In 1876, after he had completed his long sentence, Bob Horridge settled back into his home area of Rochdale Road. He re-launched his business, which was even more lucrative than before, possibly due to criminal sidelines, allowing him to buy a pony and cart to convey his goods to warehouses and wholesalers. However, he did not remain straight for long and later that year, he was charged with ‘rattening’ (damaging) four pairs of bellows belonging to his long-time competitor, blacksmith James Collinge. He was acquitted.
By this time, the police were already aware of Horridge’s ‘presence’ in the city: ‘It was very well known that when “Bob” was not in prison robberies occurred more frequently in Manchester than when he was confined’. First a furrier’s shop was burgled, then a silk mercer’s and a jeweller’s. Horridge was the prime suspect, but the police could get no further in their investigation than questioning him about walking home one evening carrying a large hammer.
Bob Horridge was particularly skilled at evading the law and, within a few months of his release, he made the first of a number of daring escapes. On this occasion, he was suspected of a robbery and 20 to 30 police officers surrounded his house in Gould Street, ready to arrest him. When they knocked at the front door, Horridge easily broke his way through the laths and plaster of the ceiling, it being a poorly-constructed tenement, and jumped out onto the roofs of the row of terrace houses. He scampered away across the slates, before slipping down through the roof of a house in a neighbouring street, where he dropped into a bedroom full of sleeping harvest workers, who were too startled to stop him. The police, however, were one step ahead and when Horridge opened the door to leave there were two constables waiting for him on the step. Without the slightest hesitation, he took a flying-leap past the officers and made off down the street.
Horridge’s next escapade was in a fancy goods shop. A policeman on his beat spotted him through the shutter, with a companion known as ‘Long Dick’. Both men, wearing aprons, were pulling down stock from the shelves. When challenged by the officer Horridge replied, ‘It’s all right, guv’nor; we’re taking stock!’ Unconvinced, the policeman slipped round to the back of the premises and found Horridge as he was leaving. The thief struck him a violent blow to the face, knocked him down and made his escape. Long Dick was left to take the fall: he was arrested and sentenced to five years’ penal servitude, while Horridge got clean away.
After this close encounter, Horridge laid low for a while. When two officers visited his new home in Addington Street, he again escaped through the ceiling and into an adjoining house. Despite his previous form, it seemed almost impossible to make accusations stick to this skilled and fearless burglar and soon he was up to his old tricks again. This time, he robbed a mill belonging to John Keyner in Bradford, near Manchester. It was the usual practice at the mill to withdraw cash from the bank on Friday evenings to pay the workers’ wages on Saturday. Horridge learned that the night watchman left the mill at 4.30am and went to the boiler house to start up the steam, ready for work starting at 6am. In his absence, the watchman took the precaution of locking the door but early one Saturday morning, while he was away from his post, Horridge and three companions, including his former partner in crime, Stephen Fignona, gained entry to the mill by using a false key. They drove a cart up to the mill and loaded it with the safe weighing about 450 lbs and containing £400 in silver and gold.
The gang evaded capture and, three weeks later, following a tip-off, the police found the empty safe in a reservoir behind Horridge’s workshop. Although he was prosecuted, once again Bob Horridge was acquitted. Having escaped justice twice in quick succession, Horridge was on a roll and before his criminal career came to an end, there would be more spectacular escapes and burglaries, this time with very grave consequences.
In the summer of 1880 a policeman patrolling in Redfern Street, not far from the cathedral, tried the door of a warehouse, only to discover that it was open. Finding this unusual, he pushed his way in and bumped into Horridge, who was rushing out. Before running off, the thief struck the officer with such violence that he was knocked to the ground. Scrambling to his feet, the policeman was joined in pursuit by a colleague, who was also knocked down after Horridge landed him a heavy blow. Next, a passing journalist tried to stop the fleeing thief and he too was felled. Horridge was out in the open, with no ceilings to escape through, and as the crowd on his heels swelled, he jumped down the steps of the approach to Victoria Railway Station, leaped over the parapet of a footbridge and dived straight into the polluted waters of the River Irk to make his escape.
A few days later, Horridge was apprehended in a local public house and convicted of breaking and entering the warehouse. He received a further seven years’ penal servitude, this time in Pentonville Prison. As he was transported to London by rail, he was overheard boasting to the other convicts that it would not be long before he would be free again. The officer in charge forewarned the governor of Pentonville and, when Horridge arrived at the prison, the guards were ready to prevent his escape.
But Horridge stuck to his plan and shortly after, two convicts joined him in a sprint for the wall. The alarm was raised and Horridge’s companions surrendered, leaving him alone in his daring escape. A guard fired and the fugitive was wounded, but he carried on running. They shot him twice more before he was forced to surrender. Horridge survived and remained in prison until the end of his sentence when, although now partially paralysed from the injuries sustained in his failed bid for freedom, he was more determined than ever to exact revenge on Chief Inspector Jerome Caminada.
Bob Horridge’s final exploit began in the early hours of 30 July 1887, a few days after his release from Pentonville. He and a female accomplice broke into a boot and shoe shop in his old stomping ground of Rochdale Road, using a false set of keys. Luck was against them and PC Bannon, passing by on his regular beat, spotted the pair. Engaging the help of a letter carrier and two other passersby, the officer entered the premises and confronted the burglar. With the bloodcurdling words: ‘I will not be taken alive’, Horridge fired a gun at PC Bannnon’s head. Fortunately the bullet only grazed the policeman’s neck. Hearing the commotion, another officer, PC Parkin, came to his colleague’s aid and Horridge fired again, shooting him straight in the chest. A passing market cart took the wounded officer straight to the infirmary and, although he survived his dreadful injury, he never fully recovered.
While the double shooting was taking place, Detective Caminada was in Chichester. He was summoned back to Manchester immediately by telegram and arrived later that afternoon. He began his enquiries with the wanted man’s family, and Horridge’s father and sister informed Caminada that, since Robert’s release, he had threatened many times to shoot the detective. Unperturbed, Caminada set out to settle his score with Horridge once and for all.
After discovering that Horridge had fled to Liverpool, Caminada and a colleague disguised themselves as labourers, and travelled by train to the city to track him down. They began their search at the docks, as Horridge’s wife had been seen there, and outside the Prince of Wales Public House Inspector Schofield noticed the strange behaviour of a passerby. He commented to his superior officer: ‘Did you see that man who has just passed? I saw him look very hard at you’. Caminada turned towards the man and instantly recognised him by his walk as Bob Horridge.
Detective Caminada seized the felon by the arms and greeted him with, ‘Hallo! Bob, how are you?’ Horridge reached his hand to his trouser pocket, but Caminada drew his revolver and placed the muzzle at full cock to his rival’s mouth: ‘If there’s any nonsense with you, you’ll get the contents of this’. The prisoner tried to get his own weapon, but by this time Schofield was on hand and the two policemen fought to restrain him. Caminada struck Horridge on the head with his revolver and they dragged him to the local police station, where he later defended his shooting of the police constables: ‘I have had to do what I did, or they would have killed me; it was the officer’s own fault he w
as shot – he would come on to it’. When Caminada searched Horridge he found a loaded six-chambered revolver and a tin box of cartridges: the detective had had a lucky escape.
At the age of 36, Robert Horridge was convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to life imprisonment, remaining in prison until his death. As Caminada concluded:
When Horridge was sent into penal servitude for life the public had the pleasure of knowing that the career of one of the most accomplished and desperate thieves that ever lived in Manchester was brought to an end.
Portrayed in the press as ‘a most desperate character’, before his life sentence Robert Horridge had spent a total of almost 17 years in prison, but his punishment had not deterred him from his ‘career of crime’. This was no surprise to Detective Caminada, who had extensive experience of the penal system and its detrimental effect on criminals.
In the mid-nineteenth century, due to a more organised and increasingly efficient police force, the number of convictions rose steadily and new prisons were built to accommodate them. In 1853 penal servitude started to replace transportation as a form of punishment. Imprisonment with hard labour began with a period of solitary confinement, before the convict was transferred to a public works prison, such as Chatham, Portland, Portsmouth or Dartmoor, to complete their sentence. On their release, ex-convicts were subject to a probationary period of police supervision.
Caminada was scathing in his condemnation of the system:
Penal servitude has become so elaborate that it is now a huge machine for punishment, destitute of discrimination, feeling, or sensitiveness; and its nonsuccess as a deterrent against crime, and its complete failure in reforming criminal character, are owing to its obvious essential tendency to deal with erring human beings – who are still men, despite their crimes – in a manner which mechanically reduces them to the uniform level of disciplined brutes.
Harsh discipline, monotonous routine and mind-numbing physical tasks, such as the treadwheel, shot drill, crank and stone-breaking characterised hard labour in Victorian prisons. Horridge experienced this regime during his two long stretches in the 1870s and 1880s. His first sentence took place at Gillingham All Male Convict Prison in Kent and his second at Pentonville Prison, in North London. Built in 1842, Pentonville was a model British prison. Designed with a central hall and five radiating wings, it was known for the ‘separate system’, in which prisoners were isolated to prevent ‘contamination’ of new offenders by seasoned criminals. It became a blueprint for subsequent institutions.
Like Horridge, convicts were transferred from holding prisons for a nine-month period of solitary confinement in Pentonville. Caminada pointed out the flaws of the separate system: ‘Notwithstanding all the precautions that may be taken it is impossible to prevent communication between prisoners. An intimacy is formed inside the gaol which is renewed on their discharge, and they are soon back again’. This was certainly the case for Bob Horridge. In Caminada’s opinion, the worst criminals were those who had spent the longest time in prison. After extended periods of confinement, they became inured to prison life: ‘He loses his self-respect, becomes acquainted with habitual criminals, and goes from bad to worse, until he almost looks upon the gaol as his home’. Outcast from society and with their social networks forged behind bars, on their release hardened criminals like Horridge would turn to their fellow convicts for support.
After Pentonville, Horridge served time in the convict prison on Portsea Island, built in the early 1850s to replace the prison ships, or ‘hulks’, used to house prisoners waiting for transportation and to ease prison overcrowding. He spent the remaining years of his life sentence in the high-security prison at Parkhurst on the Isle of Wight. After plaguing the city of Manchester for 20 years, Bob Horridge was finally confined for good. Caminada had only arrested him twice, yet the two men seemed to have a connection and a grudging respect for each other, albeit from opposite sides of the law. Perhaps, if Horridge had channelled his energies in a more positive direction, they might have been allies rather than rivals.
Deansgate in central Manchester, a bustling thoroughfare with theatres, shops, drinking dens and brothels.
The existing Free Trade Hall, built in 1853 on St Peter’s Fields, the site of the Peterloo Massacre.
Back-to-back houses were common in the slums of nineteenth century Manchester. This house in Back Queen St (now the Lloyd St) was close to the back-to-back where Caminada was born.
A typical worker’s dwelling in Southern Street, Manchester. Jerome Caminada, aged 14, lived just two doors away from this house in 1858.
Knott Mill Police Station, the headquarters of A Division, where Police Constable Caminada began his career in 1868.
When Caminada was promoted to the Detective Department he worked at Manchester Town Hall.
Jerome Caminada was a regular worshipper at the Roman Catholic Church of the Holy Name of Jesus, on Oxford Road.
London Road Railway Station (now Manchester Piccadilly) built in 1842. Railway stations were often the haunts of thieves and pickpockets during this period.
Reverend Edward James Silverton, Baptist minister and quack doctor.
Advertisement for daily consultations by Reverend Silverton at the Free Trade Hall placed in the Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser, 22 May 1884.
© THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Image reproduced with kind permission of The British Newspaper Archive (www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk)
The front page of the Illustrated Police News, 9 October 1880.
© THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Image reproduced with kind permission of The British Newspaper Archive (www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk)
Robert Horridge, blacksmith and violent thief.
Horridge’s escape from the house in Gould Street.
(Above) Horridge’s leap into the River Irk. (Below) Horridge escaping from the warehouse in Redfern Street.
(Left) Paper merchant, John Fletcher, was murdered in a hansom cab in February 1889. (Right) Fletcher’s killer: 18-year-old Charles Parton, Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser, 9 March 1889. © THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Image reproduced with kind permission of The British Newspaper Archive (www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk)
John Fletcher hailed a cab on the steps of Manchester Cathedral, unaware that later that evening he would meet his death at the hands of his young companion.
Wealthy mill-owner, Ashworth Read, and his lover, Elizabeth Ann Remington, were arrested for the murder of their illegitimate child in 1893, (Burnley Express and Advertiser, 7 October, 1893).
© THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Image reproduced with kind permission of The British Newspaper Archive (www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk)
After his acquittal, Ashworth Read returned to his work and was chased from the trading floor of the Royal Exchange.
Young offenders (under 14) were often sentenced to corporal punishment: birching or flogging.
Detective Caminada supported the use of corporal punishment rather than long prison sentences.
Greengate in Salford was the territory of the infamous Greengate scuttlers. Constable Caminada was attacked there whilst trying to break up a gang-fight.
The Manchester Anarchist Group campaigned for freedom of speech at Ardwick Green, 1893.
(Image reproduced with kind permission of the Greater Manchester Police Museum and Archives)
Official photograph of Jerome Caminada, late 1890s. (Image reproduced with kind permission of the Greater Manchester Police Museum and Archives)
Caminada’s colleagues in E Division.
A third of the criminals arrested in Victorian Manchester were female and Caminada encountered many wayward women in his daily work.
Travelling thieves and beggars plagued the city, but Detective Caminada knew all their ruses.
Telegrams dating from the 1880s, when Caminada worked undercover for the Irish Branch.
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br /> (Images reproduced with kind permission of the Greater Manchester Police Museum and Archives)
Election poster for Caminada’s candidature for Openshaw Ward, 1907.
(Above) Handbills for Caminada’s Manchester City Council elections, 1907. (Below) Caminada’s manifesto for re-election to the Council in 1910.
Images reproduced with kind permission of the Greater Manchester Police Museum and Archives
(Above) Whitworth Park, opposite the home of Jerome Caminada in the early 1900s. (Below) The Caminada family grave in Southern Cemetery, Manchester.
Chapter Ten
‘City of Martyrs’:
Caminada and the Irish Nationalists
(January 1889)
The Real Sherlock Holmes Page 10