The Redemption of Ex-Convict 509
| Author | Geoffrey Lake |
| DOI | 10.1177/026455055300602404 |
| Published date | 01 November 1953 |
| Date | 01 November 1953 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
THE REDEMPTION OF EX-CONVICT 509
GEOFFREY
LAKE
tells a'
true
story for Christmas, which is reproduced
by permission of the Editor of the London
II
Evening
News"
Many
men
turn
late
in life from
the
ways of crime.
They
shake
01I
the
past
and
do
much
to
atone
before
they die.
But
seldom is
this
reformation
achieved single
handed.
The
criminal
who decides to go
straight
needs
help-moral
and
material-if
he is to find
and
keep an
honest
place for himself in
the
society he
has
preyed
upon.
Christmas time, probation officers
and
policemen will
tell you, is
testing
time for
the
newly reformed. Your
crook is so
often
afamily
man
of
the
kindest
pattern,
and
in
the
festive season families
tend
to
demand
that
little
extra
which is no trouble at all to
the
practising
malefactor
but
which
the
honest
citizen finds very
hard
to come by. And so, as
temptation
breaks
through
the
new veneer of respectability, some
are
bound to
try
just
one
last
shot
"the
easy way."
This
Christmas
there
will be help for
many
who,
until
lately, knew only one
meaning
for
the
word"
crib";
and
that
help will come from a
fund
only recently
created
to
ease
the
difficult
path
to reform.
Just
how it was
created
is a story very suitably told
on Christmas Eve,
though
·it seems to belong more
appropriately to
the
days of Dickens
than
to these.
It
concerns
the
late
Johnnie
the
Gent, sometime
Convict 509,cracksman, confidence
man,
forger
and
thief.
It
concerns
the
letter
he wrote to
The
Evening
News,
and
the
lonely widow who
read
it-and
changed
her
will.
But
the
beginning is in a Yorkshire rectory, where
Johnnie
was
born
the
youngest son of a parson. He was
christened
John
Bloomfield Wood by a
father
who no
doubt hoped
that
when
the
boy followed
him
into
the
ministry
the
names
would
follow"
The
Rev."
with
an
agreeable resonance.
TOUGH
WEAVE
John
Bloomfield Wood certainly studied
divinity-at
Yale-but
the
cloth
he took was of
the
wrong
texture:
It
was of
the
tough weave provided for
the
tough
reforma-
tories of 50 years ago. He was a rebel
and
he became a
thief.
In
the
years
that
followed he used
many
names
of varying degrees of resonance;
but
never
John
Bloom-
field Wood.
As a criminal he
must
have
been more
persistent
than
skilful, for he
spent
some 40 years serving 15 sentences
in British, American,
Canadian
and
French
jails.
Per-
haps
his criminal practice was too catholic for
this
age
of specialisation. Certainly
there
were
many
forms of
malfeasance, plain
and
fancy, in which he indulged. He
was proud of
his
part
in
the
theft
of
the
Ascot,Gold Cup
in
1907.
He boasted
(though
it
is
not
in his official
record) of counterfeiting pound notes in a room over-
looking
an
East
End police station.
John
B. Wood
had
many
friends-mainly
policemen
and
crime
reporters-who
watched
his well-brushed red
hair
fade to a shaggy olI-white
through
the
years
and
prophesied for
him
old age in a cell
and
death
in a
prison infirmary.
But
there
was one
friend-a
real
friend, whose
name
I would like to tell you
but
may
not-who
said
that
whatever
509's
end
might
be it would
not
be
that.
And
509 agreed.
Often
he would say,
"When
I get too old
tor
the
lark
I'll drop it."
And he did. Quite suddenly,
after
five years in
Dart-
moor, he
went
straight
and
with
the
help of
this
friend,
who
must
be nameless stayed
straight.
He
spent
much
of his leisure reading Shakespeare,
Thackeray
and
Dickens (particularly Dickens) for whose works he
had
acquired a
taste
in a dozen dilIerent prison libraries.
"THE
GENT"
He was completely
and
unshakably reformed
and
for
ten
years lived a model life.
Treasured
testimonials from
his employers
testify'to
that.
These,
and
his books.
and
one seedy
but
well-pressed
suit
from
the
days when
they
called
him
"The
Gent,"
were practically all
that
he
left
when he died
three
years
ago
at
the
age of 78 in a little room in Camden Town.
These,
and
a
cutting
of
the
letter
he
had
written, over
his old prison number, to
the
Editor of
The
Evening
News;
a
letter
of
thanks
for
the
good friendship
that
had
steered
him
true
and
saved
him
from wasting his
last
vears
in jail.
Now comes
the
touch
that
would
have
warmed
the
romantic
heart
of
Johnnie
the
Gent,
"Real
Dickens," he
would have called it
....
In
alarge
and
lonely house
named
Sunrays,
at
Sunbury-
on-Thames, lived an elderly widow, Mrs. Helen Norris.
She
had
no relatives, few friends. Christmases were
quiet
at
sunravs.
She
read ex-Convict 509's
letter
in
The
Evening
News,
and
forthwith
instructed
her
solicitor
that
her
will
must
be altered.
NONE
FOR
HIM
After a few small bequests
she
wrote:
"I
give all
the
rest
of my property of every kind to
the
Public Trustee
upon
trust
for sale to
perpetuate
the
memory of my
husband
John
Edward Norris who did so
much
for others.
"I
wish to
create
a
trust
fund to be called
the
John
Nelly Norris
Fund
to help
rehabilitate
and
restore
the
self-respect of those coming
under
the
notice of
the
probation officers
at
the
Central
Criminal Court to help
such
to
an
honest
and
better
life, to help
them
place
their
trust
in God
and
to follow
the
teachings of Christ
for no good
can
come otherwise."
She
willed
that
the
proceeds of
the
sale should be
invested to
create
afund
and
pay
the
resulting income
in perpetuity to
the
Recorder's
Fund
at
the
Central
Criminal Court.
And
that
is how
John
Bloomfield Wood, alias
Johnnie
the
Gent, alias Convict 509, who
had
so
often
used his
educated
pen
to
further
wrongdoing, wrote a
letter
with
the
purest
intent
and
netted
the
biggest
haul
of his
career. A cool £
15',000,
of which, ironically,
Johnnie
enjoyed
not
apenny.
--------------------
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