Читать книгу True Crime Chronicles - Camden Pelham - Страница 62

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THE scheme laid by this man for the purpose of plunder has scarcely ever been equalled in art and consummate hypocrisy. It is to be observed that in the case of every robbery committed, the hundred where it happens, or the county at large, is responsible for the amount of the loss which the injured person in such cases may sustain. In Chandler’s attempt at fraud founded upon this law, he implicated three innocent men, by whom he pretended to have been robbed, and who, had his tale ultimately received credit, might have lost their lives. Happily his plot was frustrated, and the real offender was brought to justice.

William Chandler was the only child of Mr. Thomas Chandler, of Woodborough, near Devizes, a gentleman farmer of moderate means. At an early age the youth was articled to Mr. Banks, who was clerk of the Goldsmiths’ Company; but before two years had elapsed, in consequence of frequent disputes which took place, he was transferred to Mr. Hill, a respectable attorney in Clifford’s Inn. His clerkship being nearly expired, the necessity of providing himself with the means of commencing practice on his own account suggested itself to his mind, and he therefore laid a plan to procure the possession of as much money as he could, and then going a journey into the country, upon some plausible pretence, to trump up a story of being robbed, and sue the hundred for the amount. Upon representations to his father, that he had a good match in view, the old man gave him an estate of the value of 400l.; and then producing the deeds to his master, together with 500l. which he had obtained by other means, but which he represented that he had received from a rich uncle in Suffolk, he procured from him the advance of 500l. more, in order, as he alleged, that he might take a mortgage upon some property at Enford, within a few miles of his father’s house. Mr. Hill demanded some security for his money, and his clerk immediately proposed to give him a mortgage upon his own estate. In order to favour the appearance of the probability of his proceedings, he engaged with a Mrs. Poor, who lived at Enford, in a transaction, having the mortgage of some land which she owned for its object, and the money having been duly advanced by his employer, he fixed the 25th March, 1748, to meet Mrs. Poor to hand over the money and receive the necessary papers. Early on the 24th, having turned most of his cash into small bills, to the amount of 900l., he found, when he came to put these in canvas bags under his garters, where he proposed to carry them for safety, that they made too great a bundle, and therefore he took several of the bills, with some cash, amounting to 440l., and exchanged them at the bank for two notes, one of 400l. and the other of 40l.; the first of which, in his way home, he changed in his master’s name, at Sir Richard Hoare’s, for one note of 200l., and two of 100l. each. On his reaching the office, he told his master that the bank clerks were a little out of humour at the trouble he had already given them, and that he had changed his small notes with a stranger in the bank-hall for the notes which he in reality had received at Sir Richard Hoare’s. Mr. Hill, at Chandler’s request, having then written down the numbers and dates of the several bills, and having seen them safely put up, Chandler took leave of him, and about twelve o’clock set out.

About four o’clock the same afternoon he reached Hare-hatch, distant thirty miles from London, where he stopped to refresh; and about five, just as he had left his inn, he was, as he said, unfortunately met by three bargemen on foot, who, after they had robbed him of his watch and money, took him to a pit close by the road, and there stripped him of all his bank-notes, bound his hands and feet, and left him, threatening to return and shoot him if he made the least noise. In this woful condition, he said, he lay three hours, though the pit was so near the road that not a single horse could pass without his hearing. When night came, however, he jumped, bound as he was, near half a mile, all up hill, till, luckily for his purpose, he met one Avery, a simple shepherd, who cut the cords, and of whom the first question Chandler asked was, where a constable or tything-man lived. Avery conducted him to Richard Kelly’s, the constable’s just by, and with him Mr. Chandler left the notices required by the statutes, with the description of the men who robbed him, so exactly, that a person present remembered three such men to have passed by his house about the very time the robbery was said to have been committed; and the mayor of Reading, who was accidentally on the road, had a similar recollection of the bargemen, whom he had met near Maidenhead thicket, between four and five the same day. Chandler then returned to the inn where he had refreshed, and, after telling his deplorable tale, and acquainting his landlord with his intention of suing the hundred, he ordered a good supper and a bowl of punch, and sat down with as little concern as if nothing had happened.

Next day he returned to London, acquainted his master with the pretended robbery, and requested his assistance. Mr. Hill gave him the memorandum he had of the numbers, dates, and sums of the notes, and sent him to the bank to stop payment; but, instead of that, he went to Mr. Tufley, a silversmith in Cannon Street, bought a silver tankard, and in payment, changed one of the notes for a hundred pounds which he had received the day before at Sir Richard Hoare’s; and on his return to his master, told him the bank did no business that day, on account of the hurry the city was in with regard to a fire in Cornhill, which had happened the night before. He therefore went again the following morning, and when he came back, being asked by Mr. Hill for the paper on which he had taken down the numbers, &c., he said he had left it with the clerks of the bank, who were to stop the notes, but that he had taken an exact copy of it. This, however, was false; for he had reserved Mr. Hill’s copy, and left another at the bank, in which he had so craftily altered the numbers and dates of the three notes he received at Sir Richard Hoare’s, amounting to four hundred pounds, as to prevent their being stopped and Mr. Hill remembering the difference.

On the 26th he inserted a list of his notes, being fifteen in all, with their dates and numbers, in the daily papers, offering a reward of fifty pounds for the recovery of the whole, or in proportion for any part; but on the afternoon of the same day he withdrew his advertisement in all the daily papers, and took his own written copy away at each place. On the 29th of March, he put the notice of the robbery and the description of the robbers in the London Gazette, as the law directs, except that he did not particularize the notes, as he had done in other papers.

On the 12th of May following, he made the proper information before a justice of the peace; but though Mr. Hill, his master, was with him, and had undertaken to manage the cause for him, yet he made the same omission in his information as in his advertisement in the London Gazette.

All things being prepared, on the 18th of July 1748, Chandler’s cause came on at Abingdon, before a special jury; and, after a hearing of twelve hours, the jury retired, and then gave the prosecutor a verdict for nine hundred and seventy pounds, subject, however, to a case reserved for the opinion of the Court of Common Pleas, concerning the sufficiency of the description of the bank-notes in the London Gazette.

In the mean time, Chandler, fearing that by what came out upon the trial he should soon be suspected, and that he might be arrested, obtained a protection from Lord Willoughby de Broke, and gave out that he was removed into Suffolk to reside, as he had before pretended, with his rich uncle; but in reality he retired to Colchester, where his brother-in-law, Humphry Smart, had taken an inn, with whom he entered into copartnership, and never came publicly to London afterwards. He was, however, obliged to correspond with his master, on account of the point of law which was soon to be argued; and, therefore, to obtain his letters without discovering his place of abode, he ordered them to be directed “To Mr. Thomas Chandler, at Easton, in Suffolk, to be left for him at the Crown at Audley, near Colchester.”

Mr. Hill having written several letters to Mr. Chandler, pressing him to come to town (as the Term drew near), and he evading it by trifling excuses, the former began to suspect him, even before the point of law was determined.

Just before this period, twelve of the notes of which Mr. Chandler pretended to have been robbed, were all brought to the bank together, having been bought, October 31, 1748, at Amsterdam, of one John Smith, by Barnard Solomon, a broker there, and by him transmitted to his son, Nathan Solomon, a broker in London. Upon further inquiry, it appeared that John Smith, who sold the notes, staid but a few days in Holland; that he was seen in company with Mr. Casson, a Holland trader, and came over in the packet with him. Mr. Casson was then found, and his description of John Smith answered to the person of Chandler, who was, in consequence, pressed by letter to come to town and face Casson, to remove all suspicion; but he refused.

In the interim, the point of law was argued before the judges of the Common Pleas, when their determination was to the following effect:—“That, as Chandler had not inserted the numbers of his notes in the Gazette, nor sworn to them when he made oath before the justice, the verdict must be set aside and the plaintiff nonsuited, without the advantage of a new trial.”

But now the scene began to open apace; for about this time the very paper which Chandler left when he stopped payment of the notes at the bank, was found; and upon its being seen by Mr. Hill, he at once saw that he had been deceived, and proceeded to take the necessary steps to secure his apprehension. The whole circumstances attending the case were soon traced, upon a minute inspection of the bank books, as contrasted with those of the banking-house of Messrs. Hoare and Co.; and about midsummer 1749, Mr. Hill and others set out for Colchester, with a view of securing the person of the culprit. After a fruitless journey, however, of about a hundred and fifty miles in search of the fugitive, they returned to the very inn at Colchester which was kept by the object of their search, and then departed for London, without gaining any intelligence. Chandler having seen his pursuers, thought it prudent to decamp, and proceeded to Coventry, where he took a small public-house; but being desirous of making some reparation to his late master, he transmitted to him a hundred and fifty pounds by letter from Nottingham. By the post-mark of his letter, he was eventually traced to Coventry, and an indictment for perjury, in respect of the information on oath, which he gave to the magistrates of the robbery, having been found against him, he was taken into custody on a judge’s warrant, and removed to Abingdon, where, on the 22d July, 1750, he was arraigned on the indictment preferred against him. The witnesses being all in attendance, the prisoner traversed his trial until the next assizes, in pursuance of a right which he possessed; but then the facts already detailed having been proved in evidence, he was found guilty, and on the 16th July 1751, he was sentenced to be transported for seven years, having first undergone three months’ imprisonment in the County Jail.