The Reverend Charles Herbert Jenner applied for a loan of two hundred pounds. From the witness-box, he recounted that John Minter Hart had written that sum upon a paper he had just induced him to accept, then carried it off with the promise of returning shortly with the money. He never saw Hart again. When the bill was produced, the figures showed five hundred pounds. Between these two sums, an inked line had vanished under the action of an acid; the matter turned thereafter upon a question far more intricate than a mere disparity of inks: what proof was required for the forgery to constitute, in law, the felony charged?
Hart’s trial for the forged bill concerning Jenner took place in December 1836. Yet in Camden Pelham’s chronicle, Hart’s career reached back three years earlier, encompassing another victim, another series of instruments, and a wholly different verdict. These two episodes must be examined separately: the machinations attributed to Hart regarding the acceptances of Dugdale Astley had not brought about his conviction; the jury of 1836, on the contrary, pronounced him guilty of the forgery directed against Jenner.
In July 1833, Astley was seeking a temporary accommodation. An advertisement in the Morning Post held out twenty thousand pounds to be advanced to gentlemen of fortune upon reasonable interest. Astley applied for five thousand pounds, detailing his family connections and his estates. A letter signed “J. Morton” came in reply; the man who visited him at Basing Park, according to the case for the Crown as digested by Pelham, was Hart under an assumed name. They discussed terms, agreeing upon short-dated bills, renewable upon interest.
Hart produced ten six-shilling stamps and requested Astley to write an acceptance for five hundred pounds upon each. Astley inscribed the formula and the style of his bankers, but, according to the trial report, did not affix his signature to the foot of the instruments. Hart carried them away, swearing the funds would soon be forthcoming. No money was ever advanced. Appointed meetings were deferred, and presently a letter purporting to come from Henry Palmer announced that he had received one of the bills and might discount another. Palmer requested Astley to confirm that the paper was regular.
Astley returned no answer. The letter had awakened his suspicions; inquiries set on foot by his friends brought Hart and Palmer into close conjunction. The narrative then records fresh pressure: Palmer was said to have threatened to write to Astley’s father and father-in-law concerning the bills, before offering to surrender them for a considerable consideration. Advertisements appeared in the press, and meetings were appointed at solicitors’ offices, but no settlement was reached. Pelham presents this episode as a concerted operation; the particulars derive from the opening for the prosecution and the depositions he abridges, rather than from a complete record of the proceedings. Astley made no reply to Palmer. He caused, however, an advertisement to be inserted requesting “O. P. Q.” to meet his solicitors. At the interview, Henson inquired what Palmer demanded for giving up the acceptances: twenty shillings in the pound, the other replied. Astley refused. On the following day, Palmer’s solicitor offered ten shillings in the pound, then five; both overtures were rejected, and the negotiation terminated. This refusal did not yet convert a menace into judicial proof, but it laid bare the drift of the correspondence: to extort payment for paper upon which not a single shilling had ever been advanced.
Palmer was arraigned at the Middlesex Sessions in October 1833, charged with feloniously receiving ten bills of exchange accepted by Astley, well knowing them to have been stolen. The chronicle records a verdict of guilty and a sentence of fourteen years’ transportation. Hart was tried separately on the 2nd of December. Upon this occasion, the learned judge held that no felony had been proved, inasmuch as no property belonging to Astley had been stolen. He directed an acquittal. Pelham adds that Palmer’s conviction was likewise pronounced illegal, and he was discharged.
This first trial did not govern the Jenner indictment three years later. In July 1836, the reverend gentleman, then living near Cardiff, answered an advertisement offering loans under the address of a certain Blake, in the Haymarket. Hart met him at Chislehurst. Jenner required two hundred pounds for twelve months, assenting to five per cent interest upon the bill. The next morning, at Jenner’s father’s house, Hart placed a stamp before him, exhibiting at the same time what appeared to be a Bank of England check; he instructed him to write: “Accepted — Charles Jenner.”
Before signing, Jenner declared he saw Hart trace figures in the left-hand corner: two hundred pounds. Hart took the paper and engaged to return in half an hour with the cash. At his instance, Jenner had made the bill payable at the Bank of England. The loan was never delivered; several letters followed, but Jenner saw Hart no more. When the instrument was produced at the bar, the figures of five hundred pounds occupied the place where he maintained he had seen two hundred.
John William Edwards supplied another strand of testimony at the Old Bailey. He deposed that he had received the paper from Hart at the rate of five shillings in the pound; it was then, according to him, a blank acceptance, bearing a small blot in the corner. Edwards stated he had returned it to Hart to be drawn and endorsed. It came back to his hands bearing the name “C. Taylor.” By the same account, Hart had told him the bill came from Jenner through a man named Elliott, and that a dealer, Pook, had offered but one hundred pounds for it. Edwards was to pay a further fifty pounds if the acceptance were honored. A chemical examination, recorded by Pelham, showed that the place where Jenner maintained he had seen the figures 200 had been subjected to an acid: the ink had been extracted, and the figures 500 written in its room. The witnesses thus established a physical alteration, but the debate before the jury turned as well upon the legal construction of the deed.
The defense contended that the facts, even if they disclosed a fraud, did not support the specific felony of forgery charged in the indictment. The learned judge held, on the contrary, that the evidence sustained the count. The jury found Hart guilty. His conviction was subsequently reserved for the consideration of the fifteen judges assembled in the Exchequer Chamber, who affirmed the judgment. On February 7, 1837, Hart received sentence of transportation for life.
Pelham assigns no precise date to his demise. He records merely that following his removal to Van Diemen’s Land, Hart died after a brief residence in the colony. At the time of his conviction, the compiler notes, Hart was thirty-two years of age and described himself as a solicitor. Pelham deems it probable that he had received a legal education and been admitted an attorney, though he offers this conjecture merely as biographical surmise. The chronicle depicts him as a money-scrivener familiar with public advertisements and dealings under borrowed names; the moral strictures upon the man remain those of the compiler. The course of justice, for its part, may be measured by two divergent issues. In 1833, Hart walked forth a free man because the bench ruled that no felony had been established, since no property of Astley’s had been stolen. In 1836, the jury recognized the forgery perpetrated against Jenner, and the fifteen judges confirmed the conviction. The selfsame prisoner had twice crossed the threshold of the court; the paper, however, did not bear the same evidence.