Wallace of the Yard and The Man from Toronto

This is a story of a clever con man who committed crimes around the world and his link to West Hampstead.

On 21 May 1924 the Oxo export manager Cyril Aldersley was at his desk in Thames House, Queen Street Place in the City of London, when to his surprise he was told Chief Inspector Wallace wanted to see him. Wallace confronted Aldersley, accusing him of being involved with cheque frauds in Portsmouth amounting to £700. 

Wallace produced photographs and a newspaper article about a civil case that he said involved Aldersley. Cyril said he had never been to Portsmouth and knew nothing about it. The Chief Inspector ignored Aldersley’s protests and said he must consider himself under open arrest. After Cyril handed over his passbook and some cheques, Wallace left saying he would return at 5pm with his Superintendent.  

 

Thames House

 Aldersley was concerned that something was not right. His fears were confirmed when he telephoned Scotland Yard and was told that Chief Inspector Wallace did not exist. Aldersley returned home that evening to No.4 Cavendish Mansions in Mill Lane, West Hampstead. Mabel Miller who lived with him said that CI Wallace had called. He had shown her the passbook and told her that Aldersley was under arrest for cheque forgery and being taken to Portsmouth. He said Aldersley would need some clothes, so Mabel packed a suitcase and Wallace took it away.

From Aldersley’s description Scotland Yard knew the fake CI Wallace was really a wanted criminal called Richard Isherwood. Three days later Detective Sergeant Burbidge and a constable went to 102 St John’s Hill in Wandsworth and questioned the occupant who said his name was Woods. They asked to see his hands which had a scar on his left thumb that matched Isherwood’s description in the Police Gazette and he was arrested for fraud. He protested and said, ‘That’s absurd: can I telephone my solicitor. Shall I get compensation for this outrage?’ When they searched his room, the policemen found Aldersley’s cheques and passbook, the suitcase and clothing. Isherwood admitted everything, and when he later appeared at the London sessions he was sentenced to three years imprisonment.

 

Richard Isherwood, Police Gazette photograph

Richard Isherwood had lived a life of crime and was a skilled con man. We have found that he was born in January 1889 in Darwen, Lancashire where the family worked in the local cotton industry. His father died in 1906 and the following year the whole family sailed on the SS Cymric to Boston. In 1909 Richard, then aged 20, made a brief visit to his uncle in Blackburn but returned to New Bedford in Massachusetts where he worked as a waiter.

In Canada and America between 1911 and 1914 he was imprisoned several times for fraud and horse stealing, a serious charge which brought a 12 months sentence. In February 1918 he joined the Canadian Expeditionary Force in WWI and sailed to Europe, but he absconded and was struck off as a deserter after serving only 334 days.

Isherwood went to Aberdeen where he posed as Richard Earl Wood, the manager of the prestigious King Edward Hotel in Toronto.

 

King Edward Hotel, Toronto

In Aberdeen he placed a series of adverts for staff for the hotel in Canada. After their interviews the 39 applicants were asked for a £10 deposit to cover their expenses to the docks and Isherwood disappeared with the money.

He was arrested on 14 March 1920 when an alert boot cleaner at the Hotel Metropole in Blackpool read a newspaper article about ‘The Man from Toronto and the Canadian Swindle’. He noticed the luggage of a guest who arrived with two women had the initials ‘R.E.W.’ and thought he matched the description of the con man. When arrested, the guest’s fingerprints were sent to Scotland Yard and were found to be those of Richard Isherwood. In the Edinburgh High Court, he was sentenced to three years for fraud. ‘The Man from Toronto’ as he was called by the Scottish press, came from a popular play of that name which was later made into a film.

In October 1922 Isherwood was jailed in Preston for twelve months with hard labour for stealing a purse from a landlady in Blackpool. He had pretended to be the representative of the Blackburn Philharmonic Society who he said was holding a conference in Blackpool and that he needed accommodation for a dozen people who would arrive a few days later.

After serving his sentence for the Aldersley case, Isherwood was released on 4 September 1926 with just 1s 6d in his pocket. He slept rough on the Embankment and at St Martin’s in the Fields but could not find work. He went to a garage in Finchley Road and said he was a chauffeur to a colonel and was looking for accommodation. They gave him the address of Mrs Alice Brown at 91 Sumatra Road West Hampstead, where he stayed the night and then absconded without paying 10s for his food and accommodation. Isherwood next travelled to the South coast and stole money from several people. At Marylebone Court he pleaded guilty to a number of charges and received a sentence of four months.

The Police Gazette reported he was released on licence on 29 September 1927. The Gazette said Richard Isherwood had used numerous aliases, and gave his description as 5ft 8 inches tall, with a fair complexion, brown hair turning grey and grey eyes. It also said that he was ‘fond of the company of music hall artistes and women of loose character.’

After his release Isherwood immediately continued his life of crime, and in April 1928 he was convicted of 42 offences for larceny and false pretences at Portsmouth, saying that he was unable to get regular employment. He was given three years imprisonment.

In April 1936 he was convicted in Liverpool for stealing money and obtaining lodging on false pretences. This time he posed as the chief engineer of the Cunard’s RMS Berengaria, and he told the landlady he would soon be taking over that role on the liner Queen Mary. In court he appeared smartly dressed and was called ‘a plausible and cunning rogue’. Isherwood asked for 39 charges to be considered and he was again found guilty and sentenced to 12 months hard labour.

In March 1937 he was convicted and sentenced to 12 months in Bath, for stealing money from a man who had given him lodgings. Isherwood had told him he was coming to work at the Bath Electric Light Works.

After being released from Dartmoor on license, Isherwood went to Bedford and used the same story, saying he was going to work at the local Electric Light Works. In August 1940 he was convicted of obtaining lodging on false pretences and not paying the landlady. 

He had also stayed at a hotel in Bedford posing as Major Wood of the Canadian army saying he had instructions to billet 1,500 troops in the district. In court a police inspector said Isherwood was a habitual criminal, that between 1928-1938 he had only been out of prison for 166 days and was known to have committed 110 crimes during that period. He was sentenced to six months with hard labour.

In September 1945 he stole money from a landlady in Ramsgate. He told her he had recently been demobbed from the army and had work as an electrical engineer at the Chislet Coal colliery. He disappeared with £22 and the woman’s handbag and later stole money in Gillingham. He was arrested in Darlington on 3 January 1946 and taken back to Kent, to stand trial in Maidstone. In March, Isherwood asked for a further 36 offences to be considered and he was sentenced to five years imprisonment. But in May 1946 the Court of Appeal reduced his sentence to three years.

This proved to be the end of Isherwood’s long and persistent career of crime; he died of chronic bronchitis and heart failure in Wandsworth Prison on 10 February 1947, aged 58.

Isherwood’s life of crime shows a pattern of obtaining lodgings under false pretences and stealing money from landladies. He adopted several convincing personas and his most audacious cons were the supposed recruitment of staff for the luxury hotel in Canada and pretending to be Chief Inspector Wallace of Scotland Yard. Once caught he invariably pleaded guilty and asked for his other offences to be taken into account. Rather than obtain regular work, he was prepared to live on his wits and spend most of his life in jail.