(d) Fauntleroy spent £100,000.
To what extent did Fauntleroy participate in the proceeds of his forgeries?
When Fauntleroy made his famous declaration from the dock, he was endeavouring to refute the extravagant assertion that he had spent a sum of over four hundred thousand pounds in riotous living; and thus, led to the opposite extreme, he made the mistake of attempting to convey an erroneous impression of his frugality. Thus the statement that he had never enjoyed any advantage beyond that in which all his partners had participated seems to hint economy; but as Mr Marsh had overdrawn his loan account by £70,000, the proposition is irrelevant to the argument. Then, again, he confesses that the Brighton villa cost £400, but he is not candid enough to admit the expenses of his other establishments. The stern reality—that a thief cannot justify the expenditure of one pennyworth of stolen property—never entered his mind. Utterly false, however, is his answer to the charges of profligacy—outrageous though they were.
“It has been cruelly asserted,” he declares, “that I fraudulently invested money in the Funds to answer the payment of annuities amounting to £2200 settled upon females. I never did make such investment.”
No single tenet in Father Garnet’s doctrine of equivocation puts greater stress upon the truth. Whoever made the necessary investments—and the forger was shrewd enough not to let the transaction appear in his own name—there is certain evidence that he provided lavishly for his mistress Maria Fox. The lie is merely concealed in subtle language.
“Neither at home nor abroad,” continues Fauntleroy, “have I any investment, nor is there one shilling secretly deposited by me in the hands of any human being.”
Such an assertion goes far beyond the sophistry of the most misguided seventeenth-century Jesuit, for the Commissioners of Bankruptcy were soon to discover that he had squandered thousands on his friend Mrs Disney. His one denial in unequivocal terms is a deliberate falsehood.
“Equally ungenerous and untrue it is,” the forger proceeds, “to charge me with having lent to loose and disorderly persons large sums of money which never have and never will be repaid. I lent no sums but to a very trifling amount, and those were advanced to valued friends.”
No doubt this last declaration had reference to the rumour that he had squandered money upon the notorious Mary Ann Kent, ‘Mother Bang’—who figures as ‘Corinthian Kate’ in Life in London—and its truth or falsehood must depend upon the exact definition of the term ‘large sums’ The criminal who had dealings with huge balance-sheets, naturally had a magnificent sense of proportion.
Fauntleroy’s expenditure.