Michael Crichton - The Great Train Robbery

Most feared of all was "the crank," a drum filled with sand and turned with a crank handle. It was usually reserved as a special punishment for unruly prisoners.

The daily regimen of Coldbath Fields was so debilitating that even after a shot sentence of six months, many a man emerged "with the steel gone out of him" his body damaged, nerves shot, and resolution so enfeebled that his ability to commit further crimes was severely impaired.

As a prisoner awaiting trial, Pierce could not be made to undergo the stepper, the shot-drill, or the crank; but he was obliged to follow the rules of prison conduct, and if he broke the rule of silence, for example, he might be punished by a time at the crank. Thus one may presume that the guards frequently accused him of speaking, and he was treated to "softening up."

On December 19th, after four weeks in the Steel, Pierce was again brought to Harranby's office. Harranby had told Sharp that "now we shall see a thing or two," but the second interrogation turned out to be as brief as the first:

"Where is the man Barlow?"'

"I don't know."

"Where is the woman Miriam?"

"I don't know."

"Where is the money?"

"I don't know."

Mr. Harranby, coloring deeply, the veins standing out on his forehead, dismissed Pierce with a voice filled with rage. As Pierce was taken away, he calmly wished Mr. Harranby a pleasant Christmas.

"The cheek of the man," Harranby later recorded, "was beyond all imagining."

____________________

Mr. Harranby during this period was under considerable pressure from several fronts. The bank of Huddleston amp; Bradford wanted its money back, and made its feelings known to Harranby through the offices of none other than the Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston himself. The inquiry from "Old Pam" was in itself embarrassing, for Harranby had to admit that he had put Pierce in Coldbath Fields, and the implications of that were none too gentlemanly.

Palmerston expressed the opinion that it was "a bit irregular," but Harranby consoled himself with the thought that any Prime Minister who dyed his whiskers was hardly in a position to berate others for dissembling.

Pierce remained in Coldbath until February 6th, when he was again brought before Harranby.,

"Where is the man Barlow?"

"I don't know."

"Where is the woman Miriam?"

"I don't know."

"Where is the money?"

"In a crypt, in Saint John's Wood," Pierce said.

Harranby sat forward. "What was that?"

"It is stored," Pierce said blandly, "in a crypt in the name of John Simms, in the cemetery of Martin Lane, Saint John's Wood."

Harranby drummed his fingers on the desk. "Why have you not come forth with this information earlier?"

"I did not want to," Pierce said.

Harranby ordered Pierce taken away to Coldbath Fields once more.

____________________

On February 7th, the crypt was located, and the appropriate dispensations obtained to open it. Mr. Harranby, accompanied by a representative of the bank; Mr. Henry Fowler, opened the vault at noon that day. There was no coffin in the crypt-- and neither was there any gold. Upon re-examination of the crypt door, it appeared that the lock had been recently forced.

Mr. Fowler was extremely angry at the discovery, and Mr. Harranby was extremely embarrassed. On February 8th, the following day, Pierce was returned to Harranby's office and told the news.

"Why," Pierce said, "the villains must have robbed me."

His voice and manner did riot suggest any great distress, and Harranby said so.

"Barlow," Pierce said. "I always knew he was not to be trusted."

"So you believe it was Barlow who took the money?"

"Who else could it be?"

There was a short silence. Harranby listened to the ticking of his clock; for once, it irritated him more than his subject. Indeed, his subject appeared remarkably at ease.

"Do you not care," Harranby said, "that your confederates have turned on you in this fashion?"

"It's just my ill luck," Pierce said calmly. "And yours," he added, with a slight smile.

____________________

"By his collected manner and polished demeanour," Harranby wrote, "I presumed that he had fabricated still another tale to put us off the mark. But in further attempts to learn the truth I was frustrated, for on the first of March, 1857, the Times reporter learned of Pierces capture, and he could no longer conveniently be held in custody."

According to Mr. Sharp, his chief received the newspaper story of Pierce's capture "with heated imprecation and ejaculations." Harranby demanded to know how the papers had been put on to the story. The Times refused to divulge its source. A guard at Coldbath who was thought to have given out the information was discharged, but nobody was ever certain one way or the other. Indeed; it was even rumored that the lead had come from Palmerston's office.

In any case, the trial of Burgess, Agar, and Pierce was set to begin on July 12, 1857.

The trial of the three train robbers was greeted by the public with the same sensational interest it had earlier shown in the crime itself. The prosecuting officials, mindful of the attention focused upon the event, took care to heighten the drama inherent in the proceedings. Burgess, the most minor of the players, was brought to the docket of Old Bailey first. The fact that this man knew only parts of the whole story only whetted the public appetite for further details.

Agar was interrogated next, providing still more information. But Agar, like Burgess, was a distinctly limited man, and his testimony served only to focus attention on the personality of Pierce himself, whom the press referred to as "the master criminal" and "the brilliant malignant force behind the deed."

Pierce was still incarcerated in Coldbath Fields, and neither the public nor the press had seen him. There was plenty of freedom for eager reporters to conjure up wild and fanciful accounts of the man's appearance, manner, and style of living. Much of what was written during the first two weeks of July, 1857, was obviously untrue: that Pierce lived with three mistresses in the same house, and was "a human dynamo"; that he had been behind the great check swindle of 1852; that he was the illegitimate son of Napoleon I; that Pierce took cocaine and laudanum; that he had previously been married to a German countess and had murdered her in 1848, in Hamburg. There is not the least evidence that any of these stories is correct, but it is certainly true that the press whipped public interest to the point of frenzy.

Even Victoria herself was not immune to the fascination with "this most bold and dastardly rogue, whom we should like to perceive at first hand." She also expressed a desire to see his hanging; she was apparently not aware that in 1857 grand theft was no longer a capital offense in England.

For weeks, crowds had been gathering around Coldbath Fields, on the unlikely chance of getting a look at the master thief. And Pierce's house in Mayfair was broken into on three occasions by avid souvenir hunters. One "wellborn woman"-- there is no further description-- was apprehended while leaving the house with a man's handkerchief. Showing not the slightest embarrassment, she said that she merely wished to have a token of the man.

The Times complained that this fascination with a criminal was "unseemly, even decadent" and went so far as to suggest that the behavior of the public reflected "some fatal flaw in the character of the English mind."

Thus, it is one of the odd coincidences of history that by the time Pierce began his testimony, on May 29th, the public and the press had turned their attention elsewhere. For, quite unexpectedly, England was facing a new trial of national proportions: a shocking and bloody uprising in India.