Tag: shilling

A bit of good luck quickly turns into a personal disaster for one London plumber

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An 1865 issue Victorian florin (not actual size…)

I suppose that in these days of contactless payment fewer and fewer of us use real money any more. Even when I go the pub I rarely pay with case, and never do so in shops any more. Am I unusual, I doubt it?

If you do use cash and a barman or shop assistant gives you change, do you check it? If its short I imagine you’d say something but what if they give you back too much? I expect most of us would quietly offer a prayer to  the gods of good fortune and walk away.

That may be what Edward Pearce did in September 1892 as he paid for drinks at the bar of the Orange Tree pub in the Euston Road. The 48 year old plumber insisted that he’d handed over a florin for two glasses of ale, for which he was given 1s 6d in silver, and a further 4d in bronze as change. A florin was worth around 24 old pence, or a tenth of a pound. Since a shilling was 12 pence, we can assume his drinks cost him twopence. Today in my favourite pub I’ll pay about £10 for two ‘glasses of ale’.  Edward was paying around 68p in today’s money.

However, the barman quickly realized his mistake when he saw that instead of a florin Edward had only given him 2d  and so wasn’t entitled to any change at all. He demanded the money back but Pearce refused, insisting he’d handed over a two-shilling piece (the florin).

The police were called and since Pearce stuck to his story and the barman stuck to his the case came before the magistrate at Marylebone Police court where the plumber was tried for theft. It may have been an honest mistake or simply a cheeky attempt to get away with a bit of good luck. Sadly for Pearce all he ended up with was a week’s incarceration with hard labour. A little harsh even by late Victorian standards.

[from The Illustrated Police News, Saturday, September 17, 1892]

A cowardly attack on the wrong victim

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Elizabeth Couldry was standing at her door in Sugarloaf Court in the City of London (which led into Leadenhall Street, above) watching a group of boys play. They were up to mischief – as small boys often are – and the object of their attention was another resident of the court, Catherine Branman.

Catherine was drunk and crying out that she’d lost a shilling, claiming someone had stolen it. She’d worked herself up into a rage and was carrying a large stick. One of the boys picked up a farthing from the dirt and gave it to her, telling her that was what she’d dropped. This only enraged her further and she started hitting out at the boys who scattered.

Another door had opened by now, and a woman on crutches appeared with an elderly man behind her.  He called to her to go home and be quiet but this only provoked Catherine to confront the pair. The invalid was Jane Barham and the old man was her father. Catherine told Mr Barham that if she had been a man she would have knocked his lights out. Jane told her to calm down and come inside for a moment.

Catherine did neither. Instead she lifted her stick and smashed it down on the poor woman’s head.

Jane was rushed to the infirmary at Bow workhouse where she was treated for serious wounds to her head. It was serious enough to keep her in hospital for six days. In the meantime Catherine was arrested and the stick she’d used confiscated to be used in evidence. There must have been real concern that Jane might not recover.

Fortunately she did and on the 25 August she gave evidence before the Lord Mayor at mansion House, although she did so sitting down and with her head swathed in plaster and bandages. Catherine denied intent and said she was drunk at the time. She had been wound up by the little boys and had only struck Jane by accident. It was a risible excuse but the Lord Mayor was prepared to let her settle the matter with her victim. He gave leave for the two women to use the affidavit room to come to a financial settlement; if Catherine paid some compensation and the cost of the court case then the law need take no further action.

The women were soon back in court and Catherine was back in the dock. She’d pleaded poverty and so refused to pay anything (or anything of substance at least). As a result the Lord Mayor said he had no choice but to fine her 20s which of course she couldn’t pay. The gaoler led her away to start a month’s prison sentence and Jane went home to complete her recovery in peace.

[from The Morning Post, Friday, August 26, 1859]

A young lad is ‘too sharp for his prosecutors’, and swallows the evidence

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Mrs Sarah Cameron ran a tobacconist shop on the Broadway in Westminster, central London. One evening in November 1840 a young man  called William Meeton entered the ‘snuff and tobacco’ shop and asked for a cigar. He handed over half a crown and she gave him the cigar and his change (which consisted of ‘two shillings and four pennyworth of halfpences’).

Meeton scraped up the coin but after examining carefully it ‘threw down a shilling alleging it was bad’. He accused the tobacconist of trying to fob him off with forgeries but Mrs Cameron was sure the coins she had handed over were fine, and she said so. Now she suspected him of committing a crime and called for a policeman who soon arrived and arrested the lad.

William Meeton was charged at Queen’s Square Police Court with uttering – a variant of the wider crime of coining and forgery. While forging meant making false notes (and coming, fake coins), uttering described the practice of using or distributing counterfeit money.

The magistrate demande to see the coin in question. Sadly Mrs Cameron didn’t have it. Why not, Mr Burrell asked?

The young man had swallowed it she told him, along with several other shillings he had in his possession. It was a common enough ploy to get rid of the evidence (albeit temporarily). The chief usher of the Police Court informed his worship that that the accused was ‘well known’ to the court, which would have counted against him. However, without the proof that the shillings were bad there was little the justice could do. After some conferring Mr Burrell and his clerk agreed that no case could be made without the coins as evidence.

He turned to Meeton and told him that while today he ‘had been too sharp for his prosecutors’ his card was marked, and warned him about his future conduct. He was discharged, presumably to find the nearest privy!

[from The Morning Post, Wednesday, November 18, 1840]

NB a half-crown was worth 2 shillings and 6 pence so you can work out for yourselves just how much Mrs Cameron was selling her cigars for. No age is given for Meeton but this wouldn’t matter anyway in the context of the 19th century. There was no age restriction on buying or selling tobacco to minors until 1933. It still isn’t illegal for children to smoke but under 16 it is subject to parental control. 

An ingenious thief and the ‘bird lime trick’.

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Wapping in the 1890s, from Booth’s poverty map

Cash registers weren’t invented until the later 1870s, and that was in America. A busy pub like the Three Crowns in Upper Smithfield, Wapping didn’t have anything quite as fancy. But it did experience a creative attempt to take money from the ’till’ nevertheless.

Catherine Morgan ran the pub with her husband and at about 8 o’clock in the morning of the 10th May she was in parlour bar of the pub and noticed a young man come in. There was a glass partition between the parlour and main bar and she could clearly see the lad take out a long stick. He pushed the stick towards ‘the engine’, and inserted between its two handles.

Now I suspect someone out there knows what device the reporter is talking about here but it would seem to be some early version of a cash machine. This is made more plausible by what happened next.

As Catherine watched on in horror the young man withdrew the stick and she saw that there were two coins stick to it! Hurrying back through into the pub she grabbed him and shouted: ‘Give me that stick’. Just as quickly he broke off the end of the stick and wiped it on his trousers. Catherine unfolded his hand to discover two shillings hidden in his palm.

The police were called and Mrs Morgan held him captive until PC H31 could take him into custody. He appeared on more than one occasion at Thames Police Court before this appearance on the 20 May 1876. Now the court was told that this was not the first time the lad, by the name of Morris Cooney, had been seen practising his ‘trick’.

Earlier on the month he had almost been caught by the landlady of the Garrett Tavern in Leman Street, Whitechapel. He had come in and asked her for a light and a glass of porter. Once she had served him  she had gone out the back to the parlour to ‘see to the children’. Hearing ‘a jingle’ she came back to find him with his stick and a flash of silver. She challenged him but he gulped down his beer and ran out of the pub.

The stick had been daubed with bird lime, which made it sticky and ideal for Cooney’s purpose. Unfortunately for him his clever device was easily spotted by women as eagle eyed at Catherine Morgan. What was worse for Morris was that his appearance in court revealed a previous conviction for a felony so the magistrate was not inclined to deal with him summarily (which may have reduced his sentence). Instead he was committed for trial, at the Session or at Old Bailey, where he might face a long spell in prison.

[from Reynolds’s Newspaper, Sunday, May 21, 1876]

The Mint’s finest foils a counterfeiting conspiracy

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James Brennan had been a detective in the Metropolitan Police (for G Division) but had left the force to join a specialist team at the Royal Mint. Their role was to actively pursue inquires and prosecutions against those involved in forging and distributing counterfeit currency.

In April 1860 Brennan and his team, acting on information received, visited the Penton Arms beer shop in Islington looking for suspected coiners. He saw his target, Harry Mason, talking with two or three others. Brennan went directly up to him and said:

‘Harry, I am instructed by the Mint authorities to take you into custody. You are suspected of dealing in counterfeit coin’.

With that he reached into Mason’s pocket and removed a small bag. Inside were ‘several little packets’ containing ’31 florins and 25 shilling piece, all of them counterfeit’. There was also a tobacco tun within which was a ‘good’ florin, evidently used to make the mould for the ‘bad’ ones.

The idea that people would bother to forge fake coins of such relatively small value might seem a risk not worth taking; much less obvious perhaps than counterfeiting a high denomination bank note. But look at what has just occurred in 21st century Britain? The Mint has just issued a brand new one pound coin, complete with all sorts of anti-forgery technology. Apparently 1 in 30 of the the old ‘Thatchers’ is fake, hence the desire to crate something that can’t be forged.

Back in Islington in 1860 Mason was bundled into a cab as a ‘mob’ was gathering and inspector Brennan presumably feared they might help him affect and escape. The Mint’s inspector took his prisoner to his last known address – 2 Pembroke Street, near Caledonian Road – where they found one of his known accomplices, Margaret Sawyer. Brennan told Mason that the Mint had been watching him for several weeks; this was a carefully conceived operation.

A search of the premises revealed plenty of evidence of coining: they found a mould in a cupboard, ‘two galvanic batteries fully charged, another mould, two or three cylinders, a number of bottles containing acid, and all the necessary implements for making and colouring counterfeit coin’.

Mason was, as they say, ‘bang to rights’.

Brennan took his charges before the Police Magistrate at Clerkenwell where it was revealed that Mason was a milkman by trade, and was well known to the police, having been charged and convicted of a felony more than once before. He tried of course to deny the charges, and said the florin in the tobacco tin was also ‘bad’; Margaret said she knew nothing about any of it and hoped the magistrate would discharged her.

He did nothing of the sort and remanded them both for a week, so the Mint’s solicitor could appear. Bail was refused.

The pair appeared at the Old Bailey just under  a month later to face their trial. Margaret Sawyer was acquitted as she’d hoped, Mason though was convicted. A century earlier, a little over 40 years even, he would have faced the gallows but by 1860 the death penalty had been abolished for all crimes except murder. Harry Mason was sent into penal servitude for 8 years.

[from The Morning Post, Monday, April 09, 1860]

A working-class method of saving one’s money from the clutches of the Poor Law Guardians

On this day in 1860 the newspapers reported the case of an elderly lady who went to ask the advice of the Lambeth Police magistrate, Mr. Elliot. Her behaviour puzzled the justice but reveals  an often hidden aspect of the Victorian Poor Law.

Mrs Till (who was probably widowed and alone) told Mr. Elliot that on 4th April she had pledged 8s with a pawnbroker for sixpence. The magistrate was baffled; why would she handover 8 shillings only to take 6 pennies in return?

Mrs Till explained:

‘The fact was, your Worship, that I was going into the workhouse, and knowing that the money would be taken from me I adopted that manner of securing it’.

In effect then, rather than pawning her money she had deposited it – much like we might do in a savings account, but one that could not be touched by the authorities and used to pay for her care.

The court usher backed up what the ‘aged’ woman was saying. He told the court that when paupers entered the workhouse they were stripped and their clothes washed. Any money found on them was ‘appropriated to their support’. The sixpence that Mrs Till had she could hide in her mouth so the inspectors didn’t find it.

This struck me as rather like the dilemma that the elderly and their families have today when they are in need of full-time care in a home or with social care visits. Someone who has the means the pay will be expected to do so; thus all their savings (that they may have earmarked for their children and grandchildren) is used up in supporting them and their care. I’m not suggesting this is necessarily wrong, but the person who makes provision for old age and its unforeseen eventualities can be seemingly treated ‘unfairly’ by comparison to those who don’t.

In this case Mrs Till had come out of the workhouse and was now having trouble getting her money back. She explained that the pawnbroker was denying her the money because she could not state exactly which coins constituted the eight shillings she had pledged.

Mr Dixon, the usher, thought he could resolve this. He was familiar with the pawnbroker who was a ‘respectable’ man and, with his Worship’s leave, he said he would speak to him and get the money back. Mr Elliot agreed.

Also on this day a Joseph Grout reappeared at Guildhall Police Court on a charge of burglary. A trimming-maker from Slater Street in Bethnal Green was fully committed for trial at the Old Bailey, and bail was refused on the grounds that he had previous convictions for receiving stolen goods.

In the week that Peter Vaughan died I was reminded of his character Harry Grout (better known as ‘Grouty’) in Porridge.

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[from The Morning Post, Saturday, December 10, 1864]