In February 1833, investigators at the Four Swans inn, Bishopsgate Street, prepared decoy parcels designed to ensnare the man who should come to claim them. Smith appeared to collect them. The moment they were delivered into his hands, he was taken into custody. On 16 April, both he and Richard Coster were convicted at the Old Bailey. To understand how Coster came to stand at the head of such an enterprise, one must retrace the labyrinth of his lodgings, his phantom firms, and the paper he set in motion.
The chronicler Camden Pelham knew neither the date nor the birthplace of Coster. His narrative, composed after the events, sketches first a course of social ascension: a youth cast upon his own resources, he was said to have saved enough from his journeys between Oxford and London to purchase a horse and cart and enter the fruit trade. In London, he frequented horse-dealers, jobbers, and individuals whom Pelham associates with fraudulent practices.
In 1810, Coster set up in Queen Street, Bristol, as a general agent and bill discounter. That same year, he was detained in Bristol’s Newgate on a charge of obtaining goods under false pretences. Pelham relates that he speedily extricated himself from this first prosecution. By the following year, he was directing a firm in Bread Street, in the parish of St Philip. His return to London followed in 1814. He established himself first in Eltham Place, near Kent Road, then in High Holborn and Basing Lane. In 1816, he kept an eating-house; by 1818, he had returned to traffic in money as a commercial broker, while also serving as a clerk to Thomas Gray, a provision merchant.
His addresses shifted once more. He removed to Bridgewater Square in 1819, then opened in 1820 in Staining Lane under the style of Coates and Smith; this partnership later became Smith and Martin. In 1829, he abandoned that concern to operate upon a grander scale as Young and Co. in Little Winchester Street, as well as Casey and Coster in Great Elbow Lane. These designations did not necessarily denote independent partners. Pelham asserts that Coster was the true proprietor of numerous houses and was able to have one company recommended by another under his own control. One façade thus stood surety for another.
This mobility did not entirely shield him from the law. In September 1825, he was indicted alongside Frederick Wilson for conspiracy to defraud. Wilson was found guilty of obtaining bills of exchange under false pretences and sentenced to seven years’ transportation. At the following sessions, Coster was prosecuted for a similar offence in the matter of a man named Marquet. According to Pelham, he expended considerable sums to defeat the prosecution and brought about a compromise with the complainant; the instruments that would have constituted the evidence vanished. He escaped conviction on that occasion.
The publications of commercial trade-protection societies trace the remainder of his career. In February 1826, a report noted him as keeping a warehouse in Little Britain; in May, his name appeared in the gazetted list of bankrupts. He also kept a counting-house in New Union Street under the name of William Stoppe and Co., drawing bills of exchange upon Heslop and Co., corn and flour factors of Yarmouth. These instruments were made payable at Esdaile and Co., in connection with Lacon and Co.’s bank at Yarmouth, and bore the endorsement of “Major J. H. Montgomery.” In 1827, bills were circulating in Bristol and elsewhere. A report in September recorded that he had obtained admission to a Masonic lodge under the name of De Coste. In the years that followed, intelligence placed him in Hatton Garden, Newgate Street, Westminster, Macclesfield Street, City Road, and elsewhere. The trading styles varied incessantly: Davis and Co., Smith and Bruce, Young and Co., Brown and Co. Pelham provides a long catalogue of them, presented as an engine directed by a single hand.
At the heart of this machinery lay a circular entitled “Accommodation.” It promised tradesmen London acceptances drawn upon houses of reputed standing, tailored in dates and amounts to their requirements. The client was to pay a commission of eightpence in the pound; once procured, the bills might be discounted with a country banker or wealthy acquaintances. The circular even provided for the renewal of an acceptance at maturity: a fresh bill would discharge the first until harvests or consignments of goods yielded sufficient funds. The overture transformed credit into a continuous chain, each link sustained by the trust reposed in the last.
Yet the circular did not merely expound the scheme. It vaunted returns of fifteen to twenty per cent, demanded references, and stipulated that the commission together with the stamp duty be remitted in advance. Coster undertook to supply guarantees and recommendations; the entire address was calculated to persuade clients of his unimpeachable respectability. Pelham asserts that the signatures or bills transmitted by the victims were subsequently negotiated by the London broker for Coster’s own benefit, rather than being applied as promised. The chronicler cites the case of an Essex farmer. Having obtained two bills from Coster to the value of two hundred pounds, he sent one hundred pounds to cover the first as it fell due. An attorney nevertheless applied to him demanding payment. At Little Winchester Street, Coster denied ever receiving the remittance and declared that the firm of Young and Co. was bankrupt. The farmer departed without recovering his money and unable, without acute embarrassment, to make public his own imprudence.
Pelham likewise records merchandise procured without payment: parcels of German wine, Dublin stout, and timber. In his account, the assumed names and confederates frequently prevented the victims from discovering who had concluded the bargain. Agents, at times impoverished former tradesmen, received weekly wages; Coster, the chronicler notes, was equally capable of defrauding them of their share. This structure explains why the inquiry of 1833 did not turn upon an isolated transaction: the authorities found themselves confronted by an extensive network of correspondence, aliases, and receiving points.
In February 1833, Coster and his clerk Smith wrote to one Clarke, at Honiton, desiring him to forward a quantity of lace to W. Jackson, at the Four Swans inn, Bishopsgate Street. Three ten-pound notes were enclosed in payment. Clarke perceived that they were forgeries and placed them in the hands of Freshfield, solicitor to the Bank of England, together with an account of their receipt. It was necessary to identify the consignee “Jackson” and take him in the act, but the alias did not immediately lead to Coster. A stratagem was devised: dummy parcels, purporting to come from Honiton, were dispatched to the inn.
Smith appeared to claim them. As the packets were handed to him, he was apprehended. The matter did not rest with this arrest. The officers traced the thread back to Coster, who was discovered to be the director of the enterprise, and the letter enclosing the notes was identified as being in his handwriting. The trap at the inn furnished the prosecution with material proof and an unbroken chain of actions: the three counterfeit notes had accompanied the order, and Coster’s own hand bound the correspondence to the scheme.
After several examinations at the Mansion House, both men were committed to Newgate for trial. On 16 April 1833, they were found guilty at the Old Bailey. Pelham lays stress upon the testimony of two men who had previously served as Coster’s instruments and who disclosed the full breadth of his operations. At the close of the sessions, Coster was sentenced to transportation for life. Smith, being too ill to be brought up at that time, had his judgment respited; he was subsequently sentenced to transportation as well. The chronicle does not record whither Coster was transported, nor what became of him thereafter.
At the close of those years of shifting habitations, this final prosecution brought to light what an endless succession of names had so long concealed.