Chronicles of Newgate, Vol. 2 / From the eighteenth century to its demolition

by Arthur Griffiths

A case, almost unique, may be quoted of a nearly successful attempt to interfere with the course of justice by means of a forged order of pardon. A convict on the point of execution, a man named Shurety, was actually in the hangman's hands when a letter was brought to the governor of Newgate purporting to come from the Home Office and signed "A. F. Liddell," then Under-secretary of State, countermanding the execution. The signature was so cleverly copied that it seemed genuine, but a closer examination of the letter, envelope and seal satisfied the authorities that the document was spurious and they took upon themselves to send Shurety to the gallows. A couple of months later the forgery was brought home to a surgeon, Mr. Caleb C. Whiteford, who had interested himself in the case and having failed to save the man by lawful means had adopted this course, which brought upon him a sentence of fine and imprisonment. Another curious case was the utter discomfiture of certain ultra-sentimentalists who had laboured strenuously

to obtain a pardon for a Jew, Israel Lipski, alleged to have been wrongly convicted. Great excitement prevailed while he lay awaiting execution; numerous petitions were addressed to the Home Secretary, and his steadfast refusal to extend mercy was hysterically denounced by a section of the Press. Just when it was still asserted that judicial murder was on the point of being perpetrated, the convict made full confession of his crime and the ill-advised action of these busybodies was very properly overthrown. One or two more cases must serve to complete the list of the last great crimes expiated in Newgate. Mrs. Pearcey, who murdered her friend Mrs. Hogg, no doubt allowed her temper to get the better of her and what was at first a small quarrel unhappily degenerated into a murderous attack. The circumstances of the crime were commonplace; the special interest was in the method of removing the murdered remains. Mrs. Hogg's body with the throat cut had been found on Hampstead Heath and shortly afterwards her infant child was found dead in close proximity. It came out in the course of inquiry that Mrs. Pearcey had wheeled a perambulator containing the dead bodies all the way from St. John's Wood to Hampstead.

But for the lucky chance which so often assists the detection of great crimes, the Muswell Hill murder would hardly have been brought home to its perpetrators. This was a burglary which cost the life of the unfortunate victim, a Mr. Henry

Smith, an aged gentleman who lived alone in a small villa on Muswell Hill, one of the northern suburbs of London. He was a man of some means who was weak enough to keep his cash receipts for rents and dividends in his own safe at home. He was a tall stout man of active habits and fairly robust health who "did for himself," rising early, cleaning his house, cooking his food and living his own simple life. His habits were watched and they marked him down as open to attack and robbery. One morning his gardener, the only servant he employed, and who lived away from the house, arrived as usual to find the premises still locked up. There were unmistakable signs that a forcible entry had been made and a wire connected with an alarm gun behind the house had been disconnected. Calling upon the neighbours for assistance, the gardener entered the house and saw Mr. Smith's body lying lifeless on the floor. The safe stood open and had been evidently rifled; drawers had been pulled out and a tin box emptied. The murder had been committed with very brutal violence as the state of the body amply testified. Various small clues were forthcoming; a bull's eye lantern, two pocket knives upon the floor near the deceased and some bread and cheese which the murderers had been consuming after the deed. There were footprints in the garden leading down into the woods back of the house. Two sets of footprints, one of large boots with a very broad tread and no nails,

the other of smaller boots with pointed toes. The footprints ended at the garden fence where there were many marks and scratches to show that someone had climbed over. A small tobacco box was also picked up on the footpath leading to the wood, the property of someone who did not live at the villa, for neither the murdered man nor the gardener were in the habit of smoking.

It is customary with the police in cases of this gravity to search their records and ascertain what known offenders likely to be guilty of such a crime were then at large. Two ex-convicts, Albert Milsom and Henry Fowler, stood upon the list and at once attracted the attention of the police as habitual criminals addicted to burglary, but there was no specific evidence against them until suspicion was raised by a young lady who resided near Muswell Hill. She thought it her duty to inform the police that she had been accosted by two men, a little before the murder, who had made many inquiries about the woods behind Mr. Smith's house. Another lady had seen the same man on the very day of the murder walking in a neighbouring lane. This was sufficient to cause inquiry to be made for the two men in question who were soon identified as the above mentioned Milsom and Fowler. Suspicion deepened when it became known that after the day of the murder they were flush of money and had bought new clothes. Then a damaging fact turned up when the bull's eye lantern picked

up on the scene of the crime was claimed by Milsom's brother-in-law as his property. He proved his ownership by pointing out changes he had made in it and further that it had been abstracted from him some little time before the murder, and that the next time he saw it was in the hands of the police. The same lad recognized the tobacco box as one that Albert Milsom constantly used.

The next step was to "run in" the two men so strongly suspected. They were "wanted" for some weeks and although they seem to have still hung about London it was believed they had gone abroad. Towards the end of February they left for Liverpool and then moved south to Cardiff, where they joined forces with an itinerant showman having bought a share in his business. They moved to and fro in South Wales and then worked back to Chippenham and Bath where the police, ever hot on their track, came upon them and captured them after a desperate struggle. Fowler was a strong man of large frame and he fought like a tiger but was knocked on the head with the butt end of a revolver and overpowered. He owed his confederate Milsom a deep grudge and on more than one occasion made a murderous attempt on his life, once in the exercising yard at Holloway while awaiting trial, an affair which the present writer myself witnessed. The two men were walking in a circle some distance apart, but Fowler ran after him and was only prevented by the officers from doing him

serious mischief. Again at the Old Bailey when the jury had retired to consider their verdict, Fowler jumped out of the dock and attacked his companion but was restrained in time. Milsom had enraged him by making full confession of the murder and the manner in which it had been committed. Fowler, he said, had done the deed alone but had bitterly upbraided Milsom for giving no assistance. Both criminals were executed in Newgate.

The last great case of fraud upon the Bank of England will fitly find a place in the later criminal records of Newgate. This was the well and astutely devised plot of the brothers Bidwell, assisted by Macdonell and Noyes, all of them citizens of the United States, by which the bank lost upwards of £100,000. The commercial experience of these clever rogues was cosmopolitan. Their operations were no less world-wide. In 1871 they crossed the Channel, and by means of forged letters of credit and introduction from London, obtained large sums from continental banks in Berlin, Dresden, Bordeaux, Marseilles and Lyons. With this as capital they came back to England via Buenos Ayres, and Austin Bidwell opened a bona fide credit in the Burlington or West End Branch of the Bank of England, to which he was introduced by a well known tailor in Saville Row. After this the other conspirators travelled to obtain genuine bills and master the system of the leading houses at home and abroad. When all was ready, Bidwell first