Chapter 22 The Prad Prig
Sometime in late December, 1854, Pierce met a man named Andrew Taggert in the King's Arms publican house, off Regent Street. Taggert was by then nearly sixty, and a well-known character in the neighborhood. He had survived a long and varied career, which is worth briefly recounting, for he is one of the few participants in The Great Train Robbery whose background is known.
Taggert was born around 1790 outside Liverpool, and came to London near the turn of the century with his unmarried mother, a prostitute. By the age of ten, he was employed in "the resurrection trade," the business of digging up fresh corpses from graveyards to sell to medical schools. He soon acquired a reputation for uncommon daring; it was said that he once transported a stiff through London streets in daylight, with the man propped up in his cart like a passenger.
The Anatomy Act of 1838 ended the business in corpses, and Andrew Taggert shifted to the smasher's job of "ringing the changes"--- disposing of counterfeit money. In this maneuver, a genuine coin would be offered to a shopkeeper for some purchase, and then the smasher would fumble in his purse, saying that he thought he had correct change, and take the original coin back. After a while, he would say, "No, I don't have it, after all," and hand over a counterfeit coin in place of the original. This was petty work, and Taggert soon tired of it. He moved on to a variety of con games, becoming a full-fledged magsman by the middle 1840s. He was apparently very successful in his work; he took a respectable flat in Camden Town, which was not a wholly respectable area. (Charles Dickens had lived there some fifteen years earlier, while his father was in prison.) Taggert also took a wife, one Mary Maxwell, a widow, and it is one of those minor ironies that the master magsman should himself be conned. Mary Maxwell was a coiner specializing in small silver coins. This bit-faker had served time in prison on several occasions, and knew something of the law, which her new husband apparently did not, for she had not married idly.
A woman's legal position was already the subject of active attempts at reform; but at this time women did not have the right to vote, to own property, or to make wills, and the earnings of any married woman who was separated from her husband were still legally the property of her husband. Although the law treated women as near idiots and appeared overwhelmingly to favor men, there were some odd quirks, as Taggert discovered soon enough.
In 1847, the police raided Mary Maxwell Taggert's coining operation, catching her red-handed in the midst of stamping out sixpence pieces. She greeted the raid with equanimity, announced pleasantly that she was married and told the police the whereabouts of her husband.
By law, a husband was responsible for any criminal activities of his wife. It was assumed that such activity must be the result of the husband's planning and execution, in which the wife was a mere--- and perhaps unwilling--- participant.
In July, 1847, Andrew Taggert was arrested and convicted of counterfeiting currency and sentenced to eight years in Bridewell Prison; Mary Maxwell was released without so much as a reprimand. She is said to have displayed "a roistering, bantering demeanour" in the courtroom at the time of her husband's sentencing.
Taggert served three years, and was given a ticket-of-leave and allowed to depart. Afterward it was said the steel had gone out of him, a common consequence of a prison term; he no longer had the energy or the confidence to be a magsman, and turned to hoof-snafffing, or horse stealing. By 1854, he was a familiar face in the flash sporting pubs frequented by turfites; he was said to have been involved in the scandal of 1853 in which a four-year-old was passed off as a three-year-old in the Derby. No one was certain but, as a known prad prig, he was thought to have engineered the theft of the most famous prad of recent years: Silver Whistle, a three-year-old from Derbyshire.
Pierce met him in the King's Arms with a most peculiar suggestion, and Taggert gulped his gin as he said, "You want to snaffle a what?"
"A leopard," Pierce said.
"Now, where's an honest man like me to find a leopard?" Taggert said.
"I wouldn't know," Pierce said.
"Never in my life," Taggert said, "would I know of any leopard, excepting the bestiaries here and there, which have all manner of beasts."
"That's so," Pierce said calmly.
"Is it to be christened?"
Now this was a particularly difficult problem. Taggert was an expert christener--- a man who could conceal the fact that goods were stolen. He could disguise the markings of a horse so that even its owner would not recognize it. But christening a leopard might be harder.
"No," Pierce said. "I can take it as you have it."
"Won't gull nobody."
"It doesn't have to."
"What's it for, then?"
Pierce gave Taggert a particularly severe look and did not reply.
"No harm in asking," Taggert said. "It's not every day a man gets asked to snaffle a leopard, so I ask why--- no harm intended."
"It is a present," Pierce said, "for a lady."
"Ah, a lady."
"On the Continent"
"Ah, on the Continent"
"In Paris."
"Ah."
Taggert looked him up and down. Pierce was well dressed. "You could buy one right enough," he said. "Cost you just as dear as buying from me."
"I made you a business proposition."
"So you did, and a proper one, too, but you didn't mention the joeys for me. You just mention you want a knapped leopard."
"I'll pay you twenty guineas."
"Cor, you'll pay me forty and count yourself lucky."