The Chieftain: Victorian True Crime Through The Eyes of a Scotland Yard Detective (33 page)

At the Old Bailey, the indictments were split between two trials. In the first, all three prisoners were indicted for stealing property from Mr Massey. Once again, Charles Chabot was called as a prosecution witness to confirm that Edwards’ handwriting was the same as that found on the letters written by ‘W.H.’ and ‘C.M.H.’ In Edwards’ case the handwriting evidence was almost the only direct evidence linking him to the theft of documents from Mr Massey. However, as the local and trusted police officer at Gray’s Inn Square, he had easy access to the offices that had been burgled, and his recruitment of family members to assist in the crimes added additional circumstantial evidence. He was found ‘guilty’ as charged. His mother-in-law, Elizabeth Hopkins, was found guilty of receiving, and sentenced to twelve months’ imprisonment. The jury acquitted Sarah Edwards on the advice of the common serjeant that ‘it was to be presumed she was acting under the influence of her husband’. Thus the andro-centric Victorian viewpoint that a married woman had no independent thought or existence beyond that of her husband ensured that Sarah Edwards avoided prison. One assumes that, in the circumstances, she did not object too strongly to this. On the second indictment for stealing from Mr Hall, David Edwards decided to plead guilty and was sentenced to two consecutive terms of five years’ penal servitude for the offences.
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In their later years, several senior lawyers of the mid-Victorian era became increasingly critical of handwriting experts, Montagu Williams being one of them: ‘I never was much of a believer in experts in handwriting. I have examined and more frequently cross-examined, Chabot, Nethercliffe, and all the experts of the day, and have nearly always caught them tripping. In fact, in my opinion they are utterly unreliable.’
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Nonetheless, Clarke had once more helped secure a conviction and he was ‘highly commended by the Common Serjeant … for the intelligence and judgement shewn’.
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The General Society for Assurance against Losses on the Turf

At 2 a.m. on the morning of 15 February 1874, four men armed with revolvers attempted to break into Stannard’s Mill at Nayland near Colchester, only to find that the mill was occupied by Mr Stannard, his two sons and foreman. There was a skirmish, during which one of the burglars was arrested at the spot, but the others escaped and were believed to have headed to London. In view of the seriousness of the attempted armed robbery and the London connection, Scotland Yard was drawn into the enquiries; Inspector Pay of the detective department was given charge of the case.
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During Pay’s investigations, information emerged to suggest that the burglary had been planned at The Grapes, at Red Lion Square, Holborn. The youthful publican there, William Henry Walters, had been known to Clarke since 1871 as a betting man and he had already arrested Walters twice for betting offences.
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Walters had previously offered to act as an informant and, with Williamson’s agreement, Clarke sent Walters an unsigned letter to arrange a meeting. The letter was to assume great significance later:

Westminster April 4, 1874

Sir, I should be glad if you could make it convenient to call at my house from eight to nine p.m. this day. Very important. Don’t show this or bring anyone with you. If you cannot come I will be at Charing Cross Station at twelve noon tomorrow.
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The lack of detail in the letter indicates that the two men had met previously, that Walters would have known who had sent the letter and knew where Clarke lived. In 1874 Walters proved to have no useful information on the Stannard’s Mill case, but Clarke would soon be pursuing Walters for other reasons: a fraudulent betting scheme which went beyond anything that Clarke had encountered before.

Towards the end of 1874, large advertisements started appearing in national and provincial newspapers in Russia and several European countries for a ‘General Society for Assurance against Losses on the Turf’. The advertisements promoted the idea that the way to make money on horse racing was to bet on runners at the smaller race meetings in Britain, and that investors would be guaranteed a high return if they placed their bets through the Society offices. The advertisements claimed that the system was guaranteed to beat the book and promised to pay £1,000 to anyone who could prove that an investor in the Society had incurred any loss. The advertisements also highlighted that the Society had a substantial number of influential and titled office holders as directors. Individuals were invited to send their remittances to named offices in London: William Osborne and Co., Sidney Clarke and Co. and S. Montague and Co. However, the originators of the scheme had no intention of fulfilling their promises by returning any ‘winnings’, because the offices were a front for a fraudulent operation that relied on significant ignorance of the British horse-racing scene and hence was focused on gullible foreigners.

The Society started to receive money from overseas clients in October. During December, some of the ‘directors’ of the Society raised their concerns; they claimed to have known nothing of their apparent involvement in the scheme. By late December the post office had also become suspicious of the three offices, which were usually unmanned. As a consequence postal deliveries were stopped and the police were alerted. The
Daily Telegraph,
suspecting fraud, commented in a December editorial: ‘… is it not high time for the Metropolitan Police to make active enquiries respecting Mr William Osborne?’
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As the Scotland Yard expert on betting cases, Clarke was the obvious choice to lead the enquiries. How soon he was involved is not entirely clear, but by 11 February Clarke had arrested William Henry Walters, 24, and Edward Murray, 30 (aka Edwin Murray).
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The initial charge on the arrest warrant was not for committing fraud, but for assaulting Daniel Portch, a friend of Captain Henry Berkeley who was one of the named directors of the Society. During several magistrate’s hearings at Clerkenwell Police Court in February and March 1875, the link between the assault charge and the ‘turf fraud’ became clear.

As investigations got underway, it emerged that Captain Berkeley (a member of the betting club Tattersalls) and William Walters had been previously known to each other through horse-racing connections. Indeed, Walters had come to Berkeley’s aid with a loan to help him recover his membership of Tattersalls after Berkeley had been thrown out for defaulting on bets. In all probability, Berkeley had knowingly agreed to participate as a director in the turf fraud, but had felt obliged to deny this (albeit belatedly) when the
Daily Telegraph
started to expose the fraud in December 1874. If so, what followed later was effectively a falling out between thieves.

Berkeley, after publicly denying that he had any involvement with the Society, had written to Walters seeking compensation for the ‘injuries he had sustained’ by his apparent association with the fraud. In response, Walters had sent Berkeley some letters which he had unwisely signed, in his own handwriting, as ‘W. Osborne’. Berkeley decided to use these letters against Walters to try to negotiate financial compensation, suspecting that Walters must have raised substantial sums of money from the fraud. Certainly Walters was already living in style, having rented a large property, and was seen driving around in a carriage and pair; the carriage having armorial bearings and the motto
Qualis ab incepto
(’the same as from the beginning’) – rather apt for a villain who started young and continued in the same vein.
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When attempts to obtain financial compensation from Walters had not achieved resolution, Berkeley, together with two of his friends, Manning and Portch, fixed a meeting with Walters through Walters’ partner in crime, Murray. Murray took them to a property in the Holloway Road where they found Walters and a man named Kerr. Berkeley later gave an account in court of what followed:

Portch began reading the letters, upon which Walters said those were the ones he had wanted. The door was then opened by Kerr, and four or five ‘roughs’ came in, from the upper part of the house and seized Portch, threw him down on his back on a sofa, and after seizing him by the throat, took the letters from him. Portch was a stout man and he became very black in the face. The door had been previously locked on the inside by Kerr. Witness [Berkeley] was pushed back in a chair. After the papers had been taken from Portch it was suggested that Walters should go out and see if they were those he had wanted. He went out and, returning, said they were ‘all right’. Manning was seized and some papers were taken from him and thrown into the fire. Witness was searched by Murray who took from him a batch of documents and threw them into the fire. Before that he had asked witness if any of the papers referred to Walters. Witness said they did, and it was then Murray took them and threw them on the fire. One was a legal document, which witness, by the advice of his solicitor, had submitted to Mr. Montagu Williams. Then they made witness sit down and sign a paper which Walters had dictated. In that, witness was made to apologize for stating that he had any papers seized by Walters relating to betting transactions either in London or elsewhere. Immediately after witness had signed the document, the men who had come from upstairs, with Walters and Kerr, left the place. Walters had previously said that theirs ‘was a very hot mob’ and that he had done better jobs than that in America. Murray pulled out a handful of notes and said to witness he had better have a ‘fiver’. Witness declined, upon which Manning signified to him that he had better take it. Witness afterwards went with Portch and Manning to consult his solicitor.
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These events had led to the arrest of Walters and Murray by Clarke, on a charge of assault. There were four other men named in the arrest warrant but Clarke had not been able to locate them.
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One of these was Kerr who, though not yet arrested, soon had a representative in court watching the case on his behalf. By 2 March the Home Office was showing close interest and confirmed that the Treasury Solicitor would take over the prosecution which now included an additional charge of conspiracy to defraud.
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After due deliberation, the Clerkenwell magistrate informed the court that he felt that the case for assault had not been ‘made’, probably because suspicion was attached to aspects of the evidence given by Berkeley and Portch. Anticipating these events, Clarke and a colleague were waiting outside the court when Walters and Murray were released, and the two men were re-arrested, this time on a warrant issued in the City charging them with defrauding persons in France, Germany and Russia.
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On Saturday 6 March, Clarke and Harry Poland were rushing from one courtroom to another. For part of the day they were at Lambeth Police Court presenting prosecution evidence in a betting house case in Southwark. The rest of the day was spent at the Mansion House, before the lord mayor. By now Scotland Yard had assembled evidence of the turf fraud against Walters and Murray which Clarke presented. At least four detectives from the detective department were working on the case, including those with foreign language skills such as George Greenham. Several witnesses were called who had let office accommodation to Walters and Murray, with one female witness stating that she thought that at least seven men had been involved to her knowledge. The prisoners were remanded without bail. At later hearings during March and April, Berkeley was again called to give evidence, as were other ‘directors’ who had been listed on the advertisements, all of whom denied knowledge of, or involvement in, the scheme. Representatives of the postal authorities and parcels agency who had delivered items to the suspect offices were also called. Fifty-eight packages that had been detained in December 1874 were opened in court; all were found to be from Russia and contained remittances of money. By the conclusion of the prosecution evidence the Treasury authorities estimated that upwards of £16,000 had been received from abroad in response to the advertisements.
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On 11 April Clarke received a visit at his home from a London-based accountant, Mr Frederick Andrews, who informed Clarke that a business colleague in Shanklin, Mr George Yonge, could give some information about the turf fraud. Waiving Andrews’ offer of travel expenses, Clarke decided to travel down to see Yonge the following day, after first clearing the visit with Superintendent Williamson. Arriving in the evening, Clarke interviewed Yonge and also breakfasted with him the following day before returning to London. Yonge was a cripple, apparently from injuries received in a railway accident, and could only walk small distances with the aid of two sticks; though being of slight build he was frequently carried about by his manservant. During their discussions, Yonge admitted that he had been indirectly involved with Walters and Murray, having translated a prospectus for them but, as he was a cripple, he would appreciate Clarke’s help to make it unnecessary for him to have to travel to court, adding that he could provide Clarke with £100 if that would help. Spurning the offer of money, Clarke returned to London and reported to Williamson that he had seen Yonge, who he regarded as an ‘infernal scoundrel’, but who might be able to help in the Walters and Murray case.
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