by Payne, Chris
Secondly, in relation to the frequent visits that Kurr claimed to have made to Clarke: ‘He remembered being told by Clarke that some of this class had been watching and making mysterious inquiries about him in the neighbourhood of his own residence.’76 Thirdly, Williamson indicated that none of the money alleged by Kurr and Benson to have been paid to Clarke had been traced to him, as far as Williamson was aware (and that remained the situation).77
The next day, Lewis completed his cross-examination and presented his rebuttal of the accusations against Clarke. He then called witnesses in Clarke’s defence in the hope of achieving a discharge of the case against his client. With the considerable experience that both men had in assembling evidence and witnesses, this was undoubtedly worth a try. The first of these witnesses was Inspector John Shore, a colleague of Clarke’s at Scotland Yard, who was questioned by Lewis about his experience with informants. Shore stated that he:
Had found it necessary at times to receive information from suspected persons, from thieves, and from persons of the lowest grade … Had written hundreds of times to persons making appointments to meet them, and had kept up correspondence where necessary. All this was required to get the information they desired. Their associates at times were betting men of the lowest type, thieves, and all kinds of persons. If certain information was obtained and no result came of it, the inspectors would probably not report upon it … It was not the habit of the authorities to ask the names of informants. It was not true that witness ever had a conversation with Chief Inspector Clarke with respect to having received £400 in the Walters and Murray case, or with a Mr. Levy, about Clarke having received any money over the affair. Kurr’s statements he did not value in the least. It was known, he believed, to every inspector that Mr. Clarke reported in the interest of justice, with regard to the burglary at Stannard’s mill. Had always regarded Mr. Clarke one of the steadiest men in England. He was a man who evidently never lived beyond his means. He had always borne an irreproachable character, and witness had never known anything against him in his life.78
Amongst the other defence witnesses, Sergeant Littlechild reported that there was no truth that William Walters had been at Edwin Murray’s house when he and Clarke had searched it. Inspector Cruse confirmed that when Walters had been granted a licence for the Grapes public house, Clarke had informed the magistrate of Walters’ previous betting convictions. Clarke’s youngest daughter, Catherine, said that she often opened the door to visitors, and that she had never seen William Kurr in her life before seeing him during the court proceedings. Mary Booker, a part-time servant of a lodger in Clarke’s house, gave similar evidence. Clarke’s daughter-in-law, Louisa Clarke, stressed the frugality of the Clarke household, and stated that, on 25 September 1876, Clarke and she had spent the late evening waiting at Kings Cross Station for Clarke’s wife Elizabeth to return from visiting her sick brother-in-law. The significance of this evidence was that Kurr claimed that he had met Clarke elsewhere that evening. In a similar manner, William Norfolk confirmed that he had been out with Clarke on other nights in late December 1876 at times when Kurr had stated that he held meetings with Clarke. Norfolk’s evidence was reinforced by the landlord of the Paxton’s Head, Knightsbridge, where Clarke and Norfolk had spent an evening together. Likewise, the landlord of Clarke’s local public house, Charles Jackson, also contradicted Kurr by stating that he had never seen Kurr and Clarke together in his pub, though Clarke himself was a regular customer. Frederick Andrews, the accountant who had introduced Clarke to Yonge (Benson) in 1875, confirmed the manner of the introduction and that ‘from his knowledge of Benson he would say that he was a man who was not to believed on his oath’. Finally, James Griffin swore that William Kurr had been present at Sandown Races on 31 August 1876, as he had previously done during the turf fraud trial in April.79
When given the opportunity to speak, before a final decision was made by the chief magistrate, Clarke said:
I wish to say that I am perfectly innocent of the charge made against me by the convicts. It is made to destroy me for having honestly and fearlessly performed my duties towards the public in protecting them against the frauds committed from time to time, and especially during the last six or seven years, and for having brought them and their friends and associates to justice.80
However, despite the efforts of George Lewis and the defence witnesses, Clarke was probably sufficiently experienced and sanguine not to be surprised when he and all the arrested men were committed for trial at the Old Bailey. Only Clarke and Froggatt were permitted bail.
The Trial of the Detectives
The Old Bailey trial covered the same ground as the proceedings at Bow Street, notwithstanding the appearance of some new personalities amongst the prosecution and defence teams, and some additional witnesses.81 For this reason, the following account will not repeat aspects previously covered and will focus on the case against Clarke and the events and personalities that only emerged during the Old Bailey trial.
After his committal for trial, Clarke needed to find a counsel who could represent him at the Old Bailey and to raise the funds to pay for legal costs. On 25 September, and again on 10 October, his solicitors wrote to the Home Secretary asking for payment of Clarke’s defence costs. The letters highlighted the service he had provided to the Home Office in shutting down betting offices and stressed that Clarke was a poor man ‘and is quite without means to defend himself against the charge which has been made against him’.82 The Home Office replied that he would only have a fair claim if acquitted; in the meantime his case could not be distinguished from that of the three other inspectors. However, Secretary Cross was sufficiently intrigued to ask Commissioner Henderson ‘whether this representation as to his poverty is correct and, if so, how the fact can be explained and when it first became known to the Commissioner’. Henderson duly provided Cross with a reality check:
… Chief Inspector Clarke joined the Detective Department in May 1862. He was previously a Serjeant in the S Division his pay being £1 4/- per week. He was a Detective Serjeant until November 1867 pay £2 2/- per week, promoted then to Inspector at a salary of £200 per annum. In May 1869 he was promoted to Chief Inspector. Salary £250 per annum and in 1872 his pay was increased to £276 per annum.
I am informed that he has brought up a family of five children, three boys and two girls. He has assisted two of his sons with money to start in business, and has still one son and a daughter dependent on him. His wife has had frequent attacks of illness, his daughter also requiring expensive medical treatment. He also has to contribute to the maintenance of his aged mother.
At present he receives no pay, being suspended. Under these circumstances it is not surprising that he has no funds to draw upon to meet the heavy expense of legal assistance … an expense which probably would fall little short of £100.83
Although he was unsuccessful in raising additional funds for legal costs, there was a moment of happiness for Clarke when his daughter Emily’s first child was christened on 30 September. His grandsons’s birth had prevented Emily from giving evidence on his behalf at Bow Street, but she would be well enough to appear at the Old Bailey.
Following discussions with George Lewis, Clarke followed his solicitor’s recommendation that an up-and-coming barrister, Edward Clarke (no relation), should be asked to represent him at the Old Bailey. Edward Clarke had recently added to his burgeoning reputation as an advocate during the Staunton murder trial (often referred to as the Penge murder case).84 In his autobiography, Edward Clarke described the first meeting of the two men:
Clarke came to me with an introduction from Mr. George Lewis, assured me that he was innocent, and begged me to defend him, and in consideration of his slender means to accept a small fee and very small refreshers. I believed him and sympathised with him, and agreed to a refresher of five guineas a day, half the amount which had been paid me in the Staunton case.85
At nineteen days the trial of the detectives was, in its time
, the longest criminal trial that had been held at the Old Bailey. The prosecution for the Crown was in the hands of Attorney General Sir John Holker and Solicitor General Sir Hardinge Giffard. Edward Clarke later described his strategy as counsel for Clarke: ‘My cross-examination in the Detective case was careful but by no means long. It is a very useful general rule that you should not cross-examine when you cannot contradict. By provoking a repetition of the story you fix it on the minds of the jury, and you run the risk of the mention of some fresh detail.’86 For these reasons, he decided to keep short his cross-examination of Kurr and of Mrs Avis (Benson’s housekeeper who had produced copies of Benson’s correspondence with Clarke). As the committal hearings had shown, Clarke and Lewis had assembled a number of defence witnesses able to provide evidence that contradicted Kurr’s statements relating to his ‘meetings’ with Clarke. There was only one witness who provided partial corroboration of one aspect of Kurr’s story. This was a cabdriver who had taken Kurr to the end of Great College Street on two occasions during the autumn of 1876. However, the cabdriver had not seen whether Kurr had called at Clarke’s house, or could simply have been one of the men that Clarke had reported to Williamson, who ‘had been watching and making mysterious inquiries about him in the neighbourhood of his own residence’.87
Far more difficult to deal with was Clarke’s correspondence with Benson during 1875. Clarke had either not received or had not preserved some letters that Benson claimed to have sent him. However, copies of some of Benson’s letters and Clarke’s replies had been provided to the Treasury by Benson’s housekeeper, Mrs Avis, or had been recovered from a ‘dead letter office’ – having been sent originally to an incorrect forwarding address by an Isle of Wight resident who was clearing Rose Bank after Benson had vacated it during 1876. The recovered correspondence started with a letter from Clarke of 19 April 1875, sent shortly after his first meeting with Benson (as Yonge) in the Isle of Wight, followed by a second letter a few days later. Clarke’s initial tone had been robust:
Scotland Yard April 19th 1875
Dear Sir, In reply to yours of the 11th inst., I am utterly astonished that you, as a stranger, should have heard anything of my character, good, bad, or indifferent; but, thank God, I am not afraid of any man, and do not care one pin if all my actions through life were published to the world to-morrow. You have certainly excited my curiosity, and I appeal to you as a gentleman to let me know what you have heard about me, and you may depend that I will in no way compromise you. It is quite impossible for me to see you at the Isle of Wight. Yours respectfully, G. Clarke.88
Detective Office April 26th 1875
Dear Sir, Your letter of the 19th only reached me yesterday, having been absent from London. You must have misunderstood me when at Rose Bank, as I certainly said that my visit was purely official, and that I could not enter into any confidential correspondence respecting the two men Walters and Murray, but I did express my astonishment when you told me that the secrets of the office were betrayed by some one, whose name you may decline to give. I further said that I should be glad to hear from you on that subject. I am still prepared and anxious to hear on that matter. Yours respectfully, G. Clarke.89
By June 1875, Clarke’s tone had softened:
20, Great College Street, Westminster June 16th 1875
No doubt you have heard that the two men, Walters and Murray, did not appear to take their trial and have not been heard of since. I hear they have left the country. I should be glad to see you to talk over the matter, but I cannot spare the time this week. I feel that I want a run out somewhere for a blow. Kurr and Montague have also left the country. Yours truly, G. Clarke.90
That letter had been written in response to one from Benson:
15th June 1875
My Dear Sir and Brother, We exchanged promises at our last interview. Yours was that [you] would give me an early opportunity of proving my friendship; mine that I would show you how kindly I feel towards you, and how anxious I am to pay my debt to you. I have also news of great importance to communicate with you about the letter you know of [Clarke’s letter to Walters]. I will show you how thoroughly you can trust me. Will you, therefore, oblige me by coming down as soon as possible – Thursday or Friday? By leaving Waterloo at 3 p.m. you can return next morning in time to be in your office by 10. A line from you in return announcing your visit as requested will oblige yours sincerely, G.H.Y. If you do not like to write, merely let me know what time I may expect you, as it is urgent I should see you before Saturday.91
Subsequent letters from Benson also mentioned his ‘debt’ to Clarke, references that the prosecution interpreted as circumstantial evidence that Clarke had accepted money from him, though Clarke’s letters to Benson contained nothing specifically compromising in their content.92
Edward Clarke was also concerned that many aspects of Kurr and Benson’s ‘story’ were consistent, though the two men, in prison, were ‘without any opportunity of communication’.93 In this regard, Edward Clarke failed to recognise that Kurr and Benson had found ways of communicating while in prison, at least before their own trial. Nonetheless, Clarke’s counsel was undoubtedly right to adopt a strategy that would highlight Benson’s potential to fool not only the gullible, but also to compromise a hardened veteran of the detective department like Clarke:
My chief object was to show him [Benson] at his best; as the polished and educated man who was capable of deceiving and outwitting even a trained inspector of police. He looked little like that when my turn came to cross examine him. He was ill; it was the afternoon of his third day in the witness box; and all that morning he had been cross examined with just severity, but with some roughness by Montagu Williams. As he sat in the chair put for him in the witness box, in the ugly convict’s clothes, hair cropped, face worn with illness and fatigue, he was a pitiful object. My first words brought a change. ‘Now Mr. Benson, I have a few questions to ask you.’ It was the first time for months that he had been spoken to in any tone of courtesy. His face lit up, he rose to his feet, bowed in acknowledgment, and stood with an air of deference, waiting to reply … I felt that my object had been attained.94
During his cross-examination, Edward Clarke was successful in extracting confirmation from Benson that he had passed on information to Clarke about another fraudster, Victor Trevelli, who was later apprehended and sentenced to five years’ penal servitude for forgery in March 1877.95 This was proof that Clarke had gained information of value to the police during his dialogue with Benson.
Other prosecution witnesses who yielded a positive outcome when cross-examined were Superintendent Williamson and William Pollard (Clarke’s principal point of contact over many years at the Treasury Solicitor’s office). On the subject of whether a telegram or letter should have been sent to Glasgow police on 3 October 1876, Williamson confirmed that telegrams were only sent where essential and that ‘if information had to be sent after bank hours with a view of stopping notes on the following day a letter would answer the same purpose as a telegram’. Pollard confirmed that he had never had the slightest reason to suspect Clarke.96 When it came to the defence witnesses for Clarke, those previously examined at the Bow Street hearings re-appeared. Their number was also added to by Clarke’s daughter Emily, and by Commissioner Henderson. Emily described the excursion that she had taken to the Isle of Wight in August 1875, during which her father had left her in Shanklin for half an hour while meeting Benson (a meeting that Clarke had never denied having).97 Commissioner Edmund Henderson’s evidence was consistent with the considerable trust placed in Clarke by his superiors:
I am the Chief Commissioner of Police – besides my having the superintendence and command of all the ordinary police business, there is business of a special and confidential character in my case relating to personages of State upon which reports come directly to me – in that sort of business I have for some years employed Inspector Clarke; he has been employed and trusted in matters of the most confidential charact
er, and has been in the habit of making to me personal reports which would not pass into ordinary police work – so far as I have been able to form an opinion I have found him thoroughly trustworthy – I have never had the least cause to suspect either the information connected with his work or his want of faithfulness in any way at all – on 18th Oct., 1876, I had some communication with him with regard to a threatened attempt on the person of the Prince of Wales – the reports with regard to that matter were made on the following day, the 19th…98
When it came to Edward Clarke’s closing speech for Clarke’s defence, he has provided his own perspective:
My speech for Clarke was the most elaborately prepared of all my forensic speeches … My scheme was to throw all my strength into an exordium which might make the jury feel that such an accusation made against a man of stainless reputation and long-continued public service was really incredible. Then, when I came to deal, discreetly and not in too great detail, with the serious evidence against him, each of the twelve minds which it was my duty to influence would be predisposed, and even eager, to reject or explain away, or wholly to ignore, facts which were inconsistent with the conclusion at which it had already, if unconsciously arrived. The peroration was intended to sweep away any lingering doubts by the confidence of its rhetorical appeal for an acquittal.99
The advocate’s strategy was therefore similar to that earlier adopted by Montagu Williams for his client, Meiklejohn, which had contributed to Clarke finding himself in the dock in the first place. Would it now prove to be his salvation?
The last tense day of the trial was vividly described in the Daily Telegraph:
For forty-eight days, at Bow-street and at the Old Bailey, the trial of the detectives has dragged its slow length along, with the inevitable recurrence of the same facts, the same witnesses, the same arguments; and at the opening of the court yesterday – the last day of the trial – it really looked as if the excitement had exhausted itself. Everyone who possessed a curious mind or whose strange idiosyncrasy it was to watch the long mental agony of five of their fellow-creatures – unfortunate, however guilty; miserable, however innocent – had made himself or herself familiar with the features, the nervousness, the stolidity, or the anxiety, as the case might be, of the four police officers and the solicitor. Students of physiognomy have remarked on the undisturbed gloom which made Meiklejohn’s features a placid mask; had noticed the quick nervous changes playing over the lively face of the foreigner Druscovich; had likened the tall figure of Palmer to some well-drilled, non-commissioned officer in a line regiment; had watched the colour coming and going as Froggatt’s name was mentioned incidentally or directly; and had expended pity on the venerable look and gray hair of Clarke … At ten o’clock in the morning when the doors were undisturbed, when the passages leading to the court were comparatively free, when the barrister’s benches were half empty, and when it was possible to conduct the business of the court in order and silence, every seat allotted to the ladies had been secured. Ladies well-known in fashionable society, ladies related to the bench and the bar, ladies celebrated in art, had evidently postponed until the last moment their visit to a court of justice during a celebrated criminal trial. Though the very circumstances of the case prevented any idea of novelty or excitement during the summing-up, and though the plan of the learned judge was to deal with the evidence in order of witnesses, instead of in personal or chronological order, still it was clear that the ladies anticipated sufficient interest to reward them for sitting in the same seat for six or seven hours. The summing-up was anything but interesting even to the judicial mind. The evidence was wearisome from repetition, and the judge’s system necessitated constant allusion to the same circumstances. However, there were the prisoners exposed to the public gaze, and subjected to determined scrutiny. Whenever Druscovich stood up, whenever Froggatt sat down, whenever Clarke leaned upon his elbow, whenever Meiklejohn scrunched up a pen in his strong fingers, whenever a note was passed down from the dock to the barristers or solicitors, each one of these facts was duly recorded and whispered about by the unprofessional spectators in court. But as the lengthy list of witnesses was wearily exhausted, on one face only was seen a sign of expectancy or a ray of hope, and that was the face of Inspector Clarke. Anxiety seemed to fade from him as the end drew near. Meiklejohn never stood for a second. His features never relaxed their gloom. Druscovich and Froggatt were nervously anxious and apprehensively fidgety, were often whispering and constantly writing during the early morning hours. But Clarke’s face was comparatively cheerful and illumined with hope. When the hour for the adjournment came the case of the detectives was summed up and finished. The jury was fully charged as far as four of the prisoners were concerned. Froggatt’s was purposely kept apart by the judge all through, and this was taken after luncheon. And so without much solemnity, and with scarcely any deviation from an even and unruffled course, the jury retired to consider their verdict at twenty-five minutes past three.