On Monday, December 2, 1816, William Andrew Beckwith quitted his shop in Skinner Street between the hours of eleven and noon. He was a dealer in firearms. Before his departure, the fowling pieces and pistols displayed behind the shopfront stood undisturbed in their places; when he returned toward three o’clock, the premises were sacked. The window and its frame had been dashed to pieces. Weapons, gunpowder, and charges had vanished. The shop formed a part of his dwelling house: those who entered it thus penetrated a home wherein several persons were present.
The events that transpired between these two visits unfolded during a day of violent unrest. A young man had been apprehended for shooting a person named Piatt. He was detained within the shop when the crowd surged forward to deliver him. John Roberts, Beckwith’s apprentice, first observed four or five hundred people clamoring that the prisoner be yielded up to them; then the panes gave way, hands thrust through the breach, and the weapons were borne off. According to Roberts, once inside the shop, John Cashman forced open the drawers, seized guns and ammunition, and distributed them to the mob. He claimed to have seen him passing to and fro, carrying away as many as a dozen pieces at a time. Roberts declared himself certain of his identification.
The indictment, heard in London the following January, joined five men: Cashman, John Hooper, Richard Gamble, William Gunnell, and John Carpenter. It charged them with felonious stealing in the dwelling house and with rioting. The enumerated items comprised fowling pieces, a musket, blunderbusses, pistols, and metal ammunition. Beckwith estimated the total value of the stolen goods at upwards of thirteen hundred pounds. During the trial, this substantial sum resolved itself into assorted weapons recovered in various quarters, some recognized by their maker, others linked to the prisoners by individual witnesses.
Charles Griffin, a perfumer established in the same street, recounted another moment of that day. He had entered the premises whilst an officer was searching the apprehended man. He stepped out for a few moments to procure handcuffs. Upon his return, a crowd thronged without; he stated that he had not yet observed any depredation. In the continuation of his testimony, he pointed out Gunnell as the man who had shattered a window with a broomstick. The sequence of these observations remains obscure. Roberts, for his part, believed he recognized Gunnell, but could not swear to it with certainty.
Griffin placed Hooper and Cashman at the threshold. Hooper was said to have shouted, “Follow me!” Whereupon the two men advanced from the place where a standard was flying, inscribed with the words “Soldiers and Loving Brothers.” Griffin stated that he was seized by Hooper; Cashman then allegedly took him by the collar, demanding to know what was afoot. To escape violence, Griffin feigned that he too had come to deliver the prisoner. The men released him and made for the back of the shop. Griffin followed them, took up a blunderbuss, and cocked it. Hooper, according to this narrative, drew a pistol from beneath his greatcoat, leveled it at him, and declared that he could do the same. Griffin took fright and sought refuge in the kitchen.
He had at first related the scene quite differently. An earlier deposition, read before the court, attributed the leveling of the pistol to Cashman. Called once more to the stand, Griffin explained that Hooper stood near Cashman, clad in a greatcoat; when asked whether the man beside Cashman had leveled the piece, he had answered, “the man in the coat.” He confessed he had not reread his statement before signing it. This discrepancy did not efface his testimony regarding the arrival of the two men, but it prevented the threat at gunpoint from standing as an unassailable identification.
The arrests yielded other weapons. Samuel Levi, a constable of the City, observed Cashman at the Royal Exchange with the mob and a gun in his hand. He took him into custody and delivered the piece to Daniel Cartwright, who found it primed and loaded with powder and small shot. Beckwith thought it might have come from his shop: it bore the name of Ing, and he possessed several guns of that make, though he could not identify it individually. Cartwright reported that Cashman knew the weapon was loaded, boasting that he had brought it along “to kill or be killed.”
The evidence against Gamble followed a similar path. Abraham Samuel saw him before the Exchange with a gun; John Gough arrested him toward two o’clock in Queen Street, the weapon under his arm. His face was blackened. Gamble explained that he had picked up the piece in Skinner Street. Gough observed that the butt-end was soiled as though it had rested upon the ground, whereas the remainder was less fouled. Beckwith recognized this firearm: he had manufactured it for a gentleman in Kingston, who had returned it because he found it too heavy. Roberts confirmed having seen it in the window prior to the sack.
Carpenter was bound to a pistol through a different chain of custody. Eliza Owen stated she had received it from him on December 5 and had carried it to a pawnbroker. William Hill, the shopman, intercepted her with the weapon and gave notice to Officer Friend. Beckwith believed he recognized one of two pistols he had purchased from a certain Mortimer and had not yet sold. Hooper, meanwhile, was taken near the Exchange by John Huggins, who claimed to have discovered beneath his coat a pair of pistols, one of which was loaded with ball. The arms produced at the trial had thus passed through diverse hands: the gun found upon Cashman, the piece Gamble claimed to have picked up from the stones, and the pistols traced to Carpenter and Hooper.
The witnesses likewise endeavored to place the men among the various gatherings of that day. Edward Goodspeed stated he had seen Cashman and Hooper at Spa Fields, and subsequently encountered them in the throng at Coppice Row. Cashman, by his account, was bearing a flag. The owner of the wagon employed at Spa Fields, F. Windermede, testified that Hooper and another man had engaged him and directed him where to drive the vehicle. A small parcel deposited in the wagon contained bullets, powder, and pieces of lead. Windermede believed Hooper had placed it there, or had at least been present. His testimony and that of Goodspeed situated the men at the political gathering before their appearance outside the gunsmith’s shop.
These elements lent the day a political complexion that the indictment failed wholly to capture. The banner appealed to “soldiers” and “brothers”; one of the men wore a tricolor cockade; ammunition had been prepared beforehand. Yet Cashman insisted he had merely gone to visit a sick comrade at the hospital, then called at the Admiralty, and had caught up a weapon only while running along with the crowd. He admitted he was in liquor. Hooper denied ever having entered the shop or worn the colors, maintaining that he had come to warn the Lord Mayor of the tumult. Gamble said he had gone abroad in search of work and had only picked up his gun after following the others. Gunnell denied having wielded a stick or approached the shop. Carpenter claimed a pistol had been thrust into his hands and that he was home before one o’clock.
At the close of the proceedings, the jury returned a verdict of guilty against Cashman; Hooper, Gamble, Gunnell, and Carpenter were acquitted. Cashman was executed at Snow Hill, directly opposite the house of Beckwith. The chronicle does not record the jury’s reasoning with respect to each of the five prisoners. The sentence of the sole condemned man was carried out before the very dwelling where the arms had been seized: the scene of the plunder became the scaffold of his undoing.