The Cole Green Robbery of 1824

The Trial of George Dudfield and the Fate of Benjamin Jacobs

By Ian Fisher

Police Bill giving the names of some of the Witnesses
Hertfordshire Archives

George Dudfield, who had remained in custody on a charge of forgery, was also tried in December. Part of his defence was that he had obtained the money by gambling with a Mr Williams. However the prosecution produced a number of witnesses to prove otherwise, among whom were several bankers from Cambridge including George Fisher and John Lyon Foster. They were able to identify some of the notes collected by Haines the steward and endorsed by Edward Johnson as having been paid into their banks.  Matilda Blanchard a lodger of Dudfield’s was able to testify that she had heard the robbers counting out the money on the morning after the robbery and Jane Watson the keeper of the Wheatsheaf in Bermondsey identified Dudfield as being on her premises with the robbers – who she already knew by sight – a little later the same morning. The same witness also gave evidence at the trial of some of the others when she identified an iron bar found at Cole Green as having been stolen from The Wheatsheaf. By evidence from various coachmen, ostlers, and bank clerks as well as from the production of various bills and receipts, the court was able to show the progress of Dudfield and his companion from London to Cambridge and back. Around April 1825 a ship called The Medina left London bound for the other side of the world. On board was George Dudfield having been sentenced to 14yrs transportation to Tasmania.

His accomplice, known as Old K, real name Kelly, was eventually caught on the 17th of November 1824, tried at Kingston Surrey on the 27th December and also sentenced to 14 years transportation.

And what at the end of it all became of the informer Benjamin Jacobs? By June 1825 he was in a bad way having lost his young son through illness and probable malnutrition. The rest of his family were also suffering through his in-ability to provide. His reputation, as he put it, ‘had been so blasted’ as a result of his past activities that he was unable to get work.  His only hope was to become a freeman of London so that he could get employment as a porter. For this he needed money and so he wrote to George Nicholson, a solicitor in Hertford, to ask if he would approach Earl Cowper for the loan of £35 for which his brothers would stand security. This seems like barefaced cheek, but the tone of the letter tells a different story – one written in sheer desperation by a man at the end of his tether. He managed to obtain five pounds. No doubt he often wished he had never accepted the invitation to provide transport for the robbers and take part in the robbery.

On a brighter note, John Haines fully recovered from his beating and continued to serve as Earl Cowpers Steward until March 1844

SOURCES:

HALS D/EP 437 and D/EPT1216

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

My thanks to Ken Griffen for information regarding the sentencing of the criminals

This page was added on 14/11/2014.

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