The Chieftain: Victorian True Crime Through The Eyes of a Scotland Yard Detective (44 page)

Kurr was followed into the witness box by Harry Benson. On Saturday 25 August, Benson was in his fourth day of evidence when he also claimed that Clarke was in his pay. When cross-examined he claimed that Clarke had visited Rose Bank on at least three occasions during 1875. In addition, there had been meetings between the two men at the Langham and Westminster Palace hotels, and Benson said that he had given Clarke money on several occasions.
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Many of these comments had been extracted from Kurr and Benson during cross-examination by Meiklejohn’s counsel, Montagu Williams, who brought things to a head when he expressed the hope that it would be possible to cross-examine Clarke on 8 September.
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He explained later, during the subsequent Old Bailey trial, that his strategy for Meiklejohn in the magistrate’s court had been to ensure that Clarke was called as a witness:

… in order that he [Clarke] might have an opportunity of contradicting upon his oath the statements which had been made about him and asserting that they were a tissue of lies from the beginning to the end. If that course had been allowed, the magistrate would have had the alternative of either believing Clarke or the two convicts … Did the jury believe that such a man like Clarke, with his character, antecedents, and the position he had occupied for 35 years, would be guilty of this fraud? Did they believe he would be such a lunatic or candidate for Colney Hatch [lunatic asylum] as to put himself in the power of two such arrant knaves as those who gave their evidence?
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It was a strategy that did Clarke no favours, but it undoubtedly concentrated the minds of the Treasury legal team.

The claims made by Kurr and Benson, and the fact that several aspects of their ‘story’ appeared to be consistent, must have been enormously discomforting to Clarke, regardless of whether they were a fabrication or not. He therefore started to produce reports to rebut the accusations made. Meanwhile, the senior lawyers in government were increasingly concerned. Attorney General Sir John Holker and Solicitor General Sir Hardinge Giffard wrote to the Home Secretary on 29 August expressing their view: ‘We have come to the conclusion that Inspector Clarke ought to be charged along with the men now in custody. We may add that in our view the prosecution which has been instituted would probably be prejudicially affected unless such charge against Clarke is preferred at once.’
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Clearly, the two politicians felt that the charges against Meiklejohn, Druscovich, Palmer and Froggatt would be undermined unless Clarke was also charged, even though any case against Clarke at this stage was based solely on the uncorroborated evidence of two convicted criminals. This caused some disquiet and a measure of support for Clarke in the Home Office. The permanent secretary wrote to the Home Secretary suggesting that it would be better:

to see the whole case of Clarke’s statements before the final step is taken which is a very serious one for Clarke. I infer that the LO’s [Law Officers] have come to their decision upon the Newspaper reports:– which in effect is upon the uncorroborated statements of the convicts. Clarke professes in his statement to explain much of that and particularly the letter [to Walters] about which so much has been said, and I confess it seems fair to me that any thing that he has to say should be considered before the statements of unmitigated rascals uncorroborated should be taken as sufficient to inflict so serious a blow on so old and hitherto so trusted an official as Clarke. For whether he were convicted or discharged the blow would be fatal to him. I have seen Hodgson of the Treasury and he takes the same view.
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By 2 September, Poland and Abrahams were in favour of Clarke’s arrest while Williamson and Pollard were still of the view that Clarke was innocent, though Pollard’s opinion ‘was somewhat shaken on Friday [31 August]’, after Benson had described several meetings between Clarke and himself.
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Meanwhile, Clarke continued to assemble his response to the evidence given by Kurr and Benson, and submitted his final report to the Treasury Solicitor’s office on 7 September.

Arrest of Chief Inspector George Clarke

On the morning of Saturday 8 September, Clarke was arrested by his friend and colleague, Williamson, and suspended from duty without pay. The event became national news:

No subject has been so much talked about this week in London as the arrest of Chief Inspector Clarke. He is a well known and highly respected man, and I have heard more sympathy expressed for him than for the other three detectives put together. Why this should be I cannot say; but that is a fact, I can vouch. The arrest was made by Supt. Williamson, the Chief of the Detective Department, and I suppose he never did this duty more unwillingly in his life. He and Clarke had been neighbours and bosom friends for 29 years; and it is not surprising, under the circumstances, that he should have wept, as I am informed he did, when he told his lieutenant that he must consider himself in custody.
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Whether the increased expectation that Montagu Williams had created – that Clarke would be available for cross-examination on 8 September – was the principal trigger that influenced the timing of his arrest is not certain. It could be that the Treasury had finally made up their mind that there was a case against Clarke that needed to be answered in court. However, the fact that the prosecuting counsel, Harry Poland, was not fully prepared on 8 September to present the case against Clarke (his presentation was delayed until 13 September) suggests a degree of unplanned haste in the final decision to arrest him. Indeed, if Clarke had not been arrested when he was then he would have been eligible to give evidence at the magistrate’s hearing, and the Treasury case against the other prisoners could have been undermined in the way that Montagu Williams was seeking to achieve for his client. Once arrested and charged with the same offence, Clarke could not now give evidence on his own behalf or as a witness.

Immediately after his arrest Clarke found himself in the dock at Bow Street alongside his police colleagues and Froggatt. There was not room to fit them all in, so Froggatt was moved down to the front of the court. There are reports that Palmer and possibly Meiklejohn were in tears when Clarke entered the dock, and the events that morning were quickly captured in courtroom verse:

Clarke’s arrest at the Court was so suddenly planned,

It gives all the prisoners a shock;

But whilst the detectives are moved where they stand,

Mr. Froggatt’s moved out of the dock.
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At the end of the momentous day’s events, Poland did not oppose Clarke’s request for bail, which was granted on total sureties of £1,000.

Clarke’s arrest did not prevent his statement to the Treasury emerging into the public domain, and it soon appeared in the press. The fact that this did not raise any issues of contempt of court suggests either that Clarke released it himself before his arrest or that the Treasury Solicitor’s office, for reasons of their own, arranged for it to be available to the press. The following version was published in the
Hertfordshire Express
and would have been seen by friends and family living in the area where he was born:

I first became acquainted with the associates of these men [Kurr and Benson] in 1871, by complaints being received respecting a betting agency carried on at Myrtle-terrace, Hammersmith, and I ascertained that it was carried on by the man Walters. I obtained evidence, and submitted a report of details to the Treasury. In the result I obtained a warrant and arrested Walters, who pleaded guilty, and was fined £100. In 1872 I ascertained that this man was again carrying on betting. Again I reported to the Treasury. Again obtained a warrant against him. Again arrested him and he was fined £100. I lost sight of him until 1873, when Walters applied for a transfer of the license of the Grapes public house, Red Lion-street, Holborn. I gave evidence to the licensing magistrates of the two convictions, all I then knew of him; and on his counsel (Mr Besley) stating that Walters wanted the house for his mother, who had formerly kept a public house at Kingsclere, Berkshire, and would give up betting, the magistrates granted the transfer. Walters followed me out of the building, and said that he intended to conduct the house in a respectable manner, and that if he could assist me at any time by giving information he would be glad to do so. I never entered his house, and I saw nothing more of Walters until the spring of 1874, when the late Inspector Pay having informed me that there was every reason to believe a burglary with violence at Nayland, Suffolk, had been concocted at Walter’s public house, that one of the men arrested on the charge had had his defence paid for by Walters. I, at Pay’s request that I should see Walters, wrote a letter to Walters asking to meet me. Before sending that letter I submitted it to Superintendent Williamson. I met Walters, who denied all knowledge of the burglary and of the men, who, however, were all arrested, the last exclusively through my exertions.

I heard nothing more of Walters until January 1875, when a betting man named Charles Berkley [sic], together with Daniel Potch [sic] and George Manning, called at Scotland Yard. Berkley stated that his name was being improperly used by some men having offices in the City, and carrying on a betting swindle under the title of ‘The General Assurance Society Against Losses on the Turf’; that the principals in the ‘Society’ were a man named Edwin Murray and William Kurr; that upon Berkley complaining of his name being improperly used, the man named gave him a document holding him harmless, and promised him a sum of money for the use of his name; that by false telegrams and letters he had been induced to meet them at a wine shop in the Holloway-road for the purpose of settling the matter; and that on going there he was invited into a back parlour, where Murray, Walters, Kurr, and four or five others, armed with revolvers, under threats of his life, took the documents he possessed from him. I submitted a report to the Commissioner, and accompanied by Berkley I obtained warrants at Clerkenwell against the men named. I apprehended Murray on the same evening, but Walters and Kurr absconded. The evidence of Berkley and his friends before the magistrate was very confused, and Murray was remanded on bail. I was directed by the magistrate not to execute the other warrants, but to give the parties charged notice to attend on the remand day. I succeeded in arresting Walters on the 18th of February, and used, without success, every endeavour to arrest Kurr. During the remand till the 26th I obtained evidence connecting these men to the fraud (the ‘General Assurance Against Losses on the Turf’). I submitted a report to my superiors, asking for legal aid, and the solicitor of the Treasury obtained warrants at the Mansion House for the arrest of these men. The men in custody at Clerkenwell, Murray and Walters, were discharged, and I re-apprehended them, Kurr still keeping out of the way. They were remanded from time to time until the 27th of April. By that time, by my own exertions, I had obtained a chain of evidence connecting these men and others with the frauds which had been extensively practised in Russia, Germany and France – this evidence being reported verbally and in writing to the solicitors to the Treasury. After the committal for trial an application was made by the late Mr. Justice Archibald to the admission to bail of Walters and Murray. This was granted, though at the time I reported that the men would abscond. I said to Mr. Thomas at the Treasury, ‘I feel sure these men will abscond,’ to which he replied ‘We cannot help it, we cannot resist any longer’.

The men did not appear at the Central Criminal Court, and I found that they had absconded to America. I made inquiries from time to time, and in January, 1876, I was informed that they were in Havre, in France. I reported this to the Commissioner, and at my suggestion my report was forwarded to the French police on January 19th, 1876. The man (convict) Kurr had succeeded in keeping out of the way, but during June 1875, I heard that he was in London, and I had several conversations with Mr. Pollard as to the steps to be taken if he should be found. It was decided that it would not be advisable to apprehend him in the absence of the other two, and I inserted a ‘memo’ in the ‘police information’ to the effect that Kurr was not to be apprehended, but that if found a report was to be made in order that the solicitor might be consulted. No report was received from divisions as to Kurr’s being seen in London. During that autumn (1875), however, I received a letter from Kurr, offering to surrender himself. This I submitted to the Treasury but no steps were taken in this matter.

During the remands of Murray and Walters in 1875 I was made aware that the letter I had written to Walters respecting the burglary, asking him to meet me, had been photographed and copied and put in the hands of counsel for the purpose of making an accusation against my honesty. This was not carried into effect, owing, I believe, to the honest advice given by their counsel, Mr. D. Straight. I felt much annoyed that my letter should be in the hands of this class, and I endeavoured to recover it. Early in 1876, upon going home one evening, my wife handed me the identical letter and a copy of it. These had been left by a man in my absence. I have no doubt now that it was Kurr who left the letter. As soon as I found that this letter was of importance in the inquiry at Bow-street I handed it to Mr. Pollard and by the newspaper reports I see that it is admitted by Mr. Poland that the letter was honest, and written in the interests of justice. It follows, therefore, that the present convicts, wilfully and deliberately contemplated in 1875 making a false charge against me in respect to this very letter.