On Saturday, the 6th of April 1833, the trial of James and Thomas Berryman took place. The testimony of all the witnesses tended at once to attach the guilt of firing the pistol to the former prisoner; and the latter was also positively identified as having been a party to the robbery. The statement of the approver confirmed the declarations of the other witnesses, and both prisoners were found guilty.
The superior atrocity of the conduct of the prisoner James Berryman, marked him as a fit object for the infliction of a punishment of a serious nature, and he was sentenced to death, while his brother received sentence of transportation for life.
The sentence of death was executed upon James Berryman at Gloucester, on Saturday the 20th of April.
RICHARD COSTER.
TRANSPORTED FOR FORGERY.
THE name of Richard Coster will long be remembered in the city of London. A most accomplished and successful swindler, he for years succeeded in evading that punishment which was the just reward of his offences against society; but at length, like all other of his class, he over-reached his owning enuity, and met the fit return for his numerous frauds in a sentence of transportation.
We are not able to supply our readers either with the date or the name of the place of the birth of our hero, neither are we in possession of the mean of informing them who were his parents, or what was the sphere of life in which they moved. From the extent of the education of their son, however, it is pretty evident that their rank was considerably below that which may be denominated as the “genteel;” and the same conclusion may also be drawn from the very early period of life at which this most daring public depredator was placed “upon his own bottom,” and sent forth to gain a living for himself. At an early age we find him at Oxford, and his first employment of any note was that of driving an errand-cart, between that city and London. In this humble occupation he continued for some years, and such were his industrious and penurious habits, that he at length realised sufficient money to start on his own account, in the “costermongering line,” with a horse and cart of his own. In this business he soon found the importance of a connexion with the metropolitan trade, and ere long he located himself in London, a scene admirably adapted for the display of those peculiar talents which he possessed. He was not long there in forming acquaintances, and connexions with persons, whose advice and instruction were highly important to him, in the scenes in which he was destined to move. Horse chaunters, or copers, swindlers of all sorts, utterers of base coin, thieves, “et hoc omne genus,” were his constant companions, and Coster now became the competent associate of all. He felt, however, that he had a genius above the situation in which he was placed, and that his present calling was beneath the position which he ought to fill, and he soon quitted dealing in apples, and, by the various gradations of a small horse-dealer, an occasional purchaser of the proceeds of the produce of his associates’ plunder, and the other occupations commonly followed by such “men upon town,” he at length started in the year 1810, in Queen-street, Bristol, as a general agent and bill discounter.
Here, however, he was unfortunate; for in the course of the year he became an inmate of Newgate, in that city, on a charge of obtaining goods by false pretences; but on this occasion he seems to have slipped pretty quickly through the hands of justice, for in the following year we find him at the head of the firm of Coster and Co., in Bread-street, St. Philip’s, Bristol.
His retirement to Bristol appears to have taken place in consequence of the notoriety which he had gained in London; but in 1814 we find him again shifting his quarters back to the seclusion of the crowded metropolis, for a reason, apparently, no other than that which had before induced his migration from it; conjoined, however, with a desire to avail himself of the wider sphere of action which was presented to him in that city. At this period he located himself at No. 8, Eltham-place, Kent-road; but a short residence there satisfied him, and he removed to No. 204, High Holborn, from whence, in 1815, he again changed his quarters to No. 7, Bazing-lane. In the following year, as if to be as close to the good things of this life as possible, he carried on the business of an eating-house keeper, at No. 19, Noble-street, Falcon-square; but in the year 1818, he again appeared in the world of money, as a job-broker, at No. 5, Oat-lane, Wood-street, and at No. 22, Lower Smith-street, Northampton-square, while at the same time he acted as clerk to a Mr. Thomas Gray, provision merchant, No. 4, Berry-court, Love-lane, Wood-street.
In 1819, Coster removed to No. 3, Bridge-water square, Barbican, at which time he is still represented as acting clerk to the above Thomas Gray, at No. 1, King-street-terrace, Lower Islington, and No. 4, Cross-street, Finsbury. The following year (1820), he established himself (still retaining his locality in Bridgewater-square) at No. 4, Staining-lane, under the firm of Coates and Smith, and afterwards under that of Smith and Martin, of both of which he was the ostensible partner. In Staining-lane, he carried on business for a number of years; and only gave up this concern in 1829, to conduct, on a larger scale, his operations, under the firm of Young and Co., Little Winchester-street; and Casey and Coster, Great Elbow-lane, Dowgate-hill, Upper Thames-street.