I have watched and admired with fascination and admiration the growth and development of the Proceedings of the Old Bailey over the past ten years into one of the most important online historical resources. The Old Bailey Proceedings are a constant source of inspiration as to how scholarly historical resources should be developed and taken forward. Bloggers are celebrating the tenth anniversary of the Old Bailey Proceedings by blogging their take on the Bailey, so as part of the celebrations, here are two articles which I published a couple of years ago in the masonic periodical, The Square, on references to Freemasonry in the Old Bailey Proceedings.
I
Assiduous listeners to Radio 4 may
recently have heard a series introduced by the historian Amanda Vickery called Voices
from the Old Bailey. The radio programme gave a lively picture of everyday
life in the eighteenth century by using reports of criminal trials held at the
Old Bailey, the criminal court covering London and Middlesex. Every conceivable
type of crime passed through the doors of the Bailey. We meet brothel keepers
and male prostitutes; we see highwaymen and pickpockets at work; starving men
and women are hung for stealing a spoon or a handkerchief.
The fascination of these stories
of criminal life was recognised at the time, and reports of trials were popular
reading from the beginning of the seventeenth century onwards. From 1678, a
periodical was published entitled The Proceedings of the King's Commission
of the Peace and Oyer and Terminer, and Gaol Delivery of Newgate, held for the
City of London and the County of Middlesex, at Justice-Hall, in the Old Bailey.
The Old Bailey Proceedings, as they are known for short, became very
popular reading material among eighteenth-century Londoners. A French visitor
to London declared that the trial reports 'are in the opinion of many people
one of the most diverting things that a man can read in London'.
The reason why the Old Bailey
Proceedings are such a compelling read is not only their presentation of
the sheer variety and colour of eighteenth-century London life but also the
fact that the reports are based on shorthand notes of the trials, so that
victims, witnesses and defendants speak in the first person, and we can almost
fancy that we are hearing their own voices. In 1735, for example, a gang led by
the notorious highwayman Dick Turpin robbed a house in North London, and one of
the victims described his ordeal as follows:
Between
seven and eight at Night some body knocked; I unbolted the Door; the two
Prisoners, Wheeler, and three more came in with Pistols in their Hands, and
said, D - your Blood! How long have you lived here? We had two Candles in the
Room, and I saw their Faces plainly. They put a Cloth over my Eyes, but in five
or six Minutes they took it off, tyed my Hands before me, and carried me into
the Room where the Boy was, and sat me down by the Fire. My Master was ty'd and
hoodwink'd at the same time - They opened a Closet, took out a Bottle of Elder
Wine and made us drink twice. They took out some Linnen and Plate. I was
present when the Prisoners were taken, they had several Pistols, and made a
great Resistance.
Despite the fact that they were so
popular in the eighteenth century, the Old Bailey Proceedings lapsed
into obscurity and became difficult to consult. In recent years, however, a
joint project by the Universities of Hertfordshire and Sheffield has made the Old
Bailey Proceedings freely available online. They can be consulted at www.oldbaileyonline.org The online
resource is fully searchable and contains 197,745
trials, the largest body of texts ever published about the everyday life of the
ordinary people of London.
Among the Old Bailey
Proceedings are some fascinating references to Freemasonry which give us a
vivid sense of the role of freemasonry in eighteenth-century London life. For
example, in 1796 'Swearus Sandestrom' a Scandinavian visitor to London had his
watch stolen. This is his description of the incident:
I
am a foreigner, I have been in this country eleven months; yesterday, about
three minutes before one o'clock, I was robbed at the gate of the coffee-house,
where the Free Masons come out, before they go into Shoreditch church; I was
walking along the foot-path, there were a great many people, as thick as they
could be, the prisoner was there, and he snatched at my watch chain, and broke
it off close to the ring of the watch; I was going into the coffee-house, I
took him by the shoulder, and said, my man, you robbed me; he said, what have I
robbed you of, and he let it drop out of his hand.
The trial took place on 22 June,
suggesting that Sandestrom had been watching a procession by Freemasons at
Shoreditch preceding a St John's Day church service. The masonic procession
evidently attracted quite a crowd. The man seized by Sandestrom, William
Goodwin, protested his innocence, and produced character witnesses saying that
his business had recently closed but that he was otherwise honest.
Nevertheless, Goodwin was sent for two years to the House of Correction and
fined one shilling.
The Goose and Gridiron is famous
as the place where Grand Lodge was established in 1717. The Old Bailey
Proceedings contain a number of reports of theft at the Goose and Gridiron,
reminding us what dangerous places eighteenth-century taverns could be. Worse
than theft could occur; one particularly grizzly trial from 1766 describes the
rape of a young servant girl aged under 10. One violation of the young girl
took place in the room used by a masonic lodge at the Goose and Gridiron:
on the free
masons day (there is a club of free masons at the house) she said her uncle
sent her up, and the prisoner was cleaning the glasses; that he took her up and
flung her on the bed, and did the same again
This masonic lodge at the Goose
and Gridiron seems to have been an unhappy place. The following year, it was
the scene of a theft. Perhaps not surprisingly, it is impossible to identify
which lodge was meeting at the Goose and Gridiron at this time, and one wonders
if it was some kind of unofficial masonic activity. The victim of the theft was
James Walker, who was the keeper of both the Goose and Gridiron and the Rose
and Crown. Walker's testimony does not make it clear whether the theft occurred
in the Goose and Gridiron or the Rose and Crown, but the rape case confirms
that Walker lived at the Goose and Gridiron and that a lodge was meeting there,
so the crime probably took place there. Walker claimed that the perpetrator of
the crime was one William Gilliard. Here is the Old Bailey Proceedings
report of Walker's accusation:
I
keep the Rose and Crown, and Goose and Gridiron in St. Paul's church-yard; I
have known the prisoner from last Tuesday was a fortnight, and no longer; he
had been at my house before, as I understood by some of my customers; he
appeared decent and very genteel, and said he was private secretary to my Lord
Shelburne; I had given him credit from time to time; the first time he came in
a coach with a lodger of mine; yesterday fortnight he came, and called me up
stairs, and said he would pay me my bill, and wanted me to propose him to be
made a free mason, in the society at my house, which is held every first and
third Thursday in the month; (he used to tell what passed in the house of
Lords.) I went up stairs with him to the next room to the lodge-room, upon the
same floor; he asked me to give him two half guineas for a guinea; (it is a
general rule to deposit half a guinea when a mason
is made) I pulled out my purse, there might be 30 or 40 guineas in it; I
put it on the table; the master of the lodge immediately called; the prisoner
had given me his guinea; I in a hurry took up part of my money, but I left some
upon the table; I can safely say there were five guineas left; I went that
moment into the mason's room, I had not time to take it all up; (I had put it
down in order to look out two half guineas for his guinea) I was not absent I
believe a minute, nor two I am sure; and when I came back, the prisoner and
money was gone; I went down stairs immediately; he was got into the bar, in
order to take his great coat, as I apprehend since; (he went then by the name
of Thompson) I said, Mr. Thompson, did you take any money off the table; he
said, yes, I did take five guineas; I said, what did you take it off the table
for; he said, I took it only to secure it, as you was gone; the bell rang
again, and I ran up stairs; I don't suppose I was absent three minutes, and
when I came down again, he was gone with his great coat; that night I took some
friends with me and pursued him; I understood he used the night houses about
Covent-garden; I dare say I spent more than 10 l in looking for him; I had been
there every night; I had mentioned him to a gentleman that knew him, and I
found he was a person of very bad character; last Saturday night a person came
and said, run out, Walker, he is just gone by; I ran out, and found him in an
earthen-ware shop, cheapening some things; when he came out of the shop, I laid
hold of him, and said, Mr. Thompson, I want to speak with you; said he, I am in
a violent hurry now; I said, I must speak with you; I am in a violent hurry,
said he again; I said, I take you up as a thief, you stole my money in my
house; said he, what, for them few guineas; go with me into Queen-street,
Cheapside, and I'll give you security for your money; I said, no, you shall
never be discharged till you come to the Old-Bailey
Cross-examined, Walker was asked
whether the prisoner was the only person in the room when he went into the
mason's room. Walker replied that 'There was nobody near him but the tyler,
that was obliged to stand at the door'. John Gill, a lodger at the Goose and
Gridiron, confirmed that Walker had claimed to be Lord Shelburne's secretary
and said that he would speak to Lord Shelburne about getting a position for
him. The prisoner then spoke in his own defence:
I went to
Mr. Walker's house on Thursday the 5th instant; he took me up stairs; I told
him there in the room, I had not money then to be made a mason, what I had was
but 3 s. 6 d. The reply to me was, he would lend me any money that I wanted,
and pulled out a sum of money from his pocket, and offered me five guineas into
my hand; said he, I will make you a present of this money, if you will not
mention the case that was when you lay with me at five o'clock in the morning;
after this, I told him I would not accept of that sum of money upon any such
terms, but if he would lend me the sum of five guineas, I would be much obliged
to him, and pay him very honestly; upon this, he consented and lent it me; I
took a guinea out of them, and desired two half guineas; he took it and gave me
two half guineas, and then took one of the half guineas and went into the
lodge-room to propose me as a mason; after he had been into the club-room, he
came out to me, and told me he had proposed me; he went down stairs with me;
there I staid some time in the bar, and then told him I could not stay any
longer; I wished him a good night, and went away.
Gilliard's suggestion that he had
some kind of liaison with Walker was apparently a desperate attempt to save his
skin. Enquiries revealed that Lord Shelburne knew nothing about him. William
Pain, summoned as a character witness on behalf of Gilliard, declared that he
was actually a pastry cook called Swain, whose character 'is a very bad one; it
is that of a thief'. In fact, Swain al. Gilliard al. Thompson had already been
sentenced to death for a robbery in Surrey five years previously, but had been
pardoned by the influence of his friends. He was found guilty and sentenced to
transportation to the American colonies.
In 1774, the Bow Street Runners,
under the direction of Henry Fielding's brother, the blind magistrate Sir John
Fielding, seized a group of men who were making counterfeit coins in the
basement of a house in Old Fish Street. Among the gang was a man called Thomas
Pickering, who claimed that he was the master of a masonic lodge and was at the
time of his arrest on his way to visit Charles Bearblock, who was Grand
Secretary of the Ancients Grand Lodge from 1779 to 1782. Pickering claimed that he had simply stopped
to see what the commotion was about and had been wrongly seized by the Bow
Street Runners:
I had some
business with Mr. Bearblock; he had been a Grand Master of the Free-masons; I
was master of the Lodge this year; a man had applied to me to be made a
free-mason; I was not so well acquainted with the solemnities as Mr. Bearblock,
therefore I applied to see him; I saw a man come out of the area of this house;
I saw Heley take him, upon that I got over the rails into the area to satisfy
my curiosity; I was sent to the Compter; being taken, I could not go on to Mr.
Bearblock's at all
It was an exaggeration to claim
that Bearblock had been Grand Master, but he was Past Master of Lodge No. 4
under the Ancients. Despite Pickering's invocation of this masonic connection,
he and all the other counterfeiters were found guilty. It may be that
Bearblock, who was at that time apparently a wine importer, was indeed prone to
keeping dubious company. He was mysteriously discharged after just three years
as Grand Secretary of the Ancients. It would be intrguing to know whether the
Charles Bearblock who was tried with others at the Old Bailey in 1798 for
stealing a shipment of coffee from a ship moored on the Thames was the former
Grand Secretary of the Ancients.
One of the most compelling aspects
of The Old Bailey Proceedings is the way in which they reveal the lives
of obscure and forgotten Londoners. Tracing the life of somebody like Bearblock
through these sources is a fascinating exercise in reconstruction, and this is
the inspiration for a new project by the team which created the online version
of the Old Bailey Proceedings. London Lives will allow a number
of other datasets containing information about ordinary Londoners to be
investigated and cross-searched, so that biographies of many everyday people
can be reconstructed. The first stages of the London Lives project are
available at www.londonlives.org.
Again, this project is already bringing to light fascinating information about
eighteenth-century London Freemasonry. For example, it is already possible to
search on this site working papers of Middlesex justices which include
inquests. In 1763, a man called John Bunter was stabbed to death near Cannon
Street. The immediate reason for the argument which led to Bunter's death was
apparently his intention of becoming a Freemason.
By the late eighteenth century,
public interest in crime reports was waning, and sales of the Old Bailey
Proceedings declined. From 1787, the City of London had to subsidise the
publication costs of the proceedings. The proceedings began to become less
popular literature and more of a formal record. They continued to be pubished
until the establishment of the Central Criminal Court in 1913. The Old
Bailey Proceedings Online website has recently added these
nineteenth-century records to its database. While these reports lack the
immediacy of the eighteenth-century trials, nevertheless they are also packed
with fascinating information for the historian of Freemasonry. I hope to
discuss some of these nineteenth-century cases from the Old Bailey in the next
issue of The Square.
'A person who is tired of crime', declared Horace Rumpole,
'is tired of life'. Rumpole of course regarded his 'proper stamping ground' as
the Old Bailey. Those of you who have seen the recent BBC drama series Garrow’s Law or heard the Radio 4
programmes Voices from the Bailey
will know that Rumpole's axiom was just as true in the eighteenth century as
today. The printed collections of Old Bailey Proceedings, which describe
criminal trials held at the courts held at the Old Bailey in London, provide
vivid depictions of many aspects of everyday life in eighteenth-century London.
The Old Bailey Proceedings have been made available online by a joint project
based at the Universities of Sheffield and Hertfordshire, and you can search
these trials for yourself at
www.oldbaileyonline.org.
The eighteenth-century trials include a number of intriguing
references to Freemasonry, such as a theft during a Masonic meeting at the
Goose and Gridiron, which I described in an earlier issue of The Square. The Old Bailey Proceedings
do not simply cover the eighteenth century, but continued until 1913. However,
the nature of the reports of nineteenth-century trials in the proceedings
is slightly different to those I have
already discussed. To understand the reasons for this, it is necessary to look
briefly at the publication history of the proceedings.
The enormous public interest in the lives of ordinary
criminals (perhaps enhanced by the explicit sexual testimony in some of the
trials) meant that from the 1730s the printed proceedings were among the
best-selling publications of the day. By
the 1770s, however, readership for the proceedings was declining, as newspapers
began to carry more detailed reports of trials. Commercial publishers lost
interest in the Old Bailey Proceedings and it was necessary for the City of
London to provide a subsidy to ensure their continued publication.
The City started to view the printed proceedings
increasingly as an official record and in 1778 demanded that they should provide
a ‘true, fair and perfect narrative’ of all the trials. In response to this,
the publishers of the proceedings reduced the amount of salacious content and
reported individual trials in much greater detail. The Old Bailey Proceedings
became in effect an official publication of the City of London, providing an
accurate public record designed largely for use by lawyers. In 1834, the
jurisdiction of the court was extended and it was renamed the Central Criminal
Court. Despite occasional attempts by the City of London to save money by
discontinuing the proceedings, they continued to be published until 1913 when
the Criminal Justice Act introduced a statutory requirement for the taking of
shorthand notes of trials, paid for by the Treasury. The Old Bailey Proceedings
consequently became redundant, and their publication ceased in 1913.
The reports of nineteenth-century criminal trials at the Old
Bailey have now been made available online by the Old Bailey Online project at
the Universities of Hertfordshire and Sheffield. An immediate impression is
that these nineteenth-century trials contain much more information about
Freemasonry than the eighteenth-century trials. This may be explained in a
number of ways. As already noted, the publishers of the eighteenth-century
proceedings tended to concentrate on the more sensational cases and omitted
many mundane crimes, which may have included some cases with a Masonic element.
The nineteenth-century reports also provide a much more detailed record of the
examination of prisoners and witnesses which mean that they contain more
passing references to Freemasonry. Nevertheless, the impression which emerges
from the Old Bailey proceedings is that Freemasonry was a much more prominent
and significant part of London life during the reign of Queen Victoria than it
had been in the eighteenth century. This is important, since research into the
history of Freemasonry has tended to focus on the eighteenth century, and
Freemasonry has been largely considered historically as an expression of the
Enlightenment. Yet it was during the nineteenth century that Freemasonry
finally became an integral part of British society.
The Old Bailey Proceedings illustrate how we need to pay
more attention to nineteenth-century Freemasonry if we are to understand the
importance of Freemasonry in culture and society. The way in which Freemasonry
was all pervasive in nineteenth-century London can be seen from a number of
theft cases in which Masonic objects were stolen. For example, Henry Sales was
indicted in 1840 for shoplifting from a pawnshop. The most valuable of the
objects stolen by him were three Masonic ornaments worth altogether about a
guinea. One imagines a run-down pawnshop in which many of the most prominent
and most noticeable objects on display were Masonic. In a case from 1835,
Elizabeth Baker, who with her husband Avery kept the Crown and Horseshoe public
house in Holborn, was going to bed and found her bedroom door open. She could
see that her chest of drawers had been opened and that her clothes were
scattered all over the room. She ran down the stairs and cleverly locked a door
so that the thief could not escape if he was still upstairs. When the thief
came downstairs he tried the door and finding it locked, leapt over some
banisters. Elizabeth shouted ‘Stop Thief!’ and tried to grab the miscreant, but
he got away from her clutches.
In the scuffle, the thief lost his hat, and when it was
picked up it was found that it contained Avery Baker’s Masonic apron which was
valued at fifteen shillings (about £70 in modern values). Among other goods
which the thief had tried to take were some shirts, a gown, a shawl and some
handkerchiefs, but the Masonic apron was far and away the most valuable item.
In the tap room of the Crown and Horseshoe, where Avery was pouring
gin-and-water and customers were drinking, they heard Elizabeth’s cry of alarm,
and saw the thief trying to escape. One of the Bakers’ servants, Abigail Barry,
seized the thief, and with the assistance of one of the customers restrained him
while the watchman was summoned. The prisoner was a man called Henry Edmonds.
On closer examination of the hat, it was found that as well as the Masonic
apron it contained some skeleton keys. Edmonds, who had been seen drinking in
the bar before the attempted theft, claimed that the hat was not his, and that
he had been innocently drinking with his brother-in-law. He had simply gone
upstairs to find the landlord to get another drink. Despite receiving a good
character, Edmonds’s claim was not believed, and he was sentenced to death.
The opulence of Victorian and Edwardian Freemasonry is
vividly expressed in the case of Albert Rothery. In January 1907, Samuel Gurney
Massey was tried at the Old Bailey for fraud in managing the affairs of the
‘Economic Bank’, which had gone bankrupt. Albert Rothery, an accountant who had
acted for the liquidators of the bank, was among the witnesses who appeared
against Massey. However, nine months later, Rothery himself was to be tried at
the Old Bailey for a crude fraud on suppliers of Masonic regalia and jewels. He
had obtained Masonic and other jewellery worth hundreds of pounds on credit
from various suppliers which he had then pawned, notwithstanding the fact that
he was an undischarged bankrupt. It is worth tabulating Rothery’s depredations
since they give a good picture of the healthy state of the Masonic regalia
business in Edwardian London and the value of the jewels commonly sported by
the Freemasons of that time:
From Sir John Bennett Limited, one ring, worth £119;
From Thomas Hutchinson, seven Masonic jewels, worth £37 1s
From Sidney Alexander Weeden, two Masonic jewels, worth £12 1s 6d
From William Henry Toye, two rings and five Masonic jewels, worth £26 1s
From Frank Reginald Kenning, three Masonic jewels, worth £16 5s
From James Masters, one ring, worth £85
From William Stiffen, five Masonic jewels, worth £25 10s
Thus, Rothery had managed to acquire rings and Masonic
jewels worth a grand total of £320 17s 6d – more than £25,000 by modern values.
Rothery had spun a complex web in perpetrating his fraud, with some twenty
pawnbrokers involved.
The name of one of Rothery’s victims, William Toye
(1844-1910), who developed the specialist braid and ribbon manufacturing
business established by his father into one of the largest manufacturers of
Masonic and friendly society regalia, is still well known among British
Freemasons. It was not the first time that Toye had suffered a deception in a
case which ended up in the Bailey. In 1896, the Investor newspaper carried a prospectus for the firm of T. E.
Brinsmead and Sons, piano manufacturers in Kentish Town. Among the subscribers
to the Investor was Toye, who
described himself as a Masonic jeweller living in the Clerkenwell Road. John Brinsmead was one of the best piano
makers of the period; but the Thomas
Brinsmead who had set up T. E. Brinsmead and Sons was simply trying to cash in
on the Brinsmead name, and had no experience in the manufacture of pianos. Toye
was among those duped, and purchased ten pounds worth of shares in T. E.
Brinsmead and Sons. Shortly afterwards, he realised his mistake and he wrote
asking for his money back, stating that ‘Your prospectus certainly was very
misleading in my opinion, as it did not
distinctly state that the firm of T. E. Brinsmead and Sons had or had not any
connection with John Brinsmead and Sons, but it read as though they had’. Toye
never received his money back, and the firm of T. E. Brinsmead went bankrupt.
For their deception, Thomas Brinsmead and his associates were sentenced, thanks
to the testimony of Toye and others, to sentences ranging from three months
hard labour to five years penal servitude.
Freemasonry was associated in Victorian London with the
well-off and respectable. There was money in it, so not surprisingly it
frequently figured in cases involving forgery, deception and extortion. James
Edgell was a solicitor living in a comfortable house in Teddington who served
as a magistrate in Middlesex and was Clerk to the Kingston Guardians. On 29
December 1867, he was attending one of his committees when he received a letter
signed T. J. Adams which ‘stated that the writer was aware of certain indecent
practices which Edgell had been carrying on, that he could produce 4 witnesses,
but had no desire to cause a pubic scandal, or make a pretence of blackmailing,
and if £10 in unregistered notes was sent him, the prosecutor would never hear
more of the matter’. Edgell sent ten pounds by post and told his wife what had
happened. Inevitably, he received another demand for money a few days later.
Edgell refused to send any more money, and he received a further letter
insisting that the money should be paid and adding that if Edgell sent the
money, the blackmailer ‘would keep his secret as a brother Mason’. Eventually,
Edgell contacted the police, and an interview was arranged to trap the
blackmailer, resulting in the arrest of Oliver Fletcher. Shortly afterwards an
accomplice named John Cox was also arrested. Fletcher alleged that the
blackmailer was really his half-brother, named Reuben Brooks. He claimed that
Brooks owed him four pounds and had said to him ‘I know a Mason, and if you
will go and collect some money from him you can deduct that £4, and give me the
rest’. Brooks had told him that ‘it was a Masonic affair’. Cross-examined, Fletcher
insisted on this justification that ‘it was a Masonic matter’ as a
justification for his behaviour. Eventually, after lengthy cross-examination,
Fletcher changed his plea to guilty, and received seven years penal servitude.
Another case of extortion directed against a Freemason
occurred in 1847. Henry Robert Lewis lived in Upper Montague Street and among
his servants were William Litchfield and his wife. Litchfield’s wife died and
William Litchfield afterwards left Lewis’s service. Lewis had promised at the
time Litchfield’s wife was dying that he would help look after their son, and
Lewis gave Litchfield various sums of money after he had left his service to
help him in caring for the child. He also gave Litchfield a large sum of money
to help him establish a business. Notwithstanding Lewis’s apparent generosity
to his former employee, Litchfield seems to have felt that he still deserved
more money. On 22 July 1847, Litchfield wrote to Lewis as follows:
Sir, if you do not act as a gentleman towards me in this
affair of yours, and come to terms with your solicitor, by leaving with him
certain monies to supply my wants in the future while you are out of town, I
swear by heaven and hell that the whole of your damnable affair and beastly
conduct shall be held up before the eyes of the Masonic order, and the clubs
that you are a member of, whose secretaries I will write unto.
Lewis’s reaction to this threatening letter was to arrange
for Litchfield to be indicted and arrested. Litchfield was sentenced to be transported
for life.
Of the various cases of fraud and deception at the Old
Bailey during the nineteenth century with a Masonic connection, the most
interesting to the historian of Freemasonry is the prosecution in January 1870
of John Rust for embezzlement in January 1870, because it sheds a remarkable
light on the chaotic and financially unstable world of Masonic publication at
that time. Rust was employed in the office of William Smith, a civil engineer,
in Salisbury Street in London. Among many other activities at this office was
the production of two periodicals, namely the Artizan and the Freemasons’
Magazine. The Artizan was one of
the main periodicals concerned with civil engineering and had been established
in 1844. Smith apparently took over its publication in 1868, at the same time
that he also became the publisher of the Freemasons’ Magazine, which had
been begun in 1848 by Henry Warren. The production of these two periodicals was
just one of the many concerns of Smith’s office which apparently consisted of a
room in a building occupied by a number of other nebulous and dubious
companies. In cross-examination at the Old Bailey, Smith admitted that a great
many companies such as ‘The Public Works and Credit Company of Italy’, of which
he was engineer, and the ‘Agricultural and General Machinery Company Limited’
had their nameplates on his office doors.
John Rust had been employed in Smith’s office for about four
years and was described by Smith as the publishing clerk of the Artizan and the Freemasons’ Magazine. As far as Smith was concerned, Rust was a
junior employee whose duty was ‘to receive money when tendered at the office,
receive all letters and hand them over to me and, if I was absent, to my wife'.
In August 1869, however, Smith was arrested for debt and imprisoned for three
weeks. Smith had been first bankrupted in 1850, which he swore was not his
fault, but in connection with partnership proceedings. At the time of Rust’s
trial, he was a bankrupt to the tune of some £10,000. While Smith was in the
debtor’s prison, Rust received a cheque for £6 15s for an advertisement in the Artizan. After Smith was released from
prison, he discharged Rust, presumably because he could no longer afford the
wages. When Smith afterwards wrote to the firm which had placed the
advertisement requesting payment for the advertisement, the firm replied saying
that a cheque had already been sent which had been cashed. Smith found the
cheque had been endorsed by Rust. The ledgers of Smith’s companies seem to have
been rather hit and miss – in 1850, he had boasted that he had run a firm
without any books at all – but he claimed that Rust had deliberately failed to
enter the cheque in the ledgers. Rust was arrested at his house in Euston. Rust
admitted that he had endorsed the cheque, but insisted that he had used the
money for the business.
Smith fared badly under cross-examination. He was asked if
he had ever got a lad of fifteen to sign fictitious bills of exchange which
were used to raise money; at first, he denied doing so, but when confronted
with the boy in question, said that the boy wasn't fifteen, but actually
sixteen or seventeen. Smith attempted to bluster, but it was clear that he had
engaged in dubious transactions using office juniors as front men. Rust had signed
an affidavit for the bankruptcy court concerning Smith’s sharp practice in the
publication of the ‘National Masonic Calendar, Pocket Book, and Diary for
1870’, advertised to be edited and published by Smith. Smith claimed that
subscriptions to the Masonic calendar would be paid by the advertising agent,
but the advertisement stated that post office orders and cheques should be
payable to Henry Herbert Montague, which it transpired were the Christian names
of Smith’s nine-year-old son.
Rust claimed that he had used the money from the
advertisement to pay wages. Smith insisted that Rust had no authority to pay
wages unless money was handed to him for that purpose – according to Smith, the
only payments Rust was authorised to make were for petty cash and stamps for
the postage of newspapers. Smith admitted however that Rust was described in
the Freemasons’ Magazine as its publisher to whom Post Office orders
should be sent. There was an entry in the books which apparently referred to
the disputed cheque, but Smith denied they could be the same. Asked directly
whether he had ever been charged with fraud, Smith replied ‘Never, nor against
my character. I have always stood very high in the estimation of my friends – I
have been utterly ruined by the failure of joint stock companies to pay my fair
and reasonable charges’. Nevertheless, the cross-examination made it clear that
Smith had a long past of colourful financial dealings.
William Rogers was summoned as a witness for the defence. He
described himself as a gentleman who had been for sometime employed as Smith’s
amanuensis ‘when he was out of the way’. He produced various cheques relating
to his employment which showed the chaotic organisation of the office’s
finances and illustrated the way in which the staff had had to use their own
money to help keep the office running. Rust frequently opened letters in the
office, and signed Post Office orders on Smith’s behalf, although it was not
clear whether he also regularly endorsed cheques. Rogers declared that Rust always
paid for the postage of the periodicals:
The Artizan
journal comes out on the 27th or 28th of the month; it is
supposed to be published on the 1st. The Freemasons’ Magazine is issued every Friday. There would be a large
number that day to go to all parts of England, and some would go abroad; they
were sent out before the beginning of the month, and sometimes not then, in
consequence of an absence of money. Rust always paid my salary for the last
twelve or eighteen months. He was the publisher of the periodicals, he managed
them. He was a person of authority in the office. I considered myself under
him. There was no concealment about the cheque.
Asked whether it was ‘a common thing, or was it a very rare
thing indeed, that the office should be hard up for money, and the clerks
obliged to supply it’, Rogers replied that he had ‘heard the prisoner say so
many times and that he did not even know how he was to get the stamps to post
the magazines’. It seemed clear that Rust had endorsed the cheque, but it also
seemed that he had been routinely allowed to do this by Smith and that such
expedients were the only way in which the office could keep running. The jury
found Rust guilty, but made the pointed rider that it strongly recommended the
judge to show mercy ‘under the very peculiar circumstances of Mr Smith’s
office’. Smith’s operation was clearly a very extraordinary one.
Among the claims made by Smith against Rust was that he had
been pasing information (presumably about subscribers) to a rival masonic publication.
This is presumably a reference to The Freemason which was launched in
1869 by the supplier of Masonic jewels and regalia, George Kenning. Kenning ran
the new periodical in a much more business-like fashion and not surprisingly The
Freemasons' Magazine soon ceased trading. Rather than relying on an
inexperienced young man like John Rust, Kenning used as managers for The
Freemason men like Arthur Melbourne, who had had previous experience
in running newspapers. But even Kenning could sometimes be caught unawares.
In 1896, Edward Morgan was tried at the Old Bailey for fraud
in promoting shares in a company called
the 'United Founders' Association'. Morgan was an undischarged bankrupt,
and simply used the money he received via the United Founders' Association' to
try and clear some of his debts. The 'United Founders Association' ran
newspaper advertisements to attract investors. One such advert read 'Idle
Money.—The United Founders'Association invite the attention of investors to
unique and safe system of investment, yielding from 10 to 25 percent. No
gambling. Absolute security'.
Among the publications which ran advertisements for the
'United Founders' Association' was The Freemason. The item in The
Freemason stated that the Association had a capital of £20,000 and was paying
very satisfactory dividends. To make
matters worse, there was no indication that this was an advertisement – it
looked like an editorial recommendation by The Freemason. Kenning was
summoned as a witness to the Old Bailey to explain matters. Kenning declared
that the article 'was not written by me or by any member of my staff—I am told
it is an advertisement'. Under cross-examination, he repeated that 'I had
nothing to do with the puffing advertisement being put in this way and I do not
know how it was done'. He blamed his manager, who had supplied two hundred free
copies of the issue of The Freemason containing the advertisement to the
'United Founders' Association'. Apparently the advertisement had been secured
for The Freemason by a man named Evans who had received ten shillings
commission. Kenning felt the responsibility was entirely his manager's: 'my
manager was paying 10s. commission to insert a puffing paper what was not
marked "Advertisement"—that was very improper'.
Kenning's manager, Arthur Melbourne, was then summoned. He
explained that Evans was used to secure advertisements for The Freemason,
and had received ten shillings commission for arranging this advertisement.
Morgan had separately ordered two hndred extra copies of the issue containing
the advertisement. Since The Freemason sold for sixpence a copy, Morgan
had been invoiced for £2 10s; this bill had not been paid. Melbourne was then
cross-questioned as to why the fact that this was an advertisement was not
indicated. He replied as follows:
We did not put "Advt." at the end, because it
was stipulated that it should not be put—I agreed to that—this was an
exceptional one—nobody criticises the advertisements—our usual charge is five
shillings per inch for advertisements pure and simple—there is not a charge for
advertisements like this; it depends upon the number of copies—I saw what the
copy would make, and suggested the price—I saw it before it was set up in
type—the copy was written by Evans, the gentleman who brought orders, and to
whom I gave the commission—he has not brought advertisements frequently
before—we did not put it in leaded type—this is the first we have put in
without "Advt."—I was assured that it was a bone fide business, and I put it in, believing it was all right—the
final proof is revised by the editor, but there was not time—I took something
out—I am not sub-editor, I am manager—it was not an honest thing to put it in.
The publication of newspapers such as The Freemason was
one of the best illustrations of the way in which Freemasonry had become part
of the fabric of life in Victorian London. This integration of Freemasonry into
everyday life was most visibly expressed in the appearance of masonic halls
alongside the non-conformists chapels, temperance halls and other meeting
places that appeared as the suburbs of the Victorian city inexorably swallowed
up the surrounding countryside. One of the most singular of the cases relating
to Freemasonry reported in the Old Bailey Proceedings concerned the use of one
of these new masonic halls. The masonic hall at Mount Pleasant in Plumstead was
opened in 1888. A number of the lodges which met there had connections with the
nearby Woolwich Arsenal, and the Royal Arsenal football team had its annual
dinner there in 1891 when it was still an amateur club. In 1911, Sydney
Burnett, an employee at the Arsenal, began to hold weekly whist drives at the
Freemasons' Hall. Most of those who attended were Arsenal men and their
wives. The drives proved very popular;
on one occasion, there were 144 players at 36 tables.
The question of whether whist played in public places for
prizes contravened the gaming laws was a vexed one. A recent court decision had
determined that 'progressive whist', where pairs were split up when they won a
game, was not primarily a game of skill and therefore contravened the law.
Burnett was warned by the local police that he drive at the Freemasons' Hall
were illegal. He protested that the drives did not involve progressive whist.
He offered to allow the police to witness the play. Two policemen visited two
of the whist drives. They observed that the events were very respectably
conducted: 'No alcohol was sold. The prizes were useful ones'. They confirmed
that the drives were partner drives, and admitted that in partner drives the
element of chance was less than that of skill. Nevertheless, Burnett was
arrested, charged with 'unlawfully using the Freemasons' Hall, Mount Pleasant,
Plumstead, for the purpose of unlawful gaming' and duly appeared in the Old
Bailey.
The sense of outrage is still audible in Burnett's
testimony as recorded in the Old Bailey Proceedings:
SYDNEY BURNETT (prisoner, on oath). I am employed in the
Woolwich Arsenal. I have played whist some 20 years. It is absolutely a game of
skill. I used to organise whist drives on behalf of an association. They
presented me with a gold watch in recognition of my services. In October, 1911,
I commenced whist drives at Freemason's Hall. Ninety per cent. of the players
are Arsenal men and their wives. Most of them are expert players. The drives
originally were ordinary progressive. Since the case of Morris v. Godfrey I
introduced partner drives. I consider them legal. I consider it a game where
skill predominates over chance. It increases the skill of the game not to have
the trump card shown. In addition to the ordinary prizes there is an aggregate
prize. Those that do not win a prize hand in their cards at the end of the
evening and they choose their partners for a whole month. At the end of the
month the scores are totalled up and the lady and gentleman with the highest
score take prizes. The games are conducted in silence and proper time is given
for playing each hand. The games are over at 11 o'clock at the latest. The
profit for the 14 months of the whist drives and refreshment bar was £58.
Some of those who attended appeared to attest to Burnett's
good character. James Underwood was an examiner of forgings in the Royal
Arsenal, had known Burnett since he was a child and considered him of unimpeachable
character. Underwood himself had played whist for twenty three years, and was
firmly of the opinion that it is a game of skill. Florence Morgan was married
to a worker at the Arsenal. She had played whist for about ten years and had
regularly attended Burnett's whist drives. She added: 'The players are what I
should call the upper set of the artisan class. They are mostly very good
players. I consider whist a game of skill. I have run aggregate prizes two
months running'. Edith Pyne added simply, 'I know the people who go to these
whist drives. I think they tend to improve the social life'.
Burnett was found not guilty, and the whist drives
continued at the Freemasons' Hall in Plumstead. Rumpole was right: all human
life truly appeared at the Old Bailey, and the different ways in which
Freemasonry became bound up with London life in reigns of Queen Victoria and
Edward VII are colourfully illustrated for us in the Old Bailey Proceedings.
Explore them online for yourself.
