Chapter XV: Swindlers of More Modern Type (2)

Young Benson seems to have first made his appearance in Brussels in 1870-71, when he was prominent among the French refugees who left France at the time of the Franco-German war. He had assumed the name and title of the Comte de Montague, pretending to be the son of a General de Montague, an old Bonapartist. He lived in fine style, had carriages and horses, a sumptuous _appartement_, gave many entertainments, and was generally a very popular personage, much esteemed for his great courtliness and his pleasant, insinuating address. Nothing is known of the sources of his wealth at this period, but his first trouble with the law came of a nefarious attempt to add to them. One day the Comte de Montague called at the Mansion House, in London, and besought the Lord Mayor's charitable aid for the town of Châteaudun, which had suffered much from the ravages of the war. Money was being very freely subscribed to relieve French distress at the time, and the Comte had no difficulty in obtaining a grant of a thousand pounds for Châteaudun. This he at once proceeded to apply to his own needs, for the Comte was no other than Benson. His imposture was presently discovered, and he paid a second visit to the Mansion House, but this time as a prisoner. The escapade ended in a sentence of a year's imprisonment, during which he appears to have set his cell on fire and burned himself badly. He was ever afterwards lame, and obliged to use crutches; an unmistakable addition to his _signalement_ which would have seriously handicapped any less audacious offender.

The more extensive of the operations in which Benson was engaged followed upon his release from gaol. He was estranged from his family in Paris, and, being obliged to earn his own living, he advertised himself as seeking the place of secretary, giving his knowledge of several languages as one of his qualifications. This brought him into connection with a man who was to be his confederate and partner in many nefarious schemes. A certain William Kurr engaged him, and they soon came to an understanding, becoming associated on equal terms. Kurr was a very shady character, who had tried several lines of life. From clerk in a railway office he passed into the service of a West End money-lender, and then became interested in turf speculations. The business of illegitimate betting attracted him as offering great opportunities for acquiring fortune, and he was the originator of several sham firms and bogus offices, none of which prospered greatly until he fell in with Benson. From that time forth their operations were on a much bolder and more successful scale. Benson's ready wit and inventive genius struck out new lines of procedure, and there is little doubt that quite early in the partnership he conceived the happy idea of suborning the police. Kurr, under the name of Gardner and Co., of Edinburgh, had come under suspicion, and was being hotly pursued by a detective officer, Meiklejohn, who had been chosen from among the Scotland Yard officers to act for the Midland Railway in the north. When the scent was hottest, Kurr, by Benson's advice, approached Meiklejohn and bought him over. This was the first step in a great conspiracy which presently involved other officers, who weakly sacrificed honour and position to the specious temptations of these scoundrels.

Benson, being half a Frenchman, and intimately acquainted with French ways, saw a great opening for carrying on turf frauds in France. The firm accordingly moved over to French soil, and elaborated with great skill and patience a vast scheme for entrapping the unwary. They first worked carefully through the directories, Bottin's and others, in order to obtain the names and addresses of likely victims; when eventually they were brought to justice some of these books were found in Benson's quarters, much marked and annotated. At the same time they prepared an

attractive circular, setting forth in specious terms the extraordinary advantages of their system of betting. This circular was distributed broadcast through the country, accompanied by a copy of a sporting paper specially prepared for this particular purpose. It was the only copy of the paper that ever appeared, although it was numbered 1,713. It had been printed on purpose in Edinburgh, and was in every respect a complete journal, containing news up to date, advertisements, leading articles, columns of paragraphs and notices, several of which referred in the most complimentary language to a Mr. Hugh Montgomery--Benson's _alias_ in this fraud--and the excellence of his system of betting investment. It stated that this Mr. Hugh Montgomery, who had invented the system, had already netted nearly half a million of money by following its principles, and it was open to any to reap the same handsome profit. They had only to remit funds to the firm at any of their numerous offices in London, at Cleveland Road, Duke Street St. James's, and elsewhere.

This brilliant scheme soon brought in a rich harvest. Many simple-minded French people swallowed the bait, and none more readily than a certain Comtesse de Goncourt, a lady of good estate, but with an unfortunate taste for speculation. The comtesse threw herself eagerly into the arrangement, and forwarded several substantial sums to London, which were duly invested for her with good results; for the old trick was followed of at first allowing her to win. Presently her transactions grew larger, till at last they reached the sum of £10,000. Several bogus cheques were sent her, purporting to be her winnings, but she was desired to hold them over until a certain date, in accordance with the English law. Yet these rapacious scoundrels were not satisfied with such large profits. They wrote to the poor comtesse that another £1,200 was necessary to complete certain formalities. As she was now nearly cleaned out, she tried to raise the money in Paris through her notary, and this led to the discovery of the whole fraud.

Meanwhile the conspirators had been living in comfort, pulling the wires from London. Benson had made himself safe, as he thought, by extending his system of suborning the police. Through Meiklejohn, a second officer, Druscovitch by name, who was especially charged with the Continental business of Scotland Yard, was approached and tempted. He was a well-meaning man, with a good record, but in very straitened circumstances, and he fell before the tempting offers of the insidious Benson. All this time Benson was living in good style at Shanklin, in the Isle of Wight. He had a charming house, named Rose Bank, a good cook and numbers of other servants, he drove a good carriage, and constantly entertained his friends. One of his accomplishments was music; he composed and sang charming French _chansonettes_ with so much feeling that they were always loudly encored. Benson soon tried to inveigle another fly from Scotland Yard into his web. Scenting danger from the news that Inspector Clarke was hunting up certain sham betting offices, he invited him down to his little place at Shanklin. Benson did not succeed with Clarke, who, when placed on his trial with the other inspectors, was acquitted. He must have been sorely tried, for Benson showed consummate tact, and cleverly acted upon Clarke's fears by seeming to incriminate him. Then he offered a substantial bribe, which, however, Clarke was honest enough to refuse.

When the storm broke Benson had early notice of the danger from his allies in the police. Druscovitch warned them that a big swindle had come in from Paris; it was theirs. Already the French police had begun to act against the firm. They had requested the Scotland Yard authorities, by telegraph, to intercept letters from Paris which, it was believed, contained large remittances. But Benson contrived to secure this telegram before it was delivered. Knowing that he had good friends, he held his ground; Druscovitch, on the other hand, became more and more uneasy, thinking that he could not shield his paymasters much longer. He had many secret interviews with them, and pleaded desperately that he must ere long arrest somebody, and he warned Benson to look out for himself. It was time for the conspirators to think about their means of retreat. So far they seem to have held the bulk of their booty in Bank of England notes, a very tell-tale commodity which could always be traced through the numbers. Benson solved this difficulty by deciding to change the Bank of England notes into Scottish notes, the numbers of which were not invariably taken on issue. Through Meiklejohn Benson got rid of £13,000 worth, travelling down to Alloa on purpose and getting Clydesdale Bank notes in exchange. To cover this operation, Benson had deposited £3,000 in the Alloa Bank. He was on very friendly terms with its manager, and was actually at dinner with him when a telegram was put into his hands warning him to decamp, for Druscovitch was on his way down with the warrant to arrest him. Benson bolted, but was, of course, obliged to forfeit his deposit of £3,000.

When Druscovitch arrived his game, of course, was gone. He still attempted to linger over the job, but the authorities were more in earnest than he was, and England became too hot for him. The exchange of Bank of England into Clydesdale notes was known, and so were some of the numbers of the latter. A watch was therefore set upon the holders of these notes, and Benson thought it wiser to escape to Holland. Soon after his arrival at Rotterdam he and his friends were arrested. But here, at the closing scene, while extradition was being demanded, another confederate, Froggatt, a low-class attorney, nearly succeeded in obtaining their release. He sent a forged telegram to the Dutch police, purporting to come from Scotland Yard, to the effect that the men they had got were the wrong people. The imposition was discovered just in time, and the prisoners were handed over to a party of London police, headed, strange to say, by Druscovitch in person. His complicity with the swindlers was not yet suspected, and he was compelled to carry out his orders. What passed between him and his friends is not exactly known, but Kurr and Benson, after the manner of their class, had no idea of suffering alone. That they should turn on their police assistants was a matter of course, and one of their first acts in Millbank Prison, where they were beginning their long terms of penal servitude, was to make a clean breast of it and implicate the detectives.

When Clarke, Druscovitch, Meiklejohn, and Palmer, with Froggatt, were put upon their trial, the facts, as already stated, were elicited, and it was found that the swindlers had long secured the connivance and support of all these officers, except Clarke. A letter, which was impounded, written by Meiklejohn to Kurr as far back as 1874, shows how eager Meiklejohn was to earn his money. It was an early notification of the issue of a warrant, and warned his friends to keep a sharp look out:--

"DEAR BILL,--Rather important news from the North. Tell H. S. and
the Young One to keep themselves quiet. In the event of a smell
stronger than now they must be ready to scamper out of the way."

For this important service Meiklejohn is believed to have received a _douceur_ of £500. All these misguided men were sentenced to terms of imprisonment, and, as I have said before, the discovery of their faithlessness led to important changes in police constitution, and the creation of the Criminal Investigation Department.

I can remember Benson while he was a convict at Portsmouth, where he was employed at light labour, and might be seen hobbling on his crutches at the tail end of the gangs as they marched in and out of prison. He bore an exemplary prison character and was

released on ticket-of-leave in 1887, having fully earned his remission. He was not long in seeking new pastures, and soon used his versatile talents and many accomplishments in fresh schemes of fraud. It was his duty to report himself as a licence holder to the Metropolitan Police, but this did not suit so erratic a genius, and within a few months he was advertised for in the _Police Gazette_, a woodcut engraving of his features being accompanied with the following description of the man "wanted":--

"Age 39, height 5 ft. 4 in., complexion sallow, hair, whiskers,
beard, and moustache black (may have shaved), turning slightly
grey, eyes brown, small scar under right eye, frequently pretends
lameness, has a slouching gait, stoops slightly, head thrown
forward, invariably smoking cigarettes."

It will be seen from this that the use of crutches was not indispensable to him, but was probably assumed as a means of contusing his _signalement_. His many aliases were published with the description; some of the more remarkable were George Marlowe, George Washington Morton, Andrew Montgomery, Henry Younger (the name he went under at Rose Bank Cottage, Shanklin), Montague Posno, and the Comte de Montague.

Benson's first act after release appears to have been to ascertain whether he had inherited anything from his father, whose death had occurred while he was in prison. Nothing had come to him, but his family did not quite disown him, for a brother offered to find him a situation. This Benson contemptuously refused, and took the first opportunity of reopening his relations with Kurr, who had been released a little earlier. Soon after this the police missed them, and they appear to have crossed the Atlantic and started in a new line as company promoters, mainly in connection with mines of a sham character. Benson seems to have done well in this nefarious business before he returned to Europe, when he made Brussels his headquarters and carried on the same business, the exploitation of mines. He appears to have gained the attention of the police, and the Belgian authorities communicated with those of Scotland Yard. Benson was now identified and arrested. At his lodgings were found a great quantity of letters containing Post Office orders and cheques, which seem to have been sent to him for investment in his bogus companies. Benson next did a couple of years' imprisonment in a Belgian prison, and on his release transferred himself to Switzerland, setting up at Geneva as an American banker with large means. He stopped at the best hotels and betrayed all his old fondness for ostentation. Here he received many telegrams from his confederates, who were still "working" the United States, all of them connected with stocks and shares and the fluctuations of the market. He was in the habit of leaving these telegrams--which invariably dealt with high figures--about the hotel, throwing them down carelessly in the billiard-room, smoking-room, and other apartments, where they were read by others, and greatly enhanced his reputation.

At this hotel he became acquainted with a retired surgeon-general of the Indian army, with an only daughter, to whom he made desperate love. He lavished presents of jewellery upon her, and so won upon the father that he consented to the marriage. The old man was no less willing to entrust his savings to this specious scoundrel, and on Benson's advice sold out all his property, some £7,000 invested in India stock. The money was transmitted to Geneva and handed over to Benson in exchange for certain worthless scrip which was to double the doctor's income. Now, however, a telegram summoned Benson to New York, and he left hurriedly. His _fiancée_ followed to the port at which he had said he would embark, but missed him. Mr. Churchward--Benson's _alias_--had gone to another place, Bremen, to take passage by the North German Lloyd. The surgeon-general, trembling for his earnings, applied for a warrant, and Benson was arrested as he was on the point of embarkation. He was taken back to Geneva, but on refunding £5,000 out of the £7,000 he was liberated. It was now discovered that his presents to his _fiancée_ were all in sham jewellery, and that the scrip he had given in exchange for the £7,000 was really worth only a few pounds. After this most brilliant _coup_ Benson abandoned Europe, re-crossed the Atlantic, and resumed operations in America, He became the hero of many fraudulent adventures, the last of which led to his arrest. In the city of Mexico he impudently passed himself off as Mr. Abbey, Madame Patti's agent, and sold tickets on her behalf to the amount of 25,000 dollars. This fraud was discovered; he was arrested and taken to New York, where he was lodged in the Tombs. While awaiting trial he committed suicide in gaol by throwing himself over the railings from the top storey, thus fracturing his spine.

MAX SHINBURN.

The career of Max Shinburn can hardly be cited in proof of the old saying that honesty is the best policy. This notorious criminal won a fine fortune, as well as much evil fame, by his dishonest proceedings between 1860 and 1880, and after sundry vicissitudes, ended in Belgium as a millionaire, enjoying every luxury amidst the pleasantest surroundings.

According to one account, Shinburn was a German Jew, who emigrated to the United States rather hurriedly to evade police pursuit. He found his way, it is said, to St. Louis, and soon got into trouble there as a burglar; his intimate knowledge of the locksmith trade was useful to the new friends he made, but did not save him from capture and imprisonment. Another story is that he was born in Pennsylvania of decent parents, was well educated, and in due course became a bank clerk. His criminal tendencies were soon displayed by his defalcations; he stole a number of greenbacks, and covered the theft by fraudulent entries in the books. This ended his career of humdrum respectability, and he was next heard of at Boston, where he robbed a bank by burglariously entering the vaults, by means of his skill as a locksmith. We have here some corroboration of the first account of his origin; if he had begun life as a clerk he could not well have acquired skill as a locksmith. It is strengthened by the fact that his largest and most remunerative "affairs" were accomplished by forcing doors and opening safes. It was said of him that he could walk into any bank, for he could counterfeit any key; and that no safe, combination or other, could resist his attack. The number of banks he plundered was extraordinary; the New Windsor Bank of Maryland, a bank in Connecticut, and many more, yielded before him; and in New England alone he amassed great sums.

Shinburn spent in wasteful excess all that he thus guiltily earned. He lived most extravagantly, at the best hotels, consorting with the showiest people; he was to be seen on all racecourses, "plunging" wildly, and at the faro tables, where he played high. This continued for years. He escaped all retribution until a confederate betrayed him in connection with the wrecking of the Concord Bank, when at least 200,000 dollars was secured and divided among the gang. He was taken at Saratoga, the fashionable watering-place, and his arrest caused much sensation in the fast society of which he was so prominent a member.

Max Shinburn's consignment to gaol checked his baleful activity, but not for long. His fame as a high-class gentleman criminal secured him considerate treatment, which, on the loose system of many American gaols, meant that his warders and he were on very familiar terms. One evening Shinburn called an officer to his cell, and after a short gossip at the door, invited him inside. Next moment he had seized the warder by the throat, overpowered him, and captured his keys. Then, making his victim fast, he walked straight out of the prison.

Once more taken and incarcerated, he once more escaped. This time, by suborning his warders, he obtained the necessary tools for sawing through the prison bars, and thus regained freedom. He soon resumed his old practices, and on a much larger and more brilliant scale. One of his chief feats was the forcing of the vaults of the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company, at Whitehaven, Pennsylvania, from which he abstracted 56,000 dollars. He somehow contrived to obtain impressions of the locks, and manufactured the keys.

The famous detective, Pinkerton, was called in, and soon guessed that Shinburn had been at work. Some of the confederates were arrested, and presently Shinburn was taken, but only after a desperate encounter. Now, to ensure safe custody, the prisoner was handcuffed to one of Pinkerton's assistants, and both were locked up in a room at the hotel. Yet Shinburn, during the night, contrived to pick the lock of the handcuff by means of the shank of his scarf-pin, and, shaking himself free, slipped quietly away. He fled to Europe, and paid a first visit to Belgium, but went back to the States to make one last grand _coup_. This was the robbery of the Ocean Bank in New York, from which he took £50,000 in securities, notes, and gold. With this fine booty he returned to Belgium, bought himself a title, and--at least outwardly--lived the life of an honest and respectable citizen. We have seen that Sheridan, another American "crook," spent some years in Brussels, and it is strongly suspected that he and Shinburn were concerned in the famous mail train robbery and other great crimes in Belgium.