The Masters of Bow Street Read online

  ‘I truly believe that Beth fears he will commit some outrageous, deed at the wedding,’ Ruth Furnival remarked in the lull which followed. ‘If he does, Beth will never forgive him, and I shall find forgiveness difficult.’

  In the event, the wedding passed without disturbance. Beth was at her loveliest in her bridal gown; not only was the small church of St. Giles full but hundreds gathered outside in the sunshine and a huge table groaned with food and drink on the lawns of St. Giles Farm, where every villager was a welcome guest. Sir Mortimer Tench, an older and more mild-seeming man than James had expected, was very conscious of his duty to those who lived on his estate. Beth was radiant and her tall, somewhat too-elegant groom was obviously delighted with himself and his bride.

  It was as if the wedding closed a door firmly on the past and opened another to a bright future.

  In the odorous, dirty, overcrowded court, pleading for accused who were victims of circumstances or corruption, James Marshall learned more than he could have hoped to learn in any other way, with the help of David Winfrith and Benedict Sly. The Daily Clarion was the property of three young men, of whom Sly was one, dedicated to social reform. Much of its material was based on the Fieldings’ reports and opinions, so that the newspaper became an unofficial second means of attack. Moreover, its columns often printed advertisements at very low cost, asking victims of robberies to report their loss to Bow’ Street immediately.

  With increasing admiration James began to understand how the Fieldings worked and saw that progress was being made with the recovery of stolen property and the arrest and committal of thieves.

  ‘But until there is official support, progress will be slow,’ Winfrith declared.

  There seemed no doubt that he was right.

  By September 1753, two years almost to the day since he had returned to London, Beth had had her first child and seemed thoroughly happy; the work of converting St. Giles farmhouse was long since finished, and the first foundlings had already been taken there; and since his outbreak at the time of the river pageant, Johnny had behaved in exemplary fashion.

  Moreover, James’s own affairs prospered. His presentation of case after case was so skilful that news spread of it throughout London, and people who had grievances or believed they had been wrongly accused came to him frequently, able and ready to pay a reasonable fee for his help. These fees he gave to the poor or to help with Bow Street expenses. While the legal side of his business expanded considerably faster than he had anticipated, another venture also prospered. He did not really know how it had started, except that Benedict Sly had convinced him that he should be able to turn his exhaustive knowledge of London and her environs to account.

  ‘You should place an advertisement in The Daily Clarion, Jamey. Now let me think. How would it be if you were to declare yourself an expert on all matters pertaining to London?’

  ‘Expert is much too strong,’ James had protested.

  ‘Very well, then. How about this: “Whatever you require in London Town ‘Mr. Londoner’ knows where to find it.”?’

  After pondering, James had replied, ‘But who would want to pay me for such a service?’

  ‘Let us strike a bargain,’ Benedict had suggested. ‘I will insert the advertisement in our columns without charge daily for two weeks, and you will pay only if it brings you results.’

  On the day following the first advertisement a man had come by to find out if ‘Mr. Londoner’ knew where to obtain a certain kind of French pomade, two women had requested his assistance in buying Spanish mantillas, and an elderly man from the North American colonies had wanted to know if the place of his birth still existed.

  ‘I dare not traipse about London looking for the place where I was born,’ the man deplored. ‘It frightens me even to look at the rush and tear on the roads. The name of the place I can remember - Skelton Yard, near Saint Paul’s Cathedral.’

  ‘There are but a few houses left there,’ James was able to tell him. ‘Take a sedan chair. . .’

  He knew, also, of a shop in Covent Garden where Spanish and Portuguese as well as some Indian bric-a-brac was sold, and recommended a French hairdresser in the growing suburb of Knightsbridge as one likely to know where the pomade could be found. He made no charge for the information, asking only for a fair fee should his guidance bring results. Within two hours the man from the North American colonies was back, overjoyed; he had found the cottage and a cousin and now requested help to find other relatives.

  ‘I don’t care what it costs,’ he said grandly, placing two guinea pieces on the table where James sat. ‘There are plenty more where those came from, Mr. Londoner!’

  More and more inquiries came, from the advertisements, mostly from recommendations by word of mouth. At the doorway leading to his rooms, one of Benedict’s printers did a nameboard with the words ‘Mr. Londoner’ written across wash drawings of St. Paul’s and the Monument. James was seldom unable to answer questions.

  His own knowledge of the City and of Westminster grew even more extensive and he was so busy that he had little time to brood about what could be improved and what could be different. Now and again he saw Mary Smith, who had settled into the Weygalls’ household and, although looking thinner, was comfortably dressed and outwardly at least content. Sight of her never failed to stir him but he still had a sense of needing time before committing himself in marriage. All this time he waited for a summons from John Fielding. He had learned much about the way his men worked and of their unswerving loyalty, and he was grieved that despite their efforts the early part of that winter of 1753 showed crime had risen to fantastic heights. A few highwaymen began to work regularly close to the turnpikes, and some holdups were actually staged within the City of London. Reports claimed that these were mostly the work of one bold gang of ruthless thieves known as the Twelves, one of them having boasted that if he were taken, eleven men would come rushing to his rescue.

  Everyone who knew Henry Fielding realised that the burden of his work, his long hours in court and his constant fight for official assistance were making him ill. He-suffered, among other sicknesses, from dropsy, and his brother and friends, including Saunders Welch, persuaded him to go to Bath to take the waters. He was about to leave when an urgent message reached him from the Secretary of State, the Duke of Newcastle. At last the government had been stirred to anxiety and demanded of Henry Fielding a detailed plan to fight crime in the coming winter.

  Fielding cancelled his visit to Bath and spent four days working on a plan which he submitted to the Duke. In his report, Fielding revealed the existence of his volunteers and pleaded for six hundred pounds to buy horses so that the men could move faster and for funds with which to pay messengers and buy information. Now the government knew exactly what Henry was doing.

  The waiting began again until finally George II said in a speech from the throne: ‘It is with utmost regret that I observe that the horrid crimes of murder and robbery are increased . . . I urge that everybody should contribute their best endeavours against the criminals.’

  The following day The Daily Clarion and other newspapers quoted the speech.

  James, going into the smelly, crowded court a few days later, saw Winfrith beckoning, him.

  As soon as he drew within earshot, Winfrith whispered, ‘There is to be an official allowance of two hundred pounds a year, Jamey.’

  James gasped, ‘Two hundred! Not two thousand?’

  ‘It is a start,’ Winfrith said with a sigh. ‘It is a start.’

  19: THE BATTLE

  Out of the blue one morning at the end of November a summons came for James to wait upon John Fielding at Bow Street. This was the first time for several years that he had been in the private office, behind the court: a room once used for very unofficial purposes.

  ‘Mr. Marshall, I am keenly aware of your eagerness to assist us at Bow Street in our pursuits,’ the magistrate said. ‘But your father was killed in such service and your stepfather made great sacrifi
ces also. I have been reluctant to subject you to the dangers involved. However, one grievous problem preoccupies us - in which your special knowledge of London and of this particular district might be of help.’

  ‘I am wholly at your service, sir.’

  ‘Thank you. You will have heard of the activities of a gang known as the Twelves. We have received some intelligence that members of this gang live in the Covent Garden area, venturing out at night and riding their horses to attack our respectable citizens with the utmost violence. No one is safe.’

  ‘If I can help put an end to it I will be greatly rewarded,’ James declared.

  ‘I am aware of it. My proposal is that you use your knowledge of the topography of the area to discover exactly where these blackguards live and where they hide or dispose of their ill-gotten gains. You will be alone in your early endeavours unless you can think of one other who, not being an associate at Bow Street, would have the courage to accompany you. Should good fortune attend you, then every available man will be used to crush the Twelves.’

  ‘I will exert myself in every way,’ James promised, fighting down his increasing excitement. ‘It might be of assistance, sir, if I could study the record of the depredations of the Twelves to ascertain where they have struck, whom they have attacked, what valuables they have stolen, and on what nights they have been active.’

  ‘Such a record has been prepared. Mr. Winfrith will put it into your hands.’

  ‘You are very kind,’ James said.

  He left the house in Bow Street, still eager and yet becoming slightly apprehensive. He carried a leather case containing the information Winfrith had given him and went straight to his rooms and studied the documents for three hours. Dizzy with the concentrated effort of reading he walked to an alley in Fleet Street in which there was an eating house where the food was good, plentiful and cheap. He had been there for only ten minutes when Benedict came in, still wearing an apron smeared with printer’s ink. In the latter part of the day he set up in type the stories he had garnered during the earlier hours. His eyes had the bright glitter of a man who was tired.

  ‘I was told you were here and came to take a glass of ale with you - I must not stay long or there will be no Clarion tomorrow!’

  ‘I have been taken by an idea,’ James said suddenly. ‘Although it wasn’t in my head a minute ago, I offer it to you eagerly. Will you join me in risking life and limb in an endeavour’ - he lowered his voice and leaned across the scrubbed wooden table - ‘to catch the Twelves and put them in jail? This is a secret matter, mind you.’

  ‘Fleet Street is the right place to bring secrets,’ Benedict said dryly. ‘Are you serious about this, Jamey?’

  ‘Never more so. When I have your word on secrecy I will tell you the whole story.’

  Three-quarters of an hour later Benedict said earnestly, ‘I am your man. And I can help in a way the court cannot. The Daily Clarion holds a record of incidents in the whole of the Covent Garden area, where we sell many of our newspapers, but many are told to me and my partners, for payment if used. I’ll warrant there was no mention of the New Mohocks in the secret record.’

  Startled, James said, ‘There was one - they left a girl all but dead in an alley. Even then it was said only that they were suspected.’

  ‘We have a list of most of their little escapades as well as hundreds of others not attributable to them.’

  ‘I am very glad, but why should you keep such a list?’

  ‘Jamey, everything is grist to the mill of a newspaper,’ explained Benedict. ‘One can never be sure when a piece of gossip or a trifle of information may not lead to a story of great public interest. If you will finish eating that treacle pudding I will take you to the office and get the diary.’

  The office and printing house were only fifty yards away, and the steady beat of a machine sounded clearly as they crossed the cobbled yard. The print shop itself was heavy with the odour of printing ink and hazy with smoke from pipes and oil lamps as the men stood at the machines and the boys rushed about with loads of newsprint. The office, in one corner, was little better, and James could only just make out, through the haze, two men sitting at a long desk.

  There was good-humoured banter between Benedict and the two men before the diary was taken down from a shelf. James was astonished by the detail, the minutiae of information about that quarter of London which contained both Bow Street and Covent Garden. It was kept on a day-to-day basis, most entries being set in the hours between sunset and midnight.

  As James turned its pages, one entry kept occurring: a single line reading ‘New Mohocks’. Occasionally there was the name of a victim of their outrages or an address of a house where they had created a disturbance, but for the most part there was just ‘New Mohocks’ - identifiable because of their method of attack on women, which had sometimes developed into rape by four or five men in succession.

  ‘Bring that back intact or “Mr. Londoner” will cease to exist!’ one of Benedict’s partners threatened.

  ‘I’ll bring it back, purified!’ James laughed.

  By the time he reached his rooms it was already nine o’clock but he studied the entries for another two hours, by which time the candle was burning low and his eyes were so heavy that he found it hard to keep them open. The following day, when not at court or attending to callers, he studied both the Bow Street report on the Twelves and the diary, and read and pondered late into the night. Up at six the next morning, he breakfasted on cold beef and pancakes with heavy black treacle, and had barely finished his ale when a thought stabbed into his head. Pushing back his chair, he sprang to the table where the diary lay. He began to look through it furiously, placing in the diary a tiny dot on those days when the Twelves had been active anywhere in London.

  On no single night of the Twelves’ depredations had the New Mohocks been active. Not one single night.

  ‘You think they might be the Twelves one night and the New Mohocks another?’ Benedict sounded incredulous and David Winfrith showed a kind of resignation.

  They were in James’s bedroom, large enough to be a living room also, and at night an office. On one side of the hearth were bookshelves holding mostly law and English and European history.

  ‘I think it probable,’ James replied. ‘Even five years ago the New Mohocks were old for such youthful gangs and today some of them must be in the middle twenties and none younger than twenty-one or two. Would raping women and arousing the fear of neighbours satisfy young men of that age? Could the attacks on women not be a cover for more serious activities?’

  ‘I like your reasoning,’ Benedict replied.

  ‘And I,’ agreed Winfrith.

  ‘There is an easy way to find out,’ declared James. ‘Have each of the New Mohocks watched and followed to their homes after their next attack and then at dusk each night for a week, say, have them watched and followed wherever they go.’

  ‘Practicable but I doubt easy,’ said Winfrith. ‘The watchers would be denying themselves any of the customary rewards of thief-taking and protecting private houses. They would need some retainer, a shilling a night at least.’

  ‘I will pay whatever is needed,’ offered James.

  ‘I will pay half,’ Benedict added. ‘Get skilful men, David, accustomed to following suspects without being seen.’

  Winfrith replied, ‘I am quite sure that Mr. Fielding will agree to this and will be grateful for your generous offer.’

  The surveillance began that night with constables from adjoining parishes taking positions of vantage, sometimes in doorways, sometimes in rooms of houses owned by friends, in the alehouses and near the brothels. For two nights there was nothing to report, but on the third, several men suspected of being New Mohocks left their homes and forgathered at the Angel Inn, near a corner of Covent Garden piazza. An hour later they left the Angel and split into two groups, one concentrating near a big house in Leicester Square, the other in Long Acre. Each group was watched and followed secretly.


  The first group ran amok through the great square, terrifying people in the houses and in the streets, cutting horses loose, kicking down protective fences about the flower beds and dis appearing after ten minutes of bedlam.

  Disappearing, that is, as far as they knew. In fact they were followed, one by one, to a big warehouse belonging to Ebenezer Morgan & Sons.

  The second group lay in wait for a girl and set upon her, but before they could harm her, two riders thundered by, Bow Street men, who gave the girl a chance to escape but did not reveal their identity.

  The next night nothing happened.

  On the fifth night of the vigil the New Mohocks met again at the Angel Inn but this time they did not stay so long. In twos and threes they left in the direction of Hyde Park Turnpike and went on to the Pack Inn, a mile beyond the turnpike. Within a quarter of an hour they left by the ill-lit back door, took horses from the stables, and approached the highway; each one was masked. Since they were mounted and Fielding’s men were on foot, no chase was possible, but the Bow Street men were near enough to identify the riders as they held up two carriages and one coach. Frightened men and women were made to dismount and were robbed of all their valuables, and two young women were so roughly handled that there seemed some danger of rape, but a small company of dragoons, dispatched at Fielding’s request, came at a gallop before great harm could be done and the highwaymen scattered.

  Each one returned to the Morgan warehouse through the archway in Long Acre.

  By the time James and Benedict were summoned and reached the spot, all Fielding’s men were at the approaches to the warehouse. John Charleston, one of the oldest and most reputable of the men from Bow Street, advanced into the middle of the yard in front of the warehouse, while others crept to the doorways, where a pale light glimmered through the cracks.

  Suddenly there was a cry from the roof.