Following the robbery of a Glasgow bank, a portmanteau was sent to London and found there by the well-known Bow Street officers, Lavender and Vickery.
“ROBBERY of the GLASGOW BANK. – On the night of the 14th inst. it was discovered that the office of the Paisley Union Bank Company, Glasgow, had been entered, by means of false keys, and robbed of Scotch Bank-notes, Bank of England Notes, and cash, to the amount of 20,000 l. Suspicion falling upon three men, who for some days preceding had been seen in Glasgow, Mr. Campbell, an officer of the Police, at Edinburgh, and two of the Gentlemen belonging to the Bank, set off in pursuit of the robbers, who, as well as themselves, travelled in a post-chaise and four, and whom they traced to Darlington, and thence followed them, the London road, to Welling, in Hertfordshire, where they had left a portmanteau, to be forwarded to a person in Tottenham Court-road; and then went on in a chaise and four to town, and were put down in Coventry-street, where all trace of them was lost; but Mr. Campbell making application at the Public Office, Bow-street, Lavender, Vickery, and Atkins, three of the Officers, accompanied by Mr. Campbell, went to the house in Tottenham Court-road, where the portmanteau had been directed to, and where they found a box containing a number of pick locks, skeleton keys, and various other implements for house-breaking, and which, from being directed the same as the portmanteau, and an inn-keeper’s ticket found there, they had no doubt had been very recently sent to town. The Officers learning that the owner of this house was at present in the rules of the King’s Bench prison, went the same night to his residence in the neighbourhood of St. George’s Fields, where they apprehended a well-known character of the name of Hufton White, who, a few months since escaped from one of the hulks at Woolwich, On searching the house, the identical portmanteau was found that had been forwarded from Welling, but which contained only wearing apparel. On the person of White were found 16 guineas and some Bank of England Notes. Yesterday, White, and the man of the house where he was taken, where examined before Mr. Read, at Bow-street, when Adkins, the Governor of the House of Correction, Coldbath-fields, attended and identified the person of White, as having been convicted at the last Summer Assizes at Chester, for being at large within this kingdom before his former sentence of transportation was expired, and receiving a second sentence of transportation for life. White admitted the truth of this charge, though he denied any knowledge of the Glasgow Bank robbery. He and the other man were committed for further examination.”
The Stamford Mercury, 26th July, 1811.