The fact of the abduction did not transpire for some days. Then Mrs. Daulby learnt that Miss Turner had not arrived at Shrigley, but that she had gone to Manchester. Friends went in pursuit and traced her to Huddersfield and further north. The terror and dismay of her parents were soon intensified by the receipt of a letter from Wakefield, at Carlisle, announcing the marriage. Mr. Turner at once set off for London, where he sought the assistance of the police, and presently ascertained that Wakefield had gone to the Continent with his involuntary bride. An uncle of Miss Wakefield’s, accompanied by his solicitor and a Bow Street runner, at once went in pursuit. Meanwhile, a second letter turned up from Wakefield at Calais, in which he assured Mrs. Turner that Miss Turner was fondly attached to him, and went on to say, “I do assure you, madam, that it shall be the anxious endeavour of my life to promote her happiness by every means in my power.” The game, however, was nearly up. Miss Turner was met by her uncle on Calais pier as she was walking with Wakefield. The uncle claimed her. The husband resisted. M. le Maire was appealed to, and decided to leave it to the young lady, who at once abandoned Wakefield. As he still urged his rights over his wife, Miss Turner cried out in protest, “No, no, I am not his wife; he carried me away by fraud and stratagem, and forced me to accompany him to Gretna Green.... By the same forcible means I was compelled to quit England, and to trust myself to the protection of this person, whom I never saw until I was taken from Liverpool, and never want to see again.” On this Wakefield gave in. He surrendered the bride who had never been a wife, and she returned to England with her friends, while Wakefield went on alone to Paris.
Mr. William Wakefield was arrested at Dover, conveyed to Chester, and committed to Lancaster Gaol for trial at the next assizes, when indictments were preferred against both brothers “for having carried away Ellen Turner, spinster, then a maid and heir apparent unto her father, for the sake of the lucre of her substance; and for having afterwards unlawfully and against her will married the said Ellen Turner.” They were tried in March of the following year, Edward Wakefield having apparently given himself up, and found guilty, remaining in Lancaster Gaol for a couple of months, when they were brought up to the court of King’s Bench for judgment. The prosecution pressed for a severe penalty. Edward Wakefield pleaded that his trial had already cost him £3000. Mr. Justice Bayley, in summing up, spoke severely of the gross deception practised upon an innocent girl, and sentenced the brothers each to three years’ imprisonment, William Wakefield in Lancaster Gaol, and Edward Gibbon Wakefield in Newgate, which sentences were duly enforced. The marriage was annulled by an Act of Parliament, although Wakefield petitioned against it, and was brought from Newgate, at his own request, to oppose the second reading of the bill. He also wrote and published a pamphlet from the gaol to show that Miss Turner had been a consenting party to the marriage, and was really his wife. Neither his address nor his pamphlet availed much, for the bill for the divorce passed both Houses. That Mr. Wakefield was a shrewd critic and close observer of all that went on in the Newgate of those days, will be admitted by those who have read his book on “the punishment of death,” which was based on his gaol experiences, and of which I have availed myself in the last chapter.
After their release from Lancaster and Newgate respectively, both Wakefields went abroad. Mr. W. Wakefield served in a continental army, and rose to the rank of colonel, after which he went to New Zealand, and held an important post in that colony. Mr. E. G. Wakefield took part in the scheme for the colonization of North Australia, and for some years resided in that colony. Miss Turner subsequently married Mr. Legh of Lym Hall, Cheshire.
It must not be imagined that although highway robbery was now nearly extinct,[114] and felonious outrages in the streets were rare, that thieves or depredators were idle or entirely unsuccessful. Bigger “jobs” than ever were planned and attempted, as in the burglary at Lambeth Palace, when the thieves were fortunately disappointed, the archbishop having, before he left town, sent his plate-chests, eight in number, to the silversmith’s for greater security. The jewellers were always a favourite prey of the London thieves. Shops were broken into, as when that of Grimaldi and Johnson, in the Strand, was robbed of watches to the value of £6000. Where robbery with violence was intended, the perpetrators had now to adopt various shifts and contrivances to secure their victim. No more curious instance of this ever occurred than the assault made by one Howard upon a Mr. Mullay, with intent to rob him. The latter had advertised, offering a sum of £1000 to any one who would introduce him to some mercantile employment. Howard replied, desiring Mr. Mullay to call upon him in a house in Red Lion Square. Mr. Mullay went, and a second interview was agreed upon, when a third person, Mr. Owen, through whose interest an appointment under Government was to be obtained for Mullay, would be present. Mr. Mullay called again, taking with him £500 in cash. Howard discovered this, and his manner was very suspicious; there were weapons in the room—a long knife, a heavy trap-ball bat, and a poker. Mr. Mullay became alarmed, and as Mr. Owen did not appear, withdrew; Howard, strange to say, making no attempt to detain him; probably because Mullay promised to return a few days later, and to bring more money. On this renewed visit Mr. Owen was still absent, and Mr. Mullay agreed to write him a note from a copy Howard gave him. While thus engaged, Howard thrust the poker into the fire. Mullay protested, and then Howard, under the influence of ungovernable rage, as it seemed, jumped up, locked the door, and attacked Mullay violently with the trap-ball bat and knife. Mullay defended himself, and managed to break the knife, but not before he had cut himself severely. A life and death struggle ensued. Mullay cried “Murder!” Howard swore he would finish him, but proved the weaker of the two, and Mullay got him down on the floor. By this time the neighbours were aroused, and several people came to the scene of the affray. Howard was secured, given into custody, and committed to Newgate. The defence he set up was, that Mullay had used epithets towards him while they were negotiating a business matter, and that, being an irritable temper, he had struck Mullay, after which a violent scuffle took place. It was, however, proved that Howard was in needy circumstances, and that his proposals to Mr. Mullay could only have originated in a desire to rob him. He was found guilty of an assault with intent, and sentenced to transportation for fourteen years.
A more complicated and altogether most extraordinary case of assault, with intent to extort money, occurred a few years later. It was perpetrated upon a respectable country solicitor, Mr. Gee, of Bishop Stortford, who administered the estate of a certain Mr. Canning, deceased. This Mr. Canning had left his widow a life interest in £2000 so long as she remained unmarried. The money went after her to her children. Mr. Gee had invested £1200 of this, and was seeking how best to place the remaining £800, when he was asked to meet a Mr. Heath in London with regard to the sale of certain lands at Bishop Stortford. An appointment was made and kept by Mr. Gee, but on arrival he was met by a young sailor with a letter which begged Mr. Gee to go to Heath’s house, as the latter was not well. Mr. Gee went in the coach sent for him, and alighted at 27, York Street, West, Commercial Road. The coach immediately drove off; Mr. Gee entered the house, asked for Mr. Heath, was told he would find him in the back kitchen at breakfast. He was about to descend the stairs when three persons, one of them the young sailor, fell upon him, and in spite of his resistance carried him into a sort of den partitioned off at the end of the back kitchen. There he was seated on some sort of wooden bench and securely fastened. “A chain fixed to staples at his back passed round his chest under his arms, and was padlocked on the left side;” his feet were bound with cords and made fast to rings in the floor. Thus manacled, one of the party, who pretended to be Mrs. Canning’s brother, addressed him, insisting that he should forthwith sign a cheque for the £800 of the Canning inheritance still uninvested, and write an order sufficient to secure the surrender of the other £1200. Mr. Gee at first stoutly refused. Then, as they warned him that he would be kept a prisoner in total darkness in this horrible den until he agreed to their demands, he gave in, and signed the documents thus illegally extorted. One was a cheque for £800 on his bankers, the other an order to Mr. Bell of Newport, Essex, requesting the surrender of a deed.
His captors having thus succeeded in their designs, left him, no doubt to realize the money. The door of his place of durance stood open, and Mr. Gee began to consider whether he might not escape. For three hours he struggled without success with his bonds, but at length managed to wriggle out of the chain which confined his body, and soon loosened the ropes round his feet. Thus free, he eluded the vigilance of two of the party, who were at dinner in the front kitchen, and creeping out into the garden at the back, climbed the wall, and got into the street. His first act was to send a messenger to stop the cheque and the order to Mr. Bell, his next to seek the help of the police. Two Bow Street runners were despatched to the house in York Street, which had evidently been taken on purpose for the outrage. There was no furniture in the place, and the den in the kitchen had been recently and specially constructed of boards of immense strength and thickness. It was a cell five feet by three, within another, the intervening being filled with rammed earth to deaden the sound. A fixed seat, two feet, was at one end, and a foot above it was a bar with a staple, to which hung the body chain.
On the arrival of the police the house was empty. The two men on guard had gone off immediately after Mr. Gee had escaped, but they returned later in the day, and were apprehended. Inquiries set on foot also elicited the suspicion that the person who had represented Mrs. Canning’s brother was a blind man named Edwards, who had taken this house in York Street, and who was known to be a frequent visitor at Mrs. Canning’s. A watch was set on him at her house, where he was soon afterwards arrested. Edwards, whom Mr. Gee easily identified with the others, at once admitted that he was the prime mover of the conspiracy. He had sought by all legal means to obtain possession of the £2000, but had failed, and had had recourse to more violent means. It turned out that he was really married to Mrs. Canning, both having been recognized by the clergyman who had performed the ceremony, and the assault had been committed to secure the money which Mrs. Canning had lost by re-marriage. All three men were committed for trial, although Edwards wished to exculpate the others as having only acted under his order. At the trial the indictment charging them with felony could not be sustained, but they were found guilty of conspiracy and assault. Edwards was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment in Newgate, Weedon and Lecasser to twelve and six months respectively in Coldbath Fields.
At no period could thieves in London or elsewhere have prospered had they been unable to dispose of their ill-gotten goods. The trade of fence, or receiver, therefore, is very nearly as old as the crimes which it so obviously fostered.[115] One of the most notorious, and for a time most successful practitioners in this illicit trade, passed through Newgate in 1831. The name of Ikey Solomons was long remembered by thief and thief-taker. He began as an itinerant street vendor at eight, at ten he passed bad money, at fourteen he was a pickpocket and a “duffer,” or a seller of sham goods. He early saw the profits to be made out of purchasing stolen goods, but could not embark in it at first for want of capital. He was taken up when still in his teens for stealing a pocket-book, and was sentenced to transportation, but did not get beyond the hulks at Chatham. On his release an uncle, a slop-seller in Chatham, gave him a situation as “barker,” or salesman, at which he realized £150 within a couple of years. With this capital he returned to London and set up as a fence. He had such great aptitude for business, and such a thorough knowledge of the real value of goods, that he was soon admitted to be one of the best judges known of all kinds of property, from a glass bottle to a five hundred guinea chronometer. But he never paid more than a fixed price for all articles of the same class, whatever their intrinsic value. Thus, a watch was paid for as a watch, whether it was of gold or silver; a piece of linen as such, whether the stuff was coarse or fine. This rule in dealing with stolen goods continues to this day, and has made the fortune of many since Ikey.
Solomons also established a system of provincial agency, by which stolen goods were passed on from London to the seaports, and so abroad. Jewels were re-set, diamonds re-faced; all marks by which other articles might be identified, the selvages of linen, the stamps on shoes, the number and names on watches, were carefully removed or obliterated after the goods passed out of his hands. On one occasion the whole of the proceeds of a robbery from a boot shop was traced to Solomons’; the owner came with the police, and was morally convinced that it was his property, but could not positively identify it, and Ikey defied them to remove a single shoe. In the end the injured bootmaker agreed to buy back his stolen stock at the price Solomons had paid for it, and it cost him about a hundred pounds to re-stock his shop with his own goods.
As a general rule Ikey Solomons confined his purchases to small articles, mostly of jewellery and plate, which he kept concealed in a hiding-place with a trap-door just under his bed. He lived in Rosemary Lane, and sometimes he had as much as £20,000 worth of goods secreted on the premises. When his trade was busiest he set up a second establishment, at the head of which, although he was married, he put another lady, with whom he was on intimate terms. The second house was in Lower Queen Street, Islington, and he used it for some time as a depot for valuables. But it was eventually discovered by Mrs. Solomons, a very jealous wife, and this, with the danger arising from an extensive robbery of watches in Cheapside, in which Ikey was implicated as a receiver, led him to think seriously of trying his fortunes in another land. He was about to emigrate to New South Wales, when he was arrested at Islington and committed to Newgate on a charge of receiving stolen goods. While thus incarcerated he managed to escape from custody, but not actually from gaol, by an ingenious contrivance which is worth mentioning. He claimed to be admitted to bail, and was taken from Newgate on a writ of habeas before one of the judges sitting at Westminster. He was conveyed in a coach driven by a confederate, and under the escort of a couple of turnkeys. Solomons, while waiting to appear in court, persuaded the turnkeys to take him to a public-house, where all might “refresh.” While there he was joined by his wife and other friends. After a short carouse the prisoner went into Westminster, his case was heard, bail refused, and he was ordered back to Newgate. But he once more persuaded the turnkeys to pause at the public, where more liquor was consumed. When the journey was resumed, Mrs. Solomons accompanied her husband in the coach. Half-way to Newgate she was taken with a fit. One turnkey was stupidly drunk, and Ikey persuaded the other, who was not much better, to let the coach change and pass Petticoat Lane en route to the gaol, where the suffering woman might be handed over to her friends. On stopping at a door in this low street, Ikey jumped out, ran into the house, slamming the door behind him. He passed through and out at the back, and was soon beyond pursuit. By-and-by the turnkeys, sobered by their loss, returned to Newgate alone, and pleaded in excuse that they had been drugged.