He was placed upon his trial at the Old Bailey sessions, in the month of October 1829, when he pleaded guilty to an indictment charging him with having personated William Green, of Crucifix-lane, brazier, and thereby having obtained 125l., being the value of stock standing in his name in the Bank-books. On the 6th of March the prisoner applied to Mr. Linton, a stock-broker, in Shorter’s-court, requesting him to sell out the stock standing in the name of William Green. The broker declined selling the stock, on the ground that he did not know the prisoner; upon which he replied, “Your father knows me well, and has frequently seen me at the National Debt Office.” The broker’s father was sent for, and on seeing the prisoner, said that he recollected him somewhere, but could not tell where. The broker was satisfied with this partial recognition, and made out the necessary documents for the transfer. The receipt for the transfer was signed by the prisoner in the name of Green, and on comparing it with one which had been previously given on the receipt of the dividend upon the same stock, the hand-writing was found to correspond.
He also pleaded guilty to an indictment charging him with having personated Richard Mann, and thereby obtained 27l., being the dividend due on 300l. Consolidated Bank Annuities, of which Mann was the proprietor. A few days after the fraud on Mr. Green, the prisoner went to the Rotunda, in the Bank, and introducing himself to a broker as Mr. Mann, requested him to witness his receipt of the dividend. The broker asked for a reference, and the prisoner named Mr. Linton, who happening to be close by, was instantly appealed to, and at once recognised the prisoner as being the person who had imposed upon him in the name of Green. The prisoner refused to withdraw his plea of guilty, although advised by the judge to do so.
Upon this sentence of death was at once passed; and upon the recorder’s report being made to his Majesty, the unhappy prisoner was ordered for execution.
Monday the 19th of October, was the day upon which the sentence was directed to be executed, and the convict upon being led out from his cell was totally unnerved, and glanced about him with a fearful and hurried look. He appeared deeply and bitterly to repent his crimes; and the wretched course of life he had adopted, in spite of the anxious solicitude of his parents.
He was executed with two other men, who had been convicted of house-breaking, in the twenty-sixth year of his age, on the 19th of October, 1829.
JAMES BELL.
TRANSPORTED FOR BURGLARY.
THE great singularity of the offence, as well as of the apprehension of this fellow, induces us to lay their short particulars before our readers. The prisoner was of that class called “Resurrection men,” and the crime of which he was convicted was committed by him and three of his associates in this horrible traffic.
Bell on the 17th December, 1829, was placed at the bar at the Maidstone Assizes before Mr. Baron Garrow, under a charge of burglariously breaking and entering the dwelling-house of Daniel Redday, at Deptford, and stealing therein a shirt, a worsted comforter, and the body of a black man whose name was unknown.—It appeared that Daniel Redday was a lodging-house keeper at Deptford; an unfortunate black man had come to lodge in his house shortly before the 20th of November, and on the 19th died suddenly. His body was laid out in a back room with the shirt on, and the comforter round his head, until a coroner’s jury could sit on him. In the course of the night of the 20th the prosecutor was alarmed by a noise in the room of the dead man. Not choosing to examine into the cause from within, he went out of the house, and soon perceived a ladder placed up against the window of the room in which the corpse was deposited, and four men, of whom the prisoner was one, on the ladder. In his hurry to apprehend them he ran against the ladder, and the whole four, with the corpse, the comforter, and the shirt, came to the ground. Three of the four men made a successful retreat, but the prisoner was taken into custody.—The jury found him Guilty, and Mr. Baron Garrow, after having commented upon the heinous nature of his crime, aimed as it was at the best interests of society, sentenced him to be transported for life.