The circulation of Fleet paper was generally intrusted to profligate women, who cohabited with the men who made them. This mode was less suspicious, and in a single year had been carried on to a considerable amount.

Of this description, and we could adduce many such, was Agnes Adams who, in passing one of such notes, filled up with the words “two pence,” as a two-pound Bank of England note, to Mr. Spratz, a publican of St. John Street, Clerkenwell, was by him detected, seized, prosecuted and convicted at the Middlesex Sessions, 1811. The punishment could only be extended to six months’ hard labour in the House of Correction.

The fraternity of thieves about London have fabricated cant names for the different articles which they steal. The Fleet notes were called “Flash Screens.”

RICHARD ARMITAGE AND CHARLES THOMAS.
EXECUTED FOR FORGERY.

THE crime for which these men justly suffered was a forgery of the very worst description, having for its effect a scandalous breach of public trust—a robbery upon the very corporation which they were bound to protect from the nefarious attempts of others.

It appears that they were connected with a person named Roberts, who was apprehended on a charge of swindling, on which he was remanded from the police-office to Coldbath-Fields’ Prison, in the year 1810. In a few days he succeeded in making his escape from the jail, in company with a man named Harper, by the most extraordinary means. From the evidence adduced before the magistrates, before whom an inquiry into the escape took place, it appeared that the prisoners were locked up in the usual way at night, but that in the morning they were found to have escaped. On the jail being examined, six gates which had been locked were found standing open, and it was discovered that the prisoners had completed their design by scaling the outer wall, which they had ascended by means of the scaffolding round a lodge which was in the course of being built, and from which they had reached the ground by means of a rope which was found still hanging on the outside. The most anxious inquiries were made after Roberts, but it was not until the month of April 1811 that he was discovered at a tavern at Vauxhall, where he had passed himself off as a country attorney, and was taken into custody. He then, to save his own life, impeached the partners in his villany, and Armitage and Thomas, who were clerks in the Bank of England, were in consequence secured. Armitage was first taken, and he was examined at Marlborough-street, and committed for trial on charges of forging dividend warrants to the amount of £2400; and Thomas was almost immediately afterwards apprehended, and committed on the same charges.

At the ensuing Sessions they were put on their trial, when the case proved against them was, that they were bank clerks in the Imperial Annuity Office, and that they had forged a warrant to obtain the dividends due upon a sum of money belonging to a person who had been dead three years, and whose executors had not applied for the property. In pursuance of the warrants forged in this case the amount paid was £360, and the prisoner Thomas signed the book as an attesting witness. The case was proved by Roberts and his wife, whose testimony, however, was corroborated by that of other witnesses, and the prisoners were found guilty and were sentenced to death.

The unhappy men were executed on the 24th of June, 1811, at the Old Bailey, pursuant to their sentence. Armitage, from severe illness, was supported to the scaffold by a friend; he was also accompanied by a clergyman, to whose admonitions he appeared to pay great attention. His companion was a catholic, and was attended by a priest of that persuasion. He exhibited great fortitude.

The secret of Roberts’ escape was not discovered for a considerable time afterwards, when he was induced to confess, that through the means of a bribe offered to the person who swept the cells, he was enabled to procure impressions in wax of the keys which would be required to open the doors through which he and his fellow-prisoner would have to pass. Having obtained these, he soon got keys made, and he was assisted in his flight by this “friend at court.” It was supposed, however, that he had some other more powerful ally than a sweeper, and considerable changes in the management of the jail were subsequently made.