For many years, William Roupell appeared to have received all the gifts of fortune before he had ever earned them. In 1857, he entered Parliament following a costly campaign through the boroughs of Lambeth; he championed reform and won the applause of the public as a gentleman ripe for high affairs of state. Then, in 1862, rather than face his creditors, he fled England. A few months later, he returned to stand before a court of law, not as a representative of the people, but as the principal witness to his own extensive forgeries.
The narrative unearthed by the trial began long before that flight. Richard Palmer Roupell, a prosperous lead merchant, had amassed a substantial fortune and acquired real property across several counties. Richard and Sarah had lived together for years prior to their marriage. William was born during that period of cohabitation; his elder brother John, estranged from the father, had departed abroad. Richard, their younger brother, was born after the nuptials. In his successive testaments, the father had sought to provide for his wife and children, placing the bulk of the estate under the stewardship of trusted trustees. William, who enjoyed unrestricted access to these family documents, understood both the dispositions and the structural frailties of this domestic edifice.
By 1855, his private debts pressed him hard. A parcel of land adjoining Roupell Park, the property of a Mr. Treadwell, could be purchased for five thousand pounds. William persuaded his father that the Unity Fire Insurance Company had entrusted him with the management of capital and wished to lease the vast family estate; the acquisition of the small adjoining plot would, he alleged, greatly facilitate the transaction. His father believed him. Two drafts—one for five hundred pounds and another for four thousand five hundred—were handed to William to settle with Treadwell. The evidence at the trial established that the money never reached its intended recipient: the sums were lodged into accounts controlled by William, and Treadwell’s endorsement was forged.
This initial plunder proved insufficient. William soon claimed that the insurance company also required an inspection of the title deeds for the Norbiton Park estate. Under this pretext, he secured the original muniments of title preserved by his father. He did not convey them to the solicitors managing the affair; instead, he called upon Powell, a law stationer, to have parchment counterparts prepared. He then retained an attorney, Whitaker, whom he induced to draft a deed of gift whereby his father purportedly conveyed the estate to him. Whitaker, wholly innocent of the deceit, prepared the instrument and delivered it to him for execution.
William simulated his father’s signature. He then summoned two men, Trueman and Dove, on the pretext of attesting his own execution of the deed. The legal attestation clause was carefully concealed; they subscribed their names without perceiving that they were likewise certifying the signature of the father. Armed with this conveyance, William raised seven thousand pounds by mortgaging the property. He was thus able to satisfy Treadwell, pocket the surplus, and lend his initial fraud the colour of a legitimate transaction. When the land was sold some years later, the purchaser, Waite, held a title which his own counsel believed to be unimpeachable.
In January 1856, William repeated the manoeuvre. He led his father to believe that the company was interested in the Great Warleigh estate in Essex, thereby obtaining the deeds and leases. Another signature was forged; Whitaker, once again, prepared the engrossments in total ignorance of their true destination. A surveyor valued the property at eighteen thousand pounds, upon which a mortgage of fifteen thousand was obtained. These operations did not merely compromise strangers: they swallowed the very patrimony upon which the livelihood of his family depended.
On September 12, 1856, Richard Palmer Roupell died suddenly. Sarah, overcome with grief, entrusted the keys to her son. William rifled his father’s bureau and discovered the genuine will of 1850, confirmed by a codicil dated August 30. The Norbiton lands were devised to Richard, the younger brother. This disposition threatened to expose the deeds already manufactured and the heavy encumbrances laid upon property that had never belonged to William. In the very house where his father lay dead, William purchased a printed form of will, filled in the blanks, and drew up an entirely new instrument bearing the date of September 2.
This fraudulent will purported to make Sarah the universal legatee and appointed William as co-executor alongside her. He forged his father’s signature, together with that of Muggeridge, an aged servant whom he had previously induced to sign a five-pound receipt. The mother remained, according to William’s subsequent testimony, utterly unaware of the forgery. After the funeral, he presented the document to his father’s proctors and swore an oath affirming its authenticity. He had thus stamped his fraud with the only seal that could guarantee its survival: his own perjury.
The family fortune sustained his public career. He was elected Member of Parliament for Lambeth in 1857 and returned once more in 1859; he maintained an opulent household, patronised charitable enterprises, and stood prominently in the public eye. Meanwhile, the properties were alienated, creditors multiplied, and the capital evaporated. The chapter in the Pitaval records that William squandered nearly three hundred thousand pounds in the space of seven years. In March 1862, having committed part of his papers to the flames, he absconded to Spain. At first, his departure seemed nothing more than the commonplace flight of an insolvent debtor seeking to evade his liabilities.
The full extent of the affair came to light during a civil action tried at Guildford on August 18, 1862. Richard, the younger brother, brought an action of ejectment to recover the Kingston estate sold to Waite. The purchaser relied upon the deed of gift, which he believed to have been duly executed by the father. Richard’s counsel maintained that the deed was a forgery, as was the will that had placed Sarah at the head of the succession. To vindicate the family’s rights, the plaintiff had to establish the descent of the properties, the true testamentary intentions of the father, and the fabrication of the titles.
William’s name was called. To the astonishment of the crowded courtroom, he stepped into the witness box and methodically corroborated every particular. He recounted the spurious authority from the Unity Company, the misappropriated funds, the forged signatures, the fraudulent deed of gift, and the antedated will. He confessed to having sworn to the truth of the latter under oath. Cross-examination by Waite’s counsel sought to demonstrate that this confession might still serve the pecuniary interests of the family: if the conveyance were set aside, the land would revert to the Roupells. The moral question remained grave: could a man who had already committed wilful perjury be credited when he denounced his own falsehoods?
William also answered regarding his father’s testamentary intentions. He claimed that prior to his demise, the elder Roupell had intended to alter his will and entrust him with the management of the whole estate, charged with annuities for his mother and siblings. Yet he admitted having interrupted his father when the latter was on the point of dictating a codicil, because such an act would inevitably have exposed the fraud concerning Roupell Park. This gloss altered nothing; it merely proved that the forged will was no isolated crime, but the final keystone placed upon an extensive edifice of past plunder.
Counsel ultimately compromised the civil action, agreeing to divide the value of the disputed estate. William was forthwith taken into custody, and criminal proceedings commenced. On September 22, at the Central Criminal Court, he initially pleaded not guilty, but soon retracted and entered a plea of guilty. He explained that his earliest misstep had been incurring a small debt to purchase books and imagining himself bound to assist a distressed friend; thereafter, he declared, one encumbrance had inevitably led to another. He assumed sole responsibility for every fraudulent act, pleading only that no shadow of suspicion should fall upon the professional gentlemen who had engrossed the deeds in good faith.
His address did not sue for mercy. He affirmed that he had voluntarily relinquished a secure retreat abroad to confess his crimes, after having apprised the duped purchasers, and that he preferred an exemplary sentence to an existence spent in disgrace and terror. The court sentenced him to penal servitude for life. The chronicle depicts him returning to his cell without any outward mark of rebellion. For his kin, the conviction could not magically restore the alienated patrimony; for the bona fide purchasers, the formal acknowledgment of the forgeries rendered their titles no less ruinously impaired.
Roupell had adeptly sustained the character of a reforming legislator and a dutiful son administering an estate; document by document, he had likewise constructed an entirely spurious narrative of his own life. His downfall was precipitated not by some dramatic exposure, but by the moment when an action over a disputed title compelled deed after deed to be scrutinised in open court. A forgery might deceive by mimicry, and a false oath might sustain the deception for a season; yet in the end, the author himself was forced to mount the witness box and proclaim with his own lips what his parchments had so long concealed.