T H E
C H R O N I C L E S O F C R I M E,
OR,
THE NEW NEWGATE CALENDAR.
THOMAS BROCK, JOHN PELHAM, AND MICHAEL POWER,
CONVICTED OF COINING.
IN the year 1816, when Sir Matthew Wood was lord mayor of London, several conspiracies of a most diabolical nature were detected, and some of the conspirators punished. The conduct of the chief magistrate was such as to do honour not only to his understanding and ability, but to his disinterestedness and humanity.
The legislature, with the intention of stimulating the exertions of police-officers, and inducing others to give information, had awarded certain rewards to the parties who should contribute to the conviction of offenders against the laws. The object was laudable, but it was capable of great perversion, and was liable to many objections; it gave the prosecutor an interest in the conviction of the accused, and on that account tended to impress the public with the belief that the condemnation, and not the acquittal of the prisoner, was the object of our criminal laws. It was too true that “blood money,” as this species of remuneration was emphatically denominated, did contribute in reality to the evil we allude to. But had not a development of unparalleled villany put scepticism to flight, we could not have brought ourselves to believe that those who were paid to detect crime should be found the most active in seducing innocence and youth to its commission. Yet it is an indubitable fact that, for ten years preceding 1816, victims were brought up, session after session, to be convicted of crimes to which they were seduced by the very men who gave evidence against them, that they might revel on the “blood money,” or make use of it to provide other victims for the law. Several of those connected with the police-offices, particularly the patroles, were detected in this traffic of blood;[A] but only one officer of any note, named Vaughan, was convicted of this most atrocious crime.
[A] The following were the parliamentary rewards for the conviction of felons:—
1. By 4 W. & Mary, cap. 8, forty pounds on the conviction of every highwayman.
2. By 6 & 7 Wm. III. cap. 17, forty pounds upon the conviction of every person who had counterfeited the coin, or clipped &c. the same, or had brought into the kingdom clipped coin, &c.
3. By 5 Anne, cap. 31, forty pounds on conviction of every burglar or housebreaker.
4. By 14 Geo. II. cap. 6, ten pounds on the conviction of every sheep-stealer, &c.