Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison: Fifteen Years in Solitude
Queen's Counsels and four barristers--was about the lamest and most
idiotic possible.
We early came to the unanimous conclusion that in our country Howell
would have had to face a jury for robbing us, and that but one of our
eight lawyers had ability enough to appear in a police court here to
conduct a hearing before an ordinary magistrate.
I do not propose to enter into the details of our preliminary hearings
before the Lord Mayor at the Mansion House, or of the trial. Both the
hearings and trial were sensational in the highest degree, and attracted
universal attention all over the English-speaking world. Full-page
pictures of the trial appeared in all the illustrated journals of Europe
and America, and our portraits were on sale everywhere.
After many hearings before Sir Sidney Waterlaw, we were finally
committed for trial.
Editorial from the London Times of Aug. 13, 1873:
THE BANK FORGERIES.
"Monday next has been fixed for the trial, and the depositions
taken before the Lord Mayor at the Justice Room of the Mansion
House by Mr. Oke, the chief clerk, have been printed for the
convenience of the presiding judge and of the counsel on both
sides. They extend over 242 folio pages, including the oral and
documentary evidence, and make of themselves a thick volume,
together with an elaborate index for ready reference. Within living
memory there has been no such case for length and importance heard
before any Lord Mayor of London in its preliminary stage, nor one
which excited a greater amount of public interest from first to
last. The Overend Gurney prosecution is the only one in late years
which at all approaches it in those respects, but in that the
printed depositions only extended over 164 folio pages, or much
less than those in the Bank case, in which as many as 108 witnesses
gave evidence before the Lord Mayor, and the preliminary
examinations--twenty-three in number from first to last--lasted
from the first of March until the 2d of July, exclusive of the time
spent in remands."
From the London Times, Aug. 10, 1873:
"On the opening of the August sessions of the Old Bailey Central
Criminal Court. The court and streets were much crowded from the
beginning, and continued so throughout the day. Alderman Sir Robert
Carden, representing the Lord Mayor; Mr. Alderman Finis, Mr.
Alderman Besley, Mr. Alderman Lawrence, M.P., Mr. Alderman Whetham
and Mr. Alderman Ellis, as commissioners of the Court, occupied
seats upon the bench, as did also Alderman Sheriff White.
"Sheriff Sir Frederick Perkins, Mr. Under-Sheriff Hewitt and Mr.
Under-Sheriff Crosley, Mr. R. B. Green, Mr. R. W. Crawford, M.P.,
Governor of the Bank. Mr. Lyall, Deputy Governor, and Mr. Alfred de
Rothschild were present. The members of the bar mustered in force,
and the reserved seats were chiefly occupied by ladies. Mr.
Hardinge Gifford, Q.C. (now Lord Chancellor of the British Empire),
and Mr. Watkin Williams, Q.C. (instructed by Messrs. Freshfield,
the solicitors of the bank), appeared as counsel for the
prosecution."
For eight mortal days the final trial dragged on, and there we were
pilloried in that horrible dock--a spectacle for the staring throngs
that flocked to see the young Americans who had found a pregnable spot
in the impregnable Bank of England.
The misery of those eight days! No language can describe it, nor would I
undergo it again for the wealth of the world.
The court was filled with fashionables, ladies as well, who flocked to
stare at misery, while the corridors of the Old Bailey and the street
itself were packed with thousands eager to catch a glimpse of us. The
Judge, in scarlet, sat in solemn state, with members of the nobility or
gouty Aldermen in gold chains and robes on the bench beside him. The
body of the court was filled with bewigged lawyers--a tippling lot of
sharks and rogues, always after lunch half tipsy with the punch or dry
sherry which English lawyers drink, jesting and cracking jokes,
unmindful of the fate of their clients. Capt. Curtin and a score of
detectives were present.
No fewer than 213 witnesses were called by the prosecution. Of these
about fifty were from America, and by them they traced our lives for
many years before. As the forged bills were all sent by mail it was
necessary to convict us by circumstantial evidence. The evidence was all
very weak, save only in that remarkable matter of the blotting paper.
Our conviction was a foregone conclusion.
The jury retired to consider their verdict shortly after 7 o'clock, and
on returning into court after the lapse of about a quarter of an hour
they gave in a verdict of guilty against all of the four prisoners.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
"NOTHING LEFT US BUT A GRAVE, THAT SMALL MODEL OF THE BARREN EARTH," WITH
DISHONOR FOR AN EPITAPH.
Judge Archibald proceeded to pass sentence. He began with the
interesting and truthful remark: "I have anxiously considered whether
anything less than the maximum penalty of the law will be adequate to
meet the requirements of this case, and I think not." We had information
that a few days previously a meeting of judges had been held and that he
had been advised to pass a life sentence. What he really meant to say
was that he had anxiously considered whether anything less would be
adequate to satisfy the Bank of England. He went on to say that we had
not only inflicted great loss on the bank, but had also seriously
discredited that great institution in the eyes of the public. He
continued: "It is difficult to see the motives for this crime; it was
not want, for you were in possession of a large sum of money. You are
men of education, some of you speak the Continental languages, and you
have traveled considerably. I see no reason to make any distinction
between you, and let it be understood from the sentence which I am about
to pass upon you that men of education"--and he might have added, what
he undoubtedly thought, Americans--"who commit crimes which none but men
of education can commit must expect a terrible retribution, and that
sentence is penal servitude for life, and I further order that each one
of you pay one-fourth of the costs of prosecution--L49,000, or $245,000
in all."
And, after all, what aroused so greatly his indignation? It was simply
this--because we were youngsters and Americans, and had successfully
assaulted the fondly imagined impregnable Bank of England, and, worse
still, had held up to the laughter of the whole world its red-tape
idiotic management, for had the bank asked so common a thing as a
reference the fraud would have been made impossible.
Let my reader contrast this modern Jeffreys, his savage tirade, and, for
an offense against property, this most brutal sentence, with the
treatment of the Warwickshire bank wreckers. Greenaway, the manager of
this bank, and three of the directors by false balance sheets and
perjured reports for years had looted the bank, finally robbing the
depositors of L1,000,000, several of whom committed suicide and
thousands more of whom were ruined.
They were tried, convicted, and in being sentenced were told that, being
men of high social position, the disgrace in itself was a severe
punishment; therefore, he should take that fact into consideration, and
ended by sentencing two to eight months', one to twelve and one to
fourteen months' imprisonment.
We were sentenced late at night--nearly 10 o'clock--a smoky, foggy
London night. The court was packed, the corridors crowded, and when the
jury came in with their verdict the suppressed excitement found vent.
But when the vindictive and unheard-of sentence fell from the lips of
this villain Judge an exclamation of horror fell from that crowded
court.
We turned from the Judge and went down the stairs to the entrance to the
underground passage leading to Newgate. There we halted to say farewell.
To say farewell! Yes. The Primrose Way had come to an end, but we were
comrades and friends still, and in order that in the gloom of the
slow-moving days and the blackness and thick horror of the years to come
we might have some thought in common, we then and there promised--what
could we poor, broken bankrupts promise?
Where or to what in the thick horror enshrouding us could we turn? We
had
"Nothing left us to call our own save death,
And that small model of the barren earth
Which serves as paste and cover to our bones;"
nothing but a grave, that
"Small model of the barren earth,"
with dishonor and degradation for our epitaph!
But there, in the very instant of our overwhelming defeat, standing in
the dark mouth of the stone conduit leading from the Old Bailey to the
dungeons of Newgate, by virtue of the high resolve we made, we conquered
Fate at her worst, and by our act in establishing a secret bond of
sympathy in our separation dropped the bad, disastrous past, and
starting on new things planted our feet on the bottom round of the
ladder of success, feeling that, with plenty of faith and endurance,
Fortune, frown as she might now, must in some distant day turn her wheel
and smile again.
And what was this act? Why, it was a simple one, but bore in it the germ
of great things.
As we halted there in the gloom we swore never to give in, however they
might starve us, even grind us to powder, as we felt they would
certainly try to do. We knew that in their anxiety about our souls they
would be sure kindly to furnish each with a Bible, and we promised to
read one chapter every day consecutively, and, while reading the same
chapter at the same hour, think of the others. For twenty years we kept
the promise. Then, making the resolve mentioned in the beginning of this
book, I marched back to my cell. The door was opened and closed behind
me, leaving me in pitch darkness--a convict in my dungeon. Dressed as I
was I lay down on the little bed there, and through all that long and
terrible night, with a million dread images rushing through my brain, I
lay passive, with wide-open eyes, staring into the darkness, conscious
that sanity and insanity were struggling for mastery in my brain, while
I, like some interested spectator, watched the struggle; or, again, I
was struggling in the air with some powerful but viewless monster form,
that clutched my throat with iron fingers, but whose body was impalpable
to the grasp of my hands. A mighty space, an eternity of time and
daylight came. Then, like one in a dream, I rose mechanically, and,
finding the pin I had secreted, I stood on the little wooden bench, and,
impelled by some spiritual but irresistible force, I scratched on the
wall the message I had resolved to leave:
"In the reproof of chance
Lies the true proof of men."
Then I thought of my friends and my promise, and, like one in a dream, I
took the ill-smelling and dirty little Bible from the shelf, and,
turning to the first chapter, read:
"And the spirit of God moved upon the waters." ...
"And God said let there be light, and there was light."
Then the book fell from my hand, and I remembered no more. My mind had
gone whirling into the abyss.
I was sentenced on Wednesday. For three days, from Thursday to Sunday,
my mind was a blank. I have no recollection of my removal under escort
from Newgate to Pentonville.
On Sunday, the fourth day of my sentence, like one rousing from a
trance, I awoke to find myself shaven and shorn, dressed in a coarse
convict uniform, in a rough cell of white-washed brick. The small window
had heavy double bars set with thick fluted glass, which, while