Major Hampton Lewis awoke just as a man was bearing off his watch. Darkness shrouded the New Hummums, beneath the piazza of Covent Garden; the nocturnal visitor, clad only in shirt and trousers, was already slipping towards the door laden with the chain, seals, and purse of his unwilling host. Lewis sprang from his bed. Reaching the passage, he seized the fugitive by the shirt-collar and braces. The man struggled violently; the linen tore, and he vanished down the stairs. Though he had slipped from the Major's grasp, his garments had proved less fortunate, leaving behind ample evidence to tell the tale of their encounter.
A few hours earlier, on Saturday, 28 April 1832, Henry Macnamara had bespoken a room at this establishment, an address favoured by single gentlemen and transient visitors. His appearance bespoke respectability. He had been allotted a bed, his sole carpet bag had been carried upstairs, and a substantial supper had been served to him. In the opening hours of his stay, as recorded in Camden Pelham’s chronicle, nothing distinguished him from the other guests. The house lodged several travellers that night; directly beneath his quarters, the Major’s chamber opened upon a corridor serving four other occupied rooms.
The scuffle roused the entire house. Constables were summoned, and a search was conducted from door to door. Macnamara was found abed when they entered his room. This posture of untroubled repose collapsed the moment he was bade to rise: he still wore his trousers, while his shirt and braces were shredded. Near the Major’s threshold lay the fragments torn away in the struggle; upon the staircase leading to the suspect’s floor were discovered Lewis’s watch and purse. There was no need to await daybreak or scour the streets of London to recover the stolen property. Macnamara was straightway conveyed to the watch-house.
Order was scarcely restored before the Major’s neighbours discovered their own losses. One gentleman missed a shirt-pin; another had been robbed of English and French currency to the amount of three pounds and fifteen shillings. From a third chamber, the thief had carried off a loaded pistol—procured for its owner's personal protection—alongside a purse containing gold sovereigns and banknotes. A fourth traveller sought in vain the rings and purse left upon his dressing-table. The Major had caught the rogue in the act; the others had slumbered undisturbed through his visitation.
The search presently extended to a bedchamber facing Macnamara’s, which had stood unoccupied for several nights. Underneath the bed, the missing effects lay strewn in wild disarray. Amongst them was discovered a key. It was tried in the lock of the prisoner’s carpet bag: it turned perfectly. The portmanteau carried up by a servant the previous evening had seemed unremarkable to the innkeeper; yet its lock now furnished a decisive link between the rent linen and the treasures dropped upon the staircase.
Apprehended on Sunday, 29 April, Macnamara was brought on Monday morning before the magistrate at Bow Street. Having heard the particulars of the robberies at the New Hummums, his worship remanded the prisoner to custody, intending to allow time for further complainants to come forward. By the following Friday, a sizable crowd awaited their turn. From the hotel robbery alone, three indictments were preferred: those of Major Lewis, Mr. Courthold of Barking in Essex, and John C. Millenden, a young scholar travelling to his academy from Bordeaux, where his parents resided. Thus did three separate journeys converge upon the selfsame courtroom bar.
A further complainant, a Mr. Heath, directed the attention of the court to the preceding night. On Friday, 27 April, Macnamara had taken a bed at the Swan-with-Two-Necks in Lad Lane. The inn was of ancient construction, with an open gallery running round the yard off which the bedchambers opened. The newcomer had been lodged adjacent to Heath. In the dead of night, Davy, the watchman, had been awakened by the barking of the yard dog. Going to pacify the beast, he was led to a dark scullery or cellar, where he came upon Macnamara.
The intruder excused his presence upon some trivial pretext of nature. Davy suffered him to return to his chamber. The guest, however, did not tarry until morning: vaulting over the balustrade, he traversed the yard and fled the inn, leaving his boots behind him. In the street outside, a passer-by observed his flight and even assisted him in adjusting his cloak. On the morrow, Heath discovered the theft of his money. At the hearing, both the watchman and the stranger from the street positively identified Macnamara, and on this charge too he was committed for trial.
From one hostelry to the other, the patterns answered one another, though the witnesses had observed different fragments of the design. Davy had discovered a guest in an unseasonable place and accepted his excuse; the wayfarer in the street had rendered a courtesy without suspecting the man's trade. Major Lewis, however, had caught the prowler red-handed in his bedchamber and grappled with him. It was these collisions, joined with the torn raiment and discarded booty, that gave substance to the indictments. The watch-dog had sounded the alarm at the first inn; at the second, the Major’s sudden waking had forestalled yet another silent vanishing.
Other accusations followed. Pelham notes them to be numerous and of like character, though without detailing their particulars; they cannot, therefore, be indiscriminately equated with the charges formally tried. A turnkey from Maidstone Gaol likewise recognized the prisoner: Macnamara had broken out of that house of correction after being sentenced to three months' imprisonment for picking pockets. The well-appointed traveller of Saturday night had thus a prior incarceration and a prison breach to his name. This identification completed his profile, even as the inn victims came forward to press their respective claims.
On 21 May 1832, at the Old Bailey, he was convicted of the charges preferred against him. His offences rendered him liable to capital punishment; his sentence was ultimately commuted to transportation. The chronicle mentions neither the duration of the term nor the penal colony assigned, concluding Macnamara's history with his banishment from the scenes of his exploits. There remain the two London nights: in the first, a pair of boots abandoned in an inn-yard; in the second, a shredded shirt upon a major’s threshold. For a felon who had crossed those portals beneath the guise of a gentleman, it was trifling shreds of cloth and leather that barred his retreat forever.