On the 22nd of March, 1888, at the Central Criminal Court in London, Charles Mar Schroeder appeared to answer an indictment charging him with having forged and uttered an acceptance for the sum of 378 pounds, 13 shillings, and 8 pence. This bill was one of six instruments whose acceptance he had acknowledged in a written declaration. The German chronicle recounting the proceedings presents a dispute wherein the signature, the date of maturity, and the place of payment bore as much weight as the accused man’s journeys between London and Paris.
Schroeder was thirty-seven years of age, married, and, according to the introductory notice, without any defined occupation. The matter concerned the house of Grant & Peak, jewellers and goldsmiths of Gerrard Street, Soho. The partner, Mr. Peak, explained to the jury that he had known Schroeder through prior business transactions. In May 1886, the latter owed him more than four thousand pounds. Peak had made repeated demands without obtaining settlement; he had commenced civil proceedings, yet hesitated to apply to the debtor’s uncle, a partner in the great banking house of John Henry Schroeder. Peak stated that he had been reluctant to exert pressure by trading upon such kinship.
After an interval of silence, Peak received a letter on the 6th of July, bearing the date-line of the Hôtel Métropole. Therein Schroeder stated that he had returned to London that very morning after a journey to Germany and thence to Paris, and invited Peak to meet him to discuss his liabilities. In the course of their interview, he spoke of a loan to be secured upon an inheritance he was expecting, and then of an accommodation with his cousin, a partner and attorney in his uncle’s firm. Monies, he declared, were shortly to be placed at his disposal wherewith to satisfy his engagements. Peak considered these assurances far too nebulous to stay the civil action. He demanded a more categorical written statement; Schroeder drew it up without demur.
On the following day, the prisoner presented himself at the Gerrard Street premises. According to Peak, he appeared greatly agitated and confessed that he had made unauthorized use of the firm’s name. He explained that whilst in Paris he had learned of the writ issued against him, that other creditors were pressing him hard, and that he had quite lost his head. He had, he said, accepted a bill of exchange in the name of Grant & Peak. Peak inquired whether the acceptance had been made in Schroeder’s own name or in that of the partnership; Schroeder answered that it had been signed in the firm’s name. The first bill was to mature on the following day and had been made payable at Peak’s bankers.
Peak observed that he must have some ground to assign to his bankers if he were to refuse payment. Schroeder had not yet even ventured to disclose the sum. Thereupon he drew up a declaration admitting that he had forged the name of Grant & Peak and had accepted six bills of exchange: one for 464 pounds, 9 shillings, 8 pence; one for 485 pounds; one for 287 pounds, 4 shillings, 8 pence; one for 323 pounds, 3 shillings, 4 pence; one for 378 pounds, 13 shillings, 8 pence; and one for 319 pounds, 19 shillings. The total acknowledged amounted to 2,258 pounds, 10 shillings, and 4 pence. The indictment tried that day concerned solely the bill for 378 pounds; the schedule was not, in itself, an adjudication upon the remaining instruments.
According to Peak’s deposition, Schroeder implored him not to institute criminal proceedings. He cried that his mother would die of grief and that his uncle would discharge the liabilities out of regard for the family honor. Peak dispatched his nephew to wait upon the uncle, but the banker declined to receive him. Schroeder subsequently sent word that his wife was grievously ill and that his relatives would come to his assistance before the other bills fell due. He maintained that he had put the acceptances into circulation whilst in Paris. The chronicle records that the family ultimately discharged the instruments, but only after they had been dishonored and when the criminal prosecution had already been set on foot. Schroeder, meanwhile, had departed for Sydney prior to this settlement.
Peak set forth his reasons for having delayed before lodging a criminal complaint. He had initially elected to pursue civil remedies and had stayed his hand out of consideration for the debtor’s kindred. According to his testimony, he resolved upon criminal process only after discovering that Schroeder had slipped away to Australia without satisfying his debts, notwithstanding his solemn promises. This anterior commercial liability was not to be confounded with the six acceptances subsequently investigated: these bills had been the subject of a separate confession and formed the ground of distinct criminal charges. Schroeder was pursued, arrested in Sydney, and brought back to London under extradition. This sequence of events brought to the forefront of the trial a grave jurisdictional question: what court possessed the authority to try acceptances framed and uttered outside British territory, yet made payable within the capital?
The defense did not, at the outset, dispute Schroeder’s whereabouts at the time of the alleged transactions. Sir Henry James contended that the drawing, acceptance, and uttering had occurred in Paris. If an offense had been committed, he submitted, it fell within the purview of the French tribunals; the jurisdiction of the English courts could not reach acts executed upon foreign soil. He added that no intent to defraud any person within the realm of England had been established. These contentions formed the argument of counsel, rather than a finding of the bench.
The prosecution answered that the bills had been made payable in London, dispatched to the city, put into circulation, and presented for payment at a London banking house. In the Crown’s view, the place where the consequences of the forgery took effect conferred jurisdiction upon the Central Criminal Court. The defense thereupon called the stationer who had sold Schroeder the paper and stamps required for the bills, as well as the bill-broker who had facilitated their negotiation in Paris. Both witnesses confirmed his presence in the French capital at the material time.
The presiding judge, Sir Thomas Chambers, Recorder of London, left to the jury the specific question of whether Schroeder had been in Paris when the bills were drawn, accepted, and negotiated. To this question they returned an affirmative answer. The Recorder thereupon held that the court lacked the requisite jurisdiction. He drew a distinction between an offense of obtaining money by false pretenses, which might have been committed in Paris against the bill-broker, and the charges of forgery and uttering laid in the indictment. The chronicle attributes to him the principle that the territorial jurisdiction of the English criminal law could not embrace such acts committed beyond the realm.
A verdict of “not guilty” was accordingly recorded. It applied directly to the first bill. The prosecution declined to offer evidence upon the remaining indictments, inasmuch as the identical jurisdictional obstacle must have proved fatal; the narrative adds that the jury thereupon formally returned verdicts of not guilty upon the other charges, and Schroeder was discharged. This outcome cannot be construed as a conviction upon the remaining acceptances in the schedule. The judicial outcome preserved in the record remains precise: following the jury’s finding as to Schroeder’s presence in Paris and the Recorder’s ruling upon jurisdiction, the accused was acquitted on the first indictment, and the remaining charges were abandoned.
The chronicler of the Pitaval does not restrict himself to recording the decree. In his commentary, he censures the decision, contrasting the English doctrine of territoriality with the provisions he attributes to Continental codes. He asserts that the prisoner’s substantive guilt admitted of no doubt; yet this editorial opinion must not be confounded with the verdict of the jury, who acquitted the accused after the court declared itself without jurisdiction. The author converts the proceeding into a treatise upon the borders of the criminal law; his indignation remains a retrospective commentary, not a piece of judicial evidence.
In the end, the six sums remain inscribed upon the page like a sequence of commercial drafts bearing the name of an established house. A firm’s title, London dates of maturity, and Parisian negotiations had conducted Schroeder from the Hôtel Métropole to Sydney, and thence before a tribunal that halted at the boundary of its own jurisdiction. The chronicle delineates an adjudication determined by the locus of utterance; it cannot supply the place of the original trial minutes, nor of the bills of exchange to which the witnesses deposed.