Story of George Pink, the 'Bungling Burglar of Basingstoke'

In July 1846 he was 27-years-old. He had been a butcher all his working life, and had worked his way up to become the foreman at John Barton’s butcher’s shop in London Street.

George was also an ambitious young man. But he knew that, no matter how long he worked at Barton’s, he could rise no further.

He couldn’t become a partner in the business, or take it over when the boss retired, because John Barton had a son who was destined to inherit the business.

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The only way George could avoid spending the rest of his life as an employee, sleeping above the slaughterhouse in the yard behind the shop with the other employees, would be to buy his own business. But he had no money.

Despite his lack of funds, George told John Barton that he intended to leave and to start his own business. He had also recently bought a pistol and some bullets from William Thumwood, but nobody knew why.

Among the items in the slaughterhouse were the special cord that was used to tie the animals’ feet together and a hammer. The hammer was unique as Joseph Hall, John Barton’s slaughterman, had fixed his own handle to the head of the hammer using, “rivets, which were peculiar”.

George's mother lived in New Street. She was living next door but one to a Miss Covey, a wealthy 85-year-old maiden lady who lived alone with her maidservant, Hannah Moody.

On the evening of Thursday, July 23, 1846, George visited his mother. He had not returned to Barton’s when the other employees went to bed, but he was there next morning when they woke up.

That same evening, Miss Covey and Hannah Moody, who slept in the same room, went to bed at about 10pm. They were woken at about 2am by a man standing by the bed. He held a candle in one hand, and a pistol in the other. He had a handkerchief over the lower half of his face. By the light of the flickering candle, they saw that he was wearing a waistcoat with a very distinctive pattern. The man said, “Money I want, and money I’ll have or else I will blow out your brains”.

Hannah told the man she would give him her mistress’s money if he would spare their lives. She took a purse from under the pillow and gave it to him. He told her it was not enough and threatened to shoot them if they did not give him the keys to the drawers.

He ransacked the drawers and took out 236 sovereigns, 37 half-sovereigns, three George-the-Third guineas, £4 and 13s in silver, and a Queen Anne sixpence that Miss Covey had since she was a child.

He tied Hannah’s hands together with a piece of cord, and repeated his threat to blow their brains out if they did not lie still. He then left by the front door.

Hannah managed to open the window and call for help. A neighbour heard her cries, and roused Superintendent Franklin at New Street Police Station.

New Street police station

Superintendent Franklin found that the intruder had entered the house by breaking a pane of glass at the back of the house. It later transpired that the intruder had come from the direction of Mrs Pink’s back garden.

The people who lived in the house between the two houses had a chair in their back yard. Someone had moved the chair in the night, and propped it up against Miss Covey’s garden wall.

Superintendent Franklin also found a strange-looking hammer in one of Miss Covey’s drawers. Presumably the intruder found that, what with having to carry the money as well as the pistol, the candle and the lucifer box he used to light the candle, he didn’t have enough hands to carry the hammer.

Superintendent Franklin at New Street Police Station who investigated the burglary.

When the women described the waistcoat, Superintendent Franklin immediately knew who the burglar was. He took the hammer to John Barton who confirmed the hammer was his. At half-past eight that morning the Superintendent arrested George.

He found the waistcoat and a coat in Pink’s bedroom. The pocket of the coat had been torn away and was missing. The Superintendent took the waistcoat to Miss Covey, who recognised it as the one worn by the man in her room.

Later that day, a black bag full of money, including a Queen Anne sixpence, was found in a sawpit in Barton’s yard. The black bag turned out to be the pocket that had been torn from George's coat. George Lunn, John Barton’s stableman, later found a pistol and some bullets when he cleared out the cesspit near the dung heap in the yard.

George's case was heard at Winchester Assizes on March 4, 1847. Miss Covey was brought to the courtroom door in a sedan chair, and had to be carried into the witness box. She said she could tell that the intruder was George because of his waistcoat. She said: “I have seen him in it many a time go by my house”.

The court heard Joseph Hall swear that the hammer belonged to John Barton and was normally kept on a shelf in the slaughterhouse, and that the cord that was used to tie Hannah was the same as that used in the slaughterhouse.

William Thumwood swore that he could tell by the marks on the pistol and the bullets found in the cesspool that they were the same as those he sold to George Pink.

George's barrister argued that the case was based on circumstantial evidence only; the robber was a stranger who had entered Barton’s yard and hidden the money and the pistols with a view to collect them later.

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One of the many flaws in that argument was that no stranger could have entered the yard in the early hours of the morning without the butcher’s dog making a great noise. But when George let himself into the yard, the dog did not bark in the night. It would not have taken Sherlock Holmes to recognise that, whoever entered the yard and placed the money in the sawpit and the gun in the cesspit, it was someone the dog expected to be there.  

Although the trial lasted seven hours, it took the jury less than 10 minutes to find George guilty. He was sentenced to be transported for 15 years.

A drawing showing the inside of a convict ship.

He sailed with over 300 other prisoners on the Rodney convict ship to Van Diemen’s Land. They were at sea for 97 days before they landed at Hobart.