“Sir,—I have received in payment your acceptance for 500l., and have also been requested to discount another for the same amount, which, from the respectability of your family, I am inclined to do. Perhaps, therefore, you will have the goodness to inform me if the bills are all regular and right.
“I am, &c.,
“Henry Palmer.
“D. Astley, Esq.”
This letter Mr. Astley fortunately did not answer, but it raised his suspicions that all was not right; he accordingly made inquiries, and it was discovered that Hart and the prisoner were old friends—labourers in the same vineyard. This trick having failed, the prisoner then resorted to another; he thought that Mr. Astley would naturally wish to conceal the transaction from his own and his wife’s family; he therefore sent him a copy of a letter which he (Palmer) said he intended to send to his (Mr. Astley’s) father, and Sir Thomas Lethbridge, his father-in-law. The letter was to the following effect:—
“Sir,—Your son, Mr. Dugdale Astley, has, to my own knowledge, accepted bills to the amount of 5,000l., without receiving one penny value for them; part of them are in circulation, and the others shortly will be; but, from the circumstances that have come to my knowledge, they might be all bought up for a small sum, and thereby prevent an exposure of the transaction in a court of justice. If you think this proposal worthy your notice, and will put an advertisement in ‘The Morning Chronicle,’ addressed to O. P. Q., you shall hear from me.
“Yours, &c.
“Henry Palmer.”
This not being noticed immediately, the letters were addressed to Sir J. Astley and Sir T. Lethbridge. These letters, it would be proved were in the handwriting of the prisoner. An advertisement was subsequently put into “The Morning Chronicle,” requesting O. P. Q,. to meet the parties at the office of their solicitors, Messrs. Henson and Co., which he accordingly did, and had an interview. Mr. Henson asked the prisoner what he expected to receive by giving up the bills?—Palmer replied, with the greatest effrontery, “Twenty shillings in the pound; they are worth every farthing of it.” This, of course, was indignantly refused, and he went away. The following day the solicitor of the prisoner called upon Mr. Henson, and asked if Mr. Astley would give 10s. in the pound for the bills? This was refused. He then offered to take 5s., but this offer was also refused, and the negotiation dropped.
To support this case, a clear and connected chain of evidence was produced, showing the connexion of the prisoner with Hart, and leaving no doubt as to the conspiracy which had been formed to rob the prosecutor. The prisoner conducted his own defence, and cross-examined both the prosecutor and the other witnesses; and from the answers of the former it appeared that he had become acquainted with Mr. Smart, of Bridges-street, Covent Garden, and other persons not strictly creditable. The main facts of the charge were, however, not shaken, and the prisoner was found guilty, and sentenced to be transported for fourteen years—a sentence which so shook his nerves, that he fell in a fit, and was removed from the bar in a state of insensibility.
Hart, it will be perceived, was intimately connected with the case to which we have referred, and he too was shortly afterwards apprehended upon the charge of his participation in the offence, of which his agent had been found guilty. Having undergone several examinations before the magistrates, he was committed for trial; but upon application to the Court of King’s Bench, the indictment was removed by certiorari from the Middlesex Sessions to the Old Bailey. On Monday, the 2nd of December, 1833, Hart was put upon his trial; but an objection being taken to the indictment, upon the ground that there was no felony proved, by reason of there having been nothing stolen which was the property of Mr. Astley, a verdict of “Not guilty” was returned upon the direction of the learned judge. Hart was then discharged; and Palmer, whose conviction, it followed, had been illegal, was also subsequently liberated.
Having detailed the circumstances of these two cases, it is unnecessary that we should go into any further description of the habits and practices of Hart and his associates, because their proceedings were always so much of the same character, that their statement would be a mere repetition of the facts which we have related. Hart was, in pursuance of his sentence, carried to Van Diemen’s Land; but a short residence in that colony, aided, doubtless, by change of habit and situation, brought him to the grave.