MURDER OF MR. LITTLE--DETECTIVE INEFFICIENCY--INDIVIDUAL EFFICIENCY--A
FALSE ACCUSATION EXPOSED--EXTRAORDINARY GRATITUDE--A SALUTARY
REFORMATION--A CHARGE OF FELONY--POOR PUSS, WHO SHOT HER?--BAXTER AND
BARNES.
I shall now advert to a most atrocious murder which was committed in the
Metropolitan Police District in 1856. It occurred in the Northern
division, and I was requested by the learned and worthy Chief
Magistrate, Mr. J. W. O'Donnell, to assist in its investigation. Mr.
George Little, the Cashier of the Midland Great Western Railway, had not
returned to his residence on the evening of the 14th November, and on
the following morning, his relatives enquired for him at the office in
the station. The office door was broken open, and he was found lying on
his face in a pool of blood, his throat having been cut from ear to ear.
At first the impression was that he had committed suicide, for a
considerable sum of money was on his desk. However, it was ascertained
by an examination of the body, that many very severe injuries had been
inflicted, and that the skull had been fractured by blows from a heavy,
blunt instrument. A coroner's inquest returned a verdict of "Wilful
murder by some person or persons unknown," and a large reward was
advertised for the discovery and conviction of the perpetrator. No
arrest was made on suspicion until the 21st of December, when a person
was brought before the Northern Police Court, but was very speedily
discharged. I refrain from mentioning the name, because there is no
doubt that the charge was unfounded. It was rumoured that an
experienced London detective had been specially engaged to afford his
assistance in the furtherance of justice, but nothing of importance
transpired until the 26th June, 1857, when a woman, named Spollen,
informed a superintendent of police that her husband, James Spollen, was
the murderer, and that he had concealed the bank-notes which he took
from Mr. Little's office in a certain place immediately adjoining a
small house which he occupied on the railway premises, he being in the
Company's employment as a painter and cleanser. The superintendent
immediately arrested Spollen, but kept him in his own custody from ten
o'clock in the morning until nearly ten o'clock at night, when he
brought him to a police station-house and gave him in charge for the
murder, producing the wife of the accused as the charging party. The
place indicated by the woman was immediately searched, and a
considerable sum in bank-notes was discovered concealed in an ashpit,
and packed in a small firkin, which had previously contained white
paint. Some money in silver was also found in a canvas bag deposited in
a cistern, and the utmost publicity was given to the searches, the
results, and the source from whence the information concerning them was
derived. His wife's evidence against Spollen was properly rejected by
the magistrates; and although the case was sent for trial on other
grounds, the result was an acquittal. During the magisterial
investigation, I suggested that a portion of the Royal Canal close to
the railway premises should be drained and searched, as I considered it
very probable that some of the implements used in the murder had been
thrown into the water. When the search commenced, the superintendent
announced that whoever found the razor should receive a guinea. A razor
was accordingly found in the mud almost immediately, but it was manifest
that it had not been there until the search was directed, for it was
perfectly free from rust or corrosion. However, another razor was found,
and the name of "Spollen" was on the handle. A fitter's hammer was also
taken out of the canal, and it was more than probable that the razor and
hammer had been in fatal proximity to the throat and head of the
unfortunate George Little. After the trial, some of the London papers
commented in the strongest terms on the ignorance and stupidity evinced
in the preliminary proceedings of the police officer to whom the case
had been assigned. The bungling, blundering incompetency which
characterised the transaction was described as truly Irish. They also
complained that the English detectives who had been sent to Dublin were
thwarted and impeded in all their efforts by the members of the Dublin
force. I fully admit that the case was thoroughly mismanaged, but I must
add that the person most prominently engaged, the superintendent, was an
Englishman, and I deny that English detectives had to encounter Irish
jealousy, as no person of the description was sent to Dublin in
reference to that crime, or indeed in any instance within my
recollection, without meeting a cordial, perhaps I might venture to say,
a fraternal, reception from the Dublin Police. I may add that whenever
our constables were sent to the English metropolitan district, they
invariably returned with a grateful recollection of the kindness
manifested towards them.
In the case to which I have last adverted, and in some others which came
under my observation, I attribute the failure of justice to the
ignorance and consequent incapacity of members of the police force or of
the constabulary engaged. However, I consider it only just to remark on
the paucity of instruction afforded to constables for detective
purposes. Activity of body, corporeal strength, general mental
intelligence, and moderate educational acquirements, are considered
sufficient qualifications for the discharge of detective duties, and
further teaching is left to be acquired by future experience. In several
continental states, reports of important criminal trials are arranged
for the use of the police by an _archiviste_, and instruction is thereby
afforded as to the means by which guilt was established, or, perhaps, to
the mistakes or rash precipitancy by which justice was defeated, or
innocence accused. The essential difference between our police and that
which I have observed in France, Belgium, and Rhenish Prussia, is
exhibited in the speedy arrests of suspected persons here, compared with
the tardiness of apprehension in the latter countries, unless the
prisoner is actually caught _in flagrante delicto_. The moment that a
suspicion is entertained in Ireland, the supposed delinquent is seized,
and thereby all chance of obtaining evidence by his subsequent acts is
completely lost. The foreign system is to watch him night and day. This
frequently eventuates in detecting him concealing property, weapons, or
bloodstained clothes, or suddenly quitting his abode without any
previous intimation, and perhaps under an assumed name. If we are to
have an efficient police, we will find it indispensably necessary to
keep well-informed, shrewd, patient, watchful detectives. I have known
many who contended that a constable should adopt no disguise, but that,
in the uniform of the force to which he belongs, he should perambulate
the streets, suppress disorders, apprehend offenders, and when directed
to execute warrants, he should go in search of the culprit openly and
avowedly. To such I would suggest, that if in the organization of a
police there is anything unconstitutional, it is rather to be found in
the adoption of a uniform than in the attire of "plain clothes." The old
common-law constable had no uniform; he went, and came, and mixed
amongst other men, without a number on his collar or a crown on his
buttons, and still his office and its functions were not denounced as
unconstitutional. A policeman in uniform may patrol our streets,
suppress riots, restrain indecency, and apprehend the pickpocket or
drunkard; but it is not by such that the progress of the swindler is to
be traced and stopped, the haunts of the burglar ascertained, or that
the minute circumstances, trifling to the casual observer, but
amounting, in the aggregate, to perfect conviction, are to be discovered
and concatenated to establish the fearful guilt of the murderer.
Having remarked the inefficiency manifested by the officer to whom the
management of the murder case at the railway was assigned, I think it
fair to state, that amongst some other members of our detective
division, I have known instances in which great sagacity and promptitude
were evinced. Shortly after my appointment to the magistracy, an old man
died in a lodging-house in Bishop Street. The place in which he had
lived for nine or ten years was a small room without the slightest
indication of comfort or even of cleanliness. Nevertheless, he was
reputed to have been possessed of a considerable sum of money, which was
supposed to be hoarded in some part of his humble habitation. Two of his
relatives made oath that they believed him to have accumulated some
hundreds of pounds; that they suspected and believed that the cash had
been purloined; and they demanded that the house should be strictly
searched. I gave a search-warrant to a detective named James Brennan,
who proceeded to the house, and stated his function to the landlady. She
declared that the man had been miserably poor, that he died in complete
destitution, and that they had to bury him in a parish coffin. Brennan
searched the premises most rigidly, but the expected treasure was not
forthcoming. Some of the landlady's female neighbours expressed great
indignation at "any honest woman's place being ransacked after such a
manner." One of the garrulous sympathizers declared that "so far was the
landlady from having a lot of money, that she was hard set to live, and
that the very night the old man died, the poor woman had to pledge her
best feather bed, at Booth's the pawnbroker's, for a few shillings."
Brennan took his leave, and immediately went to the pawn-office. He had
the bed produced, and observed that the stitching on one seam was
fresher in appearance than on the others. He ripped the seam, and in the
middle of the feathers he found seven notes, each of a £100, and two of
£20. The affair eventuated in the money being divided amongst the
kindred of the deceased. The landlady denied all knowledge of the money,
and insisted that the old man must have concealed it himself. She was
not prosecuted, but Brennan's intelligence was rewarded with one of the
£20 notes.
The residence of the late Dr. Graves in Merrion Square was robbed
several years ago, by the thief's entrance at the windows of the front
drawing-room, which had been left unfastened. The balcony did not appear
accessible by ordinary means, but was easily attained from that of the
adjoining house. Brennan was sent to examine the premises, and he at
once perceived the traces left by a soiled foot in climbing by the
pillars of the hall-door next to Dr. Graves's; he then walked over to
the rails of the square, and found marks which satisfied him that some
person had recently crossed; amongst the bushes there were a few heaps
of twigs, the parings or prunings of the shrubs; and beneath one of them
he discovered an excavation or _cache_, in which was a quantity of the
stolen property. At night he lay down at a little distance from the
place, and was not long there before a person approached and proceeded
to take up the property. At the rails he was giving it to an associate,
when, on a signal from Brennan, some other constables came forward, and
the burglars were secured. They were subsequently convicted and
transported.
A FALSE ACCUSATION EXPOSED.
I have known several instances in which innocence has derived complete
protection, even from the inconvenience of any arrest or personal
interference, from the tact and intelligence of members of that force,
to which a most greedy appetite for convictions is freely attributed.
About ten years before I became a magistrate, a considerable portion of
the County of Cork was a scene of disturbances, which might be fairly
termed insurrectionary. Amongst other outrages which were then
perpetrated, was the murder of a clergyman, the Rev. Mr. Hewson, who was
shot on the high road, and in the open day, in the vicinity of Bandon.
No clue was obtained whereby the guilty parties could be discovered, and
the offence has never been punished. In the year 1842, a soldier in a
regiment stationed at Fredericton, New Brunswick, stated to his officer
that he had been concerned in the crime, and he named two persons as his
accomplices; the man was sent home and brought up before me for
examination. A detective informed me that he had been, at the period of
the murder, orderly to the constabulary officer at Bandon; that he had
been at the scene of offence very soon after its commission, and that he
wished to be present at the examination of the self-accused prisoner. To
this I acceded, and the soldier detailed that on the day and at the hour
when the clergyman was murdered, he and two men, whom he named, met the
unfortunate gentleman on his way home, that one of them seized his
horse, and the other shot him with a blunderbuss; that they immediately
fled, and he made a statement of where and how they spent the remainder
of the day. The detective, whose name, if I recollect rightly, was
Benson, by my permission asked him, "Which of you backed the horse, and
overturned the gig into the ditch at the road-side?" to which the reply
was, "I did." He then asked, "Which of you cut the traces?" The response
was, "L---- did." He proceeded, "Which of you struck the poor woman who
saw the murder, for screaming?" He was answered, "P---- did." The
interrogator then declared to me that the fellow was telling a tissue of
falsehoods, for the horse had not been backed into the grip, and the
vehicle was not a gig, but an outside jaunting-car; that the traces had
not been cut, neither was any woman near the place assaulted by the
murderers. Subsequent inquiries established the fact, that one of the
persons accused in the soldier's confession was, at the period of the
murder, apprentice to a cabinet-maker in Cork, a reference to whom and
to whose books showed that the party sought to be implicated had been in
his master's concerns during the day of the assassination, and for a
considerable time previous to and after the transaction; and it appeared
that the statement had been made for the mere purpose of its fabricator
being sent home from service in a regiment with which he was
discontented, and in which he had acquired a most disreputable
character.
EXTRAORDINARY GRATITUDE.
The discharge of magisterial duties with firmness and impartiality
occasionally evokes expressions of approbation from those by whom
proceedings may have been instituted or closely observed, and may even
elicit a complimentary notice from an editorial pen. A deep sense of
_gratitude_ for the exercise of magisterial functions is not so
frequently avowed or ascribed. I am therefore disposed to bring before
the reader the circumstances which, in a very public place, produced a
compliance with a request of mine, accompanied by the expression,
"Anything that I could do for you, Mr. Porter, if it was even to put my
hands under your feet, should be a duty and a pleasure, for I can never
be too grateful to such a worthy magistrate as you." This was said by a
station-master of the Great Southern and Western Railway named Duffy, in
1851, in reply to an application for a coupée carriage for a friend of
mine who was going to Cork with his wife and daughter. The guard of the
train was directed by Mr. Duffy to be most attentive to the party. My
friend subsequently remarked to the guard that the station-master
evinced a great anxiety to please me. "So he ought," was the reply; "the
poor fellow is married to a real incarnate devil, and Mr. Porter sends
her to gaol whenever she is brought before him." Habitual intemperance,
with concomitant violence, occasioned the frequent incarcerations for
which the delinquent's husband felt so grateful.
A SALUTARY REFORMATION.
About the time to which the last anecdote refers, I was applied to, on a
Monday afternoon, by a gentleman who asked and obtained a private
interview. He was in a high social position, and possessed an ample
fortune. He stated that his wife had lapsed into habits of intemperance
which rendered his life wretched, and estranged him from association
with his friends, to whom he could not bear to have her deplorable
tendencies exposed. When inebriated she was excessively violent, and did
not hesitate to assault the domestics, and that on the preceding evening
she had assaulted, in his presence, a female servant, with a poker. I
told him to have her summoned by the servant for the following Thursday,
and I had three o'clock mentioned as the hour for hearing the complaint.
The lady did not attend, and on proof of the service of the summons and
a sworn information of the assault, I issued a warrant for her
apprehension. She was brought before me after all the other business of
the next day had been finished, and I required her to give bail in two
sureties to keep the peace, and in default of such, to be imprisoned for
three months. At Grangegorman, she was not compelled to associate with
the other prisoners, and the matron's attention was invited to the case.
At the termination of the second month, her husband, who had received
frequent letters from her, felt confident that she had become reformed,
and I discharged her at his instance and on his surety. I afterwards met
them frequently in society. I have seen her at viceregal parties, and
never observed the slightest appearance of, or tendency to, her former
indulgence. I do not believe that she ever relapsed; but whilst I am
happy to notice a complete reformation, my satisfaction is alloyed by
the reflection that it was the only instance of such a change that I
ever knew to occur.
A CHARGE OF FELONY.
I was frequently invited to the hospitable and joyous table of my
cousin, the late Anthony Hawkins of Leopardstown, Stillorgan. On one
occasion he entertained about a score of guests, of whom I was
unquestionably the senior. Choice viands and generous wines sustained
and stimulated the utmost hilarity; and when some of the company
expressed apprehensions that further indulgence might bring them under
the cognizance of the police, the host remarked that they would have a
_friend in court_, for it could not be supposed that the jolly old
magistrate would lean heavily in the morning on those who had been his
boon companions on the preceding evening, and that each of them would
get off for _a song_, which he would suggest to be given in advance. Two
young fellows, reminded me that they lived on Merchants' Quay, and as
that was in my division, they entertained no fears. The company
separated in time to avail themselves of the latest train to Dublin, and
the two sparks travelled in the same carriage with me. Neither of them
was in the slightest degree "the worse for liquor;" and when we parted
at Harcourt Street Station we shook hands, and one said, "Good night,
your worship, I hope you'll not be hard on us to-morrow." Next morning I
was on duty at Exchange Court, and when the charge sheets from Chancery
Lane were laid before me, I was astonished beyond description to find my
companions who had bespoken my leniency brought forward on an accusation
of FELONY. A constable stated that he had seen one of the prisoners get
on the shoulders of the other, and pull down a large gilt salmon, which
formed the sign over the door of a fishing-tackle establishment on Essex
Quay. On taking down the salmon, they were crossing over to the quay
wall when he intercepted them, and with the aid of another policeman and
a civilian, he captured and brought them to the station-house. Another
witness proved that the prisoners stopped at the door over which the
sign was suspended, and that one of them said, "Let us give the poor
salmon a swim." This evidence induced me to believe that the transaction
was not a deliberate theft, but a wanton, mischievous freak. The
proprietor of the shop expressed the same opinion, and urged a summary
adjudication. They offered to pay for the sign, as it had been broken by
an accidental fall; and the court was convulsed with laughter when the
proprietor observed that the salmon had been taken "out of the lawful
season." The spree cost the two delinquents the moderate sum of six
pounds. The subsequent banterings which they had to endure amongst
their festive associates completely deterred them from any further
manifestation of fishing propensities.
POOR PUSS! WHO SHOT HER?
A friend to whose inspection I submitted the preceding pages suggested
that as they detailed many mistakes and peccadillos of others, a reader
might consider it an agreeable variety if I inserted a couple of errors
peculiarly mine own. In accordance with his opinion I have to mention
that shortly after I assumed magisterial duties at Kingstown, the
proprietor of an extensive hotel in the immediate vicinity of the
police-court received several letters threatening speedy and fatal
violence to him and his family, unless certain demands on the part of
his waiters, postillions, and carters, were complied with. He was justly
incensed and alarmed at such threats, and submitted the obnoxious
documents to the consideration of the authorities and to the detective
agencies of the police force. His garden wall was close to the yard of
the police-court, between which and the sea no building at that time
intervened. It happened that an official, connected with the fiscal
business of the county of Meath, had embezzled a considerable sum and
attempted to abscond, but was captured on shipboard at Kingstown, and
committed for further examination. The delinquent had provided himself
with a most ample outfit for emigration and residence abroad; and the
articles found in his possession were deposited in a room adjoining the
police-court and overlooking the hotel garden. Amongst them was a rifled
air-gun of great power, and after the business of the court had been
disposed of, I was, along with the chief clerk, Mr. Lees, indulging my
curiosity by pumping and discharging the weapon. There was a bag of
small bullets, of which we directed two or three at the wall of the
yard. An unfortunate cat chanced to make her appearance in the hotel
garden at a distance of fifty or sixty yards, and exclaiming that "I
would give puss a start," I sent a bullet in her direction, without the
slightest expectation that the shot would be fatal. The cat fell dead
on the garden walk; we closed the window, locked up the gun and bullets,
and departed. Next morning, I was about to commence the charge-sheets,
when the proprietor of the hotel applied most earnestly for a private
interview. He was greatly agitated, and declared that he felt convinced
of his life being in danger from those who threatened to assassinate
him. "Your worship," he added, "they are manifestly bent on mischief,
for our poor cat was found dead in the garden, and on examination she
was found to have been shot. The fellow who killed her, did so only to
show that I might expect the same treatment if an opportunity offered
for shooting me." The poor man little knew that the weapon which
inflicted the injury was in the apartment where he was expressing his
direful apprehensions, and that he was seeking the sympathies and
protection of him who had done the mischief. I took means, through a
particular channel, to disabuse his mind of the feeling that the cat's
fate was intended to precede a similar termination to his own existence.
BAXTER AND BARNES.
The carriage complaints were usually disposed of at the Head Police
Office in a court upon the ground floor. The light was derived from
windows opening on a yard, and they were so near to the magisterial
bench as to enable its occupant frequently to hear observations and
conversations of an extraordinary nature. It was my custom to remain
after the carriage cases were heard, and when the criminal charges or
summonses were, in the upper court, brought before some of my
colleagues. I was thus enabled, in comparative quietude, to prepare
reports on memorials referred by the executive or revenue authorities,
or perhaps, to enjoy an occasional leisure hour over a magazine or
newspaper. When the upper court was crowded, persons would betake
themselves to the yard and frequently engage in conversation close to
the windows, which in warm weather were generally open; but there was
no indication to those outside of the presence inside of a listener to
their communications. In the summer of 1854, I was sitting alone, and
reading the latest news from the Crimea, when two women took their stand
outside the open window, and one of them proceeded to impart her sorrows
to her sympathizing friend. At the time to which I refer, recruiting was
very rife in Dublin, and it was not uncommon for us to attest one
hundred persons in a week. The utmost vigilance was exercised to prevent
or detect desertion, and in the apprehension of deserters, a police
sergeant named Barnes had particularly exerted himself, and had
consequently received rewards to a considerable amount. This was the
reason why his name was introduced into the narrative which I happened
to overhear, and which I inscribed on a blank leaf of an interleaved
statute. There is not one original idea of mine in the production, and I
should not submit it to my readers if I did not consider it essential to
the appreciation of the criticism subsequently pronounced by Mr. Barnes.
Musha! Katey Doyle, do you know what?
Shure Jem has took the shilling,
And off he's gone to Aldershot,
It's there he'll get the drilling.
The polis now along the Coombe[6]
No more will be resisted,
And Fordham's Alley's all in gloom
Since Jem has took and listed.
So have you got a dhrop at all?
My sperrits is so sinking,
I do not think I'd stop at all
If wanst I take to drinking.
The night afore he wint to list
I cribb'd his half week's wages,
And when the two 'r three hogs[7] he miss'd
At wanst he wint outrageous.
Next mornin' to the Linen Hall
He goes and takes the bounty;
It would not be so bad at all
If he had join'd the County;
For they're not gone to foreign parts,
And won't encounter dangers,
But, just as if to break our hearts,
He join'd the Connaught Rangers.
The night afore he wint away
He came to bid "good-bye" there.
I thought to get him for to stay,
That thrick we couldn't try there,
For Barnes was watching, skulking round
When Jem and I were parting--
That polisman would make a pound
On any boy desarting.
I'm shure I'd like to take a quart
Of Jameson's distillin',
To drink bad luck to all his sort--
The tallow-faced ould villin.
So Jem is gone to Aldershot,
Where 'tis I've no idea;
Of coorse it is some desprate spot,
Nigh-hand to the Crimea.
There's some entrench'd upon a hill,
Some hutted in a valley;
I'm sure Jem would be better, still
At home in Fordham's Alley.
For the Cossacks now he'll have to stob,
Or shoot 'em holus bolus;
I'm shure 'twould be an easier job
At home to face the polis.
In a week or ten days after I had perpetrated this production, I was
sitting in the upper court, when I was informed by the usher that
Sergeant Barnes was most anxious to speak to me at my convenience and
leisure. I directed that he should be admitted, and he proceeded to
request that Mr. Baxter, one of the junior clerks, should be restrained
from singing a song which he had picked up somewhere, and occasionally
lilted to the other clerks when unemployed, as it was most
disrespectful, and even termed him, Sergeant Barnes, "a tallow-faced old
villain." I told the complainant that I should certainly prohibit
Baxter from continuing his vocal pastime, as it was calculated to annoy
an active and meritorious member of the police force. Barnes expressed
his gratitude, and added, "I knew that your worship would never tolerate
any of the clerks in abusing or ridiculing us. I readily acknowledge
that I have received nearly £30 for detecting and taking deserters, but
I would spend every farthing of the amount if I could only discover the
author of Mr. Baxter's song, I'd punish him to the utmost severity of
the law for writing such a rigmarole about me." In about ten minutes
after the interview, the song was torn out of the interleaved statute by
the hand that had inscribed it. The sergeant soon after retired from the
force on a pension, and was, for several years, in a confidential
situation at the premises from which the whisky was considered so
desirable to "drink bad luck to all his sort" namely, Jameson's
distillery.
FOOTNOTES:
[6] A long thoroughfare in the Liberties of Dublin, supposed to have
been originally called "The Come."
[7] A term used for English shillings, which previous to the change of
currency, in 1825, passed in Ireland for thirteen pence each.