Tag: burglary

Ask a silly question…

Henry Champion made it his business to always check his employer’s premises on a Sunday afternoon. He was employed as housekeeper to a Mr Wilkinson, jeweller, whose shop was at number 3 St Michael’s Alley, Cornhill in the City of London.

On Sunday 22 March 1874 Champion had entered the shop and quickly discovered a large hole had been cut – about 13 inches square – through to the property next door which was owned by a boot maker. Alarmed, the housekeeper ran off to fetch a City policeman.

A detective and several officers arrived and after shedding his heavy uniform coat, one of them managed to squeeze his way through the hole. Meanwhile the remaining police secured the property so no one could escape.

PC Morris Pocock found two men hiding in the shop. The first gave up quickly promising to ‘go quietly’, while the other, when asked what he was doing there responded with a weary:

‘Why you can see we are thieves. Why do you ask that question?’

The burglars were arrested and brought before the Lord Mayor, sitting as magistrate at Mansion House on the Monday morning. Neither of the would be thieves were British; Antonio Purnas gave his home as Brussels, Belgium while Frederick Bucaster was from Frankfort-on-Maine.

The police has discovered all sorts of burglary tools – a jemmy, saws, and a dark lantern – and it appears that the men had broken into the property on Saturday night, with the intention of plundering the jewellers. They had decided to lie low and leave on Sunday under cover of darkness, not expecting Henry Champion to undertake a security check.

They’d not even started stealing Mr Wilkinson’s goods, as the police found nothing missing and very little disturbed. The Lord Mayor remanded them in custody for seven days so the case against them could be properly investigated.

They were back in court a week alter and now their names had changed (or, more likely, clarified) – to Frederick Dagosta and Antonio Dumas, both aged 30. Inspector Tilcock of the City police told the court his men had been unable to work out exactly how the pair had got into the shop in the first place, and added that his officers had previously warned both the boot maker (a Mr Hums) and Mr Wilkinson about their lax security. Perhaps that was why Henry Champion was so adamant about carrying out his weekly checks; he certainly earned his money that weekend.

At the Central Criminal Court, Old Bailey, on 8 April 1874 the men pleaded guilty to breaking and entering and were each sentenced to 18 months imprisonment.

[Morning Post, Tuesday 24 March, 1874; Morning Post, Wednesday 1 April, 1874; https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/record/t18740407%5D

Teenagers in church, but not for the sake of their souls

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Police constable William Gearing (86B) was on his beat in Horseferry Road when he noticed two things that were suspicious. First, a lamp in the street had been extinguished, something he associated with criminals operating under cover of darkness.

The second was that there was a light flickering in the nearby Roman Catholic chapel. Given that it was 11.45 at night he assumed that the priest was not taking a late service or communion and decided to investigate.

The gate of the chapel was open but when he tried the door itself it was locked. He somehow found the keys and entered the building. Two men were in the chapel and they panicked, rushing up into the gallery to hide. PC Gearing went outside to call for help and as soon as another officer arrived they managed to secure the two intruders.

Once the pair –Joseph Isaacs and John Mason – had been locked up back at the nearest police station house, PC Gearing returned to the chapel to investigate. There he found evidence that the men had been trying to rob the place: several drawers were opened and a cupboard in the sacristy had been forced. He also found some of the church’s silver placed wrapped up in a large handkerchief ready to be taken away. The final clue was a portion of recently lighted candle and some false keys, both essential ‘calling cards’ of the nineteenth-century burglar.

He carried on his enquires and discovered that the chapel had been securely locked the evening before so the men had to have picked the lock (or used their false keys) to enter. In court at Westminster one of the duo, Isaacs, said they’d found the keys in the sacristy cupboard but couldn’t account for why they were in the chapel in the first place. Mason, probably wisely, said nothing at all.

Mr Paynter wanted to know if the men had previous form for burglary. The police told him that Isaacs had served time for highway robbery while Mason had been imprisoned for three months under a different name, for theft. The magistrate duly committed them to take their chances with an Old Bailey jury.

On the 24 November 1856, less than a week after the Westminster hearing, the pair appeared at the Central Criminal Court and pleaded guilty to simple larceny, a lesser offence than breaking and entering. They were only youngsters, both just 17 years of age. Isaacs got four years, his companion 12 months.

According to the Digital Panopticon neither lad repeated their offences (or at least were not recorded as being caught for anything after 1856). Joseph lived until he was 63, dying in 1902. John Mason was not so fortunate, he died in 1870, at the young age of 31. He was buried in St Pancras.

[from The Morning Chronicle, Wednesday, November 19, 1856]

A sharp eyed passer-by foils a burglary

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Mrs Isabel James was on her way home wither husband one Sunday night in November 1886. It was late, around midnight, and she was passing a warehouse on Bethnal Green Road when she noticed something that didn’t seem right.

A pony and cart was parked outside the warehouse, partly obscuring the door to the premises. As she looked she saw a man standing between the cart and the door and another, stopped over, who seemed to be fiddling with the lock. The standing man started straight at her, so she got a good look at him. He looked like he was trying to hide ‘as much as possible the movements of his companion’ so she told her husband that they should report it to the police.

As soon as they found a constable they explained what they’d seen and he, with another officer, went off to investigate. On reaching the warehouse they saw a man in the cart, who, seeing two policemen arriving raised the alarm and the pair of would-be burglars raced off as fast as the pony and cart could carry them, with the policemen in hot pursuit.

The chase continued through several back streets but by the time the officers caught up with the vehicle the men had escaped. However, Mrs James was able to give such a clear description of the man she’d eyeballed that it led to the arrest and charging of John Bloxham on suspicion.

His name had come up when the owner of the cart had come to claim it from the police. He explained he lent it to Bloxham (although he had no idea he was going to use it was such a nefarious purpose) and the police had their lead. They arranged an identity parade and Mrs James picked Bloxham out.

At the Worship Police court Bloxham, a 32 year old general dealer from Shoreditch, denied the crime. Mr Bushby was told that when the police investigated the warehouse (which was owned by a boot and shore manufacturer named Samuel Lyon) they had discovered that a ‘very determined effort had been made to force the door with a jemmy’. The lock had been broken although it wasn’t clear if the thieves had gained access of taken anything. At this stage Mr Bushby simply agreed to the police’s request to remand Bloxham while further enquiries were made.

The enquiries were made and Bloxham was formally charged with housebreaking and tried at the Middlesex quarter sessions on 6 December. There was insufficient evidence however, and he was cleared of the crime.

[from The Standard, Wednesday, November 17, 1886]

An unwanted ‘guest’ under a Whitechapel grocer’s bed

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Harris Rosenthorn ran a small grocer’s shop on Plummer’s Row, Whitechapel. For a few days he’d noticed a young immigrant loitering nearby and suspected he was up to no good. Then, on Thursday 2 November 1893 the lad had come into the shop and bought some butter. From his accent Mr Rosenthorn determined that the teenager was probably a Russian Pole, one of many in the East End.

At around 9.30 the grocer went upstairs to the second floor and into one of the bedrooms. The candle lighting the room had just gone out and worried, Rosenthorn lit another. He soon found the strange young man hiding under the bed. The lad crawled out and, before the shopkeeper could stop him, he pushed past and down the stairs.

He ran straight into one of the Rosenthorns’ servants, who, alerted by her master’s cries of alarm, tried to tackle him. She was punched in the chest and pushed to the floor and the man got away.

He didn’t get far however, soon several neighbours were after him and overpowered the burglar a few streets away. As he ran he dropped a chisel he’d been carrying, either to use as a jemmy or a weapon. His captors handed him over to the police and on Friday 3 November he appeared before Mr Dickinson at the Thames Police court.

The young man gave his name as Max Landay. He was just 17 years of age and under the powers bestowed on magistrates by the summary jurisdictions acts of the 1800s the justice decided to deal with him without recourse to a jury trial. Max was sent to prison for six months with hard labour.

[from The Standard, Saturday, November 04, 1893]

The uninvited guest who was under the bed

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We’ve all heard strange noises at night and wondered if an intruder is in the house. Mostly it is the wind, or mice, or our imagination, but, just occasionally, it might actually be a burglar.

One young lady in a City pub near the Mansion House was convinced that there was someone in the room upstairs. She was in the first floor kitchen and was sure that someone (or something) was moving in the floor above so she went to investigate.

She knew no one was supposed to in any of the upstairs guest bedrooms since none had been let so she proceeded with caution. As she entered one room there was nobody there but she heard a  ‘slight rustling’. She said nothing but as she looked down she saw a man’s arm sticking out from under the bed.

The young woman now left the room, locking the door behind her and removing the key, and headed downstairs. Without saying anything to anyone she went out on the street and found a policeman. Having been appraised of the situation the officer took the key and went up to the room.

First the policeman knocked the door and announced himself. The intruder now came out and tried to leave. Finding the door locked he began knocking to be let out. The bobby opened the door and asked him his business. The man – who name was Samuel Sale – claimed that it was all a mistake, that he’d ended up in the room by accident and had got locked in. When he’d heard people in the house he had hidden under the bed for fear of being taken for a thief. He gave the policeman a false address and said he had gone upstairs instead of downstairs after being misdirected by a waiter in the house.

The policeman believed none of this and took him into custody. He was brought before Alderman GIbbs at Mansion House police court on the following day. There the magistrate listened to the prisoner’s version of events (it was all a mistake, he had no intention to intrude let alone steal anything) before asking him why he had given a false address.

‘The officer mistook me’, Sale replied. In other words the policeman had taken the address down incorrectly.

‘Then we are all in a mistake’, the alderman declared.

‘You mistook the bedchamber, the officer mistook another address for your address, and I mistake you for a thief who had an intention to rob this house’.

After the laughter that this caused had subsided he went on:

‘The young lady has acted with a great deal of presence of mind and prudence in completing the business without terrifying her mother, and you shall go to Bridewell for three calendar months with hard labour’.

With that the unfortunate man was led away to start his sentence.

[from Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, Sunday, October 27, 1850]

‘Another Whitechapel outrage’ in Berner Street

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The panic over the Whitechapel (or ‘Jack the Ripper’) murders were really beginning to set in by the second week of September 1888. Martha Tabram, Polly Nicholls and Annie Chapman had all been murdered in the past few weeks. Annie was found in the back yard of 29 Hanbury Street in the early hours of Saturday 8 September, and crowds soon gathered to watch the police investigation unfold.

On the 10th William Seaman, a local builder, was accused of attempted murder at the Thames Police court.  Charles McCarthy testified that he had been walking along Ellen Street at about midnight on Saturday when he’d heard a scream. It seemed to be coming from Berner Street and he hurried off in that direction.

There was a chemist’s shop at number 82 and McCarthy found the chemist, John Simkin, his beard covered in blood, slumped over his counter. A hammer was on the counter and Seaman was standing nearby. The elderly chemist was hurt but still alive and conscious. He told McCarthy ‘here is the hammer he hit me with’ and handed it to him.

Seaman made no attempt to run away and when the police arrived he was taken quietly into custody. Constable 85H deposed that when he arrested Seaman his prisoner declared: ‘I shan’t tell you what I did it for, but I will tell the magistrate’. The man had been drinking he added. Since John Simkin was bedridden and recovering from his injuries the justice, Mr Saunders, remanded Seaman in custody while enquiries continued.

The chemist didn’t recover sufficiently until early October and so Seaman remained in custody till then. On Sunday 7 October Reynold’s carried areport of his committal for trial. The senior investigating officer was Inspector Thresher of H Division (who presumably wasn’t otherwise busy with the ‘Ripper’ case). Simkin testified that Seaman had entered his shop and asked to purchase some alum and zinc. While the chemist sorted the order hit him twice with the hammer, for no obvious reason. Having promised to explain his actions the accused chose now to keep silence and was fully committed for trial at the Old Bailey.

He appeared there on the 26 October 1888 and all he would say in his defense was that he’d been drinking. The jury convicted him of grievous bodily harm (rather than the more serious offence of attempted murder). The court was told he had a previous conviction for burglary – a sentence of 14 years  – and so the judge now sent him away for a further seven years of penal servitude.

By then Whitechapel was in full ‘Ripper panic’ mode. On the 30 September, a few weeks after the incident Liz Stride had been found dead in Berner Street, just yards away from Mr Simkin’s chemist’s shop. An hour later Catherrine Eddowes was brutally murdered in Mitre Square. The pair of murders have been dubbed the ‘double event’ after the Central News agency received a handwritten letter and then a follow up postcard from someone purporting to be the killer. The postcard read:

I was not codding dear old Boss when I gave you the tip, you’ll hear about Saucy Jacky’s work tomorrow double event this time number one squealed a bit couldn’t finish straight off. had not the time to get ears for police. thanks for keeping last letter back till I got to work again.

It was signed ‘Jack the Ripper’.

[from The Morning Post, Tuesday, September 11, 1888; Reynolds’s Newspaper , Sunday, October 7, 1888; The Morning Post, Saturday, October 27, 1888]

Drew’s new book (co-authored by Andy Wise) is published by Amberley Books. It is a new study of the Whitechapel murders of 1888 which offers up a new suspect, links the ‘Jack the Ripper’ killings to the unsolved ‘Thames Torso’ crimes, and provides the reader with important contextual history of Victorian London. The book is available on Amazon and other bookshops 

‘Rough justice’ is meted out by Mr Sainsbury

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Samuel Sainsbury was a 45 year-old carman – the late nineteenth-century equivalent of the modern ‘white van man’. I think it is fair to say that he was a man who took no nonsense from anyone and was quite prepared to defend himself and use controlled violence to do so.

So it was unfortunate that William Parris had decided to date Sainsbury’s daughter. Parris was a young plasterer but he also belonged to a gang of  ‘roughs’ (soon to termed ‘hooligans’ by the press of the day) and so was hardly deemed a suitable candidate by the girl’s father. Neverthless William persisted and attempted to get Miss Sainsbury to see him by sending a message with a marriage proposal. When she realised that his attentions did not run quite that far she upped and left and returned home to her father.

A more sensible young man would have licked his emotional wounds and reminded himself that there were plenty of other fishes in the sea. Not William Parris however. He spoke to his mates, and set off at night to make the Sainsburys pay for the rejection.

Parris and a number of others gathered outside the Sainsbury home at Down’s Buildings in Southwark. They had been drinking and only left the pub when the landlord closed up for the night. They knocked loudly on the front door, warning the residents that they had come to ‘lay out’ the Sainsbury family. No one answered so they went around to the back of the house and climbed over a six-foot wall.

Parris and lad named Magner reached the back door and forced it open. As they began to climb the stairs Samuel Sainsbury heard them and got up, alerting his son. Both readied themselves to repel the intruder but neither were dressed, Samuel was barefoot in his trousers and shirt, his son was just wearing a long nightshirt.

Samuel saw Magner and knocked him backwards down the stairs then, seizing a hammer, he went for Parris and the rest of the gang who crowded at the foot of the stairs by the door. He raised the weapon and struck Parris and then the recovering Magner. The rest of the gang fled as fast as their legs could carry them, scrambling to get over the wall and away from Mr Sainsbury’s wrath.

The police arrived but arrested Sainsbury, taking Parris and Magner to hospital to have their wounds dressed. It took a few weeks before the trio was reunited at Southwark Police court where the father was charged with assault.

Mr Kennedy, the sitting justice, was told that Parris had a previous conviction for wounding Mr Sainsbury and one for an assault on tram conductor. The police knew Magner and several other members of the gang. The magistrate declared that the youths had brought their injuries on themselves and he granted warrants to arrest Parris, Magner and several other lads on a charge of causing a riot outside the Sainsburys’ home. As for Samuel, he discharged him and he left court with his reputation significantly enhanced.

[from The Standard, Friday, August 19, 1898]

‘Nobody could say any good of him’: A stateless German at Bow Street

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Map of Prussia and the German States in 1862 (nine years before Unification)

Mrs Lavinia Roberts lived with her husband above his photographer’s studio in Charing Cross. One evening in August 1862 she went upstairs to their bedroom around 7 or 8 o’clock. To her horror a man was in the room, rifling through her drawers. Clothing was strewn all over the floor and he was holding some of her jewelry in his hands.  She demanded to know what he was doing there.

‘Ich spreche kein Englisch. Ich verstehe nicht’, he replied.

Mrs Roberts knew just enough German to make sense of this. The burglar didn’t speak English and so couldn’t understand what she’d said.

He understood that he’d been discovered though and was now in trouble and he fled. Lavinia followed him downstairs and called for a policeman. Another resident of the house heard the commotion and came out of a room and helped restrain the unwanted visitor. When the police arrived – in the person of PC Killick  (511A) the German thief was escorted to the nearest police station and charged with attempted burglary.

The man’s name was Fritz Tuell and he said he was from Prussia. Fortunately A Division had a German born officer on the strength – PC Reimers (595A) – and he was able to translate for the prisoner. When the case came before Mr Henry at Bow Street Police court the next day PC Reimers explained that Tuell was fairly recently arrived from Prussia.

After Mrs Roberts had described the events that night as she experienced them PC Killick deposed that he found a bracelet, chain and a French coin dropped just close to where the gentleman was detaining Tuell on the stairs.  All of this was translated so the German could understand and he was asked if he wished to cross-examine either of the witnesses. He did not and admitted stealing the items in question, which were valued in total at over £5.

Tuell now spoke (via PC Reimers) to explain that he was a nail maker who had arrived in London 10 days earlier. He’d not had any work in Prussia or Germany for the past three years and had moved around that country, going from place to place (presumably seeking work). He had come to England when his options seemed to have run out there.

Mr Henry asked to see his passport but Tuell didn’t have one. That was odd the magistrate said, why was this?

‘He has sold it’, Reimer told him. Apparently it was common practice for foreigners to sell their passports to someone who wanted to travel back to the continent but had lost (or sold) their own.

‘There are a good many foreign thieves in this country’ he explained; ‘and when one of wants to go to his own country he buys a passport from some one newly arrived – taking care that the description answers. He then returns to his own country, and pretends he has only been in England a few days, and that the passport is his own’.

He added that he wasn’t sure that this is what Tuell had done, nor was he suggesting he was a bad character with any previous convictions; it was just that he was aware ‘that there is such a system’.

It was news to Mr Henry and he was clearly disturbed to find it out. It added to his conviction that the Prussian nail maker should stand trial in London for his attempted theft and not be dealt with summarily – which was the man’s preference  and the reason he’d confessed so readily.  Having said that he intended to indict Tuell Mr Roberts piped up, saying that it would be inconvenient for him to attend a trial as he was travelling abroad very soon. That was ok, the justice said, it was his wife’s testimony that was required. Unfortunately Mrs Roberts was going with her husband he was told.

‘Really the case must go for trial’, Mr Henry insisted, ‘it is much too important to be dealt with summarily’.

Tuell had broken into a house and raided a bedroom, despite only arriving in London a few days earlier. It was a ‘daring’ robbery attempt and would have to be judged before the sessions because that court could hand down a much stuffer sentence.

He then concluded by asking PC Reimer to explain to the prisoner that he could send to Germany for character witnesses to support him in court. The prisoner looked just as dismayed as he had for the whole of the proceedings and responded to the policeman in his own language.  Translating Reimer said ‘nobody could say any good of him’, and he was taken down to wait for his trial.

[from The Morning Post, Thursday, August 07, 1862]

An extraordinary tale of the escaped convict who panned for Australian gold

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On Saturday 20 July 1867 the dock at Lambeth Police court was occupied by a ‘miserably-attired man’ of about 40 years of age. Thomas Nugent, of no fixed abode, was charged with having escaped from the penal colony at Van Diemen’s Land 15 years earlier.

PC Waghorn (101L) said that Nugent had walked into the Kennington Lane Police station to give himself up. He was, he declared to the desk sergeant, ‘without home or friends and perfectly destitute’. He felt he had no other option that to surrender to justice.

Nugent explained that he had been convicted of committing at burglary in Manchester and sentenced to ten years transportation at the assizes held for Kirkdale, Lancashire. He’d gone to Norfolk Island, a notorious penal settlement, but escaped during a mutiny there. For a time he’d found work prospecting in the Australian gold rush and earned enough money to buy his passage back to England. He stayed with his father, a navy pensioner, at Greenwich, before enlisting in the army.

He served in the 64thfoot in Persia (modern Iran) and during the Indian war of independence (or ‘Mutiny’) of 1857. He was discharged with a small pension after suffering a series of injures and being declared unfit. Since then he’d found work on the docks but it was back breaking and his body couldn’t cope with it.  As a result he was forced onto the streets to fend for himself as best he could.

It was an extraordinary story, as the newspaper report stated, and the magistrate was keen to discover whether it was a fantasy or not. He remanded Nugent in custody and requested the police and clerk to very the man’s tale.  At least in the meantime he’d get food, a bed and shelter for a few days.

It seems he was telling the truth, at least about his transportation, or at least in part. The Digital Panopticon reveals that in August 1843 a Thomas Nugent was convicted at Lancaster of a burglary. He had one previous conviction for ‘offences against property’. Nugent arrived in Norfolk Island in May 1846 but absconded in July 1849. He was caught, but ran away several more times before he disappears from the records in 1850. So while he got his dates wrong it is possible, likely even, that this was the same Thomas Nugent. By 1867 transportation to Australia had all but ended so perhaps now he felt safe in handing himself in.

[from The Standard, Monday, July 22, 1867]