On the 24th of August 1835, Chelsea Hospital delivered to Mr. Théleur a draft for the sum of £177. It was drawn in favour of George Langley, formerly a sergeant of artillery, who was reputed to have taken part in the capture of Buenos Aires in 1806. On the following day, the intermediary cashed the draft and remitted the funds to John Turner Flynn. Yet Langley had expired aboard the warship Woolwich less than six months after the expedition. The name employed to claim this bounty thus belonged to a man long past the reach of worldly recompense.
The indictment charged Flynn with having feloniously uttered and put off a forged order for the payment of money and a forged certificate, knowing the same to be false, with intent to defraud the Commissioners. Flynn was by no means an unknown figure to the public offices upon which he called. The chronicle of Camden Pelham describes him as a former naval officer, about fifty years of age when arraigned at the Old Bailey on the 11th of April 1840. He had seen service in several actions and had attained the rank of lieutenant. Queen Caroline was subsequently said to have retained him to command a yacht employed during her travels upon the Continent. Following her return to England, Flynn appeared as a witness before the House of Lords during the inquiry into the Queen’s conduct. His acquaintances believed him to have been knighted; such an elevation, however, is not substantiated by the record, which notes merely that he was commonly styled Sir John Flynn.
By 1831, his family had established their residence at Saint-Malo. Flynn procured a licence as a prize-money agent, a calling frequently pursued by retired military men. His habitual passages between France and England brought him into contact with Beresford Ayton, a navy agent. Ayton introduced him to Holgate, a clerk in the Prize Office at Chelsea Hospital. An arrangement was struck whereby Holgate would communicate to Flynn the names of soldiers entitled to unpaid balances, the precise amounts due, and the particular military operations upon which their claims rested. Flynn engaged to pay Holgate two and a half per cent on every sum recovered by means of this intelligence. Holgate professed to believe that Flynn would merely assist soldiers in obtaining their lawful dues; yet the transmission of such particulars was in direct violation of the duties of his office.
Flynn was well aware of the value of these lists: they supplied him with veritable identities and the exact measure of each outstanding debt. In 1835, an application reached the Prize Office under the name of George Langley, formerly sergeant in the St. Helena Artillery at the reduction of Buenos Aires, demanding the £177 standing to his credit. The Commissioners replied that, more than six years having elapsed, an explanation of the delay must be tendered before the claim could be entertained. A subsequent missive supplied the requisite explanation; whereupon the Commissioners forwarded to Langley an order to be executed according to their regulations, together with a demand for a certificate of identity signed by competent parties.
During this same period, Flynn had requested his friend E. A. Théleur, residing in Great Marlborough Street, to take in such letters as might be addressed to him, as well as any sums made payable. On the 20th of August, a packet originating from Nantes arrived at Théleur’s abode. It enclosed the order for payment, the required certificate, and directions to receive the money. The documents purported to be those of Langley, yet the names of the persons attesting to his identity would later be proved to be wholly fictitious.
Flynn entered the room while Théleur was examining the correspondence. He assured him that all was in order and urged him to hasten to Chelsea Hospital, as the order was made out in Théleur’s name. On the 24th of August, the Commissioners delivered a draft for £177 to Théleur against his receipt. On the morrow, Théleur cashed the draft and handed the specie to Flynn, who signed an acknowledgment of its receipt. The report of the trial contains no suggestion that Théleur knew Langley to be deceased; he deemed himself engaged in a lawful transaction and merely followed the behest of his friend.
The contrivance unraveled upon the interrogation of Holgate. He disclosed to Mr. Bicknell, solicitor to the Commissioners, that he had conveyed the confidential particulars of the office to Flynn. Inquiries quickly established that the true Sergeant Langley had died at sea, aboard the Woolwich, within six months of the 1806 expedition. The chronology alone sufficed to demolish the claim of 1835: the soldier had been in his grave for nearly thirty years. It was further discovered that the persons who had purportedly attested his identity from Nantes did not exist. The order for payment and the accompanying certificate were thus revealed to rest upon an assumed identity supported by fabricated attestations.
Théleur, who had since removed to Saint-Germain, was called upon for an explanation. His account of his own part in the matter immediately directed suspicion toward Flynn. At the trial, it transpired that the letters addressed to the office, the order, and the certificate had all been penned by a young woman formerly of Flynn’s household, who had since married. She was absent from London and could not be examined as to the circumstances under which she had transcribed the documents. The narrative does not record that she ever acknowledged having known them to be forgeries; her absence left the question unanswered.
The jury were thus called upon to weigh a chain of acts in which the several participants shared unequal degrees of knowledge. Holgate had parted with confidential records for a pecuniary consideration. Théleur had received the correspondence, cashed the draft, and delivered the gold to Flynn. Another hand had transcribed the instruments. Flynn himself had been present when the letter and order were produced to Théleur; he had pronounced them regular, prompted the application to the Hospital, and pocketed the proceeds. The defence insinuated that some person of greater cunning had overreached Flynn. The jury, however, found him guilty of uttering the forged instruments knowing them to be forged, while recommending him to mercy; the extract does not affirm that he had fabricated them with his own hand.
Mr. Baron Alderson severely rebuked the plundering of soldiers’ prize money, observing that these bounties represented the hard-won recompense for their services and sufferings. The statutory penalty for such an offence had formerly been death, and the learned judge alluded to the possibility that such severity might be revived were the law to prove too indulgent. He did not, however, treat the recommendation of the jury as of no account. He undertook to lay it before the Sovereign and not to impede the royal clemency, while nonetheless pronouncing sentence of transportation for life.
In Pelham’s chronicle, the case sets two reputations in opposition. Flynn is portrayed as an officer who had served Queen Caroline and testified before the Lords; yet this intimacy with the great leaves it unproven whether he had ever legitimately received the accolade of knighthood. Against him stands the name of Langley, a gunner dead at sea, whose title to a bounty had outlived him in the official ledgers. The application adhered closely enough to established forms to obtain the draft, yet the persons meant to vouch for the claimant were mere phantasms. The trial did not resolve the fate of all other disputed funds: Pelham notes that further indictments impended against Flynn and that extensive frauds had been perpetrated upon the Prize Office, though their final issue is not related here.