Reports carried in The Times on 11 November 1823 (824 KB), 4 June 1824 (1475 KB) and some time in July 1824 (151KB) deal with the Thurtell fraud case.

It seems Albert Borowitz missed a couple of salient points when he read them, especially that some of the information he took to be fact was actually supplied by Jack Thurtell in his evidence in the original court case. It is obvious that Tom Thurtell never actually lived in London for any length of time at all - he was a farmer in Lakenham and after he got out of Newgate he went back to Lakenham where he stayed for the rest of his life.

It was JACK who did business in London; Tom was merely in jail there (from February 1822 to April 1823)! A lot of the things that were done in Tom's name he can't have done personally, because he was in the King's Bench prison at the time. The debtors prisons weren't exactly closed institutions, but it is obvious from the evidence in the fraud trial (as opposed to the original case against the insurance company) that the leasing of the Cock Tavern, the acquisition of the warehouse and the insuring of the non-existent contents were actually carried out by Jack Thurtell in Tom's name (presumably because Jack was an unrepentant bankrupt while Tom was in the process of attempting to get his discharge and had a better credit rating, especially as half of the money he owed was to his father). It also looks as if the whole point of leasing the Cock Tavern was to raise about £450 for the original investment in bombazine for the warehouse by selling off the contents of the cellar.

The only thing Tom actually did in person was to sue the County Fire Office for not paying the insurance claim. One might speculate that it was because Tom couldn't do that from the fastnesses of the King's Bench Prison that Jack decided that they should give up petitioning to have Tom's bankruptcy discharged and let him out of jail.

So that's also why Tom Thurtell's wife and daughters were staying with Mrs Probert at Gill's Hill Cottage - they didn't have anywhere else to live, Tom not having a home in London. Bill Probert was also Jack's friend rather than Tom's and was a crooked wine and spirits dealer, who appears to have helped Jack to acquire the lease of the Cock.

On this reading, Tom all his life had been a pawn in Jack's schemes.