Page:Facts, failures and frauds- revelations, financial, mercantile, criminal.djvu/106

94 TACTS, TAlLrEES, AND rSAUDS. The indictment contained a great number of counts; in some of them the instrument in question was laid to be the property of Mr. Glyn, as treasurer of the Globe Insurance Company, and in others as belonging to Edward Goldsmith and William Tite, the chairman and deputy-chairman of the society.

In another set of counts the prisoner was charged with stealing a piece of paper, the property of the same prosecutors.

The Attorney-General, Mr. Clarkson, Sir J. Bayley, and Mr. Bovill appeared for the prosecution; Mr. Cockburn, Q.C, Mr. Bodkin, and Mr. Bramwell defended the prisoner.

The, in opening the case to the jury, said, that although the indictment contained a great number of counts, the charge against the prisoner in reality resolved itself into this, that while employed as a clerk and servant to the Globe Insurance Company, who were the prosecutors, he had embezzled and stolen a valuable security of the amount of £1400, the property of his employers. He was sorry to say that the facts lay in a very narrow compass, and would appear to be quite conclusive, and he believed that the case would eventually resolve itself into a question of law. The jury were aware that the Globe Insurance Company had carried on for a great many years a most extensive business both in fire and life insurances, and the prisoner had been for several years in their service as clerk. He was the son of a gentleman who had held a responsible office in the company almost from the period of its establishment, and he was instructed now to state, on behalf of that gentleman—and it was due to him to do so—that the directors entirely exonerated him from the slightest suspicion of being in any way connected with this unfortunate transaction. The Attorney-General then proceeded briefly to state the circumstances under which the charge was preferred. He said that the directors were in the habit of drawing cheques upon their bankers, Messrs. Glyn and Co., Mr. Glyn being also a director of the Globe Insurance Company, to pay different claims; and it appeared that on the 26th of February a cheque of this description for £1400 was found to be in the possession of the prisoner, by his having paid it in to his own account to the London and Westminster Bank. The cheque was paid in due course by Messrs. Glyn, and was then returned with a number of others, with the passbook in which the cheque in question was entered, in the ordinary course of business, to the prisoner; and he should be able to show that the entry relating to this cheque had been erased, and the cheque itself abstracted, and either destroyed or made away with in some other manner, as nothing had been seen of it since. It was under these circumstances that the present charge was preferred against the prisoner; and he had only to state, in addition, that in consequence of a communication that was received by the directors, an inquiry and investigation took place which led to the discovery of