At York Street West, the cell was constructed to stifle the very sound of a man. Partitions of thick timber enclosed a space measuring five feet by three; between these and an outer wall, earth had been rammed solid. When the police entered the house following the escape of Mr. Gee, they found the chain still hanging from the woodwork and cords passed through rings in the floor. Camden Pelham records this discovery as the physical conclusion of a coercive scheme contrived around a sum held in trust by the solicitor.
Gee administered the investments intended for the widow and subsequently the three children of a deceased man named Canning, under the authority of his executors. Out of a legacy of two thousand pounds, twelve hundred had been invested; eight hundred remained to be placed. Gee had entrusted this latter balance to his bankers, Messrs. Gibson and Company, at Saffron Walden. A letter signed "W. Heath" invited him to treat for a parcel of land offered for sale near Bishop’s Stortford. Gee agreed to meet the writer at the Bull Inn, Aldgate, on 12 May 1834. The man did not appear. A lad dressed as a sailor delivered a second letter, begging Gee to accompany him in a coach to the residence of the invalid.
The journey brought him to No. 27, York Street West. In the hallway, a man informed him that his brother was taking his breakfast in the kitchen. The door was shut behind him; the coachman drove away. As Gee descended the stairs, the messenger, the man from the hall, and a third individual seized him, carried him into the back kitchen, and secured him within the cell. One of them thereupon declared himself to be Mrs. Canning’s brother, demanding a cheque for eight hundred pounds as well as an order for the surrender of the deed securing the twelve hundred pounds already invested. Only then, according to Gee’s account, did he fathom the purpose of the snare.
The men made no attempt to disguise their coercion. They acknowledged knowing their conduct to be unlawful, but declared they would keep him confined until the money and the deed were obtained. As they prepared to leave him in darkness, Gee feared that an outcry for help might provoke his murder. He recalled his captors and consented to write. The cheque was drawn upon his bankers; the letter to Mr. Bell, at Newport in Essex, requested that the deed be delivered to the bearer for Mrs. Canning’s inspection. The man who had represented himself as her brother immediately departed the house with these papers. Gee remained behind with the others, but the door of the cell was left open.
It cost him three hours of labour to shift the iron chain that bound his chest and to free his feet from the cords. He then reached the garden, eluded the vigilance of the two men who were dining in the front kitchen, scaled the wall, and gained a neighbouring street. He dispatched messengers to Mr. Bell and the bank instructing them not to act upon the orders, and then repaired to the police station.
Officers Lea and Shelswell found the house empty and locked. They were compelled to force an entry. Save for a few chairs in the kitchen and a window-blind, it contained scarcely any furniture; its occupants had taken the lease only the preceding Saturday. Neighbours observed two men searching the garden after the escape. They claimed to be in pursuit of a thief, and then made off. An inspection of the cell corroborated the mechanical arrangement: a raised bench, a bar affixed to the wall to secure the chain, another upon the floor fitted with two swivels, and the cord employed to bind the captive's feet. The apparatus did not in itself establish who had devised the trap, but it accorded with the deposition of the man who had just emerged from it.
Pelham identifies the principal instigator as a man named Edwards, who was blind, the tenant of the house, and a visitor of Mrs. Canning in Providence Row. Edwards was apprehended after leaving Mrs. Canning’s lodgings. Peter Lecasser, his wife Mary, and Jeremiah Weedon were arrested as they approached the house in York Street. The account assigns them distinct roles: Mrs. Lecasser was Edwards’s sister; her husband and Weedon were said to have aided in the assault; Weedon, a blacksmith by trade, was alleged to have built the cell. Edwards was reported to have admitted directing the enterprise after failing to obtain the funds through lawful channels. Pelham likewise links "Heath" to another identity: the Reverend Mr. Mathias identified Edwards as the man he had married under that name to Elizabeth Jenkins, who was presumed, according to the hypothesis then advanced, to be Mrs. Canning. This identification was disputed by the woman concerned; her sister subsequently confirmed the marriage attested by the clergyman. Edwards maintained that he had made Mrs. Canning’s acquaintance some two years prior, having been recommended to tune her pianoforte, an occupation by which he earned his bread. Pelham observes that her interest in the bequest would have ceased upon her remarriage; he advances this circumstance as a possible motive for her denial, rather than a proven fact. Mrs. Lecasser, for her part, was not retained in the prosecution and was discharged prior to the trial of the three men.
At the preliminary examination, the three men were committed for trial at the next session; Mrs. Lecasser was discharged. Pelham also cites the statutory provision invoked: for demanding property by menaces or force, the law prescribed transportation beyond the seas for life or for a term of not less than seven years, or imprisonment for up to four years, with the discretion of corporal punishment. The chronicle places the appearance of Edwards, Weedon, and Lecasser at the Old Bailey on 12 July. The first indictment charged the robbery of a security for eight hundred pounds "from the person" of Gee; the defence submitted that he had not carried the instrument upon his person. Mr. Justice Patteson stopped the prosecution, and the jury acquitted the three prisoners. This initial acquittal turned upon the legal form of the indictment, the construction of which did not answer to the actual possession of the documents.
A second indictment charged that they had demanded with menaces a security for twelve hundred pounds and an order for the payment of one hundred pounds. The court again ruled that the charge could not be sustained: according to the reported reasons, the prisoners had already obtained the order in question, whilst Gee had never possessed the instruments required to transfer the title. They were pronounced not guilty upon this indictment as well, but were held to bail, as a separate indictment for assault had been preferred at the Middlesex Sessions, in which Mrs. Canning was also joined. An acquittal upon the capital charges of robbery and extortion thus did not terminate all proceedings.
On 1 August, four persons—Edwards, Weedon, Lecasser, and Mrs. Canning—were brought to trial at the Middlesex Sessions; the hearing lasted until ten o'clock at night. The jury acquitted Mrs. Canning. They found Edwards and Weedon guilty of conspiracy, and Lecasser guilty of an assault. The sentences measured their respective degrees of guilt: two years’ imprisonment in Newgate for Edwards, twelve months in the house of correction for Weedon, and six months in the same establishment for Lecasser.
The house in York Street was found almost bare, yet its architecture had preserved the exact dimensions of the coercion: five feet by three, a chain for the torso, cords for the legs, and earth between the timber walls. In the dock, the legal categories had shifted from one court to the next. In the room below, the staples and the iron bars remained where they had been driven; the ultimate verdicts answered to conspiracy and assault.