The dupes were advised that, in order to comply with English law, they could not cash the cheques at once, but were obliged to hold onto them for three months. There was, of course, no such law, but the delay was essential to enable the gang to milk the scheme for as long as possible. It also meant that when the dupes wanted to place another bet they could not reinvest their winnings but had to send another personal cheque.
The plan was that in three months, when the dupes found that their cheques were worthless forgeries, the business would vanish, only to reappear in a new guise, targeted at another part of France, with a different fake newspaper and a different fake bank. There was, Benson believed, enough mileage in the scheme to keep them very busy for four years, by which time they would be multimillionaires.
In the meantime, Williamson, still suspicious of Meiklejohn, saw an opportunity at least to remove him from dealing with sensitive matters. The Midland Railway Company had asked for an experienced man to superintend their police, and so before long Meiklejohn was seconded and packed off to Derby, which did not discomfit him in the least since his senior position gave him more independence of action. While in Derby, he remained in constant contact with Kurr.
The racing fraud was prospering, and Scotland Yard was quite unaware of its existence when Benson made a classic error: he became greedy. Montgomery wrote to the Comtesse suggesting that she place a bet of £30,000 with another ‘sworn bookmaker’, called Ellerton. The lure was irresistible. Seven horses had been entered for a race at Ayr and of these six were to be withdrawn, leaving Montgomery’s choice the inevitable winner. ‘Never will you find a similar opportunity to win an immense fortune. If you have not the whole amount at hand see what you can stake and I myself will willingly advance the difference.’11
Benson’s greed was only exceeded by that of the Comtesse, who was eager for another huge win. The only difficulty was that she had no more liquid funds. Anxious not to miss the opportunity, she went to her lawyer, Monsieur Chavance, for advice on how to raise the stake money. He at once suspected that she had been handing over her money to some clever villains and cabled Scotland Yard for advice. He received the reply from Williamson he had feared: ‘The scheme is a fraud.’12
The London part of the investigation was entrusted to the Comtesse’s perceptive and energetic solicitor, 52-year-old Michael Abrahams, who at once went to Scotland Yard and laid all the facts before Superintendent Williamson. Unable to trace any of the ‘sworn bookmakers’, he determined to obtain a warrant for their arrest. The superintendent decided to put his best man on to the investigation. Calling Nathaniel Druscovich into his office, he advised him that he had been told of a swindle that involved the sum of £10,000 coming in from Paris, and instructed him to call on Abrahams the following day.
When Meiklejohn got to hear about this, he at once advised Druscovich that Kurr ought to be told what was happening. On the afternoon of 25 September, Kurr was driving home from the office in his gig with Harry Street, when he happened to see Druscovich outside Scotland Yard and stopped to speak to him. Druscovich advised Kurr that he had been asked to look into a foreign swindle involving £10,000. He was not at the time aware that it was a betting scheme, and Kurr did not enlighten him. Kurr did no more than advise him to keep matters in his own hands, but as he drove away he realised that it was time to shut up shop. When he got home there was an envelope waiting for him in his own handwriting. It contained a blank piece of blotting paper. He went at once to see Clarke, who said that he was both ‘frightened and alarmed’.13 He told Kurr that there was just time to change any banknotes, but that it would be dangerous for him to go near the spurious offices.
Aware that immediate action was needed, Kurr drove as fast as he could to Benson’s lodging house. It was now almost midnight, and, unable to persuade Benson’s valet to awaken his master, Kurr threw a stone at the window and broke it. Benson, who was feeling unwell, remained in bed, and eventually Kurr gave up trying to contact him. He sent a message to Druscovich asking him to meet him at Charing Cross the following morning; he then drove home.
Druscovich was both distressed and agitated when he met Kurr under the Charing Cross archway. The policeman had by now been told all the details of the fraud, and when Kurr calmly informed him that he was involved realised what kind of man had a hold over him. To the cool villain it seemed that Druscovich hardly knew what he was saying as the inspector had convinced himself he was being ‘piped off’ or watched. ‘I have told you now, and you will have to look out for yourself,’14 he said. Kurr asked if the notes were being stopped. ‘I do not know what they are doing!’ said Druscovich, who then turned and ran away.15 Unknown to either of them, Abrahams was busy obtaining arrest warrants, but so far his investigation was hindered by not knowing the men’s real names.
Kurr hurried to the Northumberland Street office, where the gang had assembled to wait for his instructions. He advised them to close the office and leave London at once. The French money had been changed into Bank of England notes, by a money-changer named Reinhardt, but Kurr felt they needed to cover their tracks further. He then made a fatal error of judgement, which was to be instrumental in the gang’s downfall. English banks kept a record of the numbers of the notes they issued, but Scottish banks did not. He calculated that if the English notes were changed into Scottish notes they would not be traceable. Benson and two other gang members departed at once for Glasgow with £14,000 and began the process, obtaining some £10,000 in Clydesdale bank notes before their activities attracted attention.
Druscovich returned to Scotland Yard to declare that the gang had cleared out of their offices before he arrived. Williamson felt sure that the criminals had been warned, but this time it could not have been Meiklejohn, who had been in Derby for the last two weeks. It was almost unthinkable that another of his men was corrupt, yet there could hardly be another conclusion.
Abrahams had by now traced Reinhardt, who supplied him with the numbers of £12,000 worth of the English notes. Abrahams then passed on the information to Druscovich, which the officer had no alternative but to give to Williamson. Druscovich was now a very frightened man in a terrible dilemma, obliged to take action lest he excite suspicion, but afraid of doing too much in case his involvement should be revealed. He was able for a time to conceal his obstruction of the investigation under a guise of error, neglect and bad luck. Charged with the task of discovering the numbers of the remaining notes, he hesitated for as long as he was able before making them known.
Kurr was naturally anxious to find out exactly which notes had been stopped. Frustrated that Druscovich was supplying him with no further information, he had to rely on Clarke for news, and asked Meiklejohn to bring Druscovich to heel. Meiklejohn was confident that Williamson, whom he described as ‘a calf’, would ‘never tumble to it in a thousand years’16 and wired Druscovich to come to a meeting at the Midland Grand Hotel, St Pancras.
Druscovich arrived in a thoroughly agitated state. He told them of a meeting at which the police had studied the French documents, and remarked on the ‘clever fellow’ Bill had behind him. ‘Talk about Victor Hugo, I never read such French in my life,’ he exclaimed.17 The Comtesse’s brother, who had attended the meeting, was less impressed than appalled. Reading the Montgomery letters, all he could say, over and over again, was ‘Mon Dieu!’18
Druscovich hinted that, in view of the warrants, it might be best for Kurr to go to America; but Kurr refused. ‘I must arrest somebody over this job,’ said Druscovich pleadingly. ‘Arrest me if you like,’ said Kurr. Intrigued by the audacity of this idea, Druscovich realised that, since Kurr had never been to any of the branches, no one would be able to identify him. ‘I think I will,’ he said.19
An appointment was made for the dramatic coup to take place at Kurr’s house, but in the event Druscovich thought better of it. He was beginning to think that his best course of action was to have as little to do with Kurr as possible. When Kurr later asked Druscovich to supply him
with the numbers of the stopped banknotes, the officer gave evasive replies, and it was Meiklejohn who ultimately provided the information, which was at once wired to Benson.
‘How am I to get any information from Druscovich?’ Kurr complained to Meiklejohn. ‘He is frightened to come near me. Tell him to make all his business known at the office, and I am sure to know then from others.’20 Still, Kurr believed he knew how to ensure Druscovich’s loyalty. He sent him a cigar box containing £200 in gold.
On 3 October some of the notes Benson had been changing in Glasgow reached the Bank of England. Druscovich was at once informed of this, and his obvious course of action was to wire the Glasgow police, which could very well have led to Benson’s arrest, while to do nothing would expose his involvement. As a compromise, he sent the information to Scotland by letter, providing a delay that allowed Benson to leave Glasgow the next day. Clarke, who had by now guessed that ‘Mr Yonge’ was involved, told Kurr he was a fool to have sent a man whose condition made him easily remembered and identified.
The day after Benson’s return, he went with Kurr to Brighton. During this vist the Police Gazette published descriptions of the gang, the most distinctive of which was that of Benson under his various aliases: ‘5 feet 4 or 5 inches high, sallow complexion, black moustache, very thin round the waist … wears diamond studs and rings, pretends to be lame and carries two sticks, of Jewish appearance.’21
Two weeks later, no doubt refreshed from their holiday, Benson and Kurr were back in London. They had a meeting on 19 October with Inspector Meiklejohn, who had been thinking, as usual, of himself. He had come to the conclusion that he knew enough about Kurr and his business to demand a very substantial settlement, and so he asked for £2,000. After some wrangling, the sum of £500 was agreed, but the only cash available was in the form of £100 Clydesdale banknotes. While these were not numbered, they were sufficiently rarely seen in England to attract attention as soon as anyone presented one to a bank.
Meiklejohn, with careless self-confidence, began at once to change the notes, one in Manchester and one in Leeds, where he supplied his own name to the banks. The Leeds police wrote to Scotland Yard, but the letter went straight to Druscovich, who burnt it. Benson was furious with Meiklejohn, who claimed that he was a personal friend of the Chief Constable of Leeds and could get out of any trouble simply by writing to him.
The conspirators, now believing they were in the clear, started to plan the next stage of the swindle, and accordingly, early in November, moved their centre of operations to the Bridge of Allan in Scotland, where their Clydesdale notes would not be so noticeable. This was at the suggestion of Meiklejohn, who originated from the nearby village of Green Loaming and offered to introduce them to Mr Monteith, the bank manager there. Before they left they saw Druscovich, who warned that someone had mentioned Kurr’s name to Abrahams. They pacified Druscovich with £100 and some jewellery for his wife.
Kurr (who was now calling himself Captain William Gifford), Benson (under his alias of G.H. Yonge) and Meiklejohn stayed at the Queen’s Hotel, where they enjoyed convivial dinners and made plans. On Meiklejohn’s recommendation, Monteith was happy to open accounts for Yonge and his associate, and accepted their Clydesdale notes. Kurr’s new paper was called the Racing News. Soon, Brydone’s presses were busy again.
In London, meanwhile, Abrahams was continuing his inquiries. Finding that the Scotland Yard officers were not pressing matters as fast as they should, he decided to engage private detectives, much to the alarm of Druscovich, who complained to Williamson that the latter were hampering his own inquiries. Abrahams decided to offer a reward of £1,000 for the apprehension of the fraudsters, still with the only names he was aware of, and on 8 November his advertisement appeared in newspapers and was circulated to banks and police stations. At last his efforts paid off. William Rayner, the Shanklin postmaster, saw the advertisement and recognised the description of the wanted man as Mr Yonge of Shanklin. On hearing this, Abrahams ordered that any letters arriving in Shanklin should be watched.
On 10 November Druscovich was ordered to go to the Isle of Wight, and on the same day an informant sent an urgent telegram to Kurr, warning him that if Benson was in Shanklin he should be told to leave at once. The telegram was followed up with a letter. Since Benson was in Scotland, Kurr was not worried. Before Druscovich could set out, however, further news arrived at Scotland Yard that necessitated a change of plan. A cheque from the Royal Bank of London had been cashed in Edinburgh and traced back to Brydone, who had, it seemed, helped himself to his own handiwork. When the police raided the print works, they found 1,000 copies of the Racing News and a pile of fake cheques. They promptly seized the material and the plates.
Meanwhile, Abrahams’s watch of the Shanklin letters had intercepted correspondence between Benson’s servant at the Bridge of Allan and a maid in Shanklin. Abrahams went to Scotland Yard with the news. Soon, Williamson was reeling from another shock. The Edinburgh police had wired him to confirm the presence of Yonge and Gifford at the Queen’s Hotel and revealed that Meiklejohn (who had booked in under his own name) had been with them. Druscovich, who had not yet set out for Shanklin, was ordered to go to Scotland instead. Both the initial and the altered plan had been revealed to as few officers as possible. At 7 p.m that evening Clarke and Palmer met at a Masonic dinner. At 8 p.m. an anonymous wire was sent to Benson and Kurr. ‘D is coming down tonight, let Shanks [i.e. Benson] keep out of the way.’22 A letter was also sent on a piece of blotting paper. It said: ‘Keep the lame man out of the way at once.’23 The writing was never identified, but Kurr later asserted that Clarke told him he had written it. The men packed their bags, Benson heading south. Kurr, who remained in Scotland, sent a telegram to Palmer’s home asking for full details of Druscovich’s movements, and received a reply that evening. The letters did not arrive at the hotel until the men had left and remained there for several days in the charge of the landlord.
Kurr wired Druscovich to meet him at Caledonian Station. ‘Important. Come immediately on receipt of this.’24 Druscovich arrived on 11 November and Kurr offered him £1,000 not to go to the Bridge of Allan, but the detective said he had no choice. ‘He was more like a madman than anything else,’ said Kurr later. ‘He kept saying “Cannot I take him [Benson] and afterwards let him go?” ’25 Benson later observed that he had no intention of trusting himself to Druscovich.
Kurr went back to Derby while the talented and usually dynamic Druscovich continued the investigation, which – and this must have pained him deeply – he had to carry out as badly as possible. He dawdled for half a day and did not go to the Bridge of Allan until the afternoon, then sent a wire to Williamson saying that the men had left just before he got there. He had a watch kept on the printer’s, knowing that the gang would not come near the place, and tried to convince the police at the Bridge of Allan that the meetings between Meiklejohn, Yonge and Gifford were of no importance, then sent them off on a false trail. Finally, when he returned to Edinburgh, without collecting the vital letters, he found two telegrams awaiting him from Abrahams, who was now deeply impatient with his lack of progress. Abrahams’s investigations had established that Mr Yonge was the Harry Benson who had defrauded the Lord Mayor in 1871, and urged that his description should be circulated to all ports. ‘You should get hold of their letters,’ he instructed impatiently. ‘What are you doing?’26
The gang next met in Derby. Kurr was anxious to retrieve the £3,500 deposited in the Scottish bank, but Meiklejohn was unwilling to go, so Murray (who had slipped back into England under an assumed name) was instructed to take his place. It was imperative that the easily identifiable Benson get out of the way, and so he sailed for Dublin.
In Scotland, a weary and ill Druscovich was obliged to collect the letters, which, he saw to his relief, did not implicate him. Returning to London on 17 November he handed them to Williamson. The superintendent was by now a very anxious man. His star officer was suspiciously lacking in drive and e
fficiency, and Meiklejohn had met the wanted men. When Williamson read the letters, he must have been thunderstruck. Not only did they describe the confidential orders given to Druscovich, but one letter was very obviously in the handwriting of an officer who so far he had not suspected at all, Inspector William Palmer, a solid hardworking man with twenty-two years in the force.
The letters were passed on to the Treasury Solicitor, and Williamson was asked to obtain formal reports from Meiklejohn and Druscovich, explaining their actions. Meiklejohn responded that he had gone to Scotland to inquire about a missing portmanteau, and met the fraudsters by chance. Believing the men to be respectable, he had introduced them to the banker, which he very much regretted. Druscovich’s report stated only that the men escaped just before he arrived because they were elusive. Williamson, unable to take his own senior officers into his confidence, was obliged, while inquiries continued, personally to take on as much of the work of the department as he could. The only man he trusted was Clarke.
Benson, unwilling to go America as advised, sent his servant there, instructing him to send letters and cables when he arrived to give the impression that he, Benson, had gone, while in fact he returned to England and met Kurr. Kurr was a worried man, and to foil the ongoing investigations devised a new plan together with an associate, Henry Stenning, who was staying at his house. The two were of similar build, and exchanged clothes to make identification more difficult. On 28 November they learned that Murray’s attempts to retrieve the money had led to his arrest, although he had been released on a technicality and was back in London. There he had managed to change two Clydesdale notes, but when he tried two more the next day the money-changers, knowing that the police had issued warnings about such notes, held on to them.
Fraudsters and Charlatans Page 17