Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison: Fifteen Years in SolitudeBidwell, Austin
General
Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison: Fifteen Years in Solitude
Bidwell, Austin
Bank fraud -- England; Bank of England; Bidwell, Austin; Criminals -- Biography
"While this was passing I had put on my silk hat and taken up my valise,
and was standing before the glass (a la Francais) taking a final view of
my toilette, and snapping off some imaginary dust and lint, as the
two detectives stepped in, and after looking me well over went out, and
I saw them no more. That proved to be the last ordeal through which I
passed in Ireland. After being convinced that they had left the steamer
I went to my berth, and being thoroughly exhausted I fell asleep in an
instant, not awaking until the steamer was entering the harbor of
Glasgow.
"After my arrest a month later in Scotland, during the transfer to
London and afterward to Newgate, while awaiting trial, the detectives
told me that they were in Cork three hours after I had left, and one of
them related their adventures substantially as follows:
"'We arrived in Cork Saturday afternoon and were not long in finding the
temperance hotel where you stayed on Friday night, and the hat you left
behind. After a long hunt we ascertained that a jaunting car had left
the stand some hours previously and was still absent.
"'We had a good laugh at those blunder-heads, the Cork officers, letting
you slip through their fingers, and then showed them how we do things.
After some delay we traced the cab across the bridge to the shop where
you got the boy to go for it. The shopwoman was quite voluble about you,
saying she knew all the time that you were an American by the accent,
and described the bag and ulster which we had ascertained were in your
possession. Of course, we were now satisfied that we were on the right
scent, but could get no further trace or the direction taken by the cab.
We therefore sent dispatches to all the telegraph stations within fifty
miles to put the police on the watch and sent messengers to the outlying
places, but somehow you slipped through our meshes, and nothing turned
up until the car man returned at about 11 p.m., as drunk as a soldier on
furlough. After putting him under a water tap until he was half drowned
we got him sober enough to tell where he had left you; but he swore you
were a priest, and his evident sincerity caused us all to roar with
laughter. This angered him, and he said: "Ye may twist me head an'
dhroun me intirely, but I wull niver spake another wurrud about the
jintelman at all, at all," and sure enough we could get nothing more out
of him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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