Henry and Eliza Hendry appeared in the dock at Mansion House Police court as a married couple. The pair were charged with ‘forging and uttering a transfer of shares’ in a South African gold mining company. While both seemed to have been involved, Henry hadn’t planned for both of them to benefit from the crime, as the court was soon to discover.
The prosecution was opened by Mr Abraham on behalf of the Luipaard’s Vlei Estate and Gold Mining Company Limited . He alleged that while Hendry had been a clerk in the Consolidated Goldfields of South Africa he had stolen two certificates belonging to share holders. The documents represented 400 and 26 shares each, and so were of considerable value.
Mr Abraham went on to say that Hendry, ‘with the collusion of his wife’, had sold the shares certificates on the stock exchange, making the huge sum of £2,500 (£140,000 today).
Eliza was represented in court by her own lawyer, Mr Myers, and he told the Lord Mayor that his client was the very much the junior party in the crime. In the previous century the principle of coverture (femme couvert) may well have protected Mrs Hendry from prosecution as a wife acting with her husband was deemed to be following his lead, as any ‘good wife’ was expected to do. By 1900, however, I doubt that this rather surprising aspect of patriarchy would have worked for Eliza in front of a jury.
Fortunately for Eliza it never came to that. The Lord Mayor was told that once Henry Hendry had successfully sold the share certificates he left his wife and ran off with another woman. He had compounded his serious crime by acting like a pantomime villain. The City’s chief magistrate remanded him in custody but bailed his wife.
A case like this was probably complicated and evidence needed to be gathered. As a result it took several months for this to reach the Old Bailey. When it did there was no sign of Eliza, so she must have been released. As for Henry, the 30 year-old clerk pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey in May but judgement on him was respited. This probably means that there was some doubt over his conviction, possibly on some points of the law. Before 1907 (when the Court of Criminal Appeal was established) the Twelve Judges of England in the Court for Crown Cases Reserved, so they could lend their expert wisdom to the case.
Hendry disappears from the ‘bailey at this point so perhaps he too escaped the consequences of his grand scheme to defraud.
In March 1899 the area in which the Luipoards Vlei Estate was situated (the Witwatersrand) was firmly under British rule. This was to be (unsuccessfully) challenged in the coming year, as the second South African (or Boer) war broke out in late 1899. Britain’s imperial interest in Africa, in part driven by competition with other European powers (such as France and Germany) was underpinned by the desire to exploit the rich mineral wealth of the southern part of the continent. In trying to profit from the wider exploitation of Africa’s natural resources Henry Hendry was merely acting as he had seen many others do, and in the end, who can really condemn him for that?
As for leaving his wife however, now that really does mark him out to be a ‘bad lot’.
[from The Standard , Tuesday, March 28, 1899]
p.s The Luipoards Vlei Estate and Gold Mining Company had been formed in London in 1888 and successfully traded until the mid-20th century. It extracted gold and then, after this dried up in the 1950s, it continued to mine uranium. It ceased to be a going concern in 1970.
the police magistrate 