Some Distinguished Victims of the Scaffold. Bleackley Horace
hurricanes. When he looked around he saw that fortunes were being won on every side. A wave of prosperity was bearing the empire on its crest. The Great Commoner had wrenched America and India from the hereditary enemy. To these vast markets British seamen were carrying the exports of their country. At home, the clever inventors of the North, Watt and Arkwright, Hargreaves and Brindley, had increased the powers of production a thousandfold. England was setting up shop on a scale undreamt of hitherto in the world’s philosophy. Why spend one’s life in dispensing pukes and boluses, thought apothecary Robert, when the Alley is open to all who dare take advantage of this golden age?
Since this was his character, brother Daniel and his pretty chère amie soon tempted the misguided man to share their fortunes, glad to seek the cover of his reputable name to fashion new and more desperate schemes. For earls and bishops were clients of the apothecary, and ‘honest Perreau’ was one of his appellations. Yet to preserve the co-operation of such respectability a pleasant little piece of fiction had to be maintained. Brother Robert, not a fool by any means, was willing to assist their plans, but only in the character of an ingenuous agent; a method – as, no doubt, he pointed out – that must disarm all suspicion. Thus, when he canvassed his friends to advance money on bonds in pursuance of the new policy, he would be able to pose as the emissary of his sister-in-law Mrs Daniel Perreau and her doting relatives Messrs James and William Adair. Indeed, there was a letter in his pocket, authorising some such scheme, which, not being penned by the Pall Mall agent, probably was the work of the clever woman who could give imitations of other people’s handwriting. Such a letter would be useful in case his possession of an Adair bond was questioned, but most useful of all – and this most certainly Mr Robert Perreau would not point out to his confederates – in making him appear a guileless dupe in the hands of an artful woman. Very cleverly had he arranged the saving of his own skin, this sly, precise apothecary.
For no game could be more hazardous than the one which the guilty trio continued to pursue. Forgery was needful to cover forgery. As one bond became payable another had to be discounted to provide the money. A couple of bonds to the value of nearly £8000 were cashed by banker Mills in the City. On two others the large sums of £4000 and £5000 had been advanced by Sir Thomas Frankland. In this way more than a dozen were negotiated during the twelve months that preceded the discovery. All were signed with the name of the army agent – the pretended benefactor of Daniel’s wife – and their total value reached the huge sum of £70,000. Thus the Perreaus had been able to continue their speculations in Exchange Alley. Their sole chance of coming out of the mischief scot free was a lucky stroke at Jonathan’s, or the death of one of their victims.
Public interest in the case was aroused no less by the personality of the prisoners than by the mystery surrounding the actual criminal. For the brothers on one side, and Mrs Rudd on the other, told two wonderful and contradictory stories. This most artful of women, whined the Messrs Perreau, using consummate guile, had revealed to them gradually a dazzling and enticing prospect. First Mr James and then Mr William Adair was represented as the lavish benefactor of their beautiful relative. Yet such was the modesty of these capitalists, that although they declared their intention of procuring a baronetcy for Daniel, and an estate in the country for Robert, besides setting up the twins as West-End bankers, they would communicate with Mrs Rudd alone! Moreover, such was the impecuniosity of these wealthy men that they were able to carry out their benevolent intentions only by the aid of notes of hand! However, the brothers protested that these assurances had been given to them by the lady, and that all the forged bonds had been received from the fair Margaret Caroline by innocent Daniel or ingenuous Robert, in the belief that the Messrs Adair, who had signed them, intended a gratuitous present. A most happy stroke of luck, coinciding fortunately with the period of their bold speculations at Jonathan’s! Yet what was Mrs Rudd’s motive in running these risks to provide funds from which she received little benefit, was not made clear.
Even more wondrous was the other story. Although her conduct at the house in Pall Mall – whether we deem her guilty or innocent – showed something of nobility, she had no mercy for her confederates after they had played her false. While confessing once more that she had forged the bond which the Drummonds had rejected, she declared that her keeper Daniel had forced her to do so by standing over her with an open knife, threatening to cut her throat unless she obeyed. An incredible story, but no more improbable than the other! With the exception of this compulsory forgery, Mrs Rudd avowed that she was innocent. Amidst all this publicity it is likely that poor Mr James Adair, who had been very much the lady’s friend in former days, would have an unpleasant time with Mrs James Adair, and with his son, young Mr Serjeant James, M.P., the rising barrister!
Such an entertainment was a novel and delightful experience for the British public. Since the wonderful time (fourteen summers ago) when mad Earl Ferrers had made his exit at Tyburn in a gorgeous wedding dress, and amidst funereal pomp, the triple tree seldom had been graced by the appearance of gentlefolk. Broker Rice, whose shady tricks at the Alley made him the victim of Jack Ketch three years after his lordship, was almost the only respectable criminal who had been hanged for more than a decade. Indeed, except Mother Brownrigg and Jack of the Sixteen Strings, no criminal of note had dangled from a London scaffold since the days of Theodore Gardelle. Yet a glorious era was dawning for the metropolitan mob, when, in quick succession, Dodd, Hackman, and Ryland were to journey down the Oxford Road – the golden age of the gallows, when George III. was king!
On Friday, the Ist of June, Robert Perreau was put to the bar at the Old Bailey. Owing to ill-health he had been allowed to remain in the Clerkenwell prison, and was not taken to Newgate until the morning of his trial – a privilege shared also by his brother. The President of the Court was Sir Richard Aston, who, as a junior of the Oxford circuit, had helped to defend the unfortunate Miss Blandy. By his side sat the Right Honourable John Wilkes, Lord Mayor of London, a quite tame City patriot now almost ready for the royal embraces, very different from the Wilkes winged by pistol-practising Martin, M.P., and hounded by renegade Jemmy Twitcher. This same City patriot – if we may credit one of Dame Rumour’s quite credible stories – whispered into the ear of the judge the most important words spoken during the trial: – “My lord, you can convict these men without the woman’s evidence… It is a shocking thing that she should escape unpunished, as she must if you call her as a witness!” Which advice – if the lady had been as kind to ‘squinting Jacky’ as the world believed – shows that he was rising on stepping stones of Medmenham Abbey to higher things. At all events, instead of summoning Mrs Rudd into the box, the judge startled the world by ordering her to be detained in Newgate.
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