IT started on the same day a forgery was discovered at the Wilts and Dorset Bank – a questioning of accounts at the headquarters of the North Wilts Bank grew into several lawsuits and charges of conspiracy and grand larceny by one of Melksham’s most respected citizens.
During the last week of March 1875, police inspector Luffman was on his way back from Spain, bringing with him a man who had been on the run since January. He’d have gotten away except for a sighting of him in Santander by a former Melksham resident.
The prisoner, Ernest Awdry Stiles, was the great grandson of Ambrose Awdry, the patriarch of the Awdry family of Notton House, Lacock, and several other large estates in Melksham and Seend.
Stiles married well, too. His wife, Lucy Matravers, was the daughter of the woollen manufacturer that had the cloth factory at Avon Bridge. In 1871, Lucy and Ernest lived with her widowed mother at Avon House. Well-trained in banking from the age of 18, Stiles had been working as a bank cashier at North Wilts Bank since 1864.
Anomalies of several thousand pounds were found in his accounts, and after Stiles was summoned to explain, he was dismissed from work but permitted to go free, while his books were under scrutiny to discover the cause. They ascertained that £15,000 had been robbed and charges of fraudulent dealing and systematic falsification of accounts were brought against Stiles; others unconnected with the bank were also implicated. Newspapers explained the delay in the discovery because “great confidence was placed in him, on account of his highly respectable family connections.”
In fact, sympathy was felt for Stiles because it was rumoured he may have been induced to defraud his employers at the instigation of others in the town and neighbourhood. However, this soon was dashed, considering the trust that was put on Stiles to oversee his own accounts and the way he had “bamboozled” the directors. It was thought the fraud started long before then. In June 1873, when his accounts were out by £10,000, “by a clever manipulation, he was enabled to tide over the supervision on that occasion.” Then, in June 1874, he managed to “palm off” a number of old bills to make his cash account balance when the directors again came to oversee the cash accounts.
Stiles was finally caught during an inspection he hadn’t anticipated with a new director he’d never met; he was unprepared for the audit and finally had to tell the director the real state of the cash account.
The money, he explained, had gone to cashing checks and meeting bills for Mr Bown of the Kings Arms Hotel and Mr Eyles of Semington.
Stiles absconded when he learned he was going to be charged with embezzlement on 21st of January. A placard was circulated offering a £100 reward for information as to the whereabouts of Stiles, which described him as “…a banker’s clerk, about 30 years of age, five feet 10 or 11 inches high, slight build, fair hair and complexion, small sandy whiskers, large lower jaw, delicate hands, long fingers, and neatly dressed.”
Bank officials were left baffled. With Stiles gone, there was no explanation as to where the money went. (£15,000 in today’s money would be around £1.6 million, and it was felt that there could have been as much as £30,000 taken.) Stiles did not lead an extravagant lifestyle, they could not find anything untoward at the Kings Arms, and while they knew Stiles was fond of horse dealing, and kept several horses, they could not account for that large amount of money.
(Part 1 of 2; to be continued next issue)
