At such a moment, the appearance of a criminal before the docket of Old Bailey, for a crime committed two years past, was of very minor interest. But there were some reports on the inside pages of the dailies, and they are fascinating for what they reveal about Edward Pierce.
He was brought before the bar for the first time on July 29th: "handsome, charming, composed, elegant and roguish." He gave his testimony in an even, utterly calm tone of voice, but his statements were inflammatory enough. He referred to Mr. Fowler as "a syphilitic fool" and Mr. Trent as "an elderly nincompoop." These comments led the prosecutor to inquire of Pierce's views on Mr. Harranby, the man who had apprehended him. "A puffed-up dandy with the brains of a schoolboy," Pierce announced, drawing a gasp from the court, for Mr. Harranby was in the gallery as an observer. Mr. Harranby was seen to color deeply, and the veins stood out on his forehead.
Even more astounding than Mr. Pierce's words was his general demeanor, for "he carried himself extremely well, and proudly, and gave no hint of contrition, nor any trace of moral remorse for his black deeds. Quite the opposite, he seemed to, demonstrate an enthusiasm for his own cleverness as he recounted the various steps in the plan.
"He appears," noted the Evening Standard, "to take a degree of delight in his actions which is wholly inexplicable."
This delight extended to a detailed accounting of the foibles of other witnesses, who were themselves most reluctant to testify. Mr. Trent was fumbling and nervous, and greatly embarrassed ("with ample reason," snapped one outraged observer) at what he had to report, while Mr. Fowler recounted his own experiences in a voice so low that the prosecutor was continually obliged to ask him to speak up.
There were a few shocks in Pierce's testimony. One was the following exchange, which occurred on the third day of his appearance in court:
"Mr. Pierce, are you acquainted with the cabby known as Barlow?"
"I am."
"Can you tell us his whereabouts?"
"I cannot."
"Can you tell us when you last saw him?"
"Yes, I can."
"Please be so good to do so."
"I saw him last six days ago, when he visited me at Coldbath Fields."
(Here there was a buzzing of voices within the court, and the judge rapped for order.)
"Mr. Pierce, why have you not brought forth this information earlier?"
"I was not asked."
"What was the substance of your conversation with this man Barlow?"
"We discussed my escape."
"Then I take it, you intend with the aid of this man to make your escape?"
"I should prefer that it be a surprise," Pierce said calmly.
The consternation of the court was great, and the newspapers were plainly outraged: "A graceless, unscrupulous, hideous fiend of a villain," said the Evening Standard. There were demands that he receive the most severe possible sentence.
But Pierce's calm manner never changed. He continued to be casually outrageous. On August 1, Pierce said in passing of Mr. Henry Fowler that "he is as big a fool as Mr. Brudenell."
The prosecutor did not let the comment go by. Quickly he said, "Do you mean Lord Cardigan?"
"I mean Mr. James Brudenell."
"That is, in fact, Lord Cardigan, is it not?"
"You may refer to him however you wish, but he is no more than Mr. Brudenell to me."
"You defame a peer and the Inspector-General of the Cavalry."
"One cannot," Pierce said, with his usual calmness, "defame a fool."
"Sir: you are accused of a heinous crime, may I remind you of that."
"I have killed no one," Pierce replied, "but had I killed five hundred Englishmen through my own rank stupidity I should be hanged immediately."
This exchange was not widely reported in the newspapers, out of fear that Lord Cardigan would sue for libel. But there was another factor: Pierce was, by his testimony, hammering at the foundations of a social structure already perceived as under attack from many fronts. In short order, the master criminal ceased to be fascinating to anyone.
And in any case, Pierce's trial could not compete with tales of wild-eyed "niggers," as they were called, charging into a room full of women and children, raping and killing the females, skewering the screaming infants, and "disporting in a spectacle of blood-curdling heathen atavism."
CHAPTER 52
The End
Pierce concluded his testimony on August 2nd. At that time, the prosecutor, aware that the public was perplexed by the master criminal's cool demeanor and absence of guilt, turned to a final line of inquiry.
"Mr. Pierce," said the prosecutor, rising to his full height, "Mr. Pierce, I put it to you directly: did you never feel, at any time, some sense of impropriety, some recognition of misconduct, some comprehension of unlawful behavings, some moral misgivings, in the performance of these various criminal acts?"
"I do not comprehend the question," Pierce said.
The prosecutor was reported to have laughed softly. "Yes, I suspect you do not; it is written all over you."
At this point, His Lordship cleared his throat and delivered the following speech from the bench:
"Sir," said the judge, "it is a recognized truth of jurisprudence that laws are created by men, and that civilized men, in a tradition of more than two millennia, agree to abide by these laws for the common good of society. For it is only by the rule of law that any civilization holds itself above the promiscuous squalor of barbarism. This we know from all the history of the human race, and this we pass on in our educational processes to all our citizens.
"Now, on the matter of motivation, sir, I ask you: why did you conceive, plan, and execute this dastardly and shocking crime?"
Pierce shrugged. "I wanted the money," he said.
Following Pierce's testimony, he was handcuffed and escorted from the courtroom by two stout guards, both armed. As Pierce left the court, he passed Mr. Harranby.
"Good day, Mr. Pierce," Mr. Harranby said.
"Good-bye," Pierce replied.
Pierce was taken out the back of Old Bailey to the waiting police van, which would drive him to Coldbath Fields. A sizable crowd had gathered on the steps of the court. The guards pushed away the crowd, which shouted greetings and expressions of luck to Pierce. One scabrous old whore, slipping forward, managed to kiss the culprit full on the mouth, if only for a moment, before the police pushed her aside.
It is presumed that this whore was actually the actress Miss Miriam, and that in kissing Pierce she passed him the key to the handcuffs, but that is not known for certain. What is known is that when the two van guards, coshed into insensibility, were later discovered in a gutter near Bow Street, they could not reconstruct the precise details of Pierce's escape. The only thing they agreed upon was the appearance of the cabby—a tough brute of a man, they said, with an ugly white scar across his forehead.
The police van was later recovered in a field in Hampstead. Neither Pierce nor the cabby was ever apprehended. Journalistic accounts of the escape are vague, and all mention that the authorities showed reluctance to discuss it at length.
In September the British recaptured Cawnpore. They took no prisoners, and burned, hanged, and disemboweled their victims. When they found the blood-soaked house where the women and children had been slaughtered, they made the natives lick the red floor before hanging them. They went on, sweeping through India in what was called "the Devil's Wind"—marching as much as sixty miles a day, burning whole villages and murdering every inhabitant, tying mutineers to the muzzles of cannons and blowing them to bits. The Indian Mutiny was crushed before the end of the year.
In August, 1857, Burgess, the railway guard, pleaded the stresses of his son's illness, claiming that it had so warped his moral inclinations that he fell in with criminals. He was sentenced to only two years in Marshalsea Prison, where he died of cholera that winter.
The screwsman Robert Agar was sentenced to transportation to Australia for his part in The
Great Train Robbery. Agar died a wealthy man in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, in 1902. His grandson Henry L. Agar was the Lord Mayor of Sydney from 1938 to 1941.
Mr. Harranby died in 1879 while flogging a horse, which kicked him in the skull. His assistant, Sharp, became head of the Yard and died a great-grandfather in 1919. He was reported to have said he was proud that none of his children was a policeman.
Mr. Trent died of a chest ailment in 1857; his daughter Elizabeth married Sir Percival Harlow in 1858, and had four children by him. Mr. Trent's wife behaved scandalously following her husband's demise; she died of pneumonia in 1884, having enjoyed, she said, "more lovers than this Bernhardt woman."
Henry Fowler died of "unknown causes" in 1858.
The South Eastern Railway, tired of the inadequate arrangements of London Bridge Station, built two new terminals for its line: the famous vaulted arch of Cannon Street in 1862, and Blackfriars Station soon after.
Pierce, Barlow, and the mysterious Miss Miriam were never heard from again. In 1862, it was reported that they were living in Paris. In 1868, they were said to be residing in "splendid circumstances" in New York. Neither report has ever been confirmed.
The money from The Great Train Robbery was never recovered.
MICHAEL CRICHTON
was born in Chicago in 1942. His novels include Next, State of Fear, The Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park, and Timeline. He is also the creator of the television series ER.
www.michaelcrichton.com
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