Coster’s frauds became known to Alderman Sir Peter Laurie, who set himself to unmask and convict him. It might have been more difficult had not the villain added forgery to his lesser swindles. He began to circulate bogus banknotes, and in February, 1833, sent to Honiton an order for lace, enclosing three ten-pound notes in payment, all of which were forged. Clark, the lacemaker, discovered the fraud, and forwarded the notes to the solicitors of the Bank of England. A plan was laid for the transmission of fictitious parcels to the address given by Coster, “W. Jackson, at the Four Swans, Bishopsgate Street,” and when Smith, the assistant, applied for them he was arrested. Coster’s complicity was next ascertained, and he was secured. The letter ordering the lace proved to be in his handwriting, but the strongest evidence against the prisoner was that of two of his former instruments, who gladly turned upon him. Coster was transported for life, Smith for a shorter term.
WALTER SHERIDAN.
One of the most successful of modern criminal adventurers was the American, Walter Sheridan, who was said to be the originator of the great Bank of England forgeries for which the Bidwells were afterwards punished. Some say that he was the moving spirit in the whole business, but whether he did more than plan the affair may be doubted, and his name was never mixed up with it. An eminent police officer of New York, Mr. George W. Walling, states in his Reminiscences that Sheridan became disgusted with the way in which the job was worked, and declined to be further associated with such unsatisfactory partners. It is possible that, had he been allowed to carry out “the job” in his own way, it might have been accomplished without detection, to the more serious discomfiture of the Bank.
Sheridan is a typical modern criminal, having great natural gifts, unerring instinct in divining profitable operations, uncommon quickness and astuteness in planning details and executing them. No one has better utilised to his own advantage the numberless chances offered by the intricate machinery of modern trade and finance. He began in the lower lines of fraud. Full of an adventurous spirit, he ran away from his home, a small farm in Ohio, when only a boy, resolved to seek fortune by any means in the busy centres of life. St. Louis was his first point: here he at once fell into bad company, and became associated with desperadoes, especially those engaged in the confidence trick. In 1858, when just twenty, he was caught and tried for horse-stealing, but just before sentence escaped to Chicago, where he became the pupil of a certain Joe Moran, a noted hotel thief, with whom he worked the hotels around very profitably for two or three years. At last, however, he was arrested and “did time.”
On his release, Moran being dead, Sheridan took up a higher line of business and became a “bank sneak,” the clever thief who robs banks by bounce or stratagem. In this business he was greatly aided by a fine presence and an insinuating address. He was the life and soul of the gang he joined, the brains and leader of his associates, and his successes in this direction were many. With two confederates he robbed the First National Bank of Springfield, Illinois, obtaining some 35,000 dollars from the vaults. Next he secured 50,000 dollars from a fire insurance company; again, 37,000 dollars from the Mechanics’ Bank of Scranton. A very few years of this made him a rich man, and by 1867 he was supposed to be worth some £15,000 or £20,000. He had gone latterly into partnership with the notorious George Williams, commonly called “English George,” a well-known depredator and bank thief. About this time he participated in the plunder of the Maryland Fire Insurance Company of Baltimore, and fingered a large part of the 75,000 dollars taken, in money and negotiable bonds, not one cent of which was ever recovered. One of his neatest thefts was relieving Judge Blatchford, of New York, of a wallet containing 75,000 dollars’ worth of bonds.
Misfortune overtook him at last, and he failed in his attempt to rob the First National Bank of Cleveland, Ohio, in 1870. One of his confederates had laid hands on 32,000 dollars, but was caught in the act of carrying off the packages of notes, and Sheridan was arrested as an accomplice. He was very virtuously indignant at this shameful imputation, and his bail was accordingly accepted for 7,000 dollars, which he at once sacrificed and fled. But now the famous Pinkerton detectives were put upon his track. Allan Pinkerton, who was assisted by his son William, soon ascertained that Sheridan owned a prosperous hotel at Hudson, Michigan, in which State he also possessed much landed property. The Pinkertons took up their quarters at this hotel, which was under the management of Sheridan’s brother-in-law. Chiefly anxious, while cautiously prosecuting inquiries, to secure a photograph of the man so much wanted—for nothing of the kind was as yet in the hands of the police authorities—young Pinkerton stuck at nothing to obtain this valuable clue, and having ascertained where the family rooms were located in the hotel, he broke in and captured an excellent likeness of Sheridan, which was speedily copied and distributed among the various Pinkerton agencies in the United States and beyond the Atlantic.
Sheridan about this time came in person to his hotel to visit his relatives. The Pinkertons did not lay hands on him here among his friends, but they shadowed him closely when he moved on, and by-and-by captured him at Sandusky, Ohio. He was taken to Chicago, but made a desperate attempt to escape, which was foiled, and he was eventually put upon his trial. He retained the very best legal advice, paid large sums—no less than £4,000—in fees, and was eventually acquitted through the clever use of legal technicalities.
Sheridan, after this narrow escape from well-merited retribution, “went East,” and organised fresh depredations in new localities. They were often on the most gigantic scale, thanks to his wonderful genius for evil. The robbery of the Falls City Tobacco Bank realised plunder to the value of £60,000 to his gang, and Sheridan, now at the very pinnacle of his criminal career, must have himself been worth quite £50,000. In these days he made a great external show of respectability, and cultivated good business and social relations. This aided him in the still larger schemes of forgery on which he now entered, the largest ever known in the United States, which comprised the most gigantic creation of false securities and bonds. It was an extraordinary undertaking, slowly and elaborately prepared. Taking the name of Ralston, he passed himself off as a rich Californian. He began to speculate largely in grain, becoming a member of the Produce Exchange, and obtaining large advances on cargoes of grain. At the same time he kept a desk in a broker’s office in Broadway as a basis of operations. His next move was to gain the confidence of the President of the New York Indemnity Company, to whom he represented that his mother held a great number of railway bonds, on which he sought a large loan to cover the purchase of real estate. Sheridan offered £25,000 worth of these securities, and readily obtained an advance to a third of their value. These bonds were all forgeries, but so faultless in execution that they deceived the keenest eyes. It was not the only fraud of the kind, although details of the rest are wanting. But it is generally believed that the total losses incurred by the companies and institutions on whom Sheridan forged amounted to nearly a million of money. Many Wall Street brokers and a number of private investors were utterly ruined by these wholesale frauds.
