In 1812, after a supposed visit to the West Indies, he reappeared in London, where he was arrested for breach of faith with the bank and sent to Glasgow for trial. He got off by a promise of further restitution, and because the bank was unable at that time to prove his complicity in the burglary. An agent who had handed over £1,000 on his account, was then sued by Mackoull for acting without proper authority, and was obliged to refund a great part of the money. Nothing could exceed his effrontery. He traded openly as a bill broker in Scotland under the name of James Martin; buying the bills with the stolen notes and having sometimes as much as £2,000 on deposit in another bank. At last he was arrested, and a number of notes and drafts were seized with him. He was presently discharged, but the notes were impounded, and by-and-by he began a suit to recover “his property”—the proceeds really of his theft from the bank. His demeanour in court was most impudent. Crowds filled the court when he gave his evidence, which he did with the utmost effrontery, posing always as an innocent and much-injured man.
It was incumbent upon the bank to end this disgraceful parody of legal proceedings. Either they must prove Mackoull’s guilt or lose their action—an action brought, it must be remembered, by a public depredator against a respectable banking company for daring to retain a part of the property of which he had robbed them. In this difficulty they appealed to Mr. Denovan, well known as an officer and agent of the Scottish courts, and sent him to collect evidence showing that Mackoull was implicated in the original robbery in 1811.
Denovan left Edinburgh on January 8, 1820, meaning to follow the exact route of the fugitives to the south. All along his road he came upon traces of them in the “post books” or in the memory of innkeepers, waiters, and ostlers. He passed through Dunbar, Berwick, and Belford, pausing at Belford to hunt up a certain George Johnson who was said to be able to identify Mackoull. Johnson had been a waiter at the Talbot Inn, Darlington, in 1811, but was now gone—to what place his parents, who lived in Belford, could not say. “Observing, however, that there was a church behind the inn,” writes Mr. Denovan, “a thought struck me I might hear something in the churchyard on Sunday morning;” and he was rewarded with the address of Thomas Johnson, a brother of George’s, “a pedlar or travelling merchant.” “I immediately set forth in a postchaise and found Thomas Johnson, who gave me news of George. He was still alive, and was a waiter either at the Bay Horse in Leeds or somewhere in Tadcaster, or at a small inn at Spittal-on-the-Moor, in Westmorland, but his father-in-law, Thomas Cockburn, of York, would certainly know.”
Pushing on, Denovan heard of his men at Alnwick. A barber there had shaved them. “I was anxious to see the barber, but found he had put an end to his existence some years ago.” At Morpeth the inn at which they had stopped was shut up. At Newcastle the posting book was lost, and when found in the bar of the Crown and Thistle was “so mutilated as to be useless.” But at the Queen’s Head, Durham, there was an entry, “Chaise and four to Darlington, Will and Will.” The second “Will” was still alive, and remembered Mackoull as the oldest of the party, a “stiff red-faced man,” the usual description given of him. The landlady here, Mrs. Jane Escott, remembered three men arriving in a chaise who said they were pushing on to London with a quantity of Scottish bank-notes. At the Talbot Inn, Darlington, where George Johnson had lived, the scent failed till Denovan found him at another inn, the King’s Head.
His evidence was most valuable, and he willingly agreed to give it in court at Edinburgh. He had seen the three men at Durham, the oldest, “a stiff, stout man with a red face, seemed to take the management, and paid the postboys their hire.” He had offered a £20 Scottish note in payment for two pints of sherry and some biscuits, but there was not change enough in the house, and White was asked for smaller money, when he took out his pocket-book stuffed full of bank notes, all too large, so the first note was changed by Johnson at the Darlington bank. Johnson was sure he would know the “stiff man” again amongst a hundred others in any dress.
There was no further trace now till Denovan got to the White Hart, Welwyn, where the fugitives had taken the light post-coach. At Welwyn, too, they had sent off a portmanteau to a certain address, and this portmanteau was afterwards recovered with the address in Mackoull’s hand. At Welwyn also Mr. Denovan heard of one Cunnington who had been a waiter at the inn in 1811, but had left in 1813 for London, and who was said to know something of the matter. The search for this Cunnington was the next business, and Mr. Denovan pushed on to London hoping to find him there. “In company with a private friend I went up and down Holborn inquiring for him at every baker’s, grocer’s, or public house,” but heard nothing. The same at the coaching offices, until at last a guard who knew Cunnington said he was in Brighton. But the man had left Brighton, first for Horsham, then for Margate, and had then gone back to London, where Mr. Denovan ran him down at last as a patient in the Middlesex Hospital.
Cunnington was quite as important a witness as Johnson. He declared he should know Mackoull among a thousand. He had seen the three men counting over notes at the White Hart; Mackoull did not seem to be a proper companion for the two; he took the lead, and was the only one who used pen, ink, and paper. Cunnington expressed his willingness to go to Edinburgh if his health permitted.
Since Denovan’s arrival in London he had received but little assistance at Bow Street. The runners were irritated at the unorthodox way in which the case had been managed. Sayer, who had been concerned in the restitution, flatly refused to have anything to do with the business, or to go to Edinburgh to give evidence. This was presently explained by another runner, the famous Townsend, who hinted that Sayer’s hands were not clean, and that he was on very friendly terms with Mackoull’s wife, a lady of questionable character, who was living in comfort on some of her husband’s ill-gotten gains. Indeed, Sayer’s conduct had caused a serious quarrel between him and his colleagues, Lavender, Vickery, and Harry Adkins, because he had deceived and forestalled them. Denovan was, however, on intimate terms with Lavender, and succeeded in persuading him to assist, and through him he came upon the portmanteau sent from Welwyn, which had been seized at the time of Huffey White’s arrest. Huffey had been taken in the house of one Scoltop, a blacksmith in the Tottenham Court Road, the portmanteau and a box of skeleton keys being also seized. Both were now found in a back closet in the office at Bow Street, “under a singular collection of rubbish, and were actually covered by Williams’s bloody jacket, and the maul and ripping iron with which the man Williamson had been murdered in Ratcliff Highway.” The portmanteau contained many papers and notes damaging to Mackoull, and in the box were housebreaking implements, punches, files, and various “dubs” and “skrews,” as well as two handkerchiefs of fawn colour, with a broad border, such as the three thieves often wore when in their lodgings in Glasgow immediately before the robbery.
How Mr. Denovan found and won over Scoltop is a chief feather in his cap. His success astonished even the oldest officers in Bow Street. Scoltop was the friend and associate of burglars, and constantly engaged in manufacturing implements for them. He had long been a friend of Mackoull’s and had made tools for him, among them those used for the robbing of the Paisley Union Bank, a coup prepared long beforehand, as we have seen. The first set of keys supplied had been tried on the bank locks and found useless, so that Scoltop had furnished others and sent them down by mail. These also were ineffective, as the bank had “simple old-fashioned locks,” and Mackoull came back from Glasgow, bringing with him “a wooden model of the key hole and pike of the locks,” which enabled Scoltop to complete his job easily. “I wonder,” said Scoltop to Mr. Denovan, “that the bank could have trusted so much money under such very simple things.” Scoltop would not allow any of this evidence to be set down in writing, but he agreed to go down to Edinburgh and give it in court, and to swear also to receiving the portmanteau addressed in the handwriting of Mackoull.
But Denovan’s greatest triumph was with Mrs. Mackoull. She kept a house furnished in an elegant manner, but was not a very reputable person. “She was extremely shy at first, and as if by chance, but to show that she was prepared for anything, she lifted up one of the cushions on her settee, displaying a pair of horse pistols that lay below,” on which he produced a double-barrelled pistol and a card bearing the address “Public Office, Bow Street.” Then she gave him her hand and said, “We understand each other.” But still she was very reticent, acting, as Mr. Denovan was firmly convinced, under the advice of the not incorruptible Sayer. She was afraid she would be called upon to make a restitution of that part of the booty that had gone her way. Denovan strongly suspected that she had received a large sum from her husband and had refused to give it back to him—“the real cause of their misunderstanding,” which was, indeed, so serious that he had no great difficulty in persuading her also to give evidence at Edinburgh.