Tag: insurance

A wary theatre man avoids the ‘dippers’ and H H Holmes is linked to London

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Distraction theft is still one of the commonest forms committed by pickpockets in London. There are frequent warnings on the underground of ‘thieves operating’ and crowded areas like Oxford Street, Camden Town and Covent Garden are happy hunting grounds for ‘dippers’. If someone stops and asks you the time, says they know you from somewhere, or points out that you’ve dropped something – maybe even just brushes against you in the street and apologies – check your pockets!

Edward Walpole was pretty clued up and had his wits about him as he strolled along Shaftesbury Avenue one morning in July 1894. The concert agent lived in Pimlico and was presumably in the West End for work. He knew the area, was no stranger and certainly no wide-eyed tourist.

Two men approached him and one of them started to talk to him. ‘We’ve met before’, he said, ‘in Chicago, at the exhibition’. Walpole had never seen the pair before in his life, and had never been to the USA. He was suspicious, and uncomfortable as one of the men had got very close to him.

He looked down and saw that the chain of his watch was hanging loose from his waistcoat pocket and the watch itself was in the other man’s hand. As soon as they realized they’d been rumbled the other man told his companion to give Walpole his watch back and began to move away.

Edward seized the thief and the two of them struggled, falling to the pavement in the process. The fracas alerted a policeman and having ascertained that a theft had been attempted he arrested the stranger. The man gave his name as Henry Saunders but he was also known to the police as Henry Reginald Mason. He was charged before Mr Hannay at Marlborough Street Police court and sentenced to a month’s imprisonment.

The Chicago Exhibition that the men mentioned was the World Fair (or the ‘World’s Columbian Exposition’) that took place in 1893 and drew people from all over the globe to Illinois. Many locals profited from this influx of business but one man allegedly, exploited the event for a much darker purpose. Dr Henry Howard Holmes (or HH as he is almost always referred to) had built a hotel to accommodate gests for the fair but rumours soon circulated that several individuals, mostly women, had disappeared whilst staying there (although he never traded as a hotelier). HHH

Holmes (right) was a serial fraudster, coming money out of businesses and making false insurance claims and eventually when the going got too hot he quit Chicago. He was tracked down to the east coast where it was suspected he’d killed his business partner Benjamin Pitezel for the insurance money.  Meanwhile agents operating on behalf of companies Holmes had defrauded searched the hotel in Chicago. The property was very odd, with secret passageways, trap doors and windowless rooms.

Holmes was convicted of the murder of Pitezel and admitted killing many more (some of which were false claims, as the people concerned were still alive!). The hotel (dubbed ‘the castle by locals) was searched more thoroughly and human remains were found there. HH Holmes was executed in 1896 and remains a mysterious figure and possibly America’s first serial killer. Indeed, some people have suggested that he might have come to London to commit the Whitechapel murders, but having studied that case I think it unlikely. In fact if you want to know who I believe was ‘Jack the Ripper’ you might find my latest book interesting. Holmes, however, will form a small part of my next one.

[from The Illustrated Police News, Saturday, July 21, 1894]

A family day out at the races ends in court

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It was a Friday evening in early June 1876 and Henry Stokes and his wife and son were coming home from a day out at the races. As they family rode in their cart along the Balham Road in south London another vehicle – a wagonette – was, unbeknown to the Stokes, careering towards them.

Police constable Hill had seen the wagonette (literally, a small sprung wagon, drawn by one or two horses) and realized it was going too fast. London’s streets were pretty crowded in the nineteenth century and all sorts of users could be found on them. There were tens of thousands of horse drawn carts, coaches, hansoms and carriages, as well as omnibus, trams, pedestrians, horse riders, and the occasional.

PC Hill shouted a warning to the driver of the wagonette to slow down and ‘be more careful’ but he was ignored. Moments later there was a crash as the wagon and two horses collided with the other cart from behind. All three of the family were thrown into the road. Fortunately Mr Stokes and his son only suffered mild bruising but Mrs Stokes was hurt quite badly, and a doctor was summoned.

The copper arrested the other driver who gave his name as Edward Kirk. Kirk was an off duty omnibus driver so really should have known better. At Wandsworth Police Court PC testified that Kirk was doing around 12-14 miles an hour, which may not sound fast by today’s standards but was quite fast for a horse drawn vehicle at the time (most travelled at between 608 miles an hour in the city).

More damning for Kirk was an allegation that he was drunk in charge of the wagonette. Kirk denied this and produced a doctor that supported his statement but the police – in the shape of sergeant Bearman – handed over a medical certificate from a different doctor (presumably one that examined the driver at the police station) which said he was.  Faced with conflicting medical records Mr Bridge (the magistrate) chose to believe the police and fined Kirk £2 (or one month in prison).

He told Henry Stokes that if he wanted compensation for the damage to his cart and, more importantly, to cover the medical expenses incurred by his wife’s injury, he should bring an action in the county court. If he did the whole episode was likely to have been an expensive one for the omnibus driver who may well – given the public nature of the case and its reportage – have lost his job. The fine was not a small one anyway, around £125, or more than a couple of week’s salary for the bus driver, so he may have struggled to find that and have gone to prison instead.

Today, while the driving charge would stand (if there was a policeman anywhere to be found to see the incident) the civil damages would of course be dealt with by an insurance claim. Now of course, the injuries may well be worse since we travel much faster, and Kirk (or rather his insurers) might be facing claims of whiplash injury from Mrs Stokes. He would of course almost certainly have lost his license, and therefore his livelihood as well.

[from The Morning Post, Monday, June 05, 1876]

‘Where are the police?’ is the cry as windows get smashed

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Middle Row, Holborn, in the nineteenth century

Henry Holesworth was strolling along High Holborn early on Friday evening, the 19th January 1855, when he noticed a cab driver seem to throw something. The driver was following another hansom along the road and pulled back his arm in what seemed, to Holesworth at least, a throwing action. Seconds later there was an almighty smash as one of the windows of Mr Watkins’ shop shattered.

Holesworth quickly told the shopkeeper what he’d seen and the pair of them set off in hot pursuit of the cabbie. Since the street was busy with other vehicles they soon caught up with him and gave him into the custody of a nearby policeman. On the following morning three men were in court, in front of the magistrate at Bow Street.

The defendant was James Boswell and he was charged with breaking a window valued at 10s but this was no ordinary act of vandalism or revenge. The Bow Street office heard from a number of people that morning, all tradesmen, who insisted that this was part of an orchestrated campaign against them.

The magistrate heard that representatives of the Plate Glass Protection Company ‘had constantly requested’ tradesmen in the area to unsure themselves against such damage. This was what we would term a protection racket then; intimidation by a local gang of felons who perhaps employed cab drivers to remind the shopkeepers of the perils of not parting with their insurance subscriptions.

Sadly however this was merely speculation; there was little or no proof of a conspiracy. Indeed there wasn’t even enough solid evidence to convict Boswell of breaking Mr Watkins’ window. Holesworth, a mechanic by trade, could only state that he saw the cab driver’s arm move as if he was throwing a stone. Crucially he did not see him throw anything and accepted his movement could have been caused by ‘a buffeting of the wind’.

As a result Boswell was discharged and walked free from Bow Street. However, the magistrate, Mr Henry, felt obliged to state (for the newspaper record at least) that he was aware that something was amiss and his statement carried a rebuke of the police.

‘It is a notorious fact’ he grumbled, ‘that nearly every night the tradespeople of Oxford Street have their plate-glass windows smashed, and the remark has been made as to what the police are about’.

The Metropolitan Police force was only 26 years old in 1855 and still establishing itself in mid Victorian society. It may have survived the early attempts to abandon Peel’s experiment with centrally organised policing, but – as this report shows – continued to face ongoing criticism of its efficiency.

[from The Standard, Monday, January 22, 1855]

An insurance man ignores the risks to his child and earns the condemnation of the Hampstead bench

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an anti-vaccination pamphlet from the USA (c.1894)

Thomas Williamson was clearly frustrated at finding himself before the magistrate at the Hampstead Police Court. As a member of London’s growing middle-class the insurance agent (who must have known a thing or to about risk) was summoned by the local vaccination officer for not allowing his daughter to be inoculated against small pox.

The officer, Charles Weekley, stated that Louise Elizabeth Williamson, who had be born a year earlier in October 1882, had still not be vaccinated as the law required. The family had been sent several notices but all of them had been ignored, moreover Weekley had himself visited the Williamsons only to be told that they refused to vaccinate Louise because they ‘did not approve of it’.

Weekley had informed the local Board of Guardians and they applied for the summons; Williamson had then been given a further six weeks grace to comply with the injunction to have his child vaccinated but had still steadfastly refused. The result was this very public appearance before Major-General Agnew and Mr Gotto, the presiding magistrates at Hampstead.

In his defence Mr Williamson said that it was not him who objected but his wife. He argued that until the child reached the age of seven she was Mrs Williamson’s responsibility and he was unable to persuade his spouse to agree to something she so was  set against.

It should not come as a surprise that parents were occasionally (or even frequently) reluctant to have their children vaccinated in the late 1800s. There had been widespread resistance earlier in the century when Edward Jenner had first proposed infecting people with ‘cowpox’ to prevent smallpox. The treatment itself may have deterred some while others thought it ‘unchristian’ and abhorrent to introduce animal germs into a human child. We should remember that many Victorians distrusted doctors and had much less faith in science than we do today.

But it was also a question of personal liberty and many people felt it was simply not the business of the state to interfere in family life. Today we are well-used to politicians bemoaning the so-called ‘nanny state’ and for calls for greater freedom from regulations  even if this is not now generally applied to healthcare.

That said there has been a long running campaign against the MMR vaccination which was based on false rumours that the injection was linked to colitis and autism. The campaign was founded on a fraudulent science paper (published in the Lancet in 1998) which was later retracted. It has been described as “perhaps, the most damaging medical hoax of the last 100 years” and since the retraction the government have been trying to reboot the vaccination programme.  Sadly, it appears not everyone has got the message: Donald Trump (that well-known authority on all things medical) has linked back to the the now discredited research to make links between vaccination and autism.

Back at Hampstead Police Court poor Mr Williamson was rebuked by one of the magistrates for his inability to rule his own roost. ‘You are the father of the child, and master in your own house’, Major-General Agnew told him.

‘I can’t take the child out of her arms, or use force. No act of parliament will allow me to do that.’ protested the insurance man.

‘That argument, I’m afraid will not hold water’ replied the Major-General.

Mr Gotto was a little more conciliatory: ‘Surely your wife would prefer it [the vaccination] being done to you being fined, or sent to prison?’ he asked.

Mr Williamson agreed that he had already had his elder children vaccinated in compliance with the law but both ‘had suffered from it’. The bench ignored this last plea and fined him 10s including costs, warning him that he must comply or be summoned again. The man left court to bring the unhappy news back to his wife, I wonder how that conversation went.

[from The Morning Post (London, England), Thursday, October 25, 1883]

for other blogs on this subject see:

A parent is unconvinced by the theory of vaccination

Smallpox brings death and difficult decisions to the Westminster Police Court

‘Orrible Murder! Read all about it! (but quietly please)

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At half-past 11 at night John Harris was attempting to sell copies of a local newspaper. There had been a murder in Notting Hill that had seized the attention of the reading public and, like any good salesman, Harris knew he had to capitalise while the news was ‘hot’. However, the area around Goldbourne Road was a quiet one and the vendor was disturbing the peace.

He was soon discovered by a policeman on his beat. He was shouting: ‘the dreadful murder at Notting Hill: verdict and sentence of the prisoner’ at the top of his voice. There were residents at their windows calling for the policeman to make him stop his racket. PC Gallagher approached him and when he refused to stop shouting (saying he ‘had to wake Notting Hill up to sell his papers’ ) he asked him for his name and address.

Harris replied: ‘Artful Bill, commonly known at the East End as the Scarlet Runner’.

This didn’t satisfy the constable who arrested him and took him back to the station. Having spent an uncomfortable night in the cells Harris was brought before Mr Paget at Hammersmith Police Court.

He was not a happy man. He ‘told the magistrate that he was traded worse than a felon, and locked up all night’. Mr Paget understood that he needed to sell his papers and accepted that some people might have liked to have read the breaking news, but…

it was ‘a great nuisance, particularly when the men [newspaper vendors I presume he meant] cried out all sorts of things that had not taken place’. Fake news in 1881?

Given that Harris had already been punished by being incarcerated in the local nick Mr Paget discharged him. Hopefully he found a different pitch to flog his news from in future.

The murder in question took place in May that year and in Goldbourne Road. Some of the occupants of number 48 were awaked by the smell of smoke and discovered the building was on fire. It seems to have been building of multiple occupation that opened on both Goldborne Road and Portobello Road. There was a shop on the Portobello side and the fire seems to have started there. Two people (William Nash and Annie Maria Weight) were charged with the murder of Elizabeth Clark who died in the fire, but it seems that several others were also consumed by the flames. The motive seems to have been insurance; Nash’s business (as a furniture dealer) was in trouble and he and his wife (the other accused – presumably not officially married so tried under her maiden name) may have set a fire to claim against their policy with the Yorkshire Fire Insurance Company (worth upwards of £120).

The jury acquitted Annie but found her husband guilty. They recommended him to mercy on the grounds that they didn’t believe he intended to cause death. That would have been small compensation to those that lost their lives, their loved ones or their homes. The judge sentenced Nash to death but he was later reprieved.

[from The Standard, Saturday, August 06, 1881]

Daring burglars nabbed by a DC near the Duke of Wellington’s London home.

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Piccadilly, near Green Park, in 1897

In the early hours of the morning of the 27 April 1889 Detective constable William Wyers (294 C) had stationed himself in a secluded spot at the corner of Piccadilly and St George’s Place; from here he could watch Piccadilly and the homes of the wealthy that lived there.

In the Victorian period the crime that most exercised the queen’s subjects, after murder of course, was burglary. The papers were filled with reports of burgled premises and with advertisements for preventing intruders from entering your home. This was also the period that saw the birth of home contents insurance as homeowners sought to protect themselves from the supposed legions of ‘Bill Sikes’ and his ilk.

As DC Wyers watched he saw three men approaching a house at number 146 Piccadilly, adjacent in fact to where the Ritz Hotel is today.* He saw one of the men enter the gates of 146 and climb the steps to the front door. The man tried the door and seemed to fiddle with (perhaps to see it was unlocked). Finding it secure he retreated, climbed over the railings and lit a match, and waited a moment or two. From a distance Wyers couldn’t be completely sure what he was up to.

The ‘burglar’ then went back to the other men and slowly, and in single file, they each approached the property. The man (who was later established to be Arthur Thiviot, a stoker living on the Charing Cross Road) went back over the railings followed by one of his mates (William Booty, a porter ‘of no fixed abode’). While they did this the last man (John Pegg, a Soho printer) stayed back to keep watch.

None of them had noticed the detective constable however. DC Wyers took advantage of a passing hansom cab and jumped on to the back spring, hitching a ride towards them. He alighted opposite Apsley House, the London home of the Duke of Wellington. This now placed him behind the men and he crept on all fours to avoid being seen by the lookout Pegg.

Unfortunately for Wyers he wasn’t as careful as he might have been. Pegg saw him and whistled to alert the others. They ran for it, rushing across Piccadilly and into Hamilton Place, with the policeman in hot pursuit. Wyers caught Thiviot and Booty and cornered them in a doorway. Pegg was known to the police so the DC called him by name and ‘ordered him to stop’, which he did.

He asked Thiviot what he was up and what he had in his pockets. The alleged burglar told him he had nothing on him, and if he was a suspect then the copper better take him back to the station. Wyers thrust his hand into Thiviot’s pocket and produced  dark lantern, a common tool of the burglar.

‘Halloa, what are you doing with this?’ asked Wyers.

‘Oh, its all right Mr Wyers’, replied the stoker, demonstrating that the detective was also well known to the criminal fraternity, ‘I have just left my club. The stairs are very dark where I live , and I brought this lantern to show a light up there’.

It was a fairly pathetic excuse given the circumstances, but I suppose he had to offer something.

Myers grabbed Thiviot and told the others to follow him to the station, warning them that he knew where they lived should they chose to abscond. Thiviot also urged them not to abandon him. As soon as they met with two beat ‘bobbies’ on Piccadilly however, Wyers handed them over and all three were accompanied to the police station.

There all three were searched; Booty and Pegg were clean but Thiviot was found to have ‘a lock picker, a knife and a pair of scissors’ on him. DC Wyers then returned to 146 Piccadilly with Inspector Barrie and they discovered more evidence: a jemmy and marks on the door that suggested Thiviot had tried to force it earlier. They moved on to search Thiviot’s lodgings in Charing Cross Road where they also found a set of keys, ‘and a surgical lance’ (why this was mentioned is unclear, except perhaps to show that he must have stolen it at some point,  why would he have it otherwise?)

In court on the following Monday the Marlborough Street Police magistrate the three were remanded on a  charge of loitering with intent to burgle the home of Mrs Rose Joyce, 146 Piccadilly, London.

The three men went on trial at the Old Bailey in May 1889, but not for the attempted burglary in Piccadilly. Instead they were tried for burgling a warehouse in Charing Cross and the items found on Thiviot (the lantern for example) and the jemmy or chisel found at the scene of the attempted crime in Piccadilly, proved vital in convicting him. All three were found guilty and then admitted a string of previous convictions.

As a result Cheviot was sentenced to penal servitude for six years, the other two for five. The court also aware William Wyers the sum of £2 ‘for the ability he displayed in watching and apprehending the prisoners on another charge, which was not proceeded with’, this being the attempted burglary of Mrs Joyce’s home.

[from The Standard, Monday, April 29, 1889]

*The famous London landmark was not there in 1889 however, as it did not open until 1906.

A lucky escape for some as a hairdresser sets fire to his business

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John Ross was a 35 year-old hairdresser living at 615 Ossulton Street, near St. Pancras in central London. Ross had rented rooms at the house where several other people lived, including a woman of 105 and a family with three small children. Ross himself was single and lived in the parlour behind his shop. In May 1883 a new landlord had bought the house – a solicitor’s clerk named Oliver Walton –  and he allowed Ross to continue to trade from the  premises, charging him 11s a week in rent. In early April 1883 Ross was about 2 weeks behind with his rent, which suggests either business was slack or he wasn’t very good at managing his finances.

The hairdresser had taken out insurance to cover the costs of replacing his stock and possessions in the event of a fire. John Eden from the Era Industrial and General Fire Insurance Company had called on him in October 1883 and sold him a policy for a premium of 2s. a year. If the worst happened Ross was to receive £40 for his household goods and stock, plus £14 for the loss of trade.

At about 10 at night on the 10 March 1884 another lodger in the property, Mrs Eliza Nicholson, was chatting with a friend in her room when she ‘smelt burning paraffin coming up the stairs’. Running down stairs she saw a light under Ross’ parlour door. She knocked but got no answer. The door was locked and so she went to try the shop itself.

That too was locked and she could get no answer from there either so Eliza carried on to the street door where, outside, she found Ross. She told him that she believed his ‘place was on fire’ but Ross merely replied: ‘I can’t help it’.

He said he couldn’t get in to warn anyone because of the smoke, which was, by now, ‘issuing through the windows’. Eliza took control, and warned the other occupants before running across the road to fetch her husband from the pub.

A fire engine was called and so were the police. Police inspector Henry Davy got there at just after 10 (10.07 he later confirmed in court) and confirmed what Mrs Nicholson had found. He burst open the door to Ross’ parlour where he found that:

‘the place was on fire—the cupboard on the left-hand side of the fireplace was on fire inside—there was a lot of old rags or clothes on the shelves all burnt to tinder, and they smelt very strongly of paraffin—the bed clothing at the foot of the bed was also alight‘.

The call reached the fire brigade at St. Pancras at 10.17 and the engine they despatched was at Ossulton Street by 24 minutes past, an impressive reaction (just 7 minutes) for a horse-drawn vehicle. Joseph Bennett later explained that had his engine arrived just 5 minutes later the whole house and everyone left in it would have gone up on flames; fortunately no one was hurt.

Ross had used the chaos surrounding the fire to escape and it took the police until the 31 March to find him. He hadn’t gone far; a police constable found him hiding under a bed in room at number 19 Ossulton Street, probably after a tip off. On the 1 April he was proceeded before the Police magistrate at Clerkenwell. He said little or nothing in his defence and was remanded, and later committed for trial at the Old Bailey.

On the 21 April John Ross was tried and convicted for arson , with Eliza acting as the principal witness. The details of his insurance claim were revealed and despite Ross’ attempt to blame the fire on a disgruntled employee (who no one else seemed to see in the vicinity) his motivation appears to have been one of cleaning up on the insurance money. Whether he cared about the other inhabitants of the building or was just paralysed with fear over what he had done is impossible to know.

He was lucky that no one had died or the charge could have been even more serious. As it was his hairdressing career was over; he was sent into penal servitude for 10 years.

[from The Standard, Wednesday, April 02, 1884]

Threatening letters in ‘Burglaria’

 

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Henry Fisher (or Leonard as he was probably previously known) and Walter Kavanagh (a youth who called himself ‘John Smith’ in court – fooling nobody!) appeared before the Westminster magistrate accused of several burglaries over the previous few weeks. The pair had burgled a string of properties but it was the threat associated with at least one of their crimes which excited the court reporter for The Standard newspaper.

Having robbed Mrs Bromley-Davenport’s  home in Belgrave Place on the 31st August 1892 the two robbers carried on to a premises at the back, Cambridge House, which belonged to a Mr Walter Gilbey. Gilbey was a well known wine merchant and gin distiller (his brand is still in existence today) who had set up his business on his return from the Crimean War in 1857.

Walter Gilbey’s other passion was shire horses and he apparently did much to promote and improve the stock of English shire horses during his long life (he died in 1914 aged 83). Whether the two burglars knew this or not is impossible to say but their actions that night suggested they might have.

Having scaled a 10 foot high wall Fisher and the boy forced a window open and entered Cambridge House. There they broke open ‘boxes and rooms, and carried off a considerable booty’. They also attacked three paintings of horses (worth upwards of £400 or more) cutting out the heads and removing them. They left behind a threatening message which read:

“Charles Peace. We should have cut your head off if we had met you. We will visit you again when you have something more to lose”.

Charles Peace was an infamous criminal who was hanged in Leeds in February 1879. Peace carried out several burglaries and at least two murders and was the subject of a number of penny dreadfuls. He was immortalized with his executioner (William Marwood) in the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud’s.

Detective Inspector Bannister (of S Division, Metropolitan Police) testified that a note in very similar handwriting had been found at the scene of a burglary in Eton Square. The note there read: ‘thanks, boss, for what we have got’.

Burglary was (aside from murder) the hot topic within crime news and robberies of the affluent upper and middle class homes in and around Belgravia had led to satirical articles that dubbed it ‘Burglaria’ and bemoaned the   inability of the police to prevent them. Householders were urged to install devices to protect their homes and the late 19th century saw the  ‘invention’ of household contents insurance.

Fisher was no Charlie Peace however, and the pair’s bravado was hardly likely to endear them to the public or the bench. The detective told the court that Fisher (or Leonard) had been convicted of robbery in Portsmouth in the past and most recently in the Albany in 1899. While there was nothing previously known about Kavanagh/Smith the two were fully committed for trial at the Old Bailey.

[from The Standard, Thursday, October 13, 1892]