The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney

Excerpt

THE MARCH ASSIZE.

Something more than half a century ago, a person, in going along Holborn, might have seen, near the corner of one of the thoroughfares which diverge towards Russell Square, the respectable-looking shop of a glover and haberdasher named James Harvey, a man generally esteemed by his neighbors, and who was usually considered well to do in the world. Like many London tradesmen, Harvey was originally from the country. He had come up to town when a poor lad, to push his fortune, and by dint of steadiness and civility, and a small property left him by a distant relation, he had been able to get into business on his own account, and to attain that most important element of success in London—"a connection." Shortly after setting up in the world, he married a young woman from his native town, to whom he had been engaged ever since his school-days; and at the time our narrative commences he was the father of three children.

James Harvey's establishment was one of the best frequented of its class in the street. You could never pass without seeing customers going in or out. There was evidently not a little business going forward. But although, to all appearance, a flourishing concern, the proprietor of the establishment was surprised to find that he was continually pinched in his circumstances. No matter what was the amount of business transacted over the counter, he never got any richer.

At the period referred to, shop-keeping had not attained that degree of organization, with respect to counter-men and cashiers, which now distinguishes the great houses of trade. The primitive till was not yet superseded. This was the weak point in Harvey's arrangements; and not to make a needless number of words about it, the poor man was regularly robbed by a shopman, whose dexterity in pitching a guinea into the drawer, so as to make it jump, unseen, with a jerk into his hand, was worthy of Herr Dobler, or any other master of the sublime art of jugglery.

Good-natured and unsuspicious, perhaps also not sufficiently vigilant, Harvey was long in discovering how he was pillaged. Cartwright, the name of the person who was preying on his employer, was not a young man. He was between forty and fifty years of age, and had been in various situations, where he had always given satisfaction, except on the score of being somewhat gay and somewhat irritable. Privately, he was a man of loose habits, and for years his extravagances had been paid for by property clandestinely abstracted from his too-confiding master. Slow to believe in the reality of such wickedness, Mr. Harvey could with difficulty entertain the suspicions which began to dawn on his mind. At length all doubt was at an end. He detected Cartwright in the very act of carrying off goods to a considerable amount. The man was tried at the Old Bailey for the offence; but through a technical informality in the indictment, acquitted.

Unable to find employment, and with a character gone, the liberated thief became savage, revengeful, and desperate....