George & Joseph Weston
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BROTHERS IN CRIME - Continued. Page: 3
Had George but known it, the Runners were
only an hour behind him! Although they momentarily lost the trail at Lincoln,
the postmaster at Newark, a Mr Clarke, had put them back on the scent. Clarke,
who kept the Saracen's Head inn at Newark, had changed a note for £25
for a naval officer that very morning, and only an hour or two later, a
post office notice about the robbery reached him. Mr Clarke had himself
pursued the fugitive as far as Grantham, where he met the Runners, who continued
the chase.
The 'naval officer' was traced as far as
the Red Lion in Bishops gate Street, and the Runners, tired and travel stained,
arrived there only to be told by postboys that their quarry had left an
hour ago. No one had either heard the address given by the 'officer' to
the hackney carriage driver or remembered the number of the carriage. George
had no means of knowing just how close the chase had become, but he was
not a man to neglect precautions. He told the hackney driver to put him
down in Newgate Street, and took another carriage from there. The Runners
eventually managed to trace him to Newgate Street, but there the trail petered
out and the pursuit was temporarily abandoned.
The General Post Office had not been slow
to act when news of the robbery came through. On 29 January, the day of
the raid, they printed a notice which was sent out to all post offices in
the country. This was published two days later in the Morning Herald and
other newspapers, and it read:
'The postboy bringing the Bristol Mail this morning from Maidenhead was
stop't between two and three o'clock by a single highwayman with a crepe
over face, between the 11th and 12th milestones, near to Cranford Bridge,
who presented a pistol to him, and after making him alight, drove away the
horse and cart, which were found at seven o'clock this morning in a meadow
field near Farmer Lett's at Twyford, when it appears that the greatest part
of the letters were taken out of the Bath and Bristol bags and that the
following bags were entirely taken away:'
A list followed, and the notice continued:
'The person who committed this robbery is supposed to have had an accomplice,
as two persons passed the postboy on Cranford Bridge on horseback prior
to the robbery, one of whom he thinks was the robber; but it being so extremely
dark, he is not able to give any description of their persons.'
A large reward was then offered in these terms:
'Whoever shall apprehend and convict, or cause to be apprebended and convicted,
the person who committed this robbery, will be entitled to a reward of TWO
HUNDRED POUNDS, over and above the reward given by Act of Parliament for
apprehending highwaymen; or if any person, whether an accomplice in the
robbery, or knoweth thereof, shall make discovery whereby the person who
committed the same may be apprehended and brought to justice, such discoverer
will upon conviction of the party be entitled to the same reward of TWO
HUNDRED POUNDS and will also receive His Majesty's most gracious Pardon.'
Meanwhile the officers at Bow Street had been far from idle. The noted
Runner John Clarke was put in charge of the case, and at once offered a
reward to the driver of the hackney carriage in which the 'naval officer'
left the Red Lion, if he would come forward to help the authorities. A driver
named Perry went to Bow Street with vital information. He said he had picked
up a man in naval uniform at about ' eleven o'clock on the night of 12 February,
and was surprised to , discover that it was a man he knew as George Weston,
who had not to his knowledge joined the Navy.
Perry gave a good description of George, and when the Runners learned
that he had a brother, Joseph, they were delighted to get an excellent description
of this man too from the observant Perry. When others who had known the
pair were winkled out, the authorities quickly built up the detail they
needed,
The London Gazette, and every other London
newspaper, was soon carrying a 'Wanted' notice for the brothers issued by
Mr Anthony Todd, Secretary to the Postmaster-General. It read:
'George Weston is about twenty-nine years
of age, five feet seven inches high, square set, round faced, fresh coloured,
pitted with smallpox, has a rather thick nose, his upper lip rather thick,
his hair of lightest brown colour, which is sometimes tied behind and at
other times loose and curled; has much of the appearance of a country dealer
or farmer. One of his thumb nails appears, from an accident, of the shape
of a parrot's bill, and he is supposed to have a scar on his right hand
from a stroke with a cutlass.'
That thumb-nail deformity was to be vital
in trapping George later on. Next followed a description of Joseph, who
occupied second place just as he had done throughout the brothers' career.
It stated:
'Joseph Weston is about twenty-three years
of age, five feet nine inches high, slender made, of a fair and smooth complexion,
genteel person, has grey eyes and a large nose with a scar upon it; his
hair is of a light brown colour, sometimes tied behind, at other times loose
and curled; his voice is strong and he speaks a little through his nose;
has a remarkable small hand and long fingers.'
The Westons had by this time taken obscure
lodgings in the Borough and, adopting various disguises, were busily capitalizing
the rest of their plunder. They exchanged bills for large quantities of
silver plate, afterwards re-sold to dealers, and also dealt in the same
way with jewellery. They even set up as pawnbrokers for jewellery and silver,
and after items had been pledged with them, sold the goods for several times
the price they had advanced.
So successful were their methods that they
amassed capital of about £9,000 before the stolen bills and drafts
were exhausted. Later inquiries revealed that they had sold silver plate
to the value of £2,500 to Lucius Hughes, while an unnamed Jew had
given them upwards of £4,000 for items of jewellery taken to his
premises in St Mary Axe. One of these pieces
was a pair of diamond shoe buckles presented to one of his mistresses by
the Heir Apparent, and which the Westons bought with forged bills.
Realizing that their luck could not hold
much longer, the brothers decided to leave London for the country. They
went to Sussex and took a mansion house called The Friars' in the historic
little Cinque Port of Winchelsea. They had the place completely redecorated,
and went up to New Bond Street to choose additional furnishings.
Joseph, posing as a Mr William Johnson,
went to the shop of Messrs Elliott and Davis with a guarantor, Mr Samuel
Watson, who was, of course, his brother. They bought items costing more
than £400 on credit, and arranged that these should be delivered to
Winchelsea. The brothers talked airily of their estates in Yorkshire, and
the firm's principals were informed that Mr Johnson's income was £500
a year. Another New Bond Street tradesman, Mr Hanson, was given as a reference,
and was able to report with truth that he had had successful dealings with
William Johnson.
Before taking up residence in Winchelsea,
Joseph went one day to Holborn to buy a lottery ticket and met, quite by
chance, two pretty young milliners. He arranged to meet them again that
evening, and they accompanied George and Joseph to Vauxhall Gardens. After
a few more outings, including a trip by carriage to Windsor, the girls consented
to live with the affluent young men - an understandable decision since they
had been working long hours for little pay in Red Lion Square.
In November 1781 the brothers and the young
women - by this time arrayed in all the finery of fashion - travelled in
a carriage to Winchelsea and took up residence at 'The Friars'. Their arrival
in such a small place caused a great stir. The young men were seen out frequently
on fine horses, and the ladies, who had their own carriage and pair, were
much admired, for they always acted with great propriety. The style of living
the Westons adopted in Winchelsea involved lavish spending but it is surprising
that they should have courted disaster by failing to pay for the furnishings
from Messrs Elliott
and Davis.
By the middle of January, the firm's principals
became worried at the absence of promised payments but, anxious not to offend
a good customer, they decided to send a junior member of the firm to Sussex
to make a few discreet inquiries. This man, a Mr Davis, duly went to Winchelsea
and was reassured to find that Mr William Johnson was well-known as a wealthy
man who lived in elegant style with his friends.
Before he returned to London, however,
Mr Davis called upon Mr Johnson and tactfully suggested that his firm would
be most grateful for some payment on account, although they had no wish
to distress a valued customer. Mr Johnson was all affability, and explained
that while he was temporarily short of money the rents from his estates
should be arriving any day. When they did, he would discharge the debt.
The furnishing firm was not the only one
in New Bond Street awaiting payment for goods supplied to the personable
Mr Johnson. When March arrived without further word, Messrs Elliott and
Davis began to consider issuing a writ, and at this very moment they were
visited by a jeweller named Lucas, who asked if they could vouch for a customer
of his named Johnson who lived at Winchelsea. He explained that Johnson
had bought large quantities of jewellery from him, paying cash, but that
he now owed £100 and had recently sent an order for items worth many
times this sum. The goods were packed for transit, but he felt he should
take up the reference given him by Johnson before sending them.
He had been referred to Messrs Elliott
and Davis.
The result was that a writ was obtained
against William Johnson, and the angry tradesmen set out for Winchelsea
with a Sheriff's officer. They did not have to search far for their quarry,
for when they reached Rye they saw a fine carriage containing two ladies
coming towards them, escorted by two elegant young men on horseback whom
they recognized as William Johnson and his friend Samuel Watson.
The Sheriff's officer stopped the fashionable
cavalcade and attempted to arrest William Johnson, but George and Joseph
both drew pistols, warned him and the tradesmen to stand back, and
set spurs to their horses. Their excellent
mounts enabled them to get clean away, and they stopped at the Winchelsea
house only long enough to pick up money and personal belongings before disappearing
for good. The next morning the young milliners also left Winchelsea, and
returned to a house at Brompton where they had lived with the brothers before
the move to Winchelsea.
Meanwhile, George and Joseph went to Margate
and put up at Benson's Hotel, posing as Londoners who had come down for
a short holiday, and congratulated themselves on yet another escape. But
they would not have been so confident had they known that the Sheriff's
officer had taken particular notice of the deformed thumbnail on the hand
of the man he knew as Samuel Watson. It was now more than a year since the
Bristol Mail robbery, but the descriptions of the culprits had been so well
publicized that the officer's mind clicked. He at once reported that he
believed the men he had seen were George and Joseph Weston.
Back in the hotel on the Kent coast, it
was this same deformity which began to cause the brothers some anxiety.
While playing billiards, George noticed that his opponent was paying marked
attention to that thumb, and afterwards seemed preoccupied. The pair again
decided on a hurried departure, and crossed the Channel to Antwerp. It was
a happy decision, for the guest also remembered the advertisements about
the mail robbers, and went to London to report his suspicions to Justice
Wright's office in Bow Street. The Runners went hot-foot to Margate but
found that the Westons had fled.
Their inquiries did not reveal that the fugitives had gone abroad. After
a week or two on the Continent, George and Joseph returned to London and
established themselves at the Clements Hotel, at the corner of Wardour Street.
It was this premature return which finally led to their arrest. Bow Street
Runner Clarke had been indefatigable in his efforts to trace the brothers,
and had followed up dozens of false clues. Now he received information which
led him right to the hotel in Noel Street where he had reason to believe
the Westons had spent the previous night.
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