the public might recognise it.
Where the railway now runs between Shakespeare Road and Hinton Road in Brixton was then covered in osier fields. On Thursday 2 February, a young man was cutting osiers in Mr Tenpenney’s field when he discovered a large, filled hessian sack. He opened it to find the remains of human thighs and legs. Once again the remains were carted to Paddington police station, where it was determined that the legs belonged to the head and torso already there. Some wood shavings were also found at the bottom of this bag.
Mrs William Gay of Goodge Street followed the newspaper reports like everyone else. She, however, on reading that the ear on the head was torn, became convinced that this was her missing sister-in-law, Mrs Hannah Brown. Mrs Brown had disappeared a week before her wedding, on 25 December 1836, to the affluent Mr James Greenacre of Lambeth.
Mrs Gay convinced her husband, William, to go and view the head. H
e did, and recognised the slit ear, as did friends of theirs. The police took statements from all those who had come into contact with Mrs Brown.
Hannah Brown had been a handsome 45-year-old washerwoman who lived in Union Street, by Middlesex Hospital. Twice married and now single, she had put aside, so she had claimed, about £400, a goodly amount. She was to marry James Greenacre on Christmas day at St Giles-in-the-Fields, with Mr Davis, cabinet maker of 45 Bartholomew Close, Smithfield, giving her away. The Davises had last seen an agitated Mr Greenacre, with a bag under his arm, on Christmas Eve. He had explained that Mrs Brown had lied to him about her affairs and the wedding was off.
A Mrs Glass of Windmill Street, Tottenham Court Road, had waited for her friend Mrs Brown on that same evening but she had never arrived – which was curious, because she was due to stay the night. A well-dressed middle-aged man had knocked on another of Mrs Brown’s friends’ door, Mrs Blanchard, on 27 December, and told her that the wedding was off because Mrs Brown had tried to purchase goods in a tally-shop in his name. Not only that, but she had ‘grossly imposed on him’ and had lied about her circumstances. This man, Mr Greenacre, had then been introduced to her tenant, Mrs Gay, wife of Mrs Brown’s estranged brother. Mr Greenacre had promptly left.
Inspector Feltham was placed in charge of the investigation. The only person who could account for Hannah’s last actions was her fiancé, James Greenacre of Lambeth. A warrant for the arrest of Mr Greenacre was issued on 26 March, although it took a little while to find out his exact whereabouts – which turned out to be 1 St Albans Place, Lambeth.
Mr Greenacre initially told the officers he knew of no Mrs Hannah Brown. He then conceded that he was to have married a certain Mrs Brown, and had they arrived the next day they would not have found him as he would have sailed for America! The packed trunks in his room seemed to prove this. The young woman found sharing his bed attempted to conceal something in her hands. Feltham ordered her to give him what she was hiding: a watch, two rings and a pair of earrings. Miss Sarah Gale was then asked to dress, and they were both placed under arrest. She collected her child from the adjoining room and they and the packed trunks were conveyed to Paddington police station.
On inspection, it appeared that some of the clothes in the trunks seemed to be very similar to the rags found in the first hessian sack, and some of the articles belonged to the dead woman, including those taken from Miss Gale. The sacks belonged to a Mr Ward, cabinet maker of Tottenham Court Road and the man who had introduced Mr Greenacre to Mrs Brown. The wood shavings proved this.
James Greenacre and Sarah Gale at the Old Bailey.
The desperate Greenacre tried to hang himself but was promptly revived and the suspects were taken by coach to the magistrates’ court on Marylebone Road. At the hearing Greenacre admitted that he had given Sarah Gale notice to quit before Hannah Brown’s arrival. Mrs Brown had arrived with her boxes on Christmas Eve a little worse for wear and picked a quarrel with Greenacre. He found out that she had used his name to obtain credit and in a temper he tipped her chair back, knocking her head against a wooden beam. He tried to revive her but couldn’t. He panicked, sawed her body up and deposited the pieces in various parts of London. He admitted that he had wrapped her head in a silk handkerchief and calmly carried it on his knee as he rode on a London omnibus on his way to the Regent’s Canal. He had been carrying her head when he had visited Mrs Davis.
The police surgeons, however, maintained that Mrs Brown’s eye was dislodged when she had either been hit or fallen very heavily. They also said that she had been quartered alive.
Their trial was set for 10 April at the Old Bailey. Lord Chief Justice Tindal, Mr Justice Coleridge and Mr Justice Coltman presided.
By then it was established that Greenacre had had a chequered life and was a serial widower. He had first been a grocer in Southwark, became an overseer of the parish and married a daughter of the landlord of the Crown and Anchor Tavern in Woolwich. She died of a fever. He then married a Miss Romford and had seven children by her, but four of them died, and so did his wife. His third marriage was to a propertied widow, whose dowry brought him a series of properties on Bowyers Lane (between Camberwell Road and Camberwell New Road).
His business prospered until greed got the better of him. He dabbled in untaxed tea but was discovered by the Excise. He opted to leave for America with his youngest son rather than face prison in England. While he was in America his wife died. He then married again, to a young propertied woman, and then left his new wife and young son to fend for themselves while he returned to England. Here he lived in one of the few houses he had managed to keep from his creditors, 6 Carpenter’s Place, Walworth Road, and plied his trade as a cabinet maker. It was here that he met Sarah Gale, and had a child by her. Their neighbours thought them married. It was at this juncture that he had met Mr Ward of Tottenham Court Road.
The ‘guilty’ verdict was returned after only a few minutes. Greenacre was condemned to death and hanged at Newgate on 2 May 1837 whilst Sarah Gale, whom he had continuously insisted knew nothing of the murder, was sentenced to penal servitude. He was allowed to write a letter to his children with the cautionary tale that their Uncle Samuel ‘had killed your grandmother and shot off your Aunt Mary’s hand’.
six
CHERCHEZ LA FEMME
Most murders in the nineteenth century took place in provincial towns – a London murder was special. The London public’s preoccupation with murder reached epic proportions. Its lust for the horror and surreal qualities of a murder was unparalleled. Much of this was fuelled by the newspapers of the time. The following murder is a case in point, as the papers sensationalised it from the outset.
The tall, thick-set man, with a long nose bent down towards the tip as if to call attention to an angular jaw that projected out, did not turn up to work at the Port of London on Friday, 10 August 1849. His cousin William Flynn, also a customs officer, was worried. Patrick O’Connor, a 50-year-old Irishman, had long been settled in London and had done very well for himself as a customs officer, fence and loan shark. He enjoyed his job and was popular with his colleagues. When he didn’t he turn up on Saturday morning, Flynn and two colleagues, William Keating and David Graham, went to his lodgings. His landlady said she hadn’t seen him since Thursday, although she had seen his friend, Mrs Manning, since. Mrs Manning had come, alone, on Thursday and Friday.
The last time Graham and Keating had seen him was on Thursday at a quarter to five in the evening on London Bridge, where O’Connor had shown them a note from Mrs Manning asking him to come to her house at 3 Minver Place, Bermondsey, for supper to meet her lodger’s sister.
Who was this Mrs Manning? She was Swiss by birth, originally a lady’s maid, aged about 30. She and O’Connor had met in 1842. The much older and well-off Irishman had worked his charms and they had been an item for several years. She had hinted at marriage but he was not interested. She had grown tired of waiting and eventually met a train guard, Frederick Manning. The plump-faced, chinless and malleable Manning had told her he was coming into some money and, spurred on by this, the well-turned-out Marie de Roux accepted his offer of marriage in 1847. It was a mistake. She had only married him to irk O’Connor. She was also a spendthrift, spending money as quickly as Manning earned it. They moved from London to Taunton and back again, taking on the lease of a pub with backing from O’Connor, but nothing seemed to work. She had once left Manning to go back to O’Connor but Manning wooed her back. O’Connor suggested that if they took on a house in Minver Place, Bermondsey, he could rent a room off them. They took the lease of the house, fully expecting him to fulfil his end of the bargain, but he reneged on the deal. He did visit quite often, though, but was becoming tired of Marie and her morose husband. She was irksome baggage as far as O’Connor was concerned, and he now had little to do with her.
Patrick O’Connor.
Marie Manning.
Minver Place.
The three men went to Arbour Squar
e police station to report O’Connor missing. PC Barnes met Flynn that afternoon and walked to Minver Place to find it locked. Graham and Keating returned to Minver Place on Sunday, only to find Mrs Manning outside her house. She said that O’Connor had never turned up and she had gone to his lodgings to check on him, but he wasn’t there either – then again he could be very fickle! Meanwhile Flynn circulated handbills offering a £10 reward over the weekend, to no avail.
On Monday 13 August the police checked the missing man’s apartment. His share certificates and money were missing. The next day Meade, a friend of O’Connor’s, told Flynn that Mrs Manning had gone. In the evening, PC Burton, Meade and some friends searched 3 Minver Place – to find that all the furniture had gone.
On Friday 17 August, PCs Burton and Barnes made a last search of Minver Place to see if they had missed anything. This time they checked the basement kitchen, which, unlike the rest of the house, was spotless. They noticed that one of the flagstones seemed to have new, wet mortar around it and on an impulse they lifted it with a borrowed crowbar and dug the soft earth underneath it. There, 2ft below, was the naked body of a man, face down, tied up and coated with quicklime. Samuel Lockwood, a surgeon, arrived with a reporter. He felt extensive fractures on the upper part of the skull and pulled out a set of dentures. O’Connor wore dentures. They had found their man.
A further examination, undertaken by the police surgeon George Odling, revealed another fracture extending from the back of the head to the right side and a bullet slug just above the right eye.
The Times of Saturday 18 August headlined ‘Extraordinary Discovery of a Murder’ and the ‘Bermondsey Horror’. Marie Manning was described as a ‘native of Geneva, 30 years old, 5ft 7 ins, stout, fresh complexion, with long dark hair, good looking, a scar on the right-hand side of the chin, dresses very smartly, speaks broken English and has been a lady’s maid and dressmaker’. The Times also stated that ‘there can be no doubt that Manning or his wife committed the crime, as they sold all their goods to a broker in Bermondsey Street on Tuesday last, and exhibited a great desire to leave the neighbourhood.’