(Manchester Evening News, 7 December 1886)
When Chief Inspector Caminada arrested the Birmingham Forger on 6 December 1886 outside the Queen’s Theatre in Manchester, he was unaware that this complicated case would have some surprising twists and turns, including an attention-seeking witness and a spurned lover. Worse still, a legal battle connected with the case would cast a shadow over the detective’s career, long after the conviction of Arthur Foster.
At the end of November 1886 Caminada was enjoying a holiday with his wife and baby son Charles, in the Derbyshire spa town of Buxton. When his two-month-old son’s precarious health began to deteriorate, the family returned home. En route Caminada dropped in at the town hall to see if anything had been ‘stirring’ in his absence. While he was there, Superintendent Hicks told him about George Tracey, a man from the colonies, who had reported the theft of an expensive bracelet and was offering a reward of £20 for its recovery. Shortly after, Tracey had called in again to inform the police that the bracelet had been found entangled in the dress of the lady who owned it.
The superintendent felt there was something shifty about the man and reported to Caminada that he was clean-shaven, wore a wig and resembled the actor Henry Irving. His circumstances were also dubious: Tracey had said that he was from San Francisco, but was now residing in the rough neighbourhood of Greenheys on the edge of Manchester. Caminada confirmed the superintendent’s suspicions:
It appeared to me that Carter Street was not a neighbourhood where bracelets of the value of £120 were ordinarily found, and I remarked to the Superintendent, “If he lives in Carter Street, Greenheys, and says that he has come from San Francisco, there is something ‘dickey’ about him and inquiries should be made at once.
His curiosity aroused, Caminada set off immediately to make enquiries. He soon discovered that Tracey was a clerk, involved in the preparations for a pantomime and also associated with a local house of theatrical ladies. After sounding out his usual informants, Caminada returned to the town hall, where he bumped into a shopkeeper who was leaving. Henry Pingstone had just reported a mysterious customer in his hosiery store. The client looked like a priest or an actor, and had bought a new suit for £15 in a suspiciously ostentatious manner. When Pingstone gave the man’s name as George Tracey, Caminada knew he had a lead. Yet, before long he would bitterly regret that Pingstone had ever become involved in the case.
Henry Pingstone was a linen draper and hosier with a shop on Market Street, in Manchester’s commercial district. He was also a member of the city council. Despite his initial enthusiasm to give information about Tracey, he soon tried to dissociate himself from the formal investigation, by insisting that his name was kept confidential. Caminada reassured Pingstone that he was prepared to act on information gleaned, without revealing the identity of his sources: ‘If I had to wait for definite information in every case, one half of the criminals would escape me’. After their first meeting, Caminada accompanied Pingstone back to his shop and then took up position in a doorway opposite. Fifteen minutes later, Tracey appeared and the detective followed him through the streets to the Bank of England, where he changed a large amount of gold into cash.
After shadowing Tracey all afternoon, Caminada returned to the detective office, where he assembled his colleagues and, producing an image of a woodcut from the previous week’s edition of the Police Gazette, he suggested that Tracey was in fact Arthur Foster, wanted for forgery in Birmingham. The other officers were not convinced but, sticking to his instincts, Caminada went to Greenheys with the picture in his pocket and trailed Foster and his glamorous lady companion into the Queen’s Theatre for the evening’s performance of The World. While watching the play, the detective knew that he had his man:
Tracey, who followed the plot of the piece and the fate of the diamonds with the closest interest, was apparently overjoyed at the triumph of the robber who effected his purpose by administering chloroform. As he leaned back in the box laughing, I looked again at the portrait and decided to arrest him.
As reported in the Manchester Evening News, Foster’s choice of play ‘adds a somewhat dramatic feature to the arrest’.
Back at the town hall, the prisoner denied that he was Foster, but when Caminada threatened to send a telegraph to the Birmingham Police Force he agreed to co-operate, on the condition that his lady-friend was released. Before leaving, the woman handed over the diamond bracelet, apparently a gift from Foster, along with other jewels: two gold rings; another diamond-encrusted bracelet; earrings and brooches set with pearls; a gold necklet and locket; a gold watch; and an ivory fan.
Foster admitted the charges and a search of his person yielded £320 in notes, £12 in gold, £14 in silver, two diamond rings, a gold watch with an albert chain and a pearl and diamond stud set in gold. Foster had been on a spending spree. Stripped of his jewels, the prisoner was charged, but not content with the heist so far, Caminada returned to Foster’s lodgings to search for more stolen goods.
In Greenheys, after persuading the landlady to open Foster’s bedroom door, the detective discovered nearly £4,000 in new gold coins in a leather portmanteau and £26 stashed in a small leather bag (around £350,000 today).
After the widely-reported arrest, some intriguing new details came to light in the newspapers. According to the Birmingham Daily Post, a previous ‘flame’ had betrayed Foster to the police. The mystery woman had arranged to meet him the evening before his night out at the theatre and, when he failed to turn up, she was furious. Learning that he had ‘taken up’ with the Vanishing Lady, she had sent a photograph of him to the detective office in revenge and intimated that he was up to no good. The Vanishing Lady, Foster’s companion at the time of his arrest, was an actress appearing at the Free Trade Hall in the show of celebrated mesmerist, T. A. Kennedy, who used hypnotism to ‘nightly provoke continuous merriment’. In the newspapers, she was described as a woman of ‘more or less doubtful character’.
Clearly popular with women, 33-year-old Arthur Foster had already enjoyed a notable career as a thief and a forger, but he had also spent more than a third of his life in prison. Using several aliases, including George Tracey, he had committed a number of offences of forgery and embezzlement, and already completed almost 12 years of penal servitude. Undeterred by prison, as soon as he was freed on ticket-of-leave (probation) in February 1885, he had returned to his former tricks. However, at first Foster was employed as a newspaper reporter in Shrewsbury. This did not last long and, by the summer, he had forged references to obtain a position as a clerk with solicitor, Isaac Bradley, in preparation for carrying out his most daring theft yet.
For a while Foster kept his head down and worked hard. Bradley would later refer to him in court as ‘industrious and sober’. However, towards the end of October, assuming the alias of ‘Walter Nicholls’, Foster made arrangements with Bradley’s London agent, John Thomas White, to receive a claim amounting to £5,200 from Chancery on behalf of a client. Formal letters were exchanged, signatures were checked and the agent handed over the cash to ‘Nicholls’, who immediately absconded. White offered a reward of £200 for recovery of the money.
This sophisticated fraud was carried out with great skill and Foster might have got away with it, had it not been for the instinct and determination of Jerome Caminada. Arthur Foster was convicted of forgery at the Old Bailey. At the sentencing he appealed for mercy on the grounds that ‘he yielded to temptation’ but, despite his pleas, he received 15 years’ imprisonment. The case of the Birmingham Forger was closed and for Detective Caminada a new battle was about to begin.
Despite the shopkeeper Henry Pingstone’s initial reluctance to become involved, when he realised that Tracey was the Birmingham Forger, he became keen to help the police with their enquiries, even insisting on a place in the city police court, where he could watch the proceedings without being seen. The police congratulated Pingstone on his valuable contribution to the case and Caminada naïvely suggested that he receiv
e a handsome gratuity for his assistance. But Pingstone wanted more. Launching a campaign to secure the reward of £200 previously offered by the deceived London agent, John White, he wrote letters to the newspapers demanding credit for the arrest. The watch committee and the city council also put in petitions for payment of the reward. Messrs White and Sons paid the money into the court but then a complex legal battle commenced, with Councillor Pingstone going head-to-head with Chief Inspector Caminada.
Pingstone’s line of reasoning was that his information had led directly to Foster’s arrest, while Caminada contested that the investigation had already been under way before Pingstone became involved. During the first trial, on 5 May 1887, the judge complimented the detective as ‘a tolerably determined officer’. In his summing up he said:
every credit is due to Caminada for the intelligence and firmness and decision with which he acted; because…he, with great sagacity, determined that he was the right man and so secured a very serious offender.
Pingstone, on the other hand, was seen as excitable and over-zealous in his desire to take part in the police operations. The judge intimated that he might be an attention-seeker: ‘It may be a satisfaction to the pride of some people to have their names mixed up with the detection and arrest of criminals’. Despite his comments, the jury found for Pingstone, but the detective was not finished with the interfering shopkeeper.
Following an appeal, Caminada was granted a second trial on the grounds that the jury ‘had taken a wrong view of the facts’. The hearing, before a special jury, took place at the Manchester Assizes over a year after the original case of the Birmingham Forger. This time Pingstone presented an almost comic figure in court and the judge ordered him to stand up, instead of lolling in the witness box. Once again the judge considered Pingstone’s involvement in the case to be superficial and self-aggrandising: ‘he was delighted that he had a finger in the pie, that he helped to catch this great thief’. In concluding, Mr Justice Grantham gave his perceptive opinion of the case: ‘I cannot help feeling that had this been a contest between other persons than a town councillor and a member of the police force, you would not have been troubled with this case at all’.
The result of the second trial was that the reward should be shared between both parties, as well as the costs of the trials. Detective Caminada had to find £185, a not inconsiderable sum, when his annual salary was £200.
It was customary for Victorian police officers to receive rewards following the positive resolution of important cases. After the 1835 Municipal Corporations Act, watch committees were established to manage local police forces. The Manchester Borough Watch Committee was founded in 1839. Composed of elected members of the local council, the committee was responsible for promotions and rewards, as well as demotions and fines of individual police officers. In addition, private businesses and individuals could reward the police for successfully resolving specific crimes. Where appropriate, it was the role of the chief constable to divide up rewards and distribute them accordingly. Sometimes he chose to place them into the police superannuation scheme.
During his 30-year career Detective Caminada received many rewards from the Manchester Borough Watch Committee and private businesses for his sterling detective work, usually between £20 and £100. It was estimated in the Police Review that he received a total of just £400 from the watch committee, even though he had secured payment, on their behalf, of more than £9,300 in fines, following arrests.
Following the Pingstone case, Caminada’s supporters rallied round and held a meeting at the Queen’s Hotel to start a fund. Enough money was raised to pay the detective’s legal costs with an extra 300 guineas which they presented to him for the benefit of his family. Whilst this case had been unfolding, Jerome and his wife had experienced the sad death of their baby son Charles. A year later, just before the second trial against Henry Pingstone, Amelia had given birth to a fourth child. Another son, he was named Charles Bernard and would survive to adulthood.
After two complicated trials, this difficult situation ended well for Detective Caminada, but Henry Pingstone would have the final word. The egotistical witness had his own group of supporters, who also raised money to pay his share of the costs. At his presentation at the Victoria Hotel, they gloated over Pingstone’s triumph in the courts, praising him as ‘a man who has pluckily fought a public battle, and secured from a jury a verdict in his favour, which verdict, if left unchallenged, would have given others encouragement to give our detectives wrinkles that might oftener lead to the arrest of those who live upon their wits and our money’. As the chairman of the fundraising committee handed over the cheque to the proud shopkeeper, he commented that ‘Mr Pingstone had passed through a fiery furnace which had tested his metal. They all appreciated the vigour and pertinacity with which he held to what he believed to be a public right’.
Detective Caminada had been harassed by Henry Pingstone for almost two years, but Pingstone was nothing compared to the man he was about to tackle next. Bob Horridge was a ruthless career criminal, whom Caminada had first arrested while he was a police constable. Released in 1887, Horridge was determined to exact revenge on the detective and to end their rivalry once and for all.
Chapter Nine
‘The Professor Moriarty of the Slums’
(1887)
As to the reformation of the criminal, that is a myth; the prison is the best school of crime which we possess.
(Jerome Caminada, Twenty-Five Years of Detective Life, 1901)
Bob Horridge, one of the most desperate criminals that Caminada ever encountered, was an unscrupulous felon hardened by time spent behind bars, and the detective’s own real-life ‘Professor Moriarty’. An expert thief, Horridge terrorised the streets of Manchester for more than two decades. After his first long prison sentence, his career of crime began in earnest and it would eventually lead to a deadly showdown with his nemesis, Detective Caminada.
Robert Charles Horridge was born on 20 July 1845 in Back Brewery Street, Cheetham, near Strangeways Brewery and in the shadow of the prison. His parents, Ira and Margaret Horridge were respectable and hardworking; Ira was a whitesmith, who made fenders for trains. Robert was the eldest of nine children: four boys and five girls. The family grew up in the Rochdale Road area, not far from Smithfield Market. An industrial district with dye works, engineering works, factories and mills, it was on the edge of Angel Meadow, a sordid inner-city rookery. The Horridge children attended school and seemed to have had an ordinary upbringing although, according to Caminada, Robert showed signs of unusual depravity early on. After leaving school he became a blacksmith like his father, a trade at which he excelled: ‘he was a first class workman, and a better man at his trade – the fire and anvil – could not be found, as he could do half as much work again as any other smith in the country’. But Horridge had barely left his childhood when he turned his skills and determination to less worthy pursuits and in 1862, aged 16, he was convicted of stealing money and sentenced to six months in prison.
A capable businessman, Horridge returned to his legitimate occupation as blacksmith several times during his adult life. He was also a talented boxer always ready to take on an opponent in the ring. His intelligence, determination and physical fitness combined, he had the potential for a successful career, like Caminada, if only he had been able to resist the lure of criminal activity.
On 26 March 1866, aged 19, he married Jane Buckley, the daughter of a local carder; at the time Jane was three months pregnant. Robert was 5 feet 7 inches tall, with a fresh complexion, dark brown hair and blue eyes. His skin was covered in pockmarks and his hands were scarred from fighting: this was a man with a history of violence and a dangerous temper. Inevitably, this did not bode well for the marriage and just six months after the wedding, by which time their child had been born, Horridge was convicted of assaulting his wife and sentenced to three months in Belle Vue Prison.
After this stretch in prison, Horridge did not stay at libe
rty for long. The following year he conspired with 16-year-old John Doran to rob Doran’s employer, rival blacksmith James Collinge, of 72 pokers and 60 iron bars. As it was Doran’s first offence he received a sentence of just two months. Older and more experienced, Horridge served 18 months at Her Majesty’s Pleasure for receiving the stolen goods, leaving his wife and their two children to fend for themselves. Yet, on his release, Horridge returned to his trade as a blacksmith and was successful enough to buy his own business. He even took on a partner: a reliable and industrious Italian called Stephen Fignona, known as ‘Ned’, who had previously worked for a telegraph company and had a useful sideline as a ‘fence’, selling on stolen goods.
When Bob Horridge met PC Caminada in 1870, the two men had much in common. Born within a year of one another, they both came from large families and grew up in the slums. As sons of craftsmen, they each received a basic education and enjoyed a reasonably stable childhood. Although Caminada’s life became more precarious as his family circumstances declined during his teenage years, it was Horridge who turned to crime. With similar backgrounds, but having made different choices as adults, the pair would meet at pivotal points throughout their lives.
Their rivalry began after Horridge stole a watch from Samuel Mould, near the railway station during Caminada’s first year on the beat. A watchmaker identified the stolen watch by a piece missing from the dial, which had been chipped off with a knife. Horridge had left it with him for repair and the following morning when the thief arrived to collect the watch, Caminada was waiting for him. Horridge received a sentence of seven years’ penal servitude because of his previous convictions. As he embarked upon his first serious prison sentence, PC Caminada was promoted to Detective Sergeant.
Penal servitude (imprisonment with hard labour) had been introduced in 1853 to replace the practice of transportation for serious offences. The minimum sentence was three years but, unluckily for Horridge, in 1864 it had been increased to five years for a second offence and seven for subsequent convictions. This harsh sentence for a relatively small crime angered Horridge so much that, as he was sent down, he uttered a chilling death threat to the man he held responsible: Detective Caminada.
The Real Sherlock Holmes Page 9