Fraudsters and Charlatans (4 page)

Alarmed, Cochrane Johnstone insisted de Berenger depart that very night, even offering to arrange for the settlement of his debts. There was no time for him to put his affairs in order; they would all be ruined if de Berenger did not leave immediately. Cochrane Johnstone tried to increase the pressure by adding that when he had called to leave the note he had seen Bow Street officers lurking about de Berenger's lodgings looking for him. (Even the gullible de Berenger did not swallow this one.) Reassuringly, he said that he and Lord Cochrane and Butt had all decided they would provide for him for life. He must travel to Amsterdam, where he, Cochrane Johnstone, would join him and hand him funds which would enable him to go to Paris or America.

De Berenger, still anxious about the remaining fragments of his reputation, hesitated, then said he would still prefer to leave on the following day. Cochrane Johnstone, almost frantic, exclaimed: ‘Then you are
BENT
on our ruin?'
¹¹
He assured his dupe that his very first business the next day would be to call on de Berenger's creditors and settle the outstanding amount, only he must go, to save the lives of Lord Cochrane and his daughter, and himself from an agony of imprisonment. At last de Berenger agreed. He left London that night. On 17 March a warrant was issued for his arrest.

On 24 March, George Odell, a waterman, was dredging for coals in the Thames and brought up the bundle containing the scarlet uniform and medals worn by du Bourg, which he handed to the Stock Exchange.

The investigative committee had still failed to trace the elusive Alexander McRae. McRae was later described as ‘a person in most desperate circumstances',
¹²
to which he took great exception, although he never revealed how he made a living. His name had come to the notice of the Stock Exchange because he had been unwise enough to believe that an accountant called Thomas Vinn, a friend who could speak French, would be happy to be involved in a ‘very particular interesting business'.
¹³
The two men had met by appointment in the Carolina Coffee House on 15 February, where McRae enthusiastically offered Vinn the opportunity to make his fortune. Vinn was suspicious, and asked if there was anything illegal in the proposal, but McRae assured him there was not – it was something practised daily by men of consequence and affluence. Failing to read Vinn's mood, McRae revealed that the plan was for men to dress as French officers and drive into London from Dartford. He was happy to take credit for the idea, but McRae was in fact no more than the hired minion of the real brains behind the enterprise, whose identity he did not reveal. Vinn soon stopped him, indignant that anyone who knew him would even imagine he might have anything to do with such a scheme. The meeting broke up with some awkwardness, and Vinn hurried off to tell others what he had heard, but, reflecting that he had no proof of his allegations, decided to obtain some and returned to McRae, asking him to meet him later in the Jamaica Coffee House, where he would introduce him to a young man who might help him. They met as planned, but McRae, perhaps sensing that this was a trap, declined at the last moment to be introduced. He did, however, obtain from Vinn the French phrases that were later used by the two sham officers. Soon afterwards Vinn told contacts in the Stock Exchange and some companies he visited about the proposed fraud, but it seems that in the exuberance of the following Monday his warnings were forgotten. After the fraud had been made public, ties of friendship did not prevent Vinn telling all he knew to the Stock Exchange investigators.

McRae had been keeping out of the way of the authorities, but once the fraud was exposed in the newspapers he saw the opportunity to make a large sum of money. He and his confederates were not involved in the du Bourg plot, but recognised that this was a much bigger game played for far higher stakes than the scheme in which he had played a part. On 12 April he sent a letter to Cochrane Johnstone offering to reveal who was behind the Dartford fraud, exonerating the Cochranes and Butt, calculating that they might well be willing to pay handsomely to rescue their good names. No sum of money was mentioned in the letter, but the bearer, who was probably McRae, discussed the arrangements with Cochrane Johnstone. The sum payable was, according to McRae, £3,000 on demand and another £2,000 in instalments (he was no doubt gambling on being able to disappear with the funds before he could be arrested). McRae was, without realising it, becoming enmeshed in the schemes of a man who had been swindling money for far longer and better than he. Cochrane Johnstone had no intention of paying McRae anything. He wrote to the Stock Exchange, enclosing McRae's letter asking for the sum of £10,000. To McRae's dismay copies of the letter were printed with his name on and affixed in every conspicuous place around the Stock Exchange; some were even sent to the Continent. Quite who arranged this is unknown, but it seems probable it was Cochrane Johnstone in an attempt to demonstrate his own innocence.

When Cochrane Johnstone realised the Stock Exchange had declined to reply to his letter, he wrote to them again asking what they intended to do about it. He added that he, Lord Cochrane and Butt were all willing to subscribe £1,000 each towards the reward (which would, if he had been able to extract £2,000 from the others, have left a nice profit of £4,000 for himself). Somehow the Stock Exchange was not inclined to pay, and soon afterwards the scheme crumbled. Mr Holloway, the vintner, went to see the Committee together with a Mr Henry Lyte. Incensed at McRae's attempt to make money by betraying them, they confessed everything. The Dartford escapade had been dreamed up by Holloway, and the two men in the post-chaise with Sandom had been Lyte and McRae. They denied all knowledge of the Dover plan. Holloway and Lyte may have thought that their confession would earn them immunity from prosecution, but they were wrong.

On 4 April a government agent, with a warrant to arrest de Berenger under the Aliens Act, headed north to Sunderland, where a stranger calling himself Major Burne had been trying to get passage to Amsterdam. Burne had moved on, leaving behind him banknotes which were later traced to the hands of Mr Butt and Cochrane Johnstone, but he was finally run to ground in Leith and taken back to London. There the post-boys who had driven du Bourg from Dover to London were brought in to identify him. De Berenger spent much of his time complaining about his treatment and whining that he was so ill as to be on the point of expiry, but he was not taken seriously.

Lord Cochrane questioned his uncle carefully about the plot and received assurances that it was all a great misunderstanding. Not only were his uncle and Butt innocent of any conspiracy, but, said Cochrane Johnstone, de Berenger was not du Bourg, a fact that could be proved by the production of an alibi. On 27 April Lord Cochrane sent a letter to de Berenger asking him to explain publicly his reasons for coming to see him on 21 February. The reply received that same day stated ‘nothing could exceed the pain I felt, when I perceived how cruelly, how unfairly my unfortunate visit of the 21st February was interpreted (which with its object, is so correctly detailed in your affidavit)'.
¹⁴

On the same day the London Grand Jury assembled and found a true bill against Lord Cochrane, Cochrane Johnstone, Butt, de Berenger, Sandom, McRae, Holloway and Lyte. They were all committed for trial.

Lord Cochrane, who was probably one of the few people in the country who still did not believe that de Berenger was du Bourg, continued to be confident of acquittal. Believing that his innocence would be his protection, he did not trouble to read his own brief but left the whole affair in the hands of his solicitor and retired to his house in the country, not returning to London until two days before the trial. The only instruction he gave was that his case was to be tried separately from the others. While in the country he received a letter from his solicitor saying that he was to be tried jointly with Mr Butt, and since he believed in Butt's innocence, he consented, adding that he wished no further union with the other defendants. He cannot have been ignorant of his uncle's past and must have been suspicious that if there was a villain in the affair it was he, yet Cochrane remained loyal throughout, and if there was anything he knew to the detriment of his uncle, he said nothing. One possible reason was his fondness for his cousin Elizabeth, who to the end of her life remained convinced that it was for her sake Cochrane chivalrously refrained from placing the blame on her father. It must have been to his great astonishment and dismay when Thomas Cochrane discovered that he was to be tried jointly not only with Butt, de Berenger and his uncle but also with the men of the Dartford conspiracy.

The trial opened on 8 June, and from the start it was assumed by the prosecution that there had been a single conspiracy with two branches, although no connection could be proven. Sandom had once lived within the ‘Rules', but there was no evidence that he and de Berenger had ever met. Given the immediately preceding events, and the approach of the crucial settlement date, it is not as unlikely as it may seem at first glance that two people could have had a similar inspiration at the same time.

The crucial question was whether de Berenger was indeed du Bourg. De Berenger's alibi soon crumbled under the strong suspicion that his servants had been bribed to say he had been at his lodgings when du Bourg was in Dover. This sealed the fate of both Cochrane Johnstone and Butt, as the currency paid to de Berenger to finance his escapade could be traced directly back to them. The case against Lord Cochrane was flimsy in the extreme, and mainly rested on his sale of Omnium and the colour of the coat de Berenger was wearing when he arrived at Green Street. Neither Cochrane nor his servants had seen the body of de Berenger's scarlet uniform, and were left only with the impression of a dark collar, which they were all convinced was green. Cochrane had sworn the uniform was green when making his affidavit and never swerved from that opinion. The court chose to believe the testimony of the cab driver Crane, who had deposited de Berenger at Cochrane's door, and swore that the uniform was red, implying therefore that Cochrane had lied. The defence could only suggest that since the uniform of the sharpshooters was green, Cochrane, trying to recall the colour weeks after the event, had simply assumed that de Berenger had worn green. This was weak indeed, for no one could believe that had de Berenger appeared before Lord Cochrane in a foreign scarlet uniform with a medallion and star, it would not have made a very profound impression. The question of whether the scarlet body of the coat was hidden by the greatcoat was not addressed. The trial judge, Lord Ellenborough, was convinced of Cochrane's guilt and summed up for a conviction, stating that when de Berenger visited Cochrane he ‘must have appeared to any rational person, fully blazoned in the costume of that or of some other crime, which was to be effected under an assumed dress, and by means of fraud and imposition'.
¹⁵

All eight defendants were found guilty. As they awaited sentencing, de Berenger wrote a letter to Lord Cochrane. He expressed surprise that he had received no message or letter from His Lordship. He complained that he had experienced hardships and ruin on account of his anxiety for the Cochranes' welfare, yet no one had shown any feeling for him: ‘fate is not so cruel towards you as it is to me,' he continued, ‘for with your means you can live any where, but my want of means forces me to seek a living, which every where will be opposed by my debts, and by the disgrace I suffer under, CERTAINLY
on your account.
. . . What is your intention to me, – how do you mean to heal my wounds.'
¹⁶

By now Lord Cochrane was all too cruelly aware that he owed his current plight to de Berenger. He must scarcely have been able to believe that the man who had caused his downfall was trying to extort money from him. He ignored the letter.

Shortly afterwards, de Berenger received a note from Cochrane Johnstone:

My dear Baron, I have been as Mr Tahourdin [his solicitor] will inform you, dreadfully low,
and have never been out of the house, when I do
I SHALL CALL ON YOU. An application will be made tomorrow for a new trial, what the result will be God knows – the prejudice is great in the public mind – my poor daughter is almost at death's door. Adieu. I am ever yours, A.C. Johnstone
¹⁷

As with so many of his promises, Andrew Cochrane Johnstone merely said what he believed the other person wanted to hear. The ink had scarcely dried on his letter when he left England, never to return. Two more of his dupes, Donithorne and Tragear, who had been involved in another of his shady schemes, went to Calais to meet him, and bumping into him by chance were told to go to Paris, where he would join them. Naturally he did not appear there, and after some hardship they were obliged to return to England, sadder, wiser and very much poorer men.

De Berenger tried an old tactic to postpone being sentenced, his counsel claiming that his state of health made it impossible for him to attend. Lord Ellenborough had heard such ploys before. He said he had observed de Berenger after the long trial and remarked at the time that ‘a more lively and active man he had never beheld'.
¹⁸
The application was refused.

Only six prisoners were brought for sentencing – Lord Cochrane, Butt, de Berenger, Holloway, Sandom and Lyte – since Cochrane Johnstone was nowhere to be found, and McRae had also absconded. Lord Cochrane and Butt were fined £1,000 each, and Holloway £500. All six were sent to prison for twelve months, and de Berenger, Cochrane and Butt were ordered to sit in the pillory opposite the Royal Exchange in the City of London for one hour between the hours of twelve noon and two in the afternoon. They were then committed to the custody of the Marshal of the Marshalsea Prison.

A few days after the sentence, the House of Commons took a vote on the expulsion of the Cochranes from parliament. A petition was presented on behalf of the recently recaptured McRae, who, grovelling with contrition, offered to make a statement to the House in which he would utterly exonerate Lord Cochrane. The House declined to receive the petition. Lord Cochrane then rose to speak in his defence, and perhaps did not help his case, if that were possible, by asserting that there had been a conspiracy to silence him. Andrew Cochrane Johnstone's expulsion was not opposed, but many of Lord Cochrane's fellow members had had another look at the evidence and were convinced that he was innocent. Despite many appeals made on his behalf, the final vote expelled him from the House. He was to be spared the disgrace of the pillory, however, as this part of the sentence was remitted for all three men. Soon afterwards he heard that he had been removed from the Navy lists and stripped of his Order of the Bath.