On 30 May 1826, Charles Thomas White increased to 3,500 pounds the amount of the insurance policy covering the furniture and stock of the family premises at No. 265 High Holborn. Within the following two months, the building took fire. A lodger, Mr Lazarus, was awakened by the alarm; his maidservant soon found herself suspected, before fresh indications turned the investigation toward White. The chronicle published much later by Camden Pelham connects three fires, an altered policy, and torches reputed to have been bought to kindle the flames.
The policy had initially been taken out by White’s mother in September 1823. It insured the furniture for 400 pounds and the stock for 600. The book provides no reason for the augmentation of 30 May 1826; it merely places it prior to the first discovery of the fire. Pelham depicts White as a young man of respectable family, bred in the bookseller’s shop his father had kept in High Holborn and which his mother had carried on after his demise. At twenty-two, he had married and received 800 pounds to set up for himself; his wife possessed a settlement of 1,000 pounds yielding 65 pounds per annum, and he was further entitled to an interest in 4,000 pounds upon the decease of his mother-in-law. This delineation of his resources comes from the chronicle, which proceeds to present the insurance as the benefit contemplated by the prosecution.
The house was sufficiently commodious for a portion to be let to Mr Lazarus, who dwelt there with his grandmother, his sister, and a servant-maid. White occupied the other part with his wife and a domestic named Catherine Taylor. These two servants must not be confounded. When the first fire was discovered, Lazarus found his own servant in a posture that led him to suspect her complicity in the blaze; he kept his misgivings to himself at the outset. The narrative does not describe with precision the damage of that first night, but affirms that it was considerable.
On the morning of 5 August, a second fire was reported in the house. Lazarus’s servant was found near the spot where the flames had broken out, almost entirely dressed; her master caused her to be apprehended. The magistrates at Marlborough Street examined her repeatedly, but the evidence amassed against her proved insufficient to resolve the doubts, and she was discharged. Pelham affirms that particulars obtained shortly thereafter established her innocence and White’s guilt. This innocence does not arise, in the account, from any confession by the young woman: it is a conclusion of the chronicler, related as the enquiry unfolded.
Pelham fixes this second fire between one and two o’clock in the morning. Lazarus, awakened by a sense of suffocation, went down and perceived flames issuing from a closet beneath the staircase leading to the upper floor. Night watchmen were already assembled without; with their assistance, the fire was extinguished. Among the rubbish, two partially consumed torches were discovered. White declared to Lazarus that he believed the servant to be the guilty party; after her first examination, however, he suggested that it would be useless to prosecute the young woman, saying he did not believe she had possessed the torches. When interrogated concerning them, he denied all knowledge of their existence.
The enquiry was committed to Furzeman, an officer whom Pelham characterizes as active and meritorious. It led to the shop of Mr Bradford, an oilman in Broad Street, where an individual bearing a strong resemblance to White was said to have purchased torches. Whilst the investigations were proceeding, the chapter relates a third fire upon the same premises. It assigns to it the date of Wednesday, 4 October 1825, notwithstanding that it places it subsequent to the occurrences of 1826 described above. This discrepancy belongs to the printed chronology; the narrative permits no correction of it without conjecture.
At the time of this third fire, according to Pelham, only Mr and Mrs White and Catherine Taylor were sleeping in the house. Mrs White, being indisposed, had retired early; Taylor had gone to sleep in her mistress’s bedchamber about eleven o’clock, whilst White repaired to another apartment. Towards one in the morning, the staircase was discovered in flames. Mrs White proposed calling for help from the street; her husband refused and conducted the two women to a trapdoor opening upon the roof of the garret, through which they made their escape. The watchmen had in the meantime forced the door and subdued the flames. The building was thus preserved from destruction, despite the combustibles that the subsequent enquiry found disposed throughout the lower rooms.
Taylor stated that she had discovered, a day or two previously, a quantity of turpentine spilt upon a hearthrug in the parlour; the liquid had been kept for her own use. Pelham adds that further facts brought to light during the searches indicated, according to the account, a distribution of combustible materials designed to render the destruction complete. Bradford subsequently identified White as the man to whom he had sold the torches. The tradesman had observed him in an apparel resembling that worn by the customer who had come to purchase them. He was taken into custody; the circumstances set forth before the magistrates resulted in his committal to Newgate.
At the Old Bailey sessions of 31 October, White was indicted for arson. The volume does not specify the year of this session in the passage. The defence was confined to a simple denial of the alleged facts. The jury returned a verdict of guilty. Upon hearing the decision, he manifested little emotion, then, at the close of the sessions, contested the probability of the charge: according to the argument he submitted, his worldly circumstances rendered it improbable that he should have committed such a crime for any pecuniary benefit he might derive therefrom. This rejoinder did not alter the sentence of death pronounced by the court.
White subsequently addressed memorials to the government in order to obtain a commutation. Exertions were made on his behalf, but the order for his execution, appointed for 2 January 1827, reached Newgate on 20 December. Pelham records that his youthful wife, who visited him regularly in prison, remained by his side during this period of suspense; he does not report her words nor her thoughts. White persisted at first in denying his guilt. Later, he acknowledged that he had been justly accused and condemned, while pleading that he had not been in a sound state of mind at the time of the transaction. This was his own explanation as recorded by the chronicle, not a medical diagnosis.
As the hour of execution drew near, White also endeavoured to break out of Newgate. An intercepted letter aroused suspicion of a plot aided by confederates both within and without the prison walls. His cell was situated near the outer wall. He had prepared a ladder formed of black sewing thread, intricately plaited, and hoped to reach the parapet after removing the bars of his window; he was unable to displace them without tools. Shoes brought in at his request were examined: spring-saws, capable of cutting iron noiselessly, were concealed between the soles. When the design was detected, White avowed his purpose and, according to Pelham, spoke with satisfaction of the ingenuity with which he had contrivance it.
On the morning of 2 January, the sheriff’s officers conducted him from his cell to the press-room. White requested that his arms might be pinioned with a handkerchief he had provided; according to Pelham, he hoped by this means to disengage his hands. The turnkeys perceived his manoeuvres and bound his arms securely. Having mounted the scaffold at twenty minutes past eight, he made a further effort to free himself. The chronicler relates that the struggle delayed the execution, and that the executioner was obliged to hang upon his legs to complete the hanging. In this narrative, the torches bought from Bradford, which the latter attributed to White, the rug steeped in turpentine, and the saws hidden in the shoes form the material traces that led from the arson to the scaffold.