Like the great model whom he had striven to emulate, the vain man had found his Moscow. No longer was he the dandy banker of Berners Street, whose friendship had been sought by so many rich men from the City. The days of the lavish Corinthian, the associate of ‘bang-up pinks and bloods’ had passed away for ever, and he had become a criminal, standing beneath the shadow of the gallows!
While Mr Freshfield, with the aid of the constable, proceeded to execute his right of search, the members of the firm were summoned to town. At first the catastrophe was not appreciated to the full extent. On the following morning the bank opened its doors, and customers paid and drew their cheques as usual. However, before the close of the day the proprietors sent an announcement to the press that “in consequence of the extraordinary conduct of their partner,” they had determined for the present to suspend payment.
During the whole of Monday, the 13th of September, an excited throng took possession of Berners Street—neighbouring tradesmen trembling for their deposits; men from the City dismayed by the wildest rumours. A force of police was deemed necessary to prevent a riot. “Arrest of Mr Fauntleroy, the well-known banker!” The amazing tidings was upon every lip. A similar sensation had not been experienced in the memory of man. Since the days of Dr Dodd, half a century before, none so high in the social scale had been accused of such a crime. All the week, panic reigned in business houses. It was whispered that the defalcations would reach half a million pounds: that the greatest commercial scandal of the age would be disclosed. One day, it was said that Fauntleroy had arranged a plan of escape; on another, that he had cut his throat with a razor.
In the presence of a crowd of his creditors, the forger—crushed, despairing, overwhelmed with the deepest shame—was brought up for his first examination at Marlborough Street on the following Saturday. Although not more than forty, his hair, prematurely grey, made him look much older. During ten long years of torture the slow fires of suspense must have burnt deep into his soul, and the reality of this fatal hour would seem less cruel than the dreaded expectation. One observer states that “his expression is of pure John Bull good-nature”; another declares that he had “a mild Roman contour of visage”; while his dress was the inevitable blue tail-coat and trousers, with half-boots and a light-coloured waistcoat—the morning attire of all gentlemen of the period from Lord Alvanley and Ball Hughes down to Corinthian Tom.
On the Friday week following his first examination, the forger stood once more in the dock at Marlborough Street. Two maiden ladies, Miss Frances and Miss Elizabeth Young, whose small fortune had been stolen, gave testimony against the prisoner. Pained to see the man whom they had honoured and trusted in this terrible position, the tender-hearted women were tearful and distressed. Since the maiden name of Mrs Henry Fauntleroy was the same as theirs, rumour leapt to the conclusion that these witnesses were the sisters of the prisoner’s wife. When the unfortunate banker was seen to flush deeply as Miss Young appeared in the witness-box, the error was confirmed.
It was not until the 19th of October that the accused went through his third and last examination. Although well-groomed and immaculate as ever, he was a mere shadow of the placid, inscrutable man of business who had borne his guilty secret so boldly and so long. There was “rather a ghastly than a living hue upon his countenance,” remarks the stylist who reports for The Times. All the necessary charges being proved, he was committed to Newgate, his removal being postponed until Thursday, the 21st of October, on the application of his solicitor.
Meanwhile the London press had revelled in the case. Scarcely a day passed without a reference to the forger or to the forgery, and there was the greatest strife among the various newspapers to secure the most lurid reports. Many times we have the amusing spectacle of two journals belabouring each other like the envious editors in Pickwick. Even the recent crime of John Thurtell—for in this wonderful fourth year of his Gracious Majesty King George IV. the lucky public was satiated with melodrama, while Jemmy Catnach’s pockets were overflowing with gold—did not offer such chances of sensational reports. It was announced to an amazed public that Fauntleroy had squandered the proceeds of his forgeries in riot and dissipation. One-half of his private life was disclosed to public ears; and though some of the newspapers were merciful, just as others were hostile to the prisoner, one and all, with very few exceptions, probed deep into his murky past.
Happily, there is no evidence to justify the supposition that the partners in the Berners Street bank—and in particular Mr J. H. Stracey, who thirty years later succeeded to the baronetcy held in turn by his father and his two brothers—were responsible for the dastardly attacks upon the defenceless man. Even had he given no public denial to the charge, such an assumption is impossible in the case of an honourable man like the late Sir Josias Stracey. Moreover, the identity of the person who inspired the disgraceful accounts in The Times and other journals is easy to discern.
This spiteful enemy bursts upon the stage of the sad tragedy of Fauntleroy like the comic villain of melodrama—too contemptible to hate, but with a humour too crapulous for whole-hearted laughter. Joseph Wilfred Parkins—elected Sheriff of London on the 24th of June 1819—appears to have been one of the most blatant humbugs that ever belonged to the objectionable family of Bumble. Tradition relates that he was the son of a blacksmith who lived on the borders of Inglewood Forest in Cumberland; but Parkins, too proud to know from whence he came, preferred to pass as a bastard of the Duke of Norfolk. In his early youth, we are told that “he was apprenticed to a breeches-maker in Carlisle, but his dexterity as a workman not being commensurate with his powers of digestion, a separation took place.” Afterwards he sailed to Calcutta, where, assisted by letters of introduction from his patron the Duke, he established a lucrative business. In other ways, according to account, he was a success in India, where he became famous for hunting tigers with English greyhounds, and once shot a coolie for disobeying his orders, two miles and a half distant, right through the head, across the Ganges, and through an impenetrable jungle! On another occasion he claimed to have ridden stark naked in mid-day, on a barebacked horse without bridle, fifty miles in six hours, for a wager, and to have trotted back for pleasure without even a drink of water. When he returned to his native land with the treasures of the East, it was inevitable that such a man should win notoriety. Having failed to gain the affections of Queen Caroline, who preferred Alderman Wood for a beau, he devoted himself to Olive Serres, ‘Princess of Cumberland’ and became her champion and literary collaborator. One of the achievements on which he most prided himself was the refusal to marry a daughter of Lord Sidmouth, who was most eager to become his father-in-law. Sometimes we behold him fawning upon Lord Mayor Waithman and Orator Hunt. At others, no one excels him in hurling abuse at these same celebrities. During a portion of his career a charmer named Hannah White caused him much trouble. Probably he enjoys the unique honour of being the only Sheriff of London upon whom the Court of Common Council has passed a vote of censure for his conduct while in office.
For some years this great Parkins was a familiar friend of Henry Fauntleroy. “I have been looking out for you in town these three or four days,” the banker writes to him in May 1816, “as we have a dance this evening, and lots of pretty girls, and I know you are an admirer of them.” However, just after the arrest, the ex-Sheriff suspected his former associate unjustly of a breach of faith, and thus became his most deadly enemy, placing his intimate knowledge of his friend’s habits at the service of the hostile press. In order to exhibit the bankers depravity, he published a communication from the fair but frail Corinthian Kate, known in real life as ‘Mother Bang’ but the context chiefly serves to indicate that Parkins treasured a grudge because his friend had never introduced him to the lady. Even after the criminal had received sentence his animosity did not cease. “The penalty for forgery should be the gallows,” he declared at a meeting of the Berners Street creditors, “until the law discovered a worse punishment.” When the only son of the condemned man, a youth of fifteen, wrote to the papers, pleading that mercy should be shown to his father, the vindictive ex-Sheriff declared in the columns of the Morning Chronicle (as it proved, falsely) that the boy was not the author of the appeal. Nor did he scruple to print private letters from Mrs Fauntleroy to her husband in order to show that she was an ill-used wife.