Carrier Press Annotated Classics-The Man Who Robbed the Bank of England

In 1873, four young Americans nearly walked off with the Bank of England's fortune. This is the confidence man's own story.No tunnel. No pistol. Just good tailoring, a false name, and a devastating understanding of how Victorian banking ran on trust. Posing as a wealthy American named Frederick Albert Warren, Austin Bidwell talked his way into an account at the Bank of England and, with his brother George and two accomplices, drew out a fortune in forged bills of exchange - until a single undated slip of paper brought the whole scheme down.First published in 1897, Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison is Bidwell's own account of the crime, the transatlantic manhunt that ran him to ground in Havana, the Old Bailey trial, and the twenty brutal years in Victorian convict prisons that followed.This Annotated Edition includes: - The complete 1897 memoir, all fifty chapters, newly typeset- An original introduction reconstructing the 1873 forgery from the historical record - the scheme, the money, the four conspirators, the trial- Chapter annotations explaining the financial machinery, decoding the Victorian world Bidwell moved through, and fact-checking his story against the Old Bailey trial record- A frank guide to reading a charming, self-serving narrator - where to believe him, and where he is performingA true-crime classic, restored and explained: the greatest bank fraud of the nineteenth century, told by the man at the center of it.