10. The Sunday Times.
This hardy newspaper (which age cannot wither) condemns the criminal code that makes forgery a capital offence, and charges Messrs Marsh, Stracey and Graham with previous knowledge of their partner’s guilt. On October 10 appeared the famous letter from malignant ex-Sheriff Parkins, complaining that Fauntleroy or his partners had surrendered certain private documents which he had left at their bank in safe custody. In those days the Sunday Times was under the proprietorship of its founder, Daniel Harvey.
11. The Englishman.
A weekly paper, containing reports similar to those in the Observer.
12. Bell’s Weekly Messenger.
The leading article of December 5 expresses the hope that Mr Fauntleroy will be the last person executed for forgery. As a matter of fact the Berners Street frauds postponed this much-desired reform, and the illogical argument of George III. was revived in another shape—“If Dr. Dodd is pardoned, then the Perreaus have been murdered.” Captain John Montgomery would have been hanged on July 4, 1828, for forging bank notes, had he not cheated the gallows by the aid of prussic acid; Joseph Hunton, the Quaker, suffered death at Newgate on December 8 following, for issuing counterfeit bills of exchange; and Thomas Maynard, who had obtained money from the Custom House under a fraudulent warrant, was executed in the same place on the last day of the year 1829. After this date, although the capital penalty was not finally abolished until 1837, no other person was hanged for forgery in this country.
13. Bell’s Weekly Dispatch.
This newspaper, founded in 1801—five years after his Weekly Messenger—by John Bell, the printer of the British Poets, had now become the property of James Harmer the Old Bailey attorney, who was Fauntleroy’s solicitor. The scathing attacks upon Joseph Wilfred Parkins, which appear in this journal on October 3, October 10 and November 14, explain the reason of the ‘XXX Sheriff’s’ animosity towards the unfortunate banker. Some time before the arrest of the forger, Parkins, who had a law-suit pending, requested Fauntleroy to return a certain cheque for £6000 that he had drawn upon his firm a few years previously. The reply was that, as it could not be found, probably it had been destroyed. On the strength of this statement, Parkins swore in the witness-box on September 13, when his action was being tried, that the cheque in dispute had never been presented, but to his amazement and consternation the missing piece of paper was produced in Court. In consequence, he not only lost his case, but was called upon to stand his trial for perjury on December 20 following. By some means or other wily James Harmer, who happened to be solicitor for the defendants against whom Parkins was bringing his action, had discovered the cheque at the Berners Street Bank soon after Fauntleroy’s arrest, and perceiving its importance to his clients, had appropriated it. Naturally, this amusing piece of strategy was not relished by the choleric ex-Sheriff, who cast most of the blame upon the shoulders of the unhappy banker, and pursued him to the death without mercy.
The Weekly Dispatch made a great effort to save the doomed man, and the petition for reprieve which lay at its office received three thousand signatures. The Rev. Cotton, Ordinary of Newgate, comes in for some well-deserved censure for the tone of his ‘Condemned Sermon’
14. Pierce Egan’s Life in London.
This paper, started February 1, 1824, by the creator of Tom and Jerry, gives extracts, copies for the most part from other sources, and similar information to that contained in Pierce Egan’s account.