FAUNTLEROY’S TRIAL AT THE OLD BAILEY.
When Fauntleroy is called upon for his defence, he manages to stagger to his feet. The law of England will not allow his counsel to speak for him. Drawing a paper from his bosom, and wiping away the tears that stream from his eyes, he adjusts his glasses. Then, in a clumsy, insincere manner, like a schoolboy’s recitation, he begins to read a long apology. It is apparent that he has not written the speech himself, and it makes no impression. Commencing with a complaint against the false and libellous accounts in the press, he sketches the history of the Berners Street Bank in order to show that it has received the benefit of the whole of his forgeries; describing how he alone has borne the burden of the business and the anxiety of perilous speculations, while his partners have given him no assistance. All his frauds were accomplished to cover commercial losses, the withdrawal of borrowed capital, and the overdrafts of two of his colleagues. To every one of the charges of prodigality he offers an emphatic denial. In conclusion, he makes a pathetic vindication of his conduct towards his wife, declaring that not only are the statements published in the newspapers false, but that she has had always the best of feeling towards him.
Although just and merciful, the address of the judge is hostile to the prisoner, and the jury, who retire at ten minutes to three, return in less than a quarter of an hour with a verdict of guilty. Exhausted with his long ordeal, poor Fauntleroy is incapable of exhibiting emotion. A vacant expression is stamped on his pallid features, and when Justice Park tells him that the trial is over he sinks listlessly into his chair. Raising him in his arms, Governor Wontner supports him from the dock.
On the following Tuesday, when the convict is brought up to hear his doom in the New Court, Messrs Broderick and Alley move an arrest of judgment on certain technical points of law. Justice Park, who is said to have been acquainted with the prisoner, does not attend, but neither Baron Garrow nor the Recorder will accept the empty but ingenuous arguments of counsel. The prisoner reads a paper, stating that when he committed the forgeries he had expected to repay the money when his house prospered. Thus he begs for mercy from the Crown. Sentence of death is the reply.
After the publication of Fauntleroy’s defence, the press attacks—as no doubt Jaggers Harmer had foreseen—are turned against the unlucky partners. All the statements of the condemned man find acceptance, like the protests of every criminal, and it is believed that his colleagues must be guilty of complicity in the frauds. From The Times comes a demand that Messrs Marsh, Stracey, and Graham shall be examined before the Privy Council! A petition for reprieve is promoted by the creditors of the Berners Street house, on the plea that Fauntleroy’s evidence is necessary to elucidate the intricate accounts. Another lies at the office of Harmer’s paper, the Weekly Dispatch.
Condemned convicts are quartered still, and for many years afterwards, in the part of the prison known as the Press Yard—a walled quadrangle, where they are allowed to herd together indiscriminately during certain hours, adjacent to a three-storied building containing a day-room and the cells in which they are locked at night. Being a person of consequence, the miserable banker does not share this ignominy, but returns to the same apartment that he had occupied before his trial. Since the use of fetters had been abolished in Newgate, he is not required to endure even the ‘light manacles’ which some of the papers state he is wearing.
Remaining faithful to the end, although so deeply wronged, his poor wife is a constant visitor. His brother John, a London solicitor, and his fifteen-year-old son, reported variously as being educated at Winchester and Westminster (afterwards at Skinner’s, Tonbridge), come frequently to the prison. The beautiful Maria Fox, a mere schoolgirl when first she became his mistress, and who appears to be deeply attached to her protector, brings her two baby daughters to Newgate. Few men in their last hours have witnessed more terrible examples of the ruin they have wrought than the weak and self-indulgent Henry Fauntleroy.
Gentle Mr Baker, the white-haired layman of the map office in the Tower, whose work in the foul dungeon was scarcely less admirable than that of Elizabeth Fry, seems to be more successful in winning the affections of the condemned man than Ordinary Cotton; and the efforts of this good Samaritan are aided by a clergyman from Peckham, named Springett, to whom Fauntleroy had been introduced by a friend. These two are his constant companions during the remainder of his imprisonment. Most of his old associates prove loyal, in spite of his infamy and disgrace, for the fearful penalty of the forger is thought to atone for the greatest of frauds.
Meanwhile, exertions for a reprieve continue. The condemned banker is not included in the Recorder’s report on the 20th of November at a meeting of the Council, over which the King is said to have presided, and the case is argued twice before the Judges on the 23rd and 24th of the month. George IV., the only one of the four who was a gentleman, a scholar, or a man of artistic taste, the only one whose foolish egotism did not embroil the country in a costly and bloody war, was also the only one with a merciful heart. His first great fault, for which neither contemporaries nor posterity have forgiven him, was infidelity to a dull, silly, uncleanly wife, whom he was compelled to marry against his will, and who was nothing loth to pay him back in his own coin. His next, that, like the Duke of Wellington and his brother William, he was a lion among the ladies. George IV. is inclined to save Fauntleroy from the scaffold, just as he wished to save all except the murderer.