In times past the detection of crime was left very much to chance; but now and again shrewd agents, both public officials and private persons, contributed to the discovery of frauds and other misdeeds. Long ago, in France, as I have shown, there was an organised police force which often had resort, both for good and evil, to detective methods. Here in England the office of constable was purely local, and his duties were rather to make arrests in clear cases of flagrant wrong-doing than to follow up obscure and mysterious crime. The ingenious piecing together of clues and the following up of light and baffling scents was generally left to the lawyers and those engaged on behalf of the parties injured or aggrieved.
THE CASE OF LADY IVY.
One of the first cases on record of a fraud on a very large scale cleverly planned and not less cleverly detected was the claim raised by a Lady Ivy, in 1684, to a large estate in Shadwell. It was based on deeds purporting to be drawn more than a hundred years previously, in the “2nd and 3rd Philip and Mary of 1555-6, under which deeds the lands had been granted to Lady Ivy’s ancestors.” The case was tried before the famous, or, more correctly, the infamous Judge Jeffreys, and the lawyers opposed to Lady Ivy proved that the deed put forward had been forged. It was discovered that the style and titles of the king and queen as they appeared in the deed were not those used by the sovereigns at that particular date. Always in the preambles of Acts of Parliament of 1555-6 Philip and Mary were styled “King and Queen of Naples, Princes of Spain and Sicily,” not, as in the deed, “King and Queen of Spain and both the Sicilies.” Again, in the deed Burgundy was put before Milan as a dukedom; in the Acts of Parliament it was just the reverse. That style did come in later, but the person drawing the deeds could not foretell it, and as a fair inference it was urged that the deeds were a forgery. Evidence was also adduced to show that Lady Ivy had forged other deeds, and it was so held by Judge Jeffreys: “If you produce deeds made in such a time when, say you, such titles were used, and they were not so used, that sheweth your deeds are counterfeit and forged and not true deeds. And there is digitus Dei, the finger of God in it, so that though the design be deep laid and the contrivance skulk, yet truth and justice will appear at one time or other.”
Accordingly, my Lady Ivy lost her verdict, and an information for forgery was laid against her, but with what result does not appear.
A LAWYER TURNED DETECTIVE.
Fifty years later a painstaking lawyer in Berkshire was able to unravel another case of fraud, which had eluded the imperfect police of the day. It was an artful attempt to claim restitution from a certain locality for a highway robbery said to have been committed within its boundaries: a robbery which had never occurred.
On the 24th March, 1747, according to his own story, one Thomas Chandler, an attorney’s clerk, was travelling on foot along the high road between London and Reading. Having passed through Maidenhead Thicket, and while in the neighbourhood of Hare Hatch, some thirty miles out, he was set upon by three men, bargees, who robbed him of all he possessed, his watch and cash, the latter amounting to £960, all in bank-notes. After the robbery they bound him and threw him into a pit by the side of the road. He lay there some three hours, till long after dark, he said, being unable to obtain release from “his miserable situation,” although the road was much frequented and he heard many carriages and people passing along. At length he got out of the pit unaided, and, still bound hand and foot, jumped rather than walked for half a mile uphill, calling out lustily for anyone to let him loose. The first passer-by was a gentleman, who gave him a wide berth, then a shepherd came and cut his bonds, and at his entreaty guided him to the constable or tything-man of the hundred of Sunning, in the county of Berks.
Here he set forth in writing the evil that had happened to him, with a full and minute description of the thieves, and at the same time gave notice that he would in due course sue the Hundred for the amount under the statutes. All the formalities being observed, process was duly served on the high constable of Sunning, and the people of the Hundred, alarmed at the demand, which if insisted upon would be the “utter ruin of many poor families,” engaged a certain attorney, Edward Wise, of Wokingham, to defend them.
Mr. Wise had all the qualities of a good detective: he was ingenious, yet patient and painstaking, and he soon pieced together the facts he had cleverly picked up about Chandler. Some of these seemed at the very outset much against the claimant. That a man should tramp along the high road with nearly £1,000 in his pockets was quite extraordinary; not less so that he should not escape from the pit till after dark, or that his bonds should have been no stronger than tape, a length of which was found at the spot where he was untied. He seemed, moreover, to be little concerned by his great loss. After he had given the written notices to the constable, concerning which he was strangely well informed, having all the statutes at his fingers’ ends, as though studied beforehand, he ordered a hot supper and a bowl at the Hare and Hounds in Hare Hatch, where he kept up his carousals till late in the night. Nor was he in any hurry to return to town and stop payment of the lost notes at the banks, but started late and rode leisurely to London.
It was easy enough to trace him there. He had given his address in the notices, and he was soon identified as the clerk of Mr. Hill, an attorney in Clifford’s Inn. It now appeared that Chandler, for a client of his master, had negotiated a mortgage upon certain lands in the neighbourhood of Devizes for £509, far more, as was proved, than their value. An old mortgage was to be paid off in favour of the new, and Chandler had set off on the day stated to complete the transaction, carrying with him the £500 and the balance of £460 supposed to be his own property, but how obtained was never known. His movements on the previous day also were verified. He had dined with the mortgagee, when the deed was executed and the money handed over in notes. These notes were mostly for small sums, making up too bulky a parcel to be comfortably carried under his gaiters (the safest place for them, as he thought), and he had twice changed a portion, £440 at the Bank of England for two notes, and again at “Sir Richard Hoare’s shop” for three notes, two of £100 and one of £200. With the whole of his money he then started to walk ninety miles in twenty-four hours, for he was expected next day at Devizes to release the mortgage.