Volume 4
The Newgate calendar; comprising interesting memoirs of the most notorious characters who have been convicted of outrages on the laws of England since the commencement of the eighteenth century; with occasional anecdotes and observations, speeches, confessions, and last exclamations of sufferers / By Andrew Knapp and William Baldwin.
- Knapp, Andrew.
- Date:
- 1824-
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The Newgate calendar; comprising interesting memoirs of the most notorious characters who have been convicted of outrages on the laws of England since the commencement of the eighteenth century; with occasional anecdotes and observations, speeches, confessions, and last exclamations of sufferers / By Andrew Knapp and William Baldwin. Source: Wellcome Collection.
295/416 (page 289)
![exertion in my power to get away with mv property and with my cha- racter from that court and that country where I now am, through the medium of a jury. I have sa- crificed eight hundred pounds of law expenses. I have lost six years of my time, together with the fatigue and trouble of going and returning to London, and hitherto for no other purpose than to hear myself abused. For these six years my life has been made a burden to me. Mr. Jamieson, who conducts my suit, often tells me, what 1 be- lieve to be true, that not a person in the whole United Kingdom could have manifested so much resolution and firmness; and he tells me that not one case could so opportunely occur to show the general distress oj the nation. God only knows whether the practice is general; if so, I sincerely pity those who shall run the hundredth part of the gaunt- let I have done ; for it is a general robbery. The Scots live like fishes — the large devour the small! ‘ If there is any truth in the story about the bank being at ail robbed with false keys, it may, as I am told, happen that this man AVhite, who is said to he my accomplice, may turn out to be some Edinburgh deacon or magistrate, with a gold chain and cocked hat; for it was by them, along with the procurator- fiscal, that my money was first of all taken forcibly from my person, under the pretence of a crime, but for the covered purpose of taking my money. They have dropped the charge, but detained my pro- perty ! ‘You can have no conception to what length corruption and oppres- sion is gone in this part of the United Kingdom ; and, what is most lamentable, the higher orders of society are chiefly implicated in it.: VOL. IV. this you will see from the advoca- tion. In short, my good sir, all I can tell is, that, after the most active research which, during the course of six years, could be made after roguery, all that is hitherto made out is, that, of all of us concerned in that fraudulent inquiry, there is but one honest man among us, and that is myself: they are all of them chargeable, from the face of the records, but one. But, put jests aside, 1 have been shockingly used ; and, if you can m^ke a step down this way, as a witness for me at the jury trial, I shall be well enough pleased. 1 am/ &c. [The reading of this letter occa- sioned a great deal of amusement in court, from the grave folly in which it is couched, particularly its reflections on the Scotcli courts.] ' And this/ continued the learned counsel, ‘ is from an honest man, demanding the surrender of his own books!’ He would now read the answer of Mr. Martin, which was of a piece with the foregoing, and was written according to the instructions of Mackcoull, by Mackcoull’s own brother. The jury would perceive what a fraternal correspondence it was :— ‘ April J3, 1819. * Sir,—Your application to me, relative to the books in my posses- sion, is so very strange and absurd, that I am really at a loss to account lor it. In the name of reason, what can the books have to do with the bills taken or stolen from your person ? It is but a short period since you informed me that Sir Wil- liam Forbes and the Commercial Bank had declared they cancelled the hills—and 1 am now told they are not cancelled. What am 1 to think of this juggling? If you re- port truly, I do not only think, hut am justified in saying. Sir William 110](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b29350694_0004_0295.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
