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MYSTERIES OF POLICE
AND CRIME
[Illustration: WATCH HOUSE AND WATCHMEN A CENTURY AGO.
(_From a Contemporary Print by Rowlandson and Pugin._)]
MYSTERIES
OF
POLICE AND CRIME
BY
MAJOR ARTHUR GRIFFITHS
FORMERLY ONE OF H.M. INSPECTORS OF PRISONS; JOHN HOWARD GOLD
MEDALLIST; AUTHOR OF "MEMORIALS OF MILLBANK," "CHRONICLES OF
NEWGATE," ETC.
_PROFUSELY ILLUSTRATED_
IN THREE VOLUMES
VOL. I.
SPECIAL EDITION
CASSELL AND COMPANY, LIMITED
_LONDON, PARIS, NEW YORK & MELBOURNE_
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
[Illustration]
CONTENTS.
Part I.
A GENERAL SURVEY OF CRIME AND ITS DETECTION.
.....PAGE
Crime Distinguished from Law-breaking--The General Liability to
Crime--Preventive Agencies--Plan of the Work--Different Types of Murders
and Robberies--Crime Developed by Civilisation--The Police the Shield
and Buckler of Society--Difficulty of Disappearing under Modern
Conditions--The Press an Aid to the Police: the Cases of Courvoisier,
Müller, and Lefroy--The Importance of Small Clues--"Man Measurement" and
Finger-Prints--Strong Scents as Clues--Victims of Blind Chance: the
Cases of Troppmann and Peace--Superstitions of Criminals--Dogs and other
Animals as Adjuncts to the Police--Australian Blacks as Trackers:
Instances of their Almost Superhuman Skill--How Criminals give
themselves Away: the Murder of M. Delahache, the Stepney Murder, and
other Instances--Cases in which there is Strong but not Sufficient
Evidence: the Great Coram Street and Burdell Murders: the Probable
Identity of "Jack the Ripper"--Undiscovered Murders: the Rupprecht, Mary
Rogers, Nathan, and other Cases: Similar Cases in India: the Button
Crescent Murder: the Murder of Lieutenant Roper--The Balance in Favour
of the Police.....1
Part II.
JUDICIAL ERRORS.
CHAPTER I.
WRONGFUL CONVICTIONS.
Judge Cambo, of Malta--The D'Anglades--The Murder of Lady
Mazel--Execution of William Shaw for the Murder of his Daughter--The
Sailmaker of Deal and the alleged Murder of a Boatswain--Brunell, the
Innkeeper--Du Moulin, the Victim of a Gang of Coiners--The Famous Calas
Case at Toulouse--Gross Perversion of Justice at Nuremberg--The Blue
Dragoon.....51
CHAPTER II.
CASES OF DISPUTED OR MISTAKEN IDENTITY.
Lesurques and the Robbery of the Lyons Mail--The Champignelles
Mystery--Judge Garrow's Story--An Imposition practised at York
Assizes--A Husband claimed by Two Wives--A Milwaukee Mystery--A
Scottish Case--The Kingswood Rectory Murder--The Cannon Street Murder--A
Narrow Escape.....95
CHAPTER III.
PROBLEMATICAL ERRORS.
Captain Donellan and the Poisoning of Sir Theodosius Boughton:
Donellan's Suspicious Conduct: Evidence of John Hunter, the great
Surgeon: Sir James Stephen's View: Corroborative Story from his
Father--The Lafarge Case: Madame Lafarge and the Cakes: Doctors differ
as to Presence of Arsenic in the Remains: Possible Guilt of Denis
Barbier: Madame Lafarge's Condemnation: Pardoned by Napoleon
III.--Charge against Madame Lafarge of stealing a School Friend's
Jewels: Her Defence: Conviction--Madeleine Smith charged with Poisoning
her _Fiancé_: "Not Proven": the Latest Facts--The Wharton-Ketchum Case
in Baltimore, U.S.A.--The Story of the Perrys.....129
CHAPTER IV.
POLICE MISTAKES.
The Saffron Hill Murder: Narrow Escape of Pellizioni: Two Men in Newgate
for the same Offence--The Murder of Constable Cock--The Edlingham
Burglary: Arrest, Trial, and Conviction of Brannagan and Murphy:
Severity of Judge Manisty: A new Trial: Brannagan and Murphy Pardoned
and Compensated: Survivors of the Police Prosecutors put on their Trial,
but Acquitted--Lord Cochrane's Case: His Tardy Rehabilitation.....169
Part III.
POLICE--PAST AND PRESENT.
CHAPTER V.
EARLY POLICE: FRANCE.
Origin of Police--Definitions--First Police in France--Charles V.--Louis
XIV.--The Lieutenant-General of Police: His Functions and Powers--La
Reynie: His Energetic Measures against Crime: As a Censor of the Press:
His Steps to Check Gambling and Cheating at Games of Chance--La Reynie's
Successors: the D'Argensons, Hérault, D'Ombréval, Berryer--The Famous de
Sartines--Two Instances of his Omniscience--Lenoir and Espionage--De
Crosne, the last and most feeble Lieutenant-General of Police--The Story
of the Bookseller Blaziot--Police under the Directory and the
Empire--Fouché: His Beginnings and First Chances: A Born Police Officer:
His Rise and Fall--General Savary: His Character: How he organised his
Service of Spies: His humiliating Failure in the Conspiracy of General
Malet--Fouché's return to Power: Some Views of his Character.....191
CHAPTER VI.
EARLY POLICE (_continued_): ENGLAND.
Early Police in England--Edward I.'s Act--Elizabeth's Act for
Westminster--Acts of George II. and George III.--State of London towards
the End of the Eighteenth Century--Gambling and Lottery
Offices--Robberies on the River Thames--Receivers--Coiners--The
Fieldings as Magistrates--The Horse Patrol--Bow Street and its Runners:
Townsend, Vickery, and others--Blood Money--Tyburn Tickets--Negotiations
with Thieves to recover stolen Property--Sayer--George Ruthven--Serjeant
Ballantine on the Bow Street Runners compared with modern
Detectives.....219
CHAPTER VII.
MODERN POLICE: LONDON.
The "New Police" introduced by Peel--The System supported by the Duke of
Wellington--Opposition from the Vestries--Brief Account of the
Metropolitan Police: Its Uses and Services--The River Police--The City
Police--Extra Police Services--The Provincial Police.....246
CHAPTER VIII.
MODERN POLICE (_continued_): PARIS.
The Spy System under the Second Empire--The Manufacture of
_Dossiers_--M. Andrieux receives his own on being appointed Prefect--The
Clerical Police of Paris--The _Sergents de Ville_--The Six Central
Brigades--The Cabmen of Paris, and how they are kept in Order--Stories
of Honest and of Dishonest Cabmen--Detectives and Spies--Newspaper
Attacks upon the Police--Their General Character.....258
CHAPTER IX.
MODERN POLICE (_continued_): NEW YORK.
Greater New York--Despotic Position of the Mayor--Constitution of the
Police Force--Dr. Parkhurst's Indictment--The Lexow Commission and its
Report--Police Abuses: Blackmail, Brutality, Collusion with Criminals,
Electoral Corruption, the Sale of Appointments and Promotions--Excellence
of the Detective Bureau--The Black Museum of New York--The
Identification Department--Effective Control of Crime.....268
CHAPTER X.
MODERN POLICE (_continued_): RUSSIA.
Mr. Sala's Indictment of the Russian Police--Their Wide-reaching
Functions--Instances of Police Stupidity--Why Sala Avoided the
Police--Von H---- and his Spoons--Herr Jerrmann's Experiences--Perovsky,
the Reforming Minister of the Interior--The Regular Police--A Rural
Policeman's Visit to a Peasant's House--The State Police--The Third
Section--Attacks upon Generals Mezentzoff and Drenteln--The "Paris Box
of Pills"--Sympathisers with Nihilism: An Invaluable Ally--Leroy
Beaulieu on the Police of Russia--Its Ignorance and Inadequate Pay--The
Case of Vera Zassoulich--The Passport System: How it is Evaded and
Abused: Its Oppressiveness.....288
CHAPTER XI.
MODERN POLICE (_continued_): INDIA.
The New System Compared with the Old--Early Difficulties Gradually
Overcome--The Village Police in India--Discreditable Methods under the
Old System--Torture, Judicial and Extra-Judicial--Native Dislike of
Police Proceedings--Cases of Men Confessing to Crimes of which they were
Innocent--A Mysterious Case of Theft--Trumped-up Charges of
Murder--Simulating Suicide--An Infallible Test of Death--The Paternal
Duties of the Police--The Native Policeman Badly Paid.....312
CHAPTER XII.
THE DETECTIVE, AND WHAT HE HAS DONE.
The Detective in Fiction and in Fact--Early Detection--Case of Lady
Ivy--Thomas Chandler--Mackoull, and how he was run down by a Scots
Solicitor--Vidocq: his Early Life, Police Services, and End--French
Detectives generally--Amicable Relations between French and English
Detectives.....330
CHAPTER XIII.
ENGLISH AND AMERICAN DETECTIVES.
English Detectives--Early Prejudices against them Lived Down--The late
Mr. Williamson--Inspector Melville--Sir C. Howard Vincent--Dr.
Anderson--Mr. Macnaghten--Mr. McWilliam and the Detectives of the City
Police--A Country Detective's Experiences--Allan Pinkerton's first Essay
in Detection--The Private Inquiry Agent and the Lengths to which he will
go.....364
Part IV.
CAPTAINS OF CRIME.
CHAPTER XIV.
SOME FAMOUS SWINDLERS.
Recurrence of Criminal Types--Heredity and Congenital Instinct--The
Jukes and other Families of Criminals--John Hatfield--Anthelme Collet's
Amazing Career of Fraud--The Story of Pierre Cognard: Count Pontis de
St. Hélène: Recognised by an old Convict Comrade: Sent to the Galleys
for Life--Major Semple: His many Vicissitudes in Foreign Armies: Thief
and Begging-Letter Writer: Transported to Botany Bay.....387
CHAPTER XV.
SWINDLERS OF MORE MODERN TYPE.
Richard Coster--Sheridan, the American Bank Thief--Jack Canter--The
Frenchman Allmayer, a typical Nineteenth Century Swindler--Paraf--The
Tammany Frauds--Burton, _alias_ Count von Havard--Dr. Vivian, a bogus
Millionaire Bridegroom--Mock Clergymen: Dr. Berrington: Dr.
Keatinge--Harry Benson, a Prince of Swindlers: The Scotland Yard
Detectives suborned: Benson's Adventures after his Release: Commits
Suicide in the Tombs Prison--Max Shinburn and his Feats.....409
CHAPTER XVI.
SOME FEMALE CRIMINALS.
Criminal Women Worse than Criminal Men--Bell Star--Comtesse
Sandor--Mother M----, the Famous Female Receiver of Stolen Goods--The
"German Princess"--Jenny Diver--The Baroness de Menckwitz--Emily
Lawrence--Louisa Miles--Mrs. Gordon-Baillie: Her Dashing Career: Becomes
Mrs. Percival Frost: the Crofters' Friend: Triumphal Visit to the
Antipodes: Extensive Frauds on Tradesmen: Sentenced to Penal
Servitude--A Viennese Impostor--Big Bertha, the "Confidence
Queen".....447
[Illustration: MYSTERIES OF POLICE AND CRIME]
Part I.
A GENERAL SURVEY OF CRIME AND ITS DETECTION.
Crime Distinguished from Law-breaking--The General Liability to
Crime--Preventive Agencies--Plan of the Work--Different Types of
Murders and Robberies--Crime Developed by Civilisation--The Police
the Shield and Buckler of Society--Difficulty of Disappearing under
Modern Conditions--The Press an Aid to the Police: the Cases of
Courvoisier, Müller, and Lefroy--The Importance of Small
Clues--"Man Measurement" and Finger-Prints--Strong Scents as
Clues--Victims of Blind Chance: the Cases of Troppmann and
Peace--Superstitions of Criminals--Dogs and other Animals as
Adjuncts to the Police--Australian Blacks as Trackers: Instances of
their Almost Superhuman Skill--How Criminals give themselves Away:
the Murder of M. Delahache, the Stepney Murder, and other
Instances--Cases in which there is Strong but not Sufficient
Evidence: the Burdell and Various Other Murders: the Probable
Identity of "Jack the Ripper"--Undiscovered Murders: the Rupprecht,
Mary Rogers, Nathan, and other Cases: Similar Cases in India: the
Burton Crescent Murder: the Murder of Lieutenant Roper--The Balance
in Favour of the Police.
I.--THE CAUSES OF CRIME.
Crime is the transgression by individuals of rules made by the
community. Wrong-doing may be either intentional or accidental--a wilful
revolt against law, or a lapse through ignorance of it. Both are
punishable by all codes alike, but the latter is not necessarily a
crime. To constitute a really criminal act the offence must be wilful,
perverse, malicious; the offender then becomes the general enemy, to be
combated by all good citizens, through their chosen defenders, the
police. This warfare has existed from the earliest times; it is in
constant progress around us to-day, and it will continue to be waged
until the advent of that Millennium in which there is to be no more evil
passion to agitate mankind.
[Illustration: TYPES OF MALE CRIMINALS.
(_From Photographs preserved at the Black Museum, New Scotland Yard._)]
It may be said that society itself creates the crimes that most beset
it. If the good things of life were more evenly distributed, if everyone
had his rights, if there were no injustice, no oppression, there would
be no attempts to readjust an unequal balance by violent or flagitious
means. There is some force in this, but it is very far from covering the
whole ground, and it cannot excuse many forms of crime. Crime, indeed,
is the birthmark of humanity, a fatal inheritance known to the
theologians as original sin. Crime, then, must be constantly present in
the community, and every son of Adam may, under certain conditions, be
drawn into it. To paraphrase a great saying, some achieve crime, some
have it thrust upon them; but most of us (we may make the statement
without subscribing to all the doctrines of the criminal
anthropologists) are born to crime. The assertion is as old as the
hills; it was echoed in the fervent cry of pious John Bradford when he
pointed to the man led out to execution, "There goes John Bradford but
for the grace of God!"
Criminals are manufactured both by social cross-purposes and by the
domestic neglect which fosters the first fatal predisposition.
"Assuredly external factors and circumstances count for much in the
causation of crime," says Maudsley. The preventive agencies are all the
more necessary where heredity emphasises the universal natural tendency.
The taint of crime is all the more potent in those whose parentage is
evil. The germ is far more likely to flourish into baleful vitality if
planted by congenital depravity. This is constantly seen with the
offspring of criminals. But it is equally certain that the poison may be
eradicated, the evil stamped out, if better influences supervene
betimes. Even the most ardent supporters of the theory of the "born
criminal" admit that this, as some think, imaginary monster, although
possessing all the fatal characteristics, does not necessarily commit
crime. The bias may be checked; it may lie latent through life unless
called into activity by certain unexpected conditions of time and
chance. An ingenious refinement of the old adage, "Opportunity makes the
thief," has been invented by an Italian scientist, Baron Garofalo, who
declares that "opportunity only reveals the thief"; it does not create
the predisposition, the latent thievish spirit.
[Illustration: TYPES OF FEMALE CRIMINALS].
(_From Photographs at the Black Museum._)]
However it may originate, there is still little doubt of the
universality, the perennial activity of crime. We may accept the
unpleasant fact without theorising further as to the genesis of crime. I
propose in these pages to take criminals as I find them; to accept crime
as an actual fact, and in its multiform manifestations; to deal with its
commission, the motives that have caused it, the methods by which it has
been perpetrated, the steps taken--sometimes extraordinarily ingenious
and astute, sometimes foolishly forgetful and ineffective--to conceal
the deed and throw the pursuers off the scent; on the other hand, I
shall set forth in some detail the agencies employed for detection and
exposure. The subject is comprehensive, the amount of material available
is colossal, almost overwhelming.
Every country, civilised and uncivilised, the whole world at large in
all ages, has been cursed with crime. To deal with but a fractional part
of the evil deeds that have disgraced humanity would fill endless
volumes; where "envy, hatred, and malice, and all uncharitableness" have
so often impelled those of weak moral sense to yield to their criminal
instincts, a full catalogue would be impossible. It must be remembered
that crime is ever active in seeking new outlets, always keen to adopt
new methods of execution; the ingenuity of criminals is infinite, their
patient inventiveness is only equalled by their reckless audacity. They
will take life without a moment's hesitation, and often for a miserably
small gain; will prepare great coups a year or more in advance and wait
still longer for the propitious moment to strike home; will employ
address and great brain power, show fine resource in organisation, the
faculty of leadership, and readiness to obey; will utilise much
technical skill; will assume strange disguises and play many different
parts, all in the prosecution of their nefarious schemes or in escaping
penalties after the deed is done.
With material so abundant, so varied and complicated, it will be
necessary to use some discretion, to follow certain clearly defined
lines of choice. I propose in these pages to adopt the principle
embodied in the title and to deal more particularly with the "mysteries"
of crime and its incomplete, partial, or complete detection; with
offences not immediately brought home to their perpetrators; offences
prepared in secret, committed by offenders who have long remained
perhaps entirely unknown, but who have sometimes met with their true
deserts; offences that have in consequence exercised the ingenuity of
pursuers, showing the highest development of the game of hide-and-seek,
where the hunt is man, where one side fights for life and liberty,
immunity from well-merited reprisals, the other is armed with authority
to capture the human beast of prey. The flights and vicissitudes of
criminals with the police at their heels make up a chronicle of moving,
hair-breadth adventure unsurpassed by books of travel and sport.
Typical cases only can be taken, in number according to their
[Illustration: CRIMINALS' WEAPONS: REVOLVERS, KNUCKLE DUSTERS, AND LIFE
PRESERVERS IN THE BLACK MUSEUM.
_Photo: Cassell & Company, Limited._]
relative interest and importance, but all more or less illustrating and
embracing the hydra-headed varieties of crime. We shall see murders most
foul, committed under the strangest conditions; brutal and ferocious
attacks, followed by the most cold-blooded callousness in disposing of
the evidences of the crime. In some cases a man will kill, as Garofalo
puts it, "for money and possessions, to succeed to property, to be rid
of one wife through hatred of her or to marry another, to remove an
inconvenient witness, to avenge a wrong, to show his skill or his hatred
and revolt against authority." This class of criminal was well
exemplified by the French murderer Lacenaire, who boasted that he would
kill a man as coolly as he would drink a glass of wine. They are the
deliberate murderers, who kill of malice aforethought and in cold blood.
There will be slow, secret poisonings, often producing confusion and
difference of opinion among the most distinguished scientists;
successful associations of thieves and rogues, with ledgers and bank
balances, and regularly audited accounts; secret societies, some formed
for purely flagitious ends, with commerce and capitalists for their
quarry; others for alleged political purposes, but working with fire and
sword, using the forces of anarchy and disorder against all established
government.
The desire to acquire wealth and possessions easily, or at least without
regular, honest exertion, has ever been a fruitful source of crime. The
depredators, whose name is legion, the birds of prey ever on the alert
to batten upon the property of others, have flourished always, in all
ages and climes, often unchecked or with long impunity. Their methods
have varied almost indefinitely with their surroundings and
opportunities. Now they have merely used violence and brute force,
singly or in associated numbers, by open attack on highway and byway, on
road, river, railway, or deep sea; now they have got at their quarry by
consummate patience and ingenuity, plotting, planning, undermining or
overcoming the strongest safeguards, the most vigilant precautions.
Robbery has been practised in every conceivable form: by piracy, the
bold adventure of the sea-rover flying his black flag in the face of the
world; by brigandage in new or distracted communities, imperfectly
protected by the law; by daring outrage upon the travelling public, as
in the case of highwaymen, bushrangers, "holders-up" of trains; by the
forcible entry of premises or the breaking down of defences designed
against attack--by burglary in banks and houses, "winning" through the
iron walls of safes and strong-rooms, so as to reach the treasure
within, whether gold or securities or precious stones; by robberies from
the person, daring garrotte robberies, dexterous neat-handed pilfering,
pocket-picking, counter-snatching; by insinuating approaches to
simple-minded folk, and the astute, endlessly multiplied application of
the time-honoured Confidence Trick.
Crime has been greatly developed by civilisation, by the numerous
processes invented to add to the comforts and conveniences in the
business of daily life. The adoption of a circulating medium was soon
followed by the production of spurious money, the hundred and one
devices for forging notes, manufacturing coin, and clipping, sweating,
and misusing that made of precious metals. The extension of banks, of
credit, of financial transactions on paper, has encouraged the trade of
the forger and fabricator, whose misdeeds, aimed against monetary values
of all kinds, cover an extraordinarily wide range. The gigantic
accumulation no less than the general diffusion of wealth, with the
variety of operations that accompany its profitable manipulation, has
offered temptations irresistibly strong to evil-or weak-minded people,
who seem to see chances of aggrandisement, or of escape from pressing
embarrassments, with the strong hope always of replacing abstractions,
rectifying defalcations, or altogether evading detection. Less criminal,
perhaps, but not less reprehensible, than the deliberately planned
colossal frauds of a Robson, a Redpath, or a Sadleir are the victims of
adverse circumstances, the Strahans, Dean-Pauls, Fauntleroys, who
succeeded to bankrupt businesses and sought to cover up insolvency with
a fight, a losing fight, against misfortune, resorting to nefarious
practices, wholesale forgery, absolute misappropriation, and
unpardonable breaches of trust.
Between the "high flyers," the artists in crime, and the lesser fry, the
rogues, swindlers, and fraudulent impostors, it is only a question of
degree. These last-named, too, have in many instances swept up great
gains. The class of adventurer is nearly limitless; it embraces many
types, often original in character and in their criminal methods, clever
knaves possessed of useful qualities--indeed, of natural gifts that
might have led them to assured fortune had they but chosen the straight
path and followed it patiently. We shall see with what infinite labour a
scheme of imposture has been built up and maintained, how nearly
impossible it was to combat the fraud, how readily the swindler will
avail himself of the latest inventions, the telegraph and the telephone,
of chemical appliances, of photography in counterfeiting signatures or
preparing banknote plates, ere long, perchance, of the Röntgen rays. We
shall find the most elaborate and cleverly designed attacks on great
banking corporations, whether by open force or insidious methods of
forgery and falsification, attacks upon the vast stores of valuables
that luxury keeps at hand in jewellers' safes and shop fronts, and on
the dressing-tables of great dames. Crime can always command talent,
industry also, albeit laziness is ingrained in the criminal class. The
desire to win wealth easily, to grow suddenly rich by appropriating the
possessions or the earnings of others, is no doubt a strong incitement
to crime; yet the depredator who will not work steadily at any honest
occupation will give infinite time and pains to compass his criminal
ends.
[Illustration: REDUCED FAC-SIMILE OF PART OF FRONT PAGE OF THE FIRST
NUMBER OF THE "POLICE GAZETTE" (p. 13).]
II.--THE HUNTERS AND THE HUNTED.
Society, weak, gullible, and defenceless, handicapped by a thousand
conventions, would soon be devoured alive by its greedy parasites: but
happily it has devised the shield and buckler of the police; not an
entirely effective protector, perhaps, but earnest, devoted,
unhesitating in the performance of its duties. The finer achievements of
eminent police officers are as striking as the exploits of the enemies
they continually pursue. In the endless warfare success inclines now to
this side, now to that; but the forces of law and order have generally
the preponderance in the end. Infinite pains, unwearied patience,
abounding wit, sharp-edged intuition, promptitude in seizing the vaguest
shadow of a clue, unerring sagacity in clinging to it and following it
up to the end--these qualities make constantly in favour of the police.
The fugitive is often equally alert, no less gifted, no less astute;
his crime has often been cleverly planned so as to leave few, if any,
traces easily or immediately apparent, but he is constantly overmatched,
and the game will in consequence go against him. Now and again, no doubt
he is inexplicably stupid and shortsighted, and will run his head
straight into the noose. Yet the hunters are not always free from the
same fault; they will show blindness, will overrun their quarry,
sometimes indeed open a door for escape.
In measuring the means and the comparative advantages of the opponents,
of hunted and hunters, it is generally believed that the police have
much the best of it. The machinery, the organisation of modern life,
favours the pursuers. The world's "shrinkage," the facilities for
travel, the narrowing of neutral ground, of secure sanctuary for the
fugitive, the universal, almost immediate, publicity that waits on
startling crimes--all these are against the criminal. Electricity is his
worst and bitterest foe, and next to it rank the post and the Press.
Flight is checked by the wire, the first mail carries full particulars
everywhere, both to the general public and to a ubiquitous international
police, brimful of _camaraderie_ and willing to help each other. It is
not easy to disappear nowadays, although I have heard the contrary
stoutly maintained. A well-known police officer once assured me that he
could easily and effectually efface himself, given certain conditions,
such as the possession of sufficient funds (not of a tainted origin that
might draw down suspicion), or the knowledge of some honest wage-earning
handicraft, or fluency in some foreign language, and, above all, a face
and features not easily recognisable. Given any of these conditions, he
declared he could hide himself completely in the East-End, or the
Western Hebrides, or South America, or provincial France, or some
Spanish mountain town. In proof of this he declared that he had lived
for many months in an obscure French village, and, being well acquainted
with French, passed quite unknown, while watching for someone; and he
strengthened his argument by quoting the case of the perpetrator of a
recent robbery of pearls, who baffled pursuit for months, and gave
herself up voluntarily in the end.
On the other hand, it may be questioned whether this lady was altogether
hidden, or whether she was so terribly "wanted" by the police. In any
case, pursuit was not so keen as it would have been with more notorious
criminals. Nor can the many well-established cases of men and women
leading double lives be quoted in support of this view. Such people are
not necessarily in request; there may be a secret reason for
concealment, for dreading discovery, but it has generally been of a
social, a domestic, not necessarily a criminal character. We have all
heard of the crossing-sweeper who did so good a trade that he kept his
brougham to bring him to business from a snug home at the other end of
the town. A case was quoted in the American papers some years back where
a merchant of large fortune traded under one name, and was widely known
under it "down town," yet lived under another "up town," where he had a
wife and large family. This remarkable dissembler kept up the fraud for
more than half a century, and when he died his eldest son was fifty-one,
the rest of his children were middle-aged, and none of them had the
smallest idea of their father's wealth, or of his other existence. The
case is not singular, moreover. Another on all fours, and even more
romantic, was that of two youths with different names, walking side by
side in the streets of New York, who saluted the same man as father; a
gentleman with two distinct personalities.
Such deception may be long undetected when it is no one's business to
expose it. Where crime complicates it, where the police are on the alert
and have an object in hunting the wrong-doer down, disappearance is
seldom entirely successful. Dr. Jekyll could not cover Mr. Hyde
altogether when his homicidal mania became ungovernable. The clergyman
who lived a life of sanctity and preached admirable sermons to an
appreciative congregation for five full years was run down at last and
exposed as a noted burglar in private life. "Sir Granville Temple," as
he called himself, when he had committed bigamy several times, was
eventually uncloaked and shown up as an army deserter whose father was
master of a workhouse. Criminals who seek effacement do not take into
sufficient account the curiosity and inquisitiveness of mankind. At
times, just after the perpetration of a great crime, when the criminal
is missing and the pursuit at fault, every gossip, landlady, "slavey,"
local tradesman, 'bus conductor, lounger on the cab rank, newsboy,
railway guard, becomes an active amateur agent of the police, prying,
watching, wondering, looking askance at every stranger and newcomer;
ready to call in the constable on the slightest suspicion, or
immediately report any unusual circumstance. The rapid dissemination of
news to the four quarters of the land by our far-reaching,
indefatigable, and wide-awake Press has undoubtedly secured many
arrests. The judicious publication of certain details, of personal
descriptions, of names, aliases, and the supposed movements of persons
in request, has constantly borne fruit. In France police officials often
deprecate the incautious utterances of the Press, but it is a common
practice of theirs in Paris to give out fully prepared items to the
newspapers with the express intention of deceiving their quarry; the
missing man has been lulled into fancied security by hearing that the
pursuers are on a wrong scent, and, issuing from concealment, "gives
himself away."
[Illustration: THE PORTRAIT WHICH LED TO LEFROY's ARREST (p. 12).
(_By permission of the "Daily Telegraph."_)]
III.--THE PRESS AN AID TO THE POLICE.
Long ago, as far back as the murder of Lord William Russell by
Courvoisier, proof of the crime was greatly assisted by the publication
of the story in the Press. Madame Piolaine, an hotel-keeper, read in the
newspaper of the arrest of a suspected person, recognising him as a man
who had been in her service as a waiter. Only a day or two after the
murder he had come to her, begging her to take charge of a brown paper
parcel, for which he would call. He had never returned, and now Madame
Piolaine hunted up the parcel, which lay at the bottom of a cupboard,
where she had placed it. The fact that Courvoisier had brought it
justified her in examining it, and she now found that it contained a
quantity of silver plate, and other articles of value. When the police
were called in, they identified the whole as part of the property
abstracted from Lord William Russell's. Here was a link directly
connecting Courvoisier with the murder. Hitherto the evidence had been
mainly presumptive. The discovery of Lord William's Waterloo medal, with
his gold rings and a ten-pound note, under the skirting-board in
Courvoisier's pantry was strong suspicion, but no more. The man had a
gold locket, too, in his possession, the property of Lord William
Russell, but it had been lost some time antecedent to the murder. All
the evidence was presumptive, and the case was not made perfectly clear
until Madame Piolaine was brought into it through the publicity given by
the Press.
In the murder of Mr. Briggs by the German, Franz Müller, detection was
greatly facilitated by the publicity given to the facts of the crime.
The hat found in the railway carriage where the deed had been done was a
chief clue. It bore the maker's name inside the cover, and very soon a
cabman who had read this in the newspaper came forward to say he had
bought that very hat at that very maker's for a man named Müller. Müller
had been a lodger of his, and had given his little daughter a jeweller's
cardboard box, bearing the name of "Death, Cheapside." Already this Mr.
Death had produced the murdered man's gold chain, saying he had given
another in exchange for it to a man supposed to be a German. There could
be no doubt now that Müller was the murderer. His movements were easily
traced. He had gone across the Atlantic in a sailing ship, and was
easily forestalled by the detectives in a fast Atlantic liner, which
also carried the jeweller and the cabman.
Where identity is clear the publication of the _signalement_, if
possible of the likeness, has reduced capture to a certainty; it is a
mere question then of time and money. Lefroy, the murderer of Mr. Gold,
was caught through the publicity given to his portrait, which had
appeared in the columns of the _Daily Telegraph_. Some eminent but
highly cautious police officers nevertheless deprecate the interference
of the Press, and have said that the premature or injudicious disclosure
of facts obtained in the progress of investigation has led to the escape
of criminals. It is to be feared that there is an increasing distrust of
the official methods of detection, and the Press is more and more
inclined to institute a pursuit of its own when mysterious cases
continue unsolved. We may yet see this system, which has sometimes been
employed by energetic reporters in Paris, more largely adopted here.
Without entering into the pro's and con's of such competition, it is but
right to admit that the Press, with its powerful influence, its
ramifications endless and widespread, has already done great service to
justice in following up crime. So convinced are the London police
authorities of the value of a public organ for police purposes, that
they publish a newspaper of their own, the admirably managed _Police
Gazette_, which is an improved form of a journal started in 1828. This
gazette, which is circulated gratis to all police forces in the United
Kingdom, gives full particulars of crimes and of persons "wanted," with
rough but often life-like woodcut portraits and sketches that help
capture. Ireland has a similar organ, the Dublin _Hue and Cry_; and some
of the chief constables of counties send out police reports that are
highly useful at times. Through these various channels news travels
quickly to all parts, puts all interested on the alert, and makes them
active in running down their prey.
IV.--THE IMPORTANCE OF SMALL CLUES.
Detection depends largely, of course, upon the knowledge, astuteness,
ingenuity, and logical powers of police officers, although they find
many independent and often unexpected aids, as we shall see. The best
method of procedure is clearly laid down in police manuals: an immediate
systematic investigation on the theatre of a crime, the minute
examination of premises, the careful search for tracks and traces, for
any article left behind, however insignificant, such as the merest
fragment of clothing, a scrap of paper, a harmless tool, a hat, half a
button; the slow, persistent inquiry into the antecedents of suspected
persons, of their friends and associates, their movements and ways,
unexplained change of domicile, proved possession of substantial funds
after previous indigence--all these are detailed for the guidance of the
detective. It will be seen in the following pages how small a thing has
often sufficed to form a clue. A name chalked upon a door in tell-tale
handwriting; half a word scratched upon a chisel, has led to the
identification of its guilty owner, as in the case of Orrock. A button
dropped after a burglary has been found to correspond with those on the
coat of a man in custody for another offence, and with the very place
from which it was torn. The cloth used to enclose human remains has
been recognised as that used by tailors, and the same with the system of
sewing, thus narrowing inquiry to a particular class of workmen; and the
fact is well illustrated in the detection of Voirbo, to be hereafter
told. The position of a body has shown that death could not have been
accidental. A false tooth, fortunately incombustible, has sufficed for
proof of identity when every other vestige has been annihilated by fire,
as in the case of Dr. Webster of Boston.
[Illustration: _Photo: Cassell & Company, Limited._
BROKEN BUTTON AT THE BLACK MUSEUM: A CLUE.
(_The white paper has been placed upon the cloth to show up the
button._)]
In one clear case of murder, detection was aided by the simple discovery
of a few half-burnt matches that the criminal had used in lighting
candles in his victim's room to keep up the illusion that he was still
alive. A dog, belonging to a murdered man, had been seen to leave the
house with him on the morning of the crime, and was yet found fourteen
days later alive and well, with fresh food by him, in the locked-up
apartment to which the occupier had never returned. The strongest
evidence against Patch, the murderer of Mr. Blight at Rotherhithe, was
that the fatal shot could not possibly have been fired from the road
outside, and the first notion of this was suggested by the doctor called
in, afterwards eminent as Sir Astley Cooper. In the Gervais case proof
depended greatly upon the date when the roof of a cellar had been
disturbed, and this was shown to have been necessarily some time before,
for in the interval the cochineal insects had laid their eggs, and this
only takes place at a particular season. We shall see in the Voirbo
case, quoted above, how an ingenious police officer, when he found
bloodstains on a floor, discovered where a body had been buried by
emptying a can of water on the uneven stones and following the channels
in which it ran.
[Illustration: TAKING MEASUREMENTS OF CRIMINALS (BERTILLON SYSTEM).]
Finger-prints and foot-marks have again and again been cleverly worked
into undeniable evidence. The impression of the first is personal and
peculiar to the individual; by the latter the police have been able to
fix beyond question the direction in which criminals have moved, their
character and class, and the neighbourhood that owns them. The labours
of the scientist have within the last few years produced new methods of
identification, which are invaluable in the pursuit and detection of
criminals. The patient investigations of a medical expert, M. Bertillon,
of Paris (one of the witnesses in the Dreyfus case), developing the
scientific discovery of his father, have proved beyond all question that
certain measurements of the human frame are not only constant and
unchangeable, but peculiar to each subject; the width of the head, the
length of the face, of the middle finger, of the lower limbs from knee
to foot, and so forth, provide such a number of combinations that no two
persons, speaking broadly, possess them all exactly alike. This has
established the system of anthropometry, of "man measurement," which has
now been adopted on the same lines by every civilised nation in the
world. The system, however, is on the face of it a complicated one, and
at New Scotland Yard it has now been abandoned in favour of the
finger-prints method. Mr. Francis Galton, to whose researches this mode
of identification is due, has proved that finger prints, exhibited in
certain unalterable combinations, suffice to fix individual identity,
and his system of notation, as now practised in England, will soon
provide a general register of all known criminals in the country.
[Illustration: EAR AND HEAD MEASURERS (THE BERTILLON SYSTEM).]
[Illustration: MR. GALTON'S TYPES OF FINGER-PRINTS.]
The ineffaceable odour of musk and other strong scents has more than
once brought home robbery and murder to their perpetrators. A most
interesting case is recorded by General Harvey,[1] where, in the plunder
of a native banker and pawnbroker in India, an entire pod of musk, just
as it had been excised from the deer, was carried off with a number of
valuables. Musk is a costly commodity, for it is rare, and obtained
generally from far-off Thibet. The police, in following up the dacoits,
invaded their _tanda_, or encampment, and were at once conscious of an
unmistakable and overpowering smell of musk,
[Illustration: "AFTER A SHORT STRUGGLE ... THE THIEVES SEIZED THE
OPIUM" (p. 18).]
which was presently dug up with a number of rupees, coins of an uncommon
currency.
In another instance a scent merchant's agent, returning from Calcutta,
brought back with him a flask of spikenard. He travelled up country by
boat part of the way, then landed to complete the journey, and carried
with him the spikenard. He fell among thieves, a small gang of
professional poisoners, who disposed of him, killing him and his
companions and throwing them into the river. Long afterwards the
criminals, who had appropriated all their goods, were detected by the
tell-tale smell of the spikenard in their house, and the flask, nearly
emptied, was discovered beneath a stack of fuel in a small room.
Yet again, the smell of opium led to the detection of a robbery in the
Punjaub, where a train of bullock carts laden with the drug was
plundered by dacoits. After a short struggle the bullock drivers bolted,
the thieves seized the opium and buried it. But, returning through a
village, they were intercepted as suspicious characters, and it was
found that their clothes smelt strongly of opium. Then their footsteps
were traced back to where they had committed the robbery, and thence to
a spot in the dry bed of a river, in which the opium was found buried.
In India, again, many cases of obscure homicide have been brought to
light by such a trifling fact as the practice, common among native
women, of wearing glass, or rather shell lac, bangles or bracelets.
These _choorees_, as they are called, are heated, then wound round wrist
or ankle in continuous circles and joined. They are very brittle, and
will naturally be easily smashed in a violent struggle. Fruitless search
was made for a woman who had disappeared from a village, until in a
field adjoining the fragments of broken _choorees_ were picked up. On
digging below, the corpse of the missing woman, bearing marks of foul
play, was discovered.
In another case a father identified certain broken _choorees_ as
belonging to his daughter; they had been found, with traces of blood and
wisps of female hair, near a well, and were the means of bringing home
the murder. Cheevers[2] tells us that a young woman was seen to throw a
boy ten years of age into a dry well twenty feet deep. Information was
given, and the child was extracted, a corpse. Pieces of _choorees_ were
picked up near the well similar to those worn by the woman, who was
arrested and eventually convicted of murder. Here the ingenious defence
was set up that the child's mother, a woman of the same caste as the
accused, and likely to wear the same kind of bangle, had gone to wail at
the well-side and might have broken her glass ornaments in the excess of
her grief. But sentence of death was passed.
V.--"LUCK" FOR AND AGAINST CRIMINALS.
Among the many outside aids to detection, "luck," blind chance, takes a
very prominent place. We shall come upon innumerable instances of this.
Troppmann, the wholesale murderer, was apprehended quite by accident,
because his papers were not in proper form. He might still have escaped
prolonged arrest had he not run for it and tried to drown himself in the
harbour at Havre. The chief of a band of French burglars was arrested in
a street quarrel, and was found to be carrying a great part of the
stolen bonds in his pocket. When Charles Peace was taken at Blackheath
in the act of burglary, and charged with wounding a policeman, no one
suspected that this supposed half-caste mulatto, with his dyed skin, was
a murderer much wanted in another part of the country. Every good police
officer freely admits the assistance he has had from fortune. One of
these--famous, not to say notorious, for he fell into bad
ways--described to me how he was much thwarted and baffled in a certain
case by his inability to come upon the person he was after, or any trace
of him, and how, meeting a strange face in the street, a sudden impulse
prompted him to turn and follow it, with the satisfactory result that he
was led straight to his desired goal. The same officer confessed that
chancing to see a letter delivered by the postman at a certain door he
was tempted to become possessed of it, and did not hesitate to steal it.
When he had opened and read it, he found the clue of which he was in
search!
Criminals themselves believe strongly in luck, and in some cases are
most superstitious. An Italian, whose speciality was sacrilege, never
broke into a church without kneeling down before the altar to pray for
good fortune and large booty. The whole system of Thuggee was based on
superstition. The bands never operated without taking the omens; noting
the flight of birds, the braying of a jackass to right or left, and so
on, interpreting these things as warnings
[Illustration: THE FIGHT BETWEEN MACAIRE AND THE DOG OF MONTARGIS.
(_From an Old Print._)]
or as encouragements to proceed. This superstitious belief in luck is
still prevalent. A notorious banknote forger in France carefully
abstained from counterfeiting notes of two values, those for 500 francs
and 2,000 francs, being convinced that they would bring him into
trouble. Thieves, it has been noticed, generally follow one line of
business, because a first essay in it was successful. The man who steals
coats steals them continually; once a horse thief always a horse thief;
the forger sticks to his own line, as do the pickpocket, the burglar,
and the performer of the confidence trick. The burglar dislikes
extremely the use of any tools or instruments but his own; he generally
believes that another man's false keys, jemmies, and so forth, would
bring him bad luck. Only in matter-of-fact America does the cracksman
rise superior to superstition. There a good business is done by certain
people who lend housebreaking tools on hire.
Instinct, aboriginal and animal, has helped at times to bring criminals
to justice. The mediæval story of the dog of Montargis may be mere
fable, but it rests on historic tradition that after Macaire had
murdered Aubry de Montdidier in the forest of Bondy, the extraordinary
aversion shown by the dog to Macaire first aroused suspicion, and led to
the ordeal of mortal combat, in which the dog triumphed.
[Illustration: SUMATRAN THIEVES' CALENDAR (BRITISH MUSEUM) FOR
CALCULATING LUCKY DAYS.]
It has been sometimes suggested that the instinct of animals might be
further utilised in the pursuit of criminals. Something more than the
well-known unerring chase of the bloodhound might be got from the
marvellous intelligence of dogs. We shall see how the strange
restlessness of the dog owned by Wainwright's manager in the Whitechapel
Road nearly led to the discovery of the murdered Harriet Lane's remains.
The clever beast was perpetually scratching at the floor beneath which
the poor woman was buried, and his inconvenient restlessness no doubt
led to his own destruction, for Wainwright is said to have made away
with the dog. In India the idea of using the pariah dog for the purpose
of smelling out buried bodies has been often put forward. Dogs would
avail little, however, if the corpse lay at a great depth below ground,
and hence the suggestion to draw upon the keener sense, exercised over a
wider range above and below ground, of the vulture. This foul bird is
commonly believed to be untameable, but it might assist unconsciously.
Vultures are much given to perching upon the same tree near every Indian
station, and close observation might reveal the direction of their
flight. Their presence at any particular spot would constitute fair
grounds for suspicion that they were after carrion. Indian police
experience records many cases of the discovery of bodies through the
agency of kites, vultures, crows, and scavenging wild beasts. The
howling of a jackal has given the clue; in one remarkable case the body
of a murdered child was traced through the snarling and quarrelling of
jackals over the remains. A murderer who had buried his victim under a
heap of stones, on returning (the old story) to the spot found that it
had been unearthed by wild animals.
VI.--THE TRACKING INSTINCT IN AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINES.
The strange, almost superhuman, powers of the Australian blacks in
following blind, invisible tracks have been turned to good account in
the detection of crime. Their senses of sight, smell, and touch are
abnormally acute. They can distinguish the trail of lost animals one
from the other, and follow it for hundreds of miles. Like the Red
Indians of North America, they judge by a leaf, a blade of grass, a mere
splash in the mud; they can tell with unfailing precision whether the
ground has been recently disturbed, and even what has passed over it.
A remarkable instance occurred in the colony of Victoria in 1851, when a
stockholder, travelling up to Melbourne with a considerable sum of
money, disappeared. His horse had returned riderless to the station, and
without saddle or bridle. A search was at once instituted, but proved
fruitless. The horse's hoof-marks were followed to the very boundary of
the run, near which stood a hut occupied by two shepherds. These men,
when questioned, declared that neither man nor horse had passed that
way. Then a native who worked on the station was pressed into the
service, and starting from the house, walking with downcast eyes and
occasionally putting his nose to the ground, he easily followed the
horse's track to the shepherds' hut, where he at once offered some
information. "Two white mans walk here," he said, pointing to
indications he alone could discover on the ground. A few yards farther
he cried, "Here fight! here large fight!" and it was seen that the grass
had been trampled down. Again, close at hand, he shouted in great
excitement, "Here kill--kill!" A minute examination of the spot showed
that the earth had been moved recently, and on turning it over a
quantity of clotted blood was found below.
[Illustration: AN AUSTRALIAN NATIVE TRACKING.
(_A Sketch from Life._)]
There was nothing, however, definitely to prove foul play, and further
search was necessary. The black now discovered the tracks of men by the
banks of a small stream hard by, which formed the boundary of the run.
The stream was shrunk to a tiny thread after the long drought, and here
and there was swallowed up by sand. But it gathered occasionally into
deep, stagnant pools, which marked its course. Each of these the native
examined, still finding foot-marks on the margin. At last the party
reached a pond larger than any, wide, and seemingly very deep. The
tracker, after circling round and round the bank, said the trail had
ceased, and bent all his attention upon the surface of the water, where
a quantity of dark scum was floating. Some of this he skimmed off,
tasted and smelt it, and decided positively--"White man here."
The pond was soon dragged with grappling-irons and long spears, and
presently a large sack was brought up, which was found to contain the
mangled remains of the missing stockholder. The sack had been weighted
with many stones to prevent it from rising to the surface.
Suspicion fell upon the two shepherds who lived in the hut on the
boundary of the run. One was a convict on ticket-of-leave, the other a
deserter from a regiment in England. Both had taken part in the search,
and both had appeared much agitated and upset as the black's marvellous
discoveries were laid bare. Both, too, incautiously urged that the
search had gone far enough, and protested against examining the ponds.
While this was being done, and unobserved by them, a magistrate and two
constables went to their hut and searched it thoroughly. They first sent
away an old woman who acted as the shepherds' servant, and then turned
over the place. Nothing was found in the hut, but in an outhouse they
came upon a coat and waistcoat and two pairs of trousers, all much
stained with fresh blood-marks. On this the shepherds were arrested and
sent down to Melbourne.
What had become of the saddle-bags in which the murdered man had carried
his cash? It was surmised that they had been put by in some safe place,
and again the services of the native tracker were sought. He now made a
start from the shepherds' hut, and discovered as before, by sight and
smell, the tracks of two men's feet, travelling northward. These took
him to a gully or dry watercourse, in the centre of which was a high
pile of stones. The tracks ended at a stone on the side, where the
native said he smelt leather. When several stones had been taken down,
the saddle-bags, saddle, and bridle were found hidden in an inner
receptacle. The money, the motive of the murder, was still in the
bags--no less than £2,000--and had been left there, no doubt, for
removal at a more convenient time.
[Illustration: AUSTRALIAN SHEPHERD'S HUT.]
The shepherds were put on their trial, and the evidence thus accumulated
was deemed convincing by a jury. It was also proved that the
blood-stained clothes had been worn by the prisoners both on the day
before and on the very day of the murder. The stains were ascertained by
chemical analysis to be of human blood, not of sheep's, as set up by the
defence. It was also shown that the men had been absent from the hut the
greater part of the morning of the murder. They were executed at
Melbourne.
This extraordinary faculty of following a trail is characteristic of all
the Australian blacks. It was remarkably illustrated in a Queensland
case, where a man was missing who was supposed to have been murdered,
and whose remains were discovered by the black trackers. An aged
shepherd, who had long served on a certain station, was at last sent off
with a considerable sum, arrears of pay. He started down country, but
was never heard of again. Various suspicious reports started a belief
that he had been the victim of foul play. The police were called in, and
proceeded to make a thorough search, assisted by several blacks, who
usually hang about the station loafing. But they lost their native
indolence when there was tracking to be done. Now they were roused to
keenest excitement, and entered eagerly into the work, jabbering and
gesticulating, with flashing eyes. No one, to look at these eyes,
generally dull and bleary, could imagine that they possessed such visual
powers, or that their owners were so shrewdly observant.
[Illustration: AUSTRALIAN NATIVE TYPES.]
The search commenced at the hut lately occupied by the shepherd. The
first thing discovered, lying among the ashes of the hearth, was a
spade, which might have been used as a weapon of offence; spots on it,
as the blacks declared, were of blood. Some similar spots were pointed
out upon the hard, well-trodden ground outside, and the track led to a
creek or water-hole, on the banks of which the blacks picked up among
the tufts of short dried grass several locks of reddish-white hair,
invisible to everyone else. The depths of the water were now probed with
long poles, and the blacks presently fished up a blucher boot with an
iron heel. The hair and the boot were both believed to belong to the
missing shepherd. The trackers still found locks of hair, following them
to a second water-hole, where all traces ceased, and it was supposed by
some that the body lay there at the bottom. Not so the blacks, who
asserted that it had now been lifted upon horseback for removal to a
more distant spot, and in proof pointed out hoof-marks, which had
escaped observation until they detected them. The hoof-marks were large
and small, obviously of a mare and her foal. Yet the water-hole was
searched thoroughly; the blacks stripped and dived, they smelt and
tasted the water, but always shook their heads, and, as a matter of
fact, nothing was found in this second creek. The pursuit returned to
the hoof-marks, and these were followed to the edge of a scrub, where
for the time they were lost.
Next day, however, they were again picked up, on the hard, bare ground,
where there was hardly a blade of grass. They led to the far-off edge of
a plain, towards a small spiral column which ascended into the sky. It
was the remains of an old and dilapidated sheep-yard, which had been
burnt by the station overseer. This man, it should have been premised,
had all along been suspected of making away with the shepherd from
interested motives, having been the depositary of his savings. And it
was remembered that he had paid several visits in the last few days to
the burning sheep-yard. Now, when the search party reached the spot,
where little but charred and smouldering embers remained, the blacks
eagerly turned over the ashes. Suddenly a woman, a black "gin," screamed
shrilly, and cried, "Bones sit down here," and closer examination
disclosed a heap of calcined human remains. Small portions of the skull
were still unconsumed, and a few teeth were found, quite perfect, having
altogether escaped the action of the fire. Soon the buckle of a belt was
discovered, and identified as having been worn by the missing shepherd,
and also the iron heel of a boot corresponding to that found in the
first water-hole. Thus the marvellous sagacity of the black trackers had
solved the mystery of the shepherd's disappearance; but, although the
shepherd's fate was thereby established beyond doubt, the evidence was
not sufficient to bring home the crime of murder to the overseer.
VII.--THE SHORTSIGHTEDNESS OF SOME CRIMINALS.
Not the least useful of the many allies found by the police are the
criminals themselves. Their shortsightedness is often extraordinary;
even when seemingly most careful to cover up their tracks they will
neglect some small point, will drop unconsciously some slight clue,
which, sooner or later, must betray them. In an American murder, at
Michigan, a man killed his wife in the night by braining her with a
heavy club. His story was that his bedroom had been entered through the
window by some unknown murderer. This theory was at once disproved by
the fact that the window was still nailed down on one side. The real
murderer in planning the crime had extracted one nail and left the
other.
The detection of the murderers of M. Delahache, a misanthrope who lived
with a paralysed mother and one old servant in a ruined abbey at La
Gloire Dieu, near Troyes, was much facilitated by the carelessness with
which the criminals neglected to carry off a note-book from the safe.
After they had slain their three victims, they forced the safe and
carried off a large quantity of securities payable to bearer, for M.
Delahache was a saving, well-to-do person. They took all the gold and
banknotes, but they left the title-deeds of the property and his
memorandum book, in which the late owner had recorded in shorthand,
illegible by the thieves, the numbers and description of the stock he
held, mostly in Russian and English securities. By means of these
indications it was possible to trace the stolen papers and secure the
thieves, who still possessed them, together with the pocket-book itself
and a number of other valuables that had belonged to M. Delahache.
Criminals continually "give themselves away" by their own carelessness,
their stupid, incautious behaviour. It is almost an axiom in detection
to watch the scene of a murder for the visit of the criminal, who seems
almost irresistibly drawn thither. The same impulse attracts the French
murderer to the Morgue, where his victim lies in full public view. This
is so thoroughly understood in Paris that the police keep officers in
plain clothes among the crowd which is always filing past the
plate-glass windows separating the public from the marble slopes on
which the bodies are exposed. An Indian criminal's steps generally lead
him homeward to his own village, on which the Indian police set a close
watch when a man is much wanted. Numerous cases might be quoted in which
offenders disclose their crime by ill-advised ostentation: the reckless
display of much cash by those who were, seemingly, poverty-stricken just
before; self-indulgent extravagance, throwing money about wastefully,
not seldom parading in the very clothes of their victims. A curious
instance of the neglect of common precaution was that of Wainwright, the
murderer of Harriet Lane, who left the _corpus delicti_, the damning
proof of his guilt, to the prying curiosity of an outsider, while he
went off in search of a cab.
One of the most remarkable instances of the want of reticence in a
great criminal and his detection through his own foolishness occurred in
the case of the Stepney murderer, who betrayed himself to the police
when they were really at fault and their want of acuteness was being
made the subject of much caustic criticism. The victim was an aged woman
of eccentric character and extremely parsimonious habits, who lived
entirely alone, only admitting a woman to help her in the housework for
an hour or two every day. She owned a good deal of house property, let
out in tenements to the working classes. As a rule she collected the
rents herself, and was believed to have considerable sums from time to
time in her house. This made her timid; being naturally of a suspicious
nature, she fortified herself inside with closed shutters and locked
doors, never opening to a soul until she had closely scrutinised any
visitor. It called for no particular remark that for several days she
had not issued forth. She was last seen on the evening of the 13th of
August, 1860. When people came to see her on business on the 14th, 15th,
and 16th, she made no response to their loud knockings, but her strange
habits were well known; moreover, the neighbourhood was so densely
inhabited that it was thought impossible she could have been the victim
of foul play.
At last, on the 17th of August, a shoemaker named Emm, whom she
sometimes employed to collect rents at a distance, went to Mrs.
Elmsley's lawyers and expressed his alarm at her non-appearance. The
police were consulted, and decided to break into the house. Its owner
was found lying dead on the floor in a lumber-room at the top of the
house. Life had been extinct for some days, and death had been caused by
blows on the head with a heavy plasterer's hammer. The body lay in a
pool of blood, which had also splashed the walls, and a bloody footprint
was impressed on the floor, pointing outwards from the room. There were
no appearances of forcible entry to the house, and the conclusion was
fair that whoever had done the deed had been admitted by Mrs. Elmsley
herself. A possible clue to the criminal was afforded by the several
rolls of wall-paper lying about near the corpse. Mrs. Elmsley was in the
habit of employing workmen on her own account to carry out repairs and
decorations in her houses, and the indications pointed to her having
been visited by one of these, who had perpetrated the crime. Yet the
police made no useful deductions from these data.
While they were still at fault a man named Mullins, a plasterer by trade
and an ex-member of the Irish constabulary, who knew Mrs. Elmsley well
and had often worked for her, came forward voluntarily to throw some
light on the mystery. Nearly a month had elapsed since the murder, and
he declared that during this period his attention had been drawn to the
man Emm and his suspicious conduct. He had watched him, had frequently
seen him leave his cottage and proceed stealthily to a neighbouring
brickfield, laden on each occasion with a parcel he did not bring back.
Mullins, after giving this information quite unsought, led the police
officers to the spot, and into a ruined outbuilding, where a strict
search was made. Behind a stone slab they discovered a paper parcel
containing articles which were at once identified as part of the
murdered woman's property. Mullins next accompanied the police to Emm's
house, and saw the supposed criminal arrested. But to his utter
amazement the police turned on Mullins and took him also into custody.
Something in his manner had aroused suspicion, and rightly, for
eventually he was convicted and hanged for the crime.
[Illustration: "HAD ... FREQUENTLY SEEN HIM ... PROCEED STEALTHILY TO A
NEIGHBOURING BRICKFIELD."]
Here Mullins had only himself to thank. Whatever the impulse--that
strange restlessness that often affects the secret murderer, or the
consuming fear that the scent was hot, and his guilt must be discovered
unless he could shift suspicion--it is certain that but for his own act
he would never have been arrested. It may be interesting to complete
this case, and show how further suspicion settled around Mullins. The
parcel found in the brickfield was tied up with a tag end of tape and a
bit of a dirty apron string. A precisely similar piece of tape was
discovered in Mullins's lodgings lying upon the mantelshelf. There was
an inner parcel fastened with waxed cord. The idea with Mullins was, no
doubt, to suggest that the shoemaker Emm had used cobbler's wax. But a
piece of wax was also found in Mullins's possession, besides several
articles belonging to the deceased.
The most conclusive evidence was the production of a plasterer's hammer,
which was also found in Mullins's house. It was examined under the
microscope, and proved to be stained with blood. Mullins had thrown away
an old boot, which chanced to be picked up under the window of a room he
occupied. This boot fitted exactly into the blood-stained footprint on
the floor in Mrs. Elmsley's lumber-room; moreover, two nails protruding
from the sole corresponded with two holes in the board, and, again, a
hole in the middle of the sole was filled up with dried blood. So far as
Emm was concerned, he was able clearly to establish an _alibi_, while
witnesses were produced who swore to having seen Mullins coming across
Stepney Green at dawn on the day of the crime with bulging pockets
stuffed full of something, and going home; he appeared much perturbed,
and trembled all over.
Mullins was found guilty without hesitation, and the judge expressed
himself perfectly satisfied with the verdict. The case was much
discussed in legal circles and in the Press, and all opinions were
unanimously hostile to Mullins. The convict steadfastly denied his guilt
to the last, but left a paper exonerating Emm. It is difficult to
reconcile this with his denunciation of that innocent man, except on the
ground of his own guilty knowledge of the real murderer. In any case, it
was he himself who first lifted the veil and stupidly brought justice
down upon himself.
The case of Mullins was in some points forestalled by the discovery of
an Indian murder, in which the native police ingeniously entrapped the
criminal to assist in his own detection. A man in Kumacu, named Mungloo,
disappeared, and a neighbour, Moosa, was suspected of having made away
with him. The police, unable to bring home the murder to him, caught
him by bringing to him a corpse which they declared was Mungloo's. Moosa
knew better, and said so. Imprudently anxious to shift all suspicion
from himself, he told the police that a certain Kitroo knew where the
real corpse lay, and advised them to arrest him. Kitroo was seized, and
confessed in effect that Mungloo was buried close to his house. The
ground was opened, and at a considerable depth down the body was found.
Now Moosa came forward and claimed the credit, as well as the proffered
reward for discovery. He was, he said, the first to indicate where the
body was hidden. But Kitroo turned Queen's evidence, and swore that he
had seen the murder committed by Moosa and three others, and that, as he
was an eye-witness, he was compelled by them to become an accomplice.
Moosa was sentenced to transportation for life. There was in his case no
necessity to accuse Kitroo, and but for his officiousness the corpse
would never, probably, have been brought to light.
VIII.--SOME UNAVENGED CRIMES.
There have, however, been occasions when detection has failed more or
less completely. The police do not admit always that the perpetrators
remain unknown; they have clues, suspicion, strong presumption, even
more, but there is a gap in the evidence forthcoming, and to attempt
prosecution would be to face inevitable defeat. To this day it is held
at Scotland Yard that the real murderer in a mysterious murder in London
in the seventies was discovered, but that the case failed before an
artfully planned _alibi_. Sometimes an arrest is made on grounds that
afford strong _primâ-facie_ evidence, yet the case breaks down in court.
The Burdell murder in 1857, in New York, was one of these. Dr. Burdell
was a wealthy and eccentric dentist, owning a house in Bond Street, the
greater part of which he let out in tenements. One of his tenants was a
Mrs. Cunningham, to whom he became engaged, and whom, according to one
account, he married. In any case, they quarrelled furiously, and Dr.
Burdell warned her that she must leave the house, as he had let her
rooms. Whereupon she told him significantly that he might not live to
sign the agreement. Shortly afterwards he was found murdered, stabbed
with fifteen wounds, and there were all the signs of a violent struggle.
The wounds must
[Illustration: OLD MILLBANK PRISON.]
have been inflicted by a left-handed person, and Mrs. Cunningham was
proved to be left-handed. The facts were strong against her, and she was
arrested, but was acquitted on trial.
It came out long after the mysterious Road (Somerset) murder that the
detectives were absolutely right about it, and that Inspector Whicher,
of Scotland Yard, in fixing the crime on Constance Kent, had worked out
the case with singular acumen. He elicited the motive--her jealousy of
the little brother, one of a second family; he built up the clever
theory of the abstracted nightdress, and obtained what he considered
sufficient proof. It will be remembered that this accusation was
denounced as frivolous and unjust. Mr. Whicher was so overwhelmed with
ridicule that he soon afterwards retired from the force, and died, it
was said, of a broken heart. His failure, as it was called, threw
suspicion upon Mr. Kent, the father of the murdered child, and Gough,
the boy's nurse, and both were apprehended and charged, but the cases
were dismissed. In the end, as all the world knows, Constance Kent, who
had entered an Anglican sisterhood, made full confession to the Rev. Mr.
Wagner, of Brighton, and she was duly convicted of murder. Although
sentence of death was passed, it was commuted, and I had her in my
charge at Millbank for years.
The outside public may think that the identity of that later miscreant,
"Jack the Ripper," was never revealed. So far as absolute knowledge
goes, this is undoubtedly true. But the police, after the last murder,
had brought their investigations to the point of strongly suspecting
several persons, all of them known to be homicidal lunatics, and against
three of these they held very plausible and reasonable grounds of
suspicion. Concerning two of them the case was weak, although it was
based on certain suggestive facts. One was a Polish Jew, a known
lunatic, who was at large in the district of Whitechapel at the time of
the murder, and who, having developed homicidal tendencies, was
afterwards confined in an asylum. This man was said to resemble the
murderer by the one person who got a glimpse of him--the
police-constable in Mitre Court. The second possible criminal was a
Russian doctor, also insane, who had been a convict in both England and
Siberia. This man was in the habit of carrying about surgical knives and
instruments in his pockets; his antecedents were of the very worst, and
at the time of the Whitechapel murders he was in hiding, or, at least,
his whereabouts was never exactly known. The third person was of the
same type, but the suspicion in his case was stronger, and there was
every reason to believe that his own friends entertained grave doubts
about him. He also was a doctor in the prime of life, was believed to be
insane or on the borderland of insanity, and he disappeared immediately
after the last murder, that in Miller's Court, on the 9th of November,
1888. On the last day of that year, seven weeks later, his body was
found floating in the Thames, and was said to have been in the water a
month. The theory in this case was that after his last exploit, which
was the most fiendish of all, his brain entirely gave way, and he became
furiously insane and committed suicide. It is at least a strong
presumption that "Jack the Ripper" died or was put under restraint after
the Miller's Court affair, which ended this series of crimes. It would
be interesting to know whether in this third case the man was
left-handed or ambidextrous, both suggestions having been advanced by
medical experts after viewing the victims. It is true that other doctors
disagreed on this point, which may be said to add another to the many
instances in which medical evidence has been conflicting, not to say
confusing.
Yet the incontestable fact remains, unsatisfactory and disquieting, that
many murder mysteries have baffled all inquiry, and that the long list
of undiscovered crimes is continually receiving mysterious additions. An
erroneous impression, however, prevails that such failures are more
common in Great Britain than elsewhere. No doubt the British police are
greatly handicapped by the law's limitations, which in England always
act in protecting the accused. But with all their advantages, the power
to make arrests on suspicion, to interrogate the accused parties and
force on self-incrimination, the Continental police meet with many
rebuffs. Numbers of cases are "classed," as it is officially called in
Paris--that is, pigeon-holed for ever and a day, lacking sufficient
proofs for trial, and in some instances, indeed, there is no clue
whatever. In every country, and in all times, past and present, there
have been crimes that defied detection.
Feuerbach, in his record of criminal trials in Bavaria, tells, for
example, of the unsolved murder mystery of one Rupprecht, a notorious
usurer of Munich, who was killed in 1817 in the doorway of a public
tavern not fifty yards from his own residence. Yet his murderer was
never discovered. The tavern was called the "hell"; it was a place of
evil resort, for Rupprecht, a mean, parsimonious old curmudgeon, was
fond of low company and spent most of his nights here, swallowing beer
and cracking jokes with his friends. One night the landlord, returning
from his cellar, heard a voice in the street asking for Rupprecht, and,
going up to the drinking saloon, conveyed the message. Rupprecht went
down to see his visitor and never returned. Within a minute deep groans
were heard as of a person in a fit or in extreme pain. All rushed
downstairs and found the old man lying in a pool of blood just inside
the front door. There was a gaping wound in his head, but he was not
unconscious, and kept repeating, "Wicked rogue! wicked villain! the axe!
the axe!"
[Illustration: "FOUND THE OLD MAN LYING IN A POOL OF BLOOD."]
The wound had been inflicted by some sharp instrument, possibly a sword
or sabre, wielded by a powerful hand. The victim must have been taken
unawares, when his back was turned. The theory constructed by the police
was that the murderer had waited within the porch out of sight, standing
on a stone bench in a dark corner near the street door; that Rupprecht,
finding no one to explain the summons, had looked out into the street
and then had made to go back into the house. After he had turned the
blow was struck. Thus not a scrap of a clue was left on the theatre of
the crime. But Rupprecht was still alive and able to answer simple
questions. A judge was summoned to interrogate him, and asked, "Who
struck you?" "Schmidt," replied Rupprecht. "Which Schmidt?" "Schmidt the
woodcutter." Further inquiries elicited statements that Schmidt had used
a hatchet, that he lived in the Most, that they had quarrelled some time
before. Rupprecht said he had recognised his assailant, and he went on
muttering, "Schmidt, Schmidt, woodcutter, axe." To find Schmidt was
naturally the first business of the police. The name was as common as
Smith is with us, and many Schmidts were woodcutters. Three Schmidts
were suspected. One was a known confederate of thieves; another had been
intimate, but afterwards was on bad terms, with Rupprecht: this was "Big
Schmidt"; the third, his brother, "Little Schmidt," also knew Rupprecht.
All three, although none lived in the Most, were arrested and confronted
with Rupprecht, but he recognised none of them; and he died next day,
having become speechless and unconscious at the last. Only the first
Schmidt seemed guilty; he was much agitated when interrogated, he
contradicted himself, and could give no good account of the employment
of his time when the offence was committed. Moreover, he had a hatchet;
it was examined and spots were found upon it, undoubtedly of blood. He
was brought into the presence of the dead Rupprecht, and was greatly
overcome with terror and agitation.
Yet after the first accusation he offered good rebutting evidence. He
explained the stain by saying he had a chapped hand which bled, and when
it was pointed out that this was the right hand, which would be at the
other end of the axe shaft, he was able in reply to prove that he was
left-handed. Again, the wound in the head was considerably longer than
the blade of the axe, and an axe cannot be drawn along after the blow.
The murderer's cries had been heard by the landlord, inquiring for
Rupprecht, but it was not Schmidt's voice. There was an _alibi_,
moreover, or as good as one. Schmidt was at his mother-in-law's, and
was known to have gone home a little before the murder; soon after it,
his wife found him in bed and asleep. If he had committed the crime he
must have jumped out of bed again almost at once, run more than a mile,
wounded Rupprecht, returned, gone back to bed and to sleep, all in less
than an hour. Further, it was shown by trustworthy evidence that this
Schmidt knew nothing of the murder after it had occurred.
The police drew blank also with "Big Schmidt" and "Little Schmidt,"
neither of whom had left home on the night of the murder. They were no
more successful with other Schmidts, although every one of the name was
examined, and it was now realised that the last delirious words of the
dying man had led them astray. But while hunting up the Schmidts it was
not forgotten by the police that Rupprecht had also cried out, "My
daughter! my daughter!" after he had been struck down. This might have
been from the desire to see her in his last moments. On the other hand,
he was estranged from this daughter, and he positively hated his
son-in-law. They were no doubt a cold-blooded pair, these Bieringers, as
they were called. The daughter showed little emotion when she heard her
father had been mortally wounded; she looked at him as he lay without
emotion, and had so little lost her appetite that she devoured a whole
basin of soup in the house. It was suspicious, too, that she tried to
fix the guilt on "Big Schmidt." Bieringer was a man of superior station,
well bred and well educated; and he lived on very bad terms with his
wife, who was coarse, vulgar, and of violent temper like her father; and
once at his instance she was imprisoned for forty-eight hours. Rupprecht
sided with his daughter, and openly declared that in leaving her his
money he would tie it up so tightly that Bieringer could not touch a
penny. This he had said openly, and it was twisted into a motive why
Bieringer should remove him before he could make such a will. But a
sufficient _alibi_ was proved by Bieringer; his time was accounted for
satisfactorily on the night of the murder. The daughter was absolved
from guilt, for even if she, a woman, could have struck so shrewd a
blow, it was not to her interest to kill a father who sided with her
against her husband and was on the point of making a will in her favour.
Other arrests were made, Rupprecht's maid reported that three troopers
belonging to the regiment in garrison had called on her master the very
day of the murder; one of them owed him money which he could not pay,
and the others, it was thought, had joined him in trying to intimidate
the usurer. But the case of these troopers, men who could handle the
very weapon that did the deed, broke down on clear proof that they were
elsewhere at the time of the murder. The one flaw in the otherwise acute
investigation was that the sabres of all the troopers had not been
examined before so much noise had been made about the murder. But from
the first attention had been concentrated on axes, wielded by
woodcutters, and the probable use of a sabre had been overlooked. After
the troopers, two other callers had come, and Rupprecht had given them a
secret interview. One proved to be the regimental master-tailor, who was
seeking a loan and had brought with him a witness to the transaction.
Their innocence also was clearly proved; and although many other persons
were arrested they were in all cases discharged.
[Illustration: "HER BODY ... WAS FOUND IN THE WATER" (p. 40).]
The murder of this Rupprecht has remained a mystery. The only plausible
suggestion was that he had been murdered by some aggrieved person, some
would-be borrower whom he had rejected, or some debtor who could not pay
and thought this the simplest way of clearing his obligation. The
authorities could not fix this on anyone, for Rupprecht made no record
of his transactions; he could neither read nor write, and kept all his
accounts "in his head." Only on rare occasions did he call in a
confidential friend to look through his papers when there was question
of arranging them or finding a note of hand. No one but Rupprecht
himself could have afforded the proper clue; and, as it was, he had led
the police in the wrong direction.
Numerous murder mysteries have been contributed by American criminal
records. Special interest attaches to the case of Mary Rogers, "the
pretty cigar seller" of New York, who was done to death by persons
unknown in 1840, because it formed the basis of Edgar Allan Poe's famous
story, "The Mystery of Marie Roget." The scene of that story is Paris,
but the murder was actually committed near New York. Mary Rogers had
many admirers, but her character was good, her conduct seemingly
irreproachable. She was supposed to have spent her last Sunday with
friends, but was seen with a single companion late that afternoon at a
little restaurant near Hoboken. As she never returned home her
disappearance caused much excitement, but at length her body, much
maltreated, was found in the water near Sybil's Cave, Hoboken. Many
arrests were made, but the crime was never brought home to anyone.
Poe's suggested solution, the jealous rage of an old lover returned from
sea, was no more than ingenious fiction. Among others upon whom
suspicion fell was John Anderson, the cigar merchant in whose employ
Mary Rogers was, and it was encouraged by his flight after the discovery
of the murder. But when arrested and brought back, he adduced what was
deemed satisfactory proof of an _alibi_. Anderson lived to amass
enormous wealth, and about the time of his death in Paris in 1881 the
evil reports of his complicity in the murder were revived, but nothing
new transpired. It was said that in his later years Anderson became an
ardent spiritualist, and that the murdered Mary Rogers was one among the
many spirits he communed with.
The murder of Mary Rogers was not the only unsolved mystery of its class
beyond the Atlantic. It was long antedated by that known as the
Manhattan Well Mystery. This murder occurred as far back as 1799, when
New York was little more than a village compared to its present size.
The Manhattan Company, now a bank, had then the privilege of supplying
the city with water. The well stood in an open field, and all
passers-by had free access to it. One day the pretty niece of a
respectable Quaker disappeared; she had left her home, it was said, to
be privately married, and nothing more was seen of her till she was
fished out of the Manhattan well. Some thought she had committed
suicide, but articles of her dress were found at a distance from the
well, including her shoes, none of which she was likely to have removed
and left there before drowning herself. Her muff, moreover, was found in
the water; why should she have retained that to the last? Suspicion
rested upon the man whom she was to have married, and who had called for
her in his sleigh after she had already left the house. This man was
tried for his life, but the case broke down, and the murder has always
baffled detection.
Later, in 1830, there was the mystery of Sarah M. Cornell, in which
suspicion fell upon a reverend gentleman of the Methodist persuasion,
who was acquitted. Again, in 1836, there was the murder of Helen Jewitt,
which was never cleared up; and more recently that of the Ryans, brother
and sister; while the murder of Annie Downey, commonly called "Curly
Tom," a New York flower-girl, recalls many of the circumstances of the
murders in Whitechapel.
A great crime that altogether baffled the New York police occurred in
1870, and is still remembered as an extraordinary mystery. It was the
murder of a wealthy Jew named Nathan, in his own house in Twenty-third
Street. He had come up from the country in July for a religious
ceremony, and slept at home. His two sons, who were in business, also
lived in the Twenty-third Street house. The only other occupant was a
housekeeper. The sons, returning late, one after the other, looked in on
their father and found him sleeping peacefully. No noise disturbed the
house during the night, but early next morning Mr. Nathan was found a
shapeless mass upon the floor; he had been killed with brutal violence,
and the weapon used, a ship carpenter's "dog," was lying close by the
body besmeared with blood and grey hairs. The dead man's pockets had
been rifled, and all his money and jewellery were gone; a safe that
stood in the corner of the bedroom had been forced and its contents
abstracted.
Various theories were started, but none led to the track of the
criminal. One of Mr. Nathan's sons was suspected, but his innocence was
clearly proved. Another person thought to be guilty was the son of the
resident housekeeper, but that supposition also fell to the ground. Some
of the police were of opinion that it was the work of an ordinary
burglar; others opposed this view, on the ground that the ship
carpenter's "dog" was not a housebreaking tool. One ingenious solution
was offered, and it may be commended to the romantic novelist; it was to
the effect that Mr. Nathan held certain documents gravely compromising
the character of a person with whom he had had business dealings, and
that this person had planned and executed the murder in order to become
repossessed of them. This theory had no definite support from known
fact; but Mr. Nathan was a close, secretive man, who kept all the
threads of his financial affairs in his own hands; and it was said that
no one in his family, not even his wife, was aware what his safe held or
what he carried in his pockets. It is worth noticing that this last
theory resembles very closely the explanation suggested as a solution of
the undiscovered murder of Rupprecht in Bavaria, which has been already
described.
There are one or two striking cases in the records of Indian crime of
murders that have remained undiscovered. Mr. Arthur Crawfurd[3]
describes that of an old Marwari money-lender, which repeats in some
particulars the cases of Rupprecht and Nathan. This usurer was reputed
to be very wealthy. His business was extensive, all his neighbours were
more or less in his debt, and, as he was a hard, unrelenting creditor,
he was generally detested throughout the district.
He lived in a mud-built house all on the ground floor. In front was the
shop where he received his clients, and in this room, visible from the
roadway, was a vast deed-box in which he kept papers, bills, notes of
hand, but never money. When he had agreed to make a loan and all
formalities were completed, he brought the cash from a secret receptacle
in an inner chamber. In this, his strong room, so to speak, which
occupied one corner at the back of the house, he slept. In the opposite
angle lived his granddaughter, a young widow, who kept house for him. He
was protected by a guard of two men in his pay, who slept in an outhouse
close by.
One night the granddaughter, disturbed by a strange noise in the old
man's sleeping place, rose, lit a lamp, and was on the point of entering
the bedroom when the usurer appeared at the door, bleeding profusely
from his mouth and nostrils; his eyes protruded hideously; he was
clearly in the last extremity, and fell almost at once to the ground.
The granddaughter summoned the watchmen, who only arrived in time to
hear a few last inarticulate sounds as their master expired. It was seen
afterwards at the _post-mortem_ that he had been partially smothered,
and subjected to great violence. His assailant must have knelt on him
heavily, for the ribs were nearly all fractured and had been forced into
the lungs.
The police arrived in all haste and made a thorough search of the
premises. It was soon seen that a hole had been made from outside
through the mud wall close by the old man's bed. The orifice was just
large enough to admit a man. There were no traces of any struggle save
the blood, which had flowed freely and inundated the mattress. Strange
to say, there had been no robbery. The money-lender's treasure chamber
was still secure, the lock intact, and all the money and valuables were
found untouched: many bags of rupees, a tin case crammed with currency
notes, and a package containing a considerable quantity of valuable
jewellery. Nor had the deed-box in the shop been interfered with.
The perpetrators of this murder were never discovered. The police,
hoping to entrap them in the not uncommon event of a return to the
theatre of the crime, established themselves secretly inside the house,
but not in the bedroom where the murder was accomplished. They were
right in their surmise, but the design failed utterly through their
culpable neglect. The bedroom, within a fortnight, was again entered,
and in precisely the same way, while the careless watchers slept
unconscious in the adjoining shop. The fair inference was that the
murderers had returned hoping to lay hands on some of the booty which
they had previously missed. But the old man's treasure had been removed,
and they went away disappointed and empty-handed, though unfortunately
they escaped capture.
The same authority, Mr. Arthur Crawfurd, gives another case that belongs
to the class of the New York murder of Mary Rogers
[Illustration: _Photo: Kapp & Co., Calcutta._
PRISONERS AT THE PRESIDENCY GAOL CALCUTTA.]
and our own Whitechapel murders. The body of a female was washed ashore
upon the rocks below the foot of Severndroog, in the South Konkan
district. The fact was reported to Mr. Crawfurd, who found the body of a
fine healthy young Mahomedan woman, who had not been dead for more than
a couple of hours. The only injury to be seen was a severe extended
wound upon one temple, which must have bled profusely, but was not,
according to the medical evidence, sufficient to cause death. It seemed
probable that she had been stunned by it and had fallen in the water, to
be drowned, or that she had been thrown from the cliffs above on to the
rocks, and, becoming unconscious, had slipped into the sea. She had, in
fact, been seen crossing the cliffs on the morning of her death, and was
easily recognised as the wife of a fisherman who lived in a village hard
by, the port of which was filled with small craft that worked coastwise
with goods and passengers, the only traffic of those days.
The only arrests made were those of two Europeans, soldiers, one an army
schoolmaster on his way up coast to Bombay, the other a sergeant about
to be pensioned; and both had been travelling by a coast boat which was
windbound a little below the fort. They had been landed in order to take
a little exercise, and had been forthwith stopped by a crowd of
suspicious natives, who charged them with the crime. Yet on examination
no blood stains were found upon their clothes, and nothing indicative of
a struggle; moreover, it was soon clearly proved that they had not been
put ashore till 10 a.m., whereas the dead body had been picked up before
8 a.m. Further inquiry showed that they were men of estimable character.
But nothing else was elucidated beyond a vague report that the woman's
husband had reason, or believed himself to have reason, to accuse her of
profligacy and had taken this revenge.
Another more recent Indian murder went near to being classed with the
undiscovered. That it was brought home to its perpetrators was due to
the keen intelligence of a native detective officer, the Sirdar Mir
Abdul Ali, of the Bombay police. This clever detective, of whom a
biography has appeared, belonged to the Bombay police, and his many
successes show how much the Indian police has improved of late years.
The murder was known as the Parel case. On the morning of the 24th of
November, 1887, a deal box was picked up on a piece of open marsh close
to the Elphinstone Station at Parel. Near it was an ordinary
counterpane. It was at first supposed that the box had been stolen from
the railway station, and the matter was reported to the police. An
officer soon reached the spot, and ascertained that the box, from which
an offensive smell issued, was locked and fastened. On breaking it open
the remains of a woman were found within, coiled up and jammed in
tightly, and in an advanced stage of decomposition. The face was so much
battered that its features were unrecognisable, but the dress, that of a
Mahomedan, might, it was hoped, lead to identification. According to
custom, the police gathered in thousands of people by beat of _battaki_,
or drum, but no one who viewed the corpse could recognise the clothes.
Moreover, there was no woman reported missing at the time from any house
in Bombay.
Abdul Ali shrewdly surmised either that the woman was a perfect stranger
or that she had been murdered at a distance, and the box containing her
remains had been brought into Bombay to be disposed of without
attracting attention. This box furnished the clue. Abdul Ali, following
out his idea of the stranger visitor, had caused search to be made
through the "rest houses," or _musafarkhanas_ of Bombay, and in one of
these the box was identified as the property of a Pathan, named Syed
Gool, who had but recently married an unknown young woman and had
apparently deserted her. At least, it came out that he had suddenly
taken ship for Aden, and had been accompanied by his daughter and a
friend, but not by his wife. Moreover, witnesses were now prepared to
swear that the clothes found on the corpse at Parel much resembled those
commonly worn by Syed Gool's young wife. The evidence was little more
than presumptive, but the head of the Bombay police persuaded the
Governor to telegraph to the Resident of Aden to look out for the three
passengers and arrest them on landing. They were accordingly taken into
custody and sent back to Bombay.
Even now the case would have been incomplete but for the confession of
one of the parties--Syed Gool's friend, who was known as Noor Mahomed.
This man, a confederate, on arrival at Bombay, made a clean breast of
the crime and was admitted as an approver; but for that the offence
might never have been brought home. Syed Gool, it appeared, had come
from Karachi only a little before, had put up at the _musafarkhana_ of
one Ismail Habib in Pakmodia Street, where he had presently married one
Sherif Khatum, whom he met in this same "rest house," and the whole
party had taken up their residence in another house in the same street.
Noor Mahomed went on to say that husband and wife soon quarrelled as to
the possession of the latter's jewels, and their differences so
increased in bitterness that Syed Gool resolved to murder the woman. He
effected his purpose, assisted by his friend, using a pair of long iron
pincers, with which he compressed her windpipe till she died of
suffocation. The rest of the crime followed a not unusual course: the
packing of the corpse in a wooden box which had been made to Syed Gool's
order by a carpenter, and its removal in a bullock cart to the
neighbourhood of the Elphinstone Station, where the murderers hired a
man to watch it for a few pence during their temporary absence. But they
had no intention of returning; indeed, they embarked at once on board
the Aden steamer, and the man left in charge of the box took it home
with him, where it remained till he was alarmed by the offensive smell
already mentioned. Then he prudently resolved to get rid of it by
removing it to the spot on which it was found.[4]
[Illustration: "THEY WERE ACCORDINGLY TAKEN INTO CUSTODY" (p. 46).]
The tale of undiscovered murders can never be ended, and additions are
made to it continually. In this country fresh cases crop up year after
year, and it would take volumes to catalogue them all. I will mention
but one or two more, merely to point the moral that the police are often
at fault still, even in these latter days of enlightened research, where
so much makes in favour of the law. Thus the Burton Crescent murder, in
December, 1878, must always be remembered against the police. An aged
widow, named Samuel, lived at a house in Burton Crescent, but she kept
no servant on the premises, and took in a lodger, although she was of
independent means. The lodger was a musician in a theatrical orchestra,
away most of the day, returning late to supper. One evening there was no
supper and no Mrs. Samuel, but on making search he found her dead body
in the kitchen, lying in a pool of blood. The police summoned a doctor
to view the corpse, and it was found that Mrs. Samuel had been battered
to death with the fragment of a hat-rail in which many pegs still
remained. The pocket of her dress had been cut off, and a pair of boots
was missing, but no other property. Nothing could have happened till
late in the afternoon, as three workmen, against whom there was
apparently no suspicion, were in the house till then, and the maid who
assisted in the household duties had left Mrs. Samuel alive and well at
4 p.m. Only one arrest was made, that of a woman, one Mary Donovan, who
was frequently remanded on the application of the police, but against
whom no sufficient evidence was forthcoming to warrant her committal for
trial. The Burton Crescent murder has remained a mystery to this day.
So has that of Lieutenant Roper, R.E., who was murdered at Chatham on
the 11th of February, 1881. This young officer, who was going through
the course of military engineering, was found lying dead at the bottom
of the staircase leading to his quarters in Brompton Barracks. He had
been shot with a revolver, and the weapon, six-chambered, was picked up
at a short distance from the body, one shot discharged, the remaining
five barrels still loaded with ball cartridges. The only presumption was
that the murderer's object was plunder, personal robbery. Mr. Roper had
left the mess at an earlier hour than usual, between 8 and 9 p.m., on
the plea that he had letters to write home announcing his approaching
arrival on short leave of absence. A brother officer accompanied him
part of the way to Brompton Barracks, but left him to attend some
entertainment, Roper declining to go at once, for the reason given, but
promising to join him later.
The unfortunate officer was quite unconscious when found, and although
he survived some forty minutes, he never recovered the power of speech,
so that he could give no indication as to his assailant. A poker
belonging to Mr. Roper was found by his side, and it was inferred that
he had entered his room before the attack, and had seized the poker as
the only instrument of self-defence within reach. Not the slightest clue
was ever obtained which would help to solve this mystery; rewards were
offered, but in vain, and the police had at last to confess themselves
entirely baffled. Mr. Roper was an exceedingly promising young officer;
he had but just completed his course of instruction with considerable
credit, and he was said to have been in perfect health and spirits on
the fatal evening, so that there was nothing whatever to support, and
indeed everything to discredit, any theory of suicide.
IX.--A GOOD WORD FOR THE POLICE.
Taking a general view of the case as between hunted and hunters, it may
be fairly considered that the ultimate advantage is with the latter. Let
it be remembered that we hear more of one instance of failure on the
part of the police than of ninety-nine successes. The failure is
proclaimed trumpet-tongued, the successes pass almost unnoticed into the
great garner of criminal reports and judicial or police statistics.
At the very least it must be said that we are bound, in common justice,
to give due credit to the ceaseless activity, the continual, painstaking
effort of the guardians of the public weal. Their methods are the
outcome of long and patient experience, developed and improved as time
passes, and they have deserved, if not always commanded, success. It may
be that the ordinary detective works a little too openly--at least, in
this country; that his face and, till lately, his boots were well known
in the circles generally frequented by his prey. Again, there may be at
times slackness in pursuit, neglect or oversight of early clues.
Well-meaning but obstinate men will not keep a perfectly open mind: they
may cling too long and too closely to a first theory, wresting their
opinions and forcing acquired facts to fit this theory, and so travel
farther and farther along the wrong road. "Shadowing" suspected persons
does not always answer, and may be carried too far; more, it may be so
clumsily done as to put the quarry on his guard and altogether defeat
the object in view. But to lay overmuch stress on such shortcomings as
these would surely savour of hypercriticism. It is more just to accept
with gratitude the overwhelming balance in favour of the police, and
give them the credit due to them for the results achieved.
[Illustration]
Part II.
JUDICIAL ERRORS.
CHAPTER I.
WRONGFUL CONVICTIONS.
Judge Cambo, of Malta--The D'Anglades--The Murder of Lady
Mazel--Execution of William Shaw for the Murder of his
Daughter--The Sailmaker of Deal and the alleged Murder of a
Boatswain--Brunell the Innkeeper--Du Moulin, the Victim of a Gang
of Coiners--The Famous Calas Case at Toulouse--Gross Perversion of
Justice at Nuremberg--The Blue Dragoon.
The criminal annals of all countries record cases of innocent persons
condemned by judicial process on grounds that seemed sufficient at the
time, but that ultimately proved mistaken. Where circumstantial evidence
is alone forthcoming, terrible errors have been committed, and when,
later, new facts are brought to light, the mischief has been done. There
is a family likeness in these causes of judicial mistake: strong
personal resemblance between the real criminal and another; strangely
suspicious facts confirming a first strong conjecture, such as the
suspected person having been near the scene of the crime, having let
drop incautious words, being found with articles the possession of which
has been misinterpreted or has given a wrong impression. Often a sudden
accusation has produced confusion, and consequently a strong presumption
of guilt. Or the accused, although perfectly innocent, has been weak
enough to invent a false defence, as in the case quoted by Sir Edward
Coke of a man charged with killing his niece. The accused put forward
another niece in place of the victim to show that the alleged murder had
never taken place. The trick was discovered, his guilt was assumed, and
he paid the penalty with his life. On the other hand, the deliberate
cunning of the real criminal has succeeded but too often in shifting the
blame with every appearance of probability upon other shoulders.
JUDGE CAMBO OF MALTA.
A curious old story of judicial murder, caused by the infatuation of a
judge, is to be found in the annals of Malta, when under the Knights,
early in the eighteenth century. This judge, Cambo by name, rising early
one morning, heard an affray in the street, just under his window.
Looking out, he saw one man stab another. The wounded man, who had been
flying for his life, reeled and fell. At this moment the assassin's cap
came off, and his face was for a moment fully exposed to the judge
above. Then, quickly picking up the cap, he ran on, throwing away the
sheath of his knife, and, turning into another street, disappeared.
While still doubtful how he should act, the judge now saw a baker,
carrying his loaves for distribution, approach the scene of the murder.
Before he reached the place where the corpse lay, he saw the sheath of
the stiletto, picked it up, and put it into his pocket. Walking on, he
came next upon the corpse. Terrified at the sight, and losing all
self-control, he ran and hid himself lest he should be charged with the
crime. But at that moment a police patrol entered the street, and saw
him disappearing just as they came upon the body of the murdered man.
They naturally concluded that the fugitive was the criminal, and made
close search for him. When they presently caught him, they found him
confused and incoherent, a prey to misgiving at the suspicious position
in which he found himself. He was searched, and the sheath of the
stiletto was discovered in his pocket. When tried, it was found that the
sheath exactly fitted the knife lying by the side of the corpse. The
baker was accordingly taken into custody and carried off to prison.
All this went on under the eyes of the judge, yet he did not interpose
to protect an innocent man. The police came and reported both murder and
arrest; still he said nothing. He was at the time the presiding judge in
the criminal court, and it was before him that the wretched baker was
eventually tried. Cambo was a dull, stupid person, and he now conceived
that he was forbidden to act from his own private knowledge in the
matter brought before him--that he must deal with the case according to
[Illustration: "SAW HIM DISAPPEARING JUST AS THEY CAME UPON THE BODY"
(p. 52).]
the evidence of the witnesses. So he sat on the Bench to hear the
circumstantial proofs against a man who he had no sort of doubt was
actually innocent. When he saw that the evidence was insufficient,
amounting to no more than _semi prova_, half-proof, according to Maltese
law, he used every endeavour to make the accused confess his crime.
Failing in this, he ordered the baker to be "put to the question," with
the result that the man, under torture, confessed to what he had not
done. Cambo was now perfectly satisfied; the accused, innocent in fact,
was guilty according to law, and having thus satisfied himself that his
procedure was right, he carried his strange logic to the end, and
sentenced the baker to death. "Horrible to relate," says the old
chronicle, "the hapless wretch soon after underwent the sentence of the
law."
[Illustration: TORTURE PINCERS, FROM THE CHÂTELET PRISON.[A]]
The sad truth came out at last, when the real murderer, having been
convicted and condemned for another crime, confessed that he was guilty
of the murder for which the baker had wrongly suffered. He appealed to
Judge Cambo himself to verify this statement, for he knew that the judge
had seen him. The Grand Master of the Knights of Malta now called upon
Judge Cambo to defend himself from this grave imputation. Cambo freely
admitted his action, but still held that he had only done his duty, that
he was really right in sending an innocent man to an ignominious death
sooner than do violence to his own legal scruples. The Grand Master was
of a more liberal mind, and condemned the judge to degradation and the
forfeiture of his office, ordering him at the same time to provide
handsomely for the family of his victim.
THE D'ANGLADES.
A very flagrant judicial error was committed in Paris towards the latter
end of the same century, mainly through the obstinate persistence of the
Lieutenant-General of Police in believing that he had discovered the
real perpetrators of a theft. Circumstantial evidence was accepted as
conclusive proof in spite of the unblemished character and the high
social position of the accused.
[Illustration: BRANDING IRONS, FROM THE CHÂTELET PRISON.[5]]
The Marquis d'Anglade and his wife lived in the same house with the
Comte and Comtesse de Montgomerie; it was in the Rue Royale, the best
quarter in Paris, and both kept good establishments. The Montgomeries
were the more affluent, had many servants, and a stable full of horses
and carriages. D'Anglade also kept a carriage, but his income was said
to be greatly dependent upon his winnings at the gaming table. The two
families were on terms of very friendly intercourse, frequently visited,
and accepted each other's hospitality. When the Comte and Comtesse went
to their country house, the D'Anglades often accompanied them.
[Illustration: FRENCH CONVICTS "EN CHAÎNE."
(_From a Drawing by Moanet._)]
It was to have been so on one occasion, but at the eleventh hour the
Marquis d'Anglade begged to be excused on the score of his wife's
indisposition. The Montgomeries went alone, but took most of their
servants with them. When they returned to Paris, a day earlier than they
were expected, they found the door of their apartments open, although it
had been locked when they left. A little later D'Anglade came in. Having
been supping with other friends, and hearing that the Montgomeries were
in the house, he went in to pay his respects. Madame d'Anglade joined
him, and the party did not break up till a late hour. There was no
suspicion of anything wrong then.
Next morning, however, the Comte de Montgomerie discovered that he had
been the victim of a great robbery. His strong box had been opened by a
false key, and thirteen bags of silver, amounting to 13,000 francs, and
11,000 francs in gold, had been abstracted, also a hundred louis d'or
coined in a new pattern, and a valuable pearl necklace. The police were
summoned, and their chief, the Lieutenant-General, declared that someone
resident in the house must be the thief. Suspicion seems to have
attached at once to the D'Anglades, although they readily offered to
allow their premises to be searched. The search was forthwith made, and
the whole of their boxes, the beds and cupboards, and all receptacles in
the rooms they occupied, were thoroughly ransacked. Only the garrets
remained, and D'Anglade willingly accompanied the officers thither. His
wife, being ill and weak, remained downstairs.
Here, in the garret, the searchers came upon seventy-five louis d'or of
the kind above mentioned, wrapped in a scrap of printed paper part of a
genealogical table, which Montgomerie at once identified as his. The
police now wished to fix the robbery on the D'Anglades, and their
suspicions were strengthened by the poor man's confusion when desired,
as a test, to count out the money before them all. He was trembling, a
further symptom of guilt. However, when the basement was next examined,
the part occupied by the Montgomerie servants, evidence much more
incriminatory was obtained against the latter. In the room where they
slept, five of the missing bags of silver were found, all full, and a
sixth nearly so. None of these servants was questioned, yet they were as
likely to be guilty as the accused, more so indeed. But the police
thought only of arresting the D'Anglades, one of whom was imprisoned in
the Châtelet, the other in the Fors l'Evêque prison.
The prosecution was of the most rancorous and pitiless kind. Those who
sat in the seat of justice prejudiced the case in D'Anglade's disfavour,
and, as he still protested his innocence, ordered him to suffer torture
so as to extort confession. He remained obdurate to the last, was
presently found guilty, although on this incomplete evidence, and was
sentenced to the galleys for life, and his wife to be banished from
Paris, with other penalties and disabilities. D'Anglade was condemned to
join the _chaîne_, the gang of convicts drafted to Toulon, and, having
suffered inconceivably on the road, he died of exhaustion at Marseilles.
His wife was consigned to an underground dungeon, where she was confined
of a girl, and both would have succumbed to the rigours of their
imprisonment, when suddenly the truth came out, and they were released
in time to escape death.
An anonymous letter reached a friend of the D'Anglades, coming from a
man who was about to turn monk, being torn by remorse, which gave him no
rest. This man had been one of several confederates, and he declared
that he knew the chief agent in the theft to have been the Comte de
Montgomerie's almoner, a priest called Gaynard, who had stolen the
money, aided by accomplices, mainly by one Belestre, who, from being in
great indigence, had come to be suddenly and mysteriously rich. Gaynard
and Belestre were both already in custody for a street brawl, and when
interrogated they confessed. Gaynard had given impressions of the
Comte's keys to Belestre, who had had false keys manufactured which
opened the strong box. Belestre was also proved to be in possession of a
fine pearl necklace.
The true criminals were now examined and subjected to torture, when they
completely exonerated D'Anglade. The innocent marquis could not be
recalled to life, but a large sum was subscribed, some £4,000, for his
wife, as a slight compensation for the gross injustice done her. The
Comte de Montgomerie was also ordered to make restitution of the
property confiscated, or to pay its equivalent in money.
LADY MAZEL.
One of the earliest of grave judicial blunders to be found in French
records is commonly called the case of Lady Mazel, who was a lady of
rank, living in a large mansion, of which she occupied two floors
herself: the ground floor as reception-rooms, the first floor as her
bedroom and private apartments. The principal door of her bedroom shut
from the inside with a spring, and when the lady retired for the night
there was no access from without, except by a special key which was
always left on a chair _within_ the chamber. Two other doors of her room
opened upon a back staircase, but these were kept constantly locked. On
the second floor was lodged the family chaplain only; above, on the
third floor, were the servants.'
One Sunday evening the mistress supped with the abbé as was her general
practice; then went to her bedroom, where she was attended by her
waiting-maids. Her butler, by name Le Brun, came to take her orders for
the following day, and then, when the maids withdrew, leaving the key on
the chair inside as usual, he also went away, shutting the spring door
behind him.
Next morning there was no sign of movement from the lady, not at seven
a.m. (her time for waking), nor yet at eight--she was still silent, and
had not summoned her servants. Le Brun, the butler, and the maids began
to be uneasy, and at last the son of the house, who was married and
lived elsewhere, was called in. He expressed his fears that his mother
was ill, or that worse had happened, and a locksmith was called in, and
the door presently broken open.
[Illustration: "MY MISTRESS HAS BEEN MURDERED!"]
Le Brun was the first to enter, and he ran at once to the bedside.
Drawing aside the curtains, he saw a sight which made him cry aloud, "My
mistress has been murdered!" and this exclamation was followed by an act
that afterwards went against him. He opened the wardrobe and took out
the strong box. "It is heavy," he said; "at any rate there has been no
robbery." The murder had been committed with horrible violence. The poor
woman had fought hard for life; her hands were all cut and lacerated,
and there were quite fifty wounds on her body. A clasp knife, much
discoloured, was found in the ashes of the fire. Among the bedclothes
they picked up a piece of a coarse lace cravat, and a napkin bearing the
family crest, twisted into a nightcap. The key of the bedroom door,
which had been laid on the chair, had disappeared. Nothing much had been
stolen. The jewels were untouched, but the strong box had been opened
and some of the gold abstracted.
Suspicion fell at once upon the butler, Le Brun. The story he told was
against himself. He said that after leaving his mistress he went down
into the kitchen and fell asleep there. When he awoke he found, to his
surprise, the street-door wide open. He shut it, locked it, and went to
his own bed. In the morning he did his work as usual until the alarm was
given; went to market, called to see his wife, who lived near by, and
asked her to lock up some money, gold crowns and louis d'or, for him.
This was all he had to tell, but on searching him a key was found in his
pocket: a false or skeleton key, the wards of which had been newly
filed, and it fitted nearly all the locks in the house, including the
street-door, the antechamber, and the back door of the lady's bedroom.
The napkin nightcap was tried on his head and fitted him exactly. He was
arrested and shortly afterwards put upon his trial.
It was not alleged that he had committed the murder himself. No blood
had been found on any of his clothes, although there were scratches on
his person. A shirt much stained with blood had been discovered in the
loft, but it did not fit Le Brun, nor was it like any he owned. Nor did
the scrap of coarse lace correspond with any of his cravats; on the
contrary, a maid-servant stated that she thought she recognised it as
belonging to one she had washed for Berry, once a footman in the house.
The supposition was that Le Brun had let some accomplice into the house,
who had escaped after effecting his purpose. This was borne out by the
state of the doors, which showed no signs of having been forced, and by
the discovery of Le Brun's false key.
Le Brun was a man of exemplary character, who had served the family
faithfully for twenty-nine years, and was "esteemed a good husband, a
good father, and a good servant," yet the prosecution seemed satisfied
he was guilty and put him to the torture. In the absence of real proofs
it was hoped, after the cruel custom of the time, to force
self-condemnatory admissions from the accused. The "question
extraordinary" was applied, and the wretched man died on the rack,
protesting his innocence to the last.
[Illustration: THE TORTURE OF THE RACK.]
A month later the real culprit was discovered. The police of Sens had
arrested a horse-dealer named Berry, the man who had been in Lady
Mazel's service as a lackey, but had been discharged. In his possession
was a gold watch proved presently to have belonged to the murdered
woman. He was carried to Paris, where he was recognised by someone who
had seen him leaving Lady Mazel's house on the night she was murdered,
and a barber who shaved him next morning deposed to having seen that his
hands were much scratched. Berry said that he had been killing a cat.
Put to the torture prior to being broken on the wheel, he made full
confession. At first he implicated the son and daughter-in-law of Lady
Mazel, but when at the point of death he retracted the charge, and said
that he had returned to the house with the full intention of committing
the murder. He had crept in unperceived on the Friday evening, had
gained the loft on the fourth floor, and had lain there concealed until
Sunday morning, subsisting the while on apples and bread. When he knew
the mistress had gone to mass he stole down into her bedroom, where he
tried to conceal himself under the bed. It was too low, and he returned
to the garret and slipped off his coat and waistcoat, and found now that
he could creep under the bed. His hat was in his way, so he made a cap
of the napkin. He lay hidden till night, then came out, and having
secured the bell ropes, he roused the lady and demanded her money. She
resisted bravely, and he stabbed her repeatedly until she was dead. Then
he took the key of the strong box, opened it, and stole all the gold he
could find; after which, using the bedroom key which lay on the chair by
the door, he let himself out, resumed his clothes in the loft, and
walked downstairs. As the street-door was only bolted he easily opened
it, leaving it open behind him. He had meant to escape by a rope ladder
which he had brought for the purpose of letting himself down from the
first floor, but it was unnecessary.
It may be remarked that this confession was not inconsistent with Le
Brun's complicity. But it is to be presumed that Berry would have
brought in Le Brun had he been a confederate, even although it could not
have lessened his own guilt or punishment.
WILLIAM SHAW.
In Britain the list of judicial blunders includes the case of William
Shaw, convicted of the murder of his daughter in Edinburgh simply on the
ground of her own outcry against his ill-usage. They were on bad terms,
the daughter having encouraged the addresses of a man whom he strongly
disliked as a profligate and a debauchee. One evening there was a fresh
quarrel between father and daughter, and bitter words passed which were
overheard by a neighbour. The Shaws occupied one of the tenement houses
still to be seen in Edinburgh, and their flat, the prototype of a modern
popular form of residence in Paris and London, adjoined that of a man
named Morrison.
The words used by Catherine Shaw startled and shocked Morrison. He
heard her repeat several times, "Cruel father, thou art the cause of my
death!" These were followed by awful groans. Shaw had been heard to go
out, and the neighbours ran to his door demanding admittance. As no one
opened and all was now silent within, a constable was called to force an
entrance, and the girl was found weltering in her blood, with a knife by
her side. She was questioned as to the words overheard, was asked if her
father had killed her, and she was just able to nod her head in the
affirmative, as it seemed.
Now William Shaw returned. All eyes were upon him; he turned pale at
meeting the police and others in his apartment, then trembled violently
as he saw his daughter's dead body. Such manifest signs of guilt fully
corroborated the deceased's incriminating words. Last of all, it was
noticed with horror that there was blood on his hands and on his shirt.
He was taken before a magistrate at once, and committed for trial. The
circumstances were all against him. He admitted in his defence the
quarrel, and gave the reason, but declared that he had gone out that
evening leaving his daughter unharmed, and that her death could only be
attributed to suicide. He explained the bloodstains by showing that he
had been bled some days before and that the bandage had become untied.
The prosecution rested on the plain facts, mainly on the girl's words,
"Cruel father, thou art the cause of my death!" and her implied
accusation in her last moments.
Shaw was duly convicted, sentenced, and executed at Leith Walk in
November, 1721, with the full approval of public opinion. Yet the
innocence which he still maintained on the scaffold came out clearly the
following year. The tenant who came into occupation of Shaw's flat found
there a paper which had slipped down an opening near the chimney. It was
a letter written by Catherine Shaw, as was positively affirmed by
experts in handwriting, and it was addressed to her father, upbraiding
him for his barbarity. She was so hopeless of marrying him whom she
loved, so determined not to accept the man her father would have forced
upon her, that she had decided to put an end to the existence which had
become a burden to her. "My death," she went on, "I lay to your charge.
When you read this, consider yourself as the inhuman wretch that plunged
the knife into the bosom of the unhappy Catherine Shaw!"
This letter, on which there was much comment, came at last into the
hands of the authorities, who, having satisfied themselves that it was
authentic, ordered the body of Shaw to be taken down from the gibbet
where it still hung in chains and to be decently interred. As a further
but somewhat empty reparation of his honour, a pair of colours was waved
over his grave.
[Illustration: THE PRESS-GANG AT WORK (p. 64).]
THE SAILMAKER AND THE BOATSWAIN.
A still more curious story is that of a sailmaker who many years ago
went to spend Christmas with his mother near Deal. On his way he spent a
night at an inn at Deal, and shared a bed with the landlady's uncle,
the boatswain of an Indiaman, who had just come ashore. In the morning
the uncle was missing, the bed was saturated with blood, and the young
sailmaker had disappeared. The bloodstains were soon traced through the
house, and beyond, as far as the pier-head. It was naturally concluded
that the boatswain had been murdered and his body thrown into the sea. A
hue-and-cry was at once set up for the young man, who was arrested the
same evening in his mother's house.
He was taken red-handed, with ample proofs of his guilt upon him. His
clothes were stained with blood; in his pockets were a knife and a
strange silver coin, both of which were sworn to most positively as the
property of the missing boatswain. The evidence was so conclusive that
no credence could be given to the prisoner's defence, which was
ingenious but most improbable. His story was that he woke in the night
and asked the boatswain the way to the garden, that he could not open
the back door, and borrowed his companion's clasp-knife to lift the
latch. When he returned to bed the boatswain was gone; why or where he
had no idea.
The youth was convicted and sent to the gallows, but by strange fortune
he escaped death. The hanging was done so imperfectly that his feet
touched the ground, and when taken down he was soon resuscitated by his
friends. They made him leave as soon as he could move, and he went down
to Portsmouth, where he engaged on board a man-of-war about to start for
a foreign station. On his return from the West Indies three years later
to be paid off, he had gained the rating of a master's mate, and gladly
took service on another ship. The first person he met on board was the
boatswain he was supposed to have murdered!
The explanation given was sufficiently strange. On the day of his
supposed murder the boatswain had been bled by a barber for a pain in
the side. During the absence of his bedfellow the bandage had come off
his arm, which bled copiously, and he got up hurriedly to go in search
of the barber. The moment he got into the street he was seized by a
press-gang and carried off to the pier. There a man-of-war's boat was in
waiting, and he was taken off to a ship in the Downs, which sailed
direct for the East Indies. He never thought of communicating with his
friends; letter-writing was not much indulged in at that period.
Doubts have been thrown upon this story, which rests mainly upon local
tradition. As no body was found, it does not seem probable that there
would be a conviction for murder. Of the various circumstances on which
it was based, that of the possession of the knife was explained, but not
the possession of the silver coin. It has been suggested that when the
sailmaker took it out of the boatswain's pocket the coin had stuck
between the blades of the knife.
BRUNELL THE INNKEEPER.
The astute villainy of a criminal in covering up his tracks was never
more successful than in the case of Brunell, the innkeeper at a village
near Hull. A traveller was stopped upon the road and robbed of a purse
containing twenty guineas. But he pursued his journey uninjured, while
the highwayman rode off in another direction.
Presently the traveller reached the Bell Inn, kept by Brunell, to whom
he recounted his misadventure, adding that no doubt the thief would be
caught, for the stolen gold was marked, according to his rule when
travelling. Having ordered supper in a private room, the gentleman was
soon joined by the landlord, who had heard the story, and now wished to
learn at what hour the robbery took place.
"It was just as night fell," replied the traveller.
"Then I can perhaps find the thief," said the landlord. "I strongly
suspect one of my servants, John Jennings by name, and for the following
reason. The man has been very full of money of late. This afternoon I
sent him out to change a guinea. He brought it back saying he could not
get the change, and as he was in liquor I was resolved to discharge him
to-morrow. But then I was struck with the curious fact that the guinea
was not the same as that which I had given, and that it was marked. Now
I hear that those you lost were all marked, and I am wondering whether
this particular guinea was yours."
"May I see it?" asked the traveller.
"Unfortunately I paid it away not long since to a man who lives at a
distance, and who has gone home. But my servant Jennings, if he is the
culprit, will probably have others in his possession. Let us go and
search him."
They went to Jennings's room and examined his pockets. He was in a deep
drunken sleep, and they came without difficulty upon a purse containing
nineteen guineas. The traveller recognised his purse, and identified by
the mark his guineas. The man was roused and arrested on this seemingly
conclusive evidence. He stoutly denied his guilt, but was sent for trial
and convicted. The case was thought to be clearly proved. Although the
prosecutor could not swear to the man himself, as the robber had been
masked, he did to his guineas. Again, the prisoner's master told the
story of his substitution of the marked for the other coin; while the
man to whom the landlord had paid the marked guinea produced it in
court. A comparison with the rest of the money left no doubt that these
guineas were one and the same.
The unfortunate Jennings was duly sentenced to death, and executed at
Hull. Yet, within a twelvemonth, it came out that the highwayman was
Brunell himself. The landlord had been arrested on a charge of robbing
one of his lodgers, and convicted; but he fell dangerously ill before
execution. As he could not live, he made full confession of his crimes,
including that for which Jennings had suffered.
It seemed that he had ridden sharply home after the theft, and, finding
a debtor had called, gave him one of the guineas, not knowing they were
marked. When his victim arrived and told his story, Brunell became
greatly alarmed. Casting about for some way of escape, he decided to
throw the blame on his servant, whom he had actually sent out to change
a guinea, but who had failed, as we know, and had brought back the same
coin. As Jennings was drunk, Brunell sent him to bed, and then easily
planted the incriminating purse in the poor man's clothes. No sort of
indemnity seems to have been paid to Jennings's relations or friends.
DU MOULIN'S CASE.
Of the same class was the conviction of a French refugee, Du Moulin, who
had fled to England from the religious persecutions in his own country.
He brought a small capital with him, which he employed in buying goods
condemned at the Custom-house, disposing of them by retail. The business
was "shady" in its way, as the goods in question were mostly smuggled,
but Du Moulin's honesty was not impeached until he was found to be
passing false gold. He made it a frequent practice to return money paid
him by his customers, declaring it was bad. The fact could not be
denied, but the suspicion was that he had himself changed it after the
first payment; and this happened so often that he presently got into
disrepute, losing both his business and his credit. The climax came when
he received a sum of £78 in guineas and Portugal gold, and "scrupled,"
or questioned, several of the pieces. But he took them, giving his
receipt. In a few days he brought back six coins, which he insisted were
of base metal. His client Harris as positively declared that they were
not the same as those he had paid. Then there was a fierce dispute. Du
Moulin was quite certain; he had put the whole £78 into a drawer and
left the money there till he had to use it, when part of it was at once
refused. Harris continued to protest, threatening Du Moulin with a
charge of fraud, but presently he paid. He lost no opportunity, however,
of exposing Du Moulin's conduct, doing so so often, and so libellously,
that the other soon brought an action for defamation of character.
[Illustration: _Photo: Cassell & Co., Ltd._
COINERS' MOULD IN THE BLACK MUSEUM, ONE IN SEPARATE PARTS, THE OTHER
CLOSED AND HELD IN POSITION BY A SPRING.]
This drove Harris to set the law in motion also, on his own
information, backed by the reports of others on whom Du Moulin had
forced false money. A warrant was issued against the Frenchman, his
house was searched, and in a secret drawer all the apparatus of a
counterfeiter of coin was discovered--files, moulds, chemicals, and many
implements. This evidence was damnatory; his guilt seemed all the more
clear from the impudence with which he had assailed Harris and his
insistence in passing the bad money. Conviction followed, and he was
sentenced to death. But for a mere accident, which brought about
confession, he would certainly have suffered on the scaffold.
A day or two before he was to have been executed, one Williams, a seal
engraver, was thrown from his horse and killed, whereupon his wife fell
ill, and in poignant remorse confessed that her husband was one of a
gang of counterfeiters, and that she helped him by "putting off" the
coins. One of the gang hired himself as servant to Du Moulin, and, using
a whole set of false keys, soon became free of all drawers and
receptacles, in which he planted large quantities of false money,
substituting them for an equal number of good pieces.
The members of this gang were arrested and examined separately. They
altogether repudiated the charge, but Du Moulin's servant was
dumbfounded when some bad money was found in his quarters. On this he
turned king's evidence, and his accomplices were convicted.
CALAS.
A case in which "justice" was manifestly unjust is that of the shameful
prosecution and punishment of Calas, a judicial murder begun in wicked
intolerance and carried out with almost inconceivable cruelty.
Bitter, implacable hatred of the Protestant or Reformed faith and all
who professed it survived in the South of France till late in the
eighteenth century. There was no more bigoted city than Toulouse, which
had had its own massacre ten years before St. Bartholomew, and
perpetuated the memory of this "deliverance," as it was called, by
public fêtes on its anniversary. It was on the eve of the fête of 1761
that a terrible catastrophe occurred in the house of one Jean Calas, a
respectable draper, who had the misfortune to be a heretic--in other
words, a criminal, according to the ideas of Toulouse.
Marc Antoine Galas, the eldest son of the family, was found in a
cupboard just off the shop, hanging by the neck, and quite dead. The
shocking discovery was made by the third brother, Pierre. It was then
between nine and ten p.m.; he had gone downstairs with a friend who had
supped with them, and had come suddenly upon the corpse.
The alarm was soon raised in the town, and the officers of the law
hastened to the spot. In Toulouse the police was in the hands of the
_capitouls_, functionaries akin to the sheriffs and common councillors
of a corporation, and one of the leading men among them just then was a
certain David de Beaudrigue, who became the evil genius of this
unfortunate Calas family. He was bigoted, ambitious, self-sufficient,
full of his own importance, fiercely energetic in temperament, and
undeviating in his pursuit of any fixed idea.
[Illustration: MEDALS STRUCK IN COMMEMORATION OF THE ST. BARTHOLOMEW
MASSACRE.
1. Obverse, Pope Gregory XIII. Reverse, Angel smiting Protestants.
2. Obverse, Charles IX. Reverse, The King as Hercules slaying
the hydra of heresy.
3. Obverse, Charles IX. Reverse, The King on his throne.
]
Now, when called up by the watch and told of the mysterious death of
Marc Antoine Calas, he jumped to the conclusion that it was a murder,
and that the perpetrator was Jean Calas; in other words, that Calas was
a parricide. The motives of the crime were not far to seek, he thought.
One Calas son had already abjured the Protestant for the true faith,
this now dead son was said to have been anxious to go over, and the
father was resolved to prevent it at all cost. It was a commonly
accepted superstition in those dark times that the Huguenots would
decree the death of any traitors to their own faith.
Full of this baseless prepossession, De Beaudrigue thought only of what
would confirm it. He utterly neglected the first duty of a police
officer: to seek with an unbiassed mind for any signs or
[Illustration: THE CALAS FAMILY.
(_From the Picture by L. C. Carmontelli._)]
indications that might lead to the detection of the real criminals. He
should have at once examined the wardrobe in which the body was found
pendent; the shop close at hand, the passage that led from it through a
small courtyard into the back street. It was perfectly possible for
ill-disposed people to enter the shop from the front street and escape
by this passage, and possibly they might leave traces behind them.
De Beaudrigue thought only of securing those whom he already in his own
mind condemned as guilty, and hurrying upstairs found the Calas, husband
and wife, whom he at once arrested; Pierre Calas, whom he also
suspected, was given in charge of two soldiers; the maid-servant, too,
was taken, as well as two friends of the family who happened to be in
the house at the time. When another _capitoul_ mildly suggested a little
less precipitation, De Beaudrigue replied that he would be answerable,
and that he was acting in a holy cause.
The whole party was carried off to gaol. When the elder Calas asked to
be allowed to put a candlestick where he might find it easily on his
return, he was told sardonically, "You will not return in a hurry." The
request and its answer went far to produce a revulsion in his favour
when the facts became known. The wretched man never re-entered his
house, but he passed it on his way to the scaffold and knelt down to
bless the place where he had lived happily for many years, and from
which he had been so ruthlessly torn.
On the way to gaol the prisoners were greeted with yells and
execrations. It was already taken for granted that they had murdered
Marc Antoine. Arrived at the Hôtel de Ville, there was a short halt
while the accusation was prepared charging the whole party as principals
or accessories. An interrogatory followed which was no more than a
peremptory summons to confess. "Come," said the _capitoul_ to Pierre,
"confess you killed him." Denial only exasperated De Beaudrigue, who
began at once to threaten Calas and the rest with the torture.
There was absolutely no evidence whatever against the accused, and in
the absence of it recourse was had to an ancient ecclesiastical
practice, the _monitoire_, a solemn appeal made to the religious
conscience of all who knew anything to come forward and declare it. This
notice was affixed to the pulpits of churches and in street corners. It
assumed the guilt of the Calas family quite illegally, because without
the smallest proof, and it warned everyone to come forward and speak,
whether from hearsay or of their own knowledge. Nothing followed the
_monitoire_, so these pious sons of the Church went a step farther and
obtained a _fulmination_; a threat to excommunicate all who could speak
yet would not. This was duly launched, and caused great alarm. Religious
sentiment had reached fever pitch. The burial of Marc Antoine with all
the rites of the Church was a most imposing ceremony. He lay in state.
The catafalque bore a notice to the effect that he had abjured heresy.
He was honoured as a martyr; a little more and he would have been
canonised as a saint.
[Illustration: IRON CHAIR IN WHICH CALAS IS SAID TO HAVE BEEN TORTURED,
NOW IN THE POSSESSION OF MADAME TUSSAUD & SONS, LIMITED.]
Still, nothing conclusive was forthcoming against the Calas. One or two
witnesses declared that they had heard disputes, swore to piteous
appeals made to the father by the dead son, to cries such as "I am being
strangled!" "They are murdering me!" and this was all. It was all for
the prosecution; not a word was heard in defence. The Protestant friends
of the family were not competent to bear witness; the accused, moreover,
were permitted to call no one. It would be hard to credit the
disabilities still imposed upon the French Huguenots were it not that
the laws in England against Roman Catholics at that time were little
less severe. In France all offices, all professions were interdicted to
Protestants. They could not be ushers or police agents, they were
forbidden to trade as printers, booksellers, watchmakers, or grocers,
they must not practise as doctors, surgeons, or apothecaries.
Although there was no case, the prosecution was obstinately persisted
in, not merely because the law officers were full of prejudice, but
because, if they failed to secure conviction, they would be liable to a
counter action for their high-handed abuse of legal powers. As has been
said, no pains were taken at the first discovery of the death to examine
the spot or investigate the circumstances. It was all the better for the
prosecution that nothing of the kind was done. Had the police approached
the matter with an open mind, judging calmly from the facts apparent,
they would have been met at once by an ample, nay, overwhelming--explanation.
There can be no doubt that Marc Antoine Calas committed suicide. The
proofs were plain. This eldest son was a trouble to his parents, ever
dissatisfied with his lot, disliking his father's business, eager to
take up some other line, notably that of an advocate. Here, however, he
encountered the prejudice of the times, which forbade this profession to
a Protestant; and it was his known dissatisfaction with this law that
led to the conjecture--and there was little else--that he wished to
abjure his faith. At last Marc Antoine offered to join his father, but
was told that until he learnt the business and showed more aptitude he
could not hope for a partnership. From this moment he fell away, took to
evil courses, frequented the worst company, was seen at the billiard
tables and tennis courts of Toulouse, and became much addicted to
gambling. When not given to debauchery he was known as a silent, gloomy,
discontented youth, who quarrelled with his lot and complained always of
his bad luck. On the very morning of his death he had lost heavily--a
sum of money entrusted him by his father to exchange from silver into
gold.
All this pointed to the probability of suicide. The Calas themselves,
however, would not hear of any such solution. Suicide was deemed
disgraceful and dishonourable. Sooner than suggest suicide, the elder
Calas was prepared to accept the worst. One of the judges was strongly
of opinion that it was clearly a case of
[Illustration: JEAN CALAS TAKING LEAVE OF HIS FAMILY.
(_From the Painting by D. Chodswiecke, 1768._)]
_felo de se_, but he was overruled by the rest, who were equally
convinced of the guilt of the Calas. Not a single witness of the 150
examined could speak positively; not one had seen the crime committed;
they contradicted each other, and their statements were improbable and
opposed to common sense. Moreover, the murder was morally and physically
impossible. Was it likely that a family party collected round the
supper-table would take one of their number downstairs and hang him?
Could such wrong be done to a young and vigorous man without some sort
of struggle that would leave its traces on himself and in the scene
around?
But the bigoted and prejudiced judges of Toulouse gave judgment against
the accused; yet, although so satisfied of their guilt, they ordered the
torture to be applied to extort full confession. The prisoners
appealing, the case was heard in the local parliament, and the first
decision upheld. Thirteen judges sat; of these, seven were for a
sentence of death, three for preliminary torture, two voted for a new
inquiry based on the supposition of suicide, one alone was for
acquittal. As this was not a legal majority, one dissident was won over,
and sentence of death was duly passed on Calas, who was to suffer
torture first, in the hope that by his admissions on the rack the guilt
of the rest might be assured.
The sentence was executed under circumstances so horrible and
heartrending that humanity shudders at hearing them. Calas was taken
first to the question chamber and put "upon the first button." There,
being warned that he had but a short time to live and must suffer
torments, he was sworn and exhorted to make truthful answer to the
interrogatories, to all of which, after the rack had been applied, he
replied denying his guilt. He was then put "upon the second button"; the
torture increased, and still he protested his innocence. Last of all, he
was subjected to the question extraordinary, and being still firm, he
was handed over to the reverend father to be prepared for death. He
suffered on the wheel, being "broken alive"; the process lasted two
whole hours, but at the end of that time the executioner put him out of
his misery by strangling him. When asked for the last time, on the very
brink of the grave, to make a clean breast of his crime and give up the
names of his confederates, he only answered, "Where there has been no
crime there can be no accomplices." His constancy won him the respect
of all who witnessed his execution. "He died," said a monk "like one of
our Catholic martyrs."
[Illustration: VOLTAIRE.
(_From the Picture by Largillière._)]
This noble end caused deep chagrin to his judges; they were consumed
with secret anxiety, having hoped to the last that a full confession
would exonerate them from their cruelty. At Toulouse there had been a
fresh outburst of fanaticism, in which more lives were lost; and now,
the news of Calas' execution reaching the city, open war was declared
against all Huguenots. But a reaction was at hand, caused by the very
excess of this religious intolerance. The terrible story began to
circulate through France and beyond. The rest of the accused had been
released, not without reluctance, by the authorities of Toulouse, but
Pierre Calas had been condemned to banishment. Another brother had
escaped to Geneva, where he met with much sympathy.
The feeling in other Protestant countries was intense, and loud protests
were published. But the chief champion and vindicator of the Calas
family was Voltaire, who seized eagerly at an opportunity of attacking
the religious bigotry of his countrymen. He soon raised a storm through
Europe, writing to all his disciples, denouncing the judges of Toulouse,
who had killed an innocent man. "Everyone is up in arms. Foreign
nations, who hate us and beat us, are full of indignation. Nothing since
St. Bartholomew has so greatly disgraced human nature."
Voltaire bent all the powers of his great mind to collecting evidence
and making out a strong case. The Encyclopædists, with d'Alembert at
their head, followed suit. All Paris, all France grew excited. The widow
Calas was brought forward to make a fresh appeal to the king in council.
The whole case was revived in a lengthy and tedious procedure, and in
the end it was decided to reverse the conviction. "There is still
justice in the world!" cried Voltaire--"still some humanity left.
Mankind are not all villains and scoundrels."
Three years after the judicial murder of Jean Calas all the accused were
formally pronounced innocent, and it was solemnly declared that Jean
Calas was illegally done to death. But the family were utterly ruined,
and, although entitled to proceed against the judges for damages, they
had no means to go to law. The Queen said the French wits had drunk
their healths, but had given them nothing to drink in return.
It is satisfactory to know, however, that some retribution overtook the
principal mover in this monstrous case. The fierce fanatic, David de
Beaudrigue, was dismissed from all his offices, and being threatened
with so many lawsuits, he went out of his mind. He was perpetually
haunted with horrors, always saw the scaffold and the executioner at his
grisly task, and at last, in a fit of furious madness, he threw himself
out of the window. The first time he escaped death, but he made another
attempt, and died murmuring the word "Calas" with his last breath.
A GROSS PERVERSION OF JUSTICE AT NUREMBERG.
On the 30th of January, 1790, at five o'clock in the morning, the
Nuremberg merchant Johann Marcus Sterbenk was awakened by his maid with
the unpleasant news that his house had been broken into and the
counting-house robbed of its strong-box, containing the sum of 2,000
gulden. It was a heavy iron strong-box, standing on four legs, and was
painted in dark green stripes and ornamented on the top surface and lock
with leaves and flowers. The sum stolen meant a small fortune in those
days. The counting-house had a window which looked out on to the
staircase, and some ten days before, when the key of the door had been
mislaid, it had been necessary to remove a pane of glass from the window
in order to reach the door from within. On getting to his
counting-house, the merchant found that the pane of glass had again been
removed, and that the door of the room was standing open. The main front
door also was open, although the maid had declared that she had bolted
it securely the evening before.
The robbery had clearly been the work of someone who knew the locality
well; yet, although several people swore to having seen
suspicious-looking men in the neighbourhood about two o'clock in the
morning, they were unable to identify or describe them, and for a time
justice was at fault.
Suddenly suspicion fell on one Schönleben, Sterbenk's messenger; and ere
long all agreed that he must be the culprit. There was absolutely no
evidence--nothing more than his own careless words, which were seized
upon and twisted against him. It was now remembered that his previous
life had not been blameless, and every little incident was seized upon
to his discredit. Thus it was said that the day after the robbery his
brother was seen in close converse with him at his house; after that the
brother drove out of town with his cart, in which, according to general
belief, the strong-box was concealed. Again, it was noted that
Schönleben had been often late at business, and again, that the day
after the robbery he appeared extremely lightheaded.
On the strength of these suspicions Schönleben was arrested, and with
him a poor beadmaker, Beutner by name, who was suspected of being his
accomplice. The only connection between the two was that Beutner had
once helped Schönleben to carry a load of wood into the Sterbenks'
house; and as he was passing the window of the counting-house, it was
said that he gazed spell-bound at the sight of all the money inside. For
not more than this the two were lodged in gaol and subjected to
criminal examination. It was hardly thought possible that they could be
innocent men. A new clue was, however, soon discovered. A barber named
Kirchmeier called on Sterbenk and declared that on the day of the
robbery he had seen a cash-box identical in every respect with the one
stolen. It was in the room of a working gilder, Mannert, who lived in
the same house as Schönleben the messenger. On making a second call at
the same room a few days later there was no box to be seen. Kirchmeier
deposed that the box was standing under the table near the oven and
behind the door; and as this witness was a respectable, well-to-do
citizen, bearing the character of an upright, religious man, his
testimony was deemed unimpeachable. The poor gilder, Mannert, had also
always borne the best of characters, but he, too, was arrested, with his
wife and sons. When examined, he denied absolutely that he had ever
owned such a box, and although he admitted a slight acquaintance with
Schönleben, and that he was employed by Sterbenk, he declared that he
knew nothing of the messenger's private affairs.
Then the examination of the Mannerts was renewed; but as they still
persisted in repudiating all knowledge of the strong-box the Court had
recourse to more drastic measures. In those days it was not absolutely
required that witnesses should take the oath, which was reserved for
extreme cases; it was a last step when evidence was imperfect, and the
punishment for perjury was very severe. Kirchmeier signified his perfect
willingness to be sworn, and eventually reiterated his charges upon
oath. "That which I saw, I saw," he averred. "The green-painted
cash-box, with green wooden legs, I saw in the rooms of the man who is
now kneeling imploringly before me. I cannot help it. I am quite
convinced that in this case I am not mistaken. If I am, his blood be on
my head."
The Court, after such solemn testimony, could not exonerate the Mannerts
and Schönleben; and the public shared this conviction. Excitement over
the case was not confined to Nuremberg, but spread through all Germany.
So high ran feeling against the accused for their obstinate pleas of
innocence, that the mob smashed Schönleben's windows and killed his
youngest child as it lay in its mother's arms.
[Illustration: "TOGETHER THEY ... LIFTED THE CASH-BOX AND ... CARRIED IT
HOME" (p. 84).]
Mannert's wife and sons corroborated his statements. Nevertheless, the
barber, Kirchmeier, when confronted with them, stuck to his story. The
entire absence of all malicious motive strengthened his testimony and
gained him full credence from the Nuremberg authorities. So the Mannert
family were also consigned to durance, while their residence was
searched from top to bottom. Nothing incriminating was found; only in a
lumber room one of the planks appeared to have been recently disturbed,
and this, although it led to no further discovery, was deemed highly
suspicious.
Meanwhile, Schönleben had been again questioned, and still stoutly
denied his guilt. When asked as to his accomplices and confederates, he
replied that he could have had none, having committed no crime. Beutner,
the beadmaker, had no doubt asked him once where Sterbenk's
counting-house was situated, and whether the family all slept upstairs,
but, after all, that might be mere curiosity. Beutner excused himself by
saying he must have been drunk when he asked such questions--at least,
he had no recollection of putting them. Several independent witnesses
deposed to having been with Beutner on the night of the robbery till 2
a.m., after which they walked home with him.
The perverse cruelty of the Nuremberg Court, which had accepted
Kirchmeier's story so readily, was not yet exhausted, and, very much as
in the case of Calas, given on a previous page, it persisted in seeking
a confession as its own best justification. Mannert was still obdurate,
however, and force was now applied. Floggings were tried, but quite
without result, and at last, a fresh search of the dwellings of both
Mannert and Schönleben having proved fruitless, it was resolved to
appeal to the antiquated instruments of Nuremberg justice, surviving
still, within ten years of the nineteenth century--the priest and the
rack.
The power of the priest to extort confession, even from the most
hardened criminals, had often proved successful heretofore, and public
expectation was raised high that justice would once more be vindicated
in this fashion. But the priests failed now. Neither Mannert, nor his
wife, nor his sons would make the slightest acknowledgment of their
guilt, and it became clear that they had won over the priests to their
side. Still the Court was resolute to follow out its own line of action.
Confession having failed, it determined to try the effect of flogging
the woman, or, if her health did not allow such an extreme proceeding,
she was to be strictly isolated, and kept upon bread and water in the
darkest dungeon of the prison; lastly, if these merciless measures
proved of no avail, she was to be subjected to the rack.
Schönleben, from the recesses of the prison, now made a desperate effort
to free himself by reviving suspicion against Beutner. So absolutely
helpless and hopeless had justice now become that the Nuremberg Court
actually accepted a dream as evidence. Schönleben pretended that he had
seen the missing cash-box under a heap of wood at Beutner's house--seen
it only in his dreams, however. This "baseless fabric" of his
imagination sufficed to send the officers to search Beutner's house,
and although nothing was discovered, public opinion agreed with the
judges in again accusing Beutner, and he was held to be implicated,
despite the renewed proof of a satisfactory _alibi_. Nobody believed
Beutner's witnesses.
The next incident in these shameful proceedings was the death of Frau
Mannert, who succumbed to the cruel treatment she had received. She died
protesting her innocence to the last, and the priests who shrived her in
the dark underground cell where she breathed her last expressed much
indignation at the shocking ill-usage to which she owed her death.
Four more months passed, bringing no relaxation in the law's severity
towards those whom it still gripped in its cruel clutches. Who shall say
what their fate might have been? But now, at last, an unexpected turn
was given to the inquiry, and by pure accident justice got upon the
right track. Certain rumours reached the ears of one of the judges, who
proceeded to investigate them. These rumours started from a beer-shop,
where someone in his cups had been heard grossly to abuse a locksmith,
Gösser by name, and his assistant, Blösel. The vituperation ended in a
direct charge of complicity in the Sterbenk robbery. Blösel sat
speechless under the attack, but his master, Gösser, tried lamely to
repudiate the charges. It was remembered now against these two that,
although miserably poor till a certain date, they had become suddenly
rich; had bought good clothes and silver watches, had launched out into
many extravagances, and were always ready to stand treat to their
friends. Gösser just now had applied for a passport to leave Nuremberg
and go to Dresden; and passports were in those days rather expensive
luxuries, and generally beyond the means of persons in straitened
circumstances. Schönleben once more contributed his quota to the newly
formulated charge; he had always suspected him, he said; and this time
he had good reason to do so. When the police arrested Gösser and his
assistant (they were always glad to arrest anybody), the two prisoners
incontinently confessed their crime.
Gösser, a man of thirty-three, had settled in Nuremberg with his wife
and family about a year previously. He was a shiftless, aimless fellow,
and it was only by serious money sacrifices that he obtained admission
into the guild of locksmiths in Nuremberg. Having thus started in debt,
he was never able to get clear
[Illustration: STREET IN NUREMBERG.]
again. He was often in want of the necessaries of life; his relations
would not help him; and he began to despair of ever gaining an honest
livelihood. Having once visited Sterbenk's house, he had quickly
realised how easily the counting-house door might be forced. The
criminal idea of thus obtaining funds once formed, it grew and gained
more mastery, till at length, on the night of the 29th of January, he
proceeded to perpetrate the theft. He went to Sterbenk's, opened the
outer door, which he said was unbolted, and silently, and without
difficulty, entered the counting-house. Finding the strong-box too heavy
to move by himself, he had gone home and awakened his assistant, whom
he persuaded to join him. Together they had crept back, lifted the
cash-box, and, without interference, carried it home. While Gösser's
wife was out of the way, they opened it and divided the spoil. The box
they kept close hidden for a long time, but at last broke it up and
threw the pieces bit by bit into the river. After the robbery Gösser
confessed to his wife, who, overcome with fear, implored her husband to
return the money. But he paid some pressing debts and bought what he
needed for his business, and now hoped that he was on the high road to
success and competence. Gösser declared that no one had instigated him
to the deed, that he alone was responsible, and had had no accomplice
beyond Blösel; and the confessions of his wife and Blösel corroborated
these statements.
[Illustration: OLD PRISON AND "HANGMAN'S PASSAGE", NUREMBERG.]
An examination of Gösser's dwelling also confirmed them, while portions
of the strong-box were by-and-bye found in the river. But it was not
till after there remained no shadow of doubt of the truth of Gösser's
story that the other prisoners were lightened of their chains, and only
by degrees were they informed of the new turn of affairs.
Kirchmeier was arrested on the 4th of November, and feeling ran
tremendously strong against him as the original cause of so much cruel
injustice. His three confessions were read out to him, and he was asked
if he still stood by them. Strange to state, he firmly reiterated them,
continuing to do so even when the fragments of the box and the plainly
rebutting evidence were laid before him. The only plausible solution of
his extraordinary conduct was that he suffered from hallucinations. He
had only lately recovered from a bad attack of bilious fever; and it was
quite probable that in his convalescent condition the excitement of the
robbery working on a disordered mind produced an impression which had
all the weight and force of actual tangible fact. Some such view of his
conduct was evidently taken by the Court; for, although arraigned for
perjury, he was acquitted, and absolved from having falsely sworn from
any evil motive. Yet his fellow-townspeople could not readily forgive
him, or forget the sufferings he had brought upon the innocent victims
of his delusions. He was scouted by his old friends and deserted by his
customers; and, to escape universal execration and the starvation that
threatened him, he settled in another part of Germany. Gösser and Blösel
were, of course, duly punished.
"THE BLUE DRAGOON."
This case,[6] in which Justice got upon a false scent and narrowly
escaped the commission of a tragical blunder, is remarkable for the
tortuous course it ran before the truth was at last reached. In a
certain Dutch town there lived, towards the close of the last century,
an elderly widow lady, Madame Andrecht. She was fairly well-to-do, and
possessed some valuable silver, although she lived in a quiet, retired
street and in a not very reputable locality. Her neighbours were all of
the poorer classes; and the town ditch, which was navigable, flowed at
the bottom of her back garden. Hers was a tranquil, uneventful
existence; she was served by one elderly female servant, and her only
recreation was a yearly visit paid to a married son in the country, when
she locked up the house and took the servant away with her.
On the 30th of June, 17--, she returned home, after one of these visits,
to find her house broken into and most of her possessions gone. It was
clear that the thieves were acquainted with the interior of the house,
and had set to work in a systematic fashion, although some of the
plunder had escaped them. A window leading from the garden had been
forced; the back door was open, and footsteps could be traced down the
garden to the hedge at the bottom over the ditch. This pointed to the
removal of the booty by boat.
The discovery of this robbery caused a great sensation, and the house
was soon surrounded by a gaping crowd, whom the police had some trouble
in controlling. One, an irrepressible baker, managed to make his way
inside, and his acquaintances awaited with impatience the result of his
investigations. But on his return he assumed a great air of mystery, and
refused to satisfy their curiosity. Everyone was left to evolve his own
theory, and the most voluble of the chatterers was a wool-spinner,
Leendert van N----, who talked so pointedly that before evening he was
summoned to the town house and called upon for an explanation by the
burgomaster. In a hesitating, stammering way, as if dreading to
incriminate anyone, he unfolded his suspicions, which were to the
following effect:--
At the end of the street stood a small alehouse, kept by an ex-soldier,
Nicholas D----, commonly known as the "Blue Dragoon." Some years
previously he had courted and married a servant of Madame Andrecht. The
mistress had never liked the match, and had done all she could to
prevent the young people from meeting. Nicholas had managed, however, to
pay the girl secret visits, stealing at night across Leendert's back
garden and over the hedge. Leendert objected, and begged Nicholas to
discontinue these clandestine proceedings. Later on he discovered that
the ardent lover used to row along the fosse and enter the garden that
way. All this was ancient history, but it was brought back to his mind
by the robbery. His suspicion had been emphasised by the fact of his
finding a handkerchief on the fosse bank, opposite the garden, only ten
days before. This handkerchief proved to be marked with the initials N.
D.
Suspicion, once raised against the dragoon, was strengthened by other
circumstances. During the first search of the house a half-burnt paper
had been picked up, presumably a pipelight. On examination, it was found
to be an excise receipt, and further investigation proved it to have
belonged to Nicholas D----. This evidence, such as it was, seemed to
point to the same person, and, after a short consultation among the
magistrates, orders were given for his arrest, and that of his wife,
father, and brother. His house was ransacked, but the closest search
failed to reveal the missing plate; only in one drawer a memorandum-book
was discovered which was proved beyond doubt to have belonged to Madame
Andrecht.
Nothing resulted from a first examination to which the prisoner was
subjected. He answered every question in an open, straightforward
manner; but while admitting the facts of his courtship, as told by the
wool-spinner, he could adduce no rebutting evidence in his own defence.
The other members of the household corroborated what he had said; and
the wife declared strenuously that the note-book had not been in the
drawer the previous week, when she had removed all the contents in order
to clean the press. Their attitude and their earnest protestations of
innocence made a favourable impression on the judge; the neighbours
testified to their honest character and general good name. Still,
Nicholas could not be actually exonerated; the note-book, the charred
receipt, and the handkerchief were so many unanswered points against
him.
At this stage of the inquiry a new witness came forward and strengthened
the suspicion against Nicholas D----. A respectable citizen, a wood
merchant, voluntarily appeared before the authorities and made a
statement, which, he said, had been weighing on his conscience ever
since the robbery. It would seem that a carpenter, Isaac van C----, owed
this man money; and he had been obliged to put pressure upon him. The
carpenter had begged him to delay proceedings, telling him of the
difficulty he also had in collecting his dues, and showing him some
silver plate he had taken in pledge from one of his debtors. After some
discussion, the wood merchant agreed to accept the plate as part payment
of the carpenter's bill. When the robbery became known, the wood
merchant began to think the articles pledged to him might have formed
part of the stolen property. He had no reason to suspect his debtor, the
carpenter, of being concerned in the theft, but still he thought the
clue ought to be followed up.
The carpenter was immediately sent for and examined. He said that the
debtor of whom he spoke to the wood merchant was Nicholas D----, who
owed him sixty gulden for work done on the premises, and as he would not
or was unable to pay, he (the carpenter) had peremptorily asked for his
money. Nicholas then offered him some old silver, which he said had
belonged to his father, and asked him to dispose of it through an agent
in Amsterdam or some distant town. Nicholas was brought in, and,
confronted with the carpenter, did not deny that he owed the debt and
could not see how to pay it; but when the plate was shown him he
hesitated, turned pale, and declared he knew nothing about it. His
nervousness and prevarication excited a general doubt as to his previous
statements. This was further increased by the examination of the
carpenter's private account-book, which contained an entry of the old
silver received from the innkeeper. The carpenter's housekeeper and
apprentice also bore witness to the agreement.
[Illustration: SUMMER UNIFORM.]
[Illustration: DUTCH POLICE AT THE PRESENT DAY.]
[Illustration: WINTER UNIFORM.]
The general feeling in the town was now very strong against Nicholas
D----. He was committed to the town prison, and his relatives placed
under closest surveillance. All, nevertheless, persisted in their story.
In order to ascertain the truth, justice was prepared to go to the
extreme length of applying torture to force a confession from the
obstinate accused. But happily, just as the "question" was about to be
employed, the following letter was received:--
"Before I leave the country and betake myself where I shall be
beyond the reach either of the Court of M---- or the military
tribunal of the garrison, I would save the unfortunate persons who
are now prisoners at M----. Beware of punishing the innkeeper, his
wife, his father, or his brother, for a crime of which they are not
guilty. How the story of the carpenter is connected with theirs I
cannot conjecture. I have heard of it with the greatest surprise.
The latter may not himself be entirely innocent. Let the judge pay
attention to this remark. You may spare yourself the trouble of
inquiring after me. If the wind is favourable, by the time you read
this letter I shall be on my passage to England.
"JOSEPH CHRISTIAN RUHLER,
Formerly Corporal in the Company of Le Lery."
The receipt of this letter started a new set of conjectures, followed up
by inquiries. Captain le Lery's company was quartered in the town, and
Corporal Ruhler had, as a matter of fact, belonged to it, but he had
mysteriously and suddenly disappeared about the time of the robbery. No
trace of him had been found. His letter seemed to throw light upon his
disappearance, yet when it was shown to his captain and some of his
comrades it was unanimously declared to be a forgery. What could have
been the writer's object in fabricating it? Various theories were
advanced, the most popular being that some guilty party, knowing the
corporal had gone, thought to implicate him and save the accused from
the torture, which might have driven them to full confession, in which
the names of all accomplices would have been divulged. It was a clumsy
explanation, but the only feasible one forthcoming. Every effort was
made to discover the author of the letter, but without avail.
Now a fresh witness volunteered information--a merchant who lived in
Madame Andrecht's neighbourhood, and who had left home about the time
that the robbery had been perpetrated. He had just returned, to find
that the mysterious affair was the talk of the town--indeed, he had had
a full account of it from his fellow-passengers in the coach which
brought him home. He now came to the authorities and told them what he
knew. A day or two before the robbery a carpenter, Isaac van C----, had
come to him seeking to borrow his boat, which the merchant kept in the
fosse just behind his warehouse. Isaac made some pretence for wanting
the boat which was not altogether satisfactory to the merchant, who
refused to lend it, but yielded when the carpenter declared he wished to
use it for the purposes of fishing. The next morning the boat was
returned, but was not in exactly its right place; the inside of the
boat, moreover, was too clean and dry for it to have been recently used
for fishing. The merchant, although he had not yet heard of the robbery,
strongly suspected that the carpenter had used the boat for some
improper purpose, and he was strengthened in this view by finding two
silver spoons under one of the thwarts. This discovery angered him, for
he felt he had been deceived, and putting the spoons in his pocket, he
went at once to the carpenter for an explanation. The carpenter, with
whom were his housekeeper and apprentice, seemed greatly embarrassed
when the spoons were produced, and after having been pressed by the
merchant, they confessed that they had been up to no good, but would not
say where or how they had obtained these spoons. The merchant was now
called away from home, and the affair was driven from his mind by more
serious transactions. Now that he heard of the robbery, he remembered
the suspicious conduct of the carpenter and his servants.
Evidence of this sort, coming from a witness of the highest character,
carried so much weight that the judge ordered the carpenter and his
companions to be arrested. At the same time, search was made in the
house, which resulted in the discovery of the whole of the stolen
effects. The culprits, finding it useless to deny their guilt, now made
full confession. The three of them were implicated, but it was not
settled who had originated the idea. The apprentice, having worked in
Madame Andrecht's house for another master, knew his way about it, and
had guided the thieves after they had effected their entrance. The boat
had been borrowed, in the way described, to simplify the removal of the
plunder. All three of the culprits were with the crowd assembled outside
the house when the robbery had been discovered. They heard of the
suspicions against the Blue Dragoon, and the apprentice at once visited
the alehouse, and succeeded in secreting the memorandum-book in the
drawer of the press, where it was discovered.
The foregoing evidence was sufficient to convict the carpenter and his
two accomplices, but justice was not yet satisfied of Nicholas D----'s
innocence. Two damaging facts still told against him: the half-charred
excise bill and the handkerchief bearing his initials. It was possible
that he had been an accomplice, although the carpenter and the others
would not accuse him. That other people were also concerned seemed
evident from the fact of the forged letter, whose authorship was still
undiscovered.
Further facts of a strange and interesting kind were presently
forthcoming about this letter. The schoolmaster of a neighbouring
village came with a scrap of paper on which was inscribed the name
Joseph Christian Ruhler, the name with which the forged letter had been
signed. At the schoolmaster's request the writing of this paper was
compared with that of the letter, and they were found to be identical.
Then the schoolmaster went on to say that both had been written by a
pupil of his, a deaf and dumb boy whom he had taught to write, and who
made a scanty living as an amanuensis. Some time before this, an unknown
man had called on the boy, had taken him to an inn in the village, and
there given him a letter to copy. The boy, on reading the letter--which,
as we have seen, was of a very compromising nature--demurred. But he was
pacified by the present of a gulden, and made the copy. Still, the
secrecy and peculiarity of the whole affair weighed on his mind, and he
at length confided the story to his teacher. The alleged letter from the
corporal had already got into circulation in the neighbourhood, and was
clearly the one the boy had copied. The schoolmaster went to the inn,
made inquiries about the strange man, and eventually found him to be a
baker, H----, the very man who had been so determined to enter Madame
Andrecht's house when the robbery was first announced. So far he had
been utterly unconnected in any way with the crime, though his excessive
zeal had attracted attention at the time. However, he was arrested; and
from the disclosures he made a warrant was also issued for the
apprehension of the wool-spinner, Leendert van N----, and his wife, who
had been the first to air their suspicions of the innkeeper's
complicity.
As the investigation proceeded, a curious tale was unfolded. The last
persons arrested had no share in the housebreaking, but were concerned
in another crime, which probably would never have been discovered but
for the robbery. The substance of their confessions was as follows:--
Leendert van N----, H---- the baker, and Corporal Ruhler were old
acquaintances, and had dealings together of not too reputable a kind in
connection with the victualling and clothing of the garrison. They
cordially hated and despised each other, and only kept together from
community of interests and pursuits.
The associates were playing cards one evening (June 29th) in Leendert's
house, situated in the vicinity of Madame Andrecht's, when they
quarrelled with the corporal, and the corporal retorted in offensive
terms. From words they came to blows, in which Madame van N----
assisted. In a few minutes the corporal lay pinioned on the ground,
uttering loud curses and threatening them with public exposure. The
baker whispered that they had better do the job thoroughly, and after a
few blows the corpse, drenched in blood, lay at their feet.
The terrors of conscience and the apprehensions of their crime paralysed
their thoughts during the night. The next morning they heard the
commotion caused by the news of the discovery of the robbery at Madame
Andrecht's. At once they realised their danger, and the probability of a
house-to-house search being instituted, when their horrible crime would
be discovered. Their great object, then, was to give the authorities
something to occupy their time till the body could be disposed of. It
was Madame van N---- who perfected the idea. Why should not suspicion be
laid at the door of the Blue Dragoon? His nocturnal courtship was
remembered, and corroborative evidence could be supplied by a
handkerchief that he had dropped in the house some little time before.
The baker then remembered the old excise receipt that Nicholas D---- had
once handed him to make a note on. Part of it was charred away, and the
remaining portion was carelessly dropped in the house when the baker
accompanied the police in their search. It may be remembered that the
van N----'s were most busy in the hints they gave of the innkeeper's
supposed guilt, and their machinations were unconsciously assisted by
those of the carpenter and his confederates. So the false evidence
brought by these two independent plots formed very circumstantial proof
against the innocent victim. However, the baker and the wool-spinner
only wanted to excite suspicion against Nicholas till they could
accomplish their object of hiding the body. That effected, they began to
feel remorse that an innocent person should be ruined. The thought of
the torture which awaited him struck them with horror, and they evolved
the idea of a letter from
[Illustration: "THE CORPORAL LAY PINIONED ON THE GROUND" (p. 92).]
Ruhler, incriminating himself. Thus they hoped to obtain delay for
Nicholas and safety for themselves. However, their plans were too well
thought out; their fear of detection led them to employ the strange deaf
and dumb boy to write their letter, which afterwards betrayed them.
Sentence of death was pronounced against the persons who had been
concerned in the housebreaking as well as against those who had
committed the murder, and it was carried into effect on all of them with
the exception of Madame van N----, who died in prison. The wool-spinner
alone exhibited any sign of penitence.
[Illustration: DISCOVERY OF A CRIME]
CHAPTER II.
CASES OF DISPUTED OR MISTAKEN IDENTITY.
Lesurques and the Robbery of the Lyons Mail--The Champignelles
Mystery--Judge Garrow's Story--An Imposition Practised at York
Assizes--A Husband Claimed by Two Wives--A Milwaukee Mystery--A
Scottish Case--The Kingswood Rectory Murder--The Cannon Street
Case--A Narrow Escape.
LESURQUES.
The most famous, and perhaps the most hackneyed, of all cases of
mistaken identity is that of Lesurques, charged with the robbery and
murder of the courier of the Lyons mail, which has been so vividly
brought home to us through the dramatic play based upon it and the
marvellous impersonation of the dual _rôle_, Lesurques-Duboscq, by Sir
Henry Irving.
Lesurques was positively identified as a man who had travelled by the
mail coach, and he was in due course convicted. Yet at the eleventh hour
a woman came into court and declared his innocence, swearing that the
witnesses had mistaken him for another, Duboscq, whom he greatly
resembled. She was the _confidante_ of one of the gang who had planned
and carried out the robbery. But her testimony, although corroborated by
other confederates, was rejected, and Lesurques received sentence of
death. Yet there were grave doubts, and the matter was brought before
the Revolutionary Legislature by the Directory, who called for a
reprieve. But the Five Hundred refused, on the extraordinary ground that
to annul a sentence which had been legally pronounced "would subvert all
ideas of justice and equality before the law."
Lesurques died protesting his innocence to the last. "Truth has not been
heard," he wrote a friend; "I shall die the victim of a mistake." He
also published a letter in the papers addressed to Duboscq: "Man in
whose place I am to die," he wrote, "be satisfied with the sacrifice of
my life. If you are ever brought to justice, think of my three
children, covered with shame, and of their mother's despair, and do not
prolong the misfortunes of so fatal a resemblance." On the scaffold he
said, "I pardon my judges and the witnesses whose mistake has murdered
me. I die protesting my innocence."
Four years elapsed before Duboscq was captured. In the interval others
of the gang had passed through the hands of the police, but the prime
mover was only now taken. Even then he twice escaped from prison. When
finally he was put on his trial, and the judge ordered a fair wig, such
as Lesurques had worn, to be placed on his head, the strange likeness
was immediately apparent. He denied his guilt, but was convicted and
guillotined. Thus two men suffered for one offence.
French justice was very tardy in atoning for this grave error. The
rehabilitation of Lesurques' family was not decreed till after repeated
applications under several _régimes_--the Directory, the Consulate, the
Empire, and the Restoration. In the reign of Louis XVIII. the
sequestrated property was restored, but there was no revision of the
sentence, although the case was again and again revived.
THE CHAMPIGNELLES MYSTERY.
One day in October, 1791, a lady dressed in mourning appeared at the
gates of the Château of Champignelles, and was refused admission. "I am
the Marquise de Douhault, _née_ de Champignelles, the daughter of your
old master. Surely you know me?" she said, lifting her veil. "The
Marquise de Douhault has been dead these three years," replied the
_concierge_; "you cannot enter here. I have strict orders from the Sieur
de Champignelles."
This same lady was seen next day at the village church, praying at the
tomb of the late M. de Champignelles, and many remarked her
extraordinary resemblance to the deceased Marquise. But the marquise was
dead; her funeral service had been performed in this very church. Some
of the bystanders asked the lady's maid-servant who she was, and were
told that they ought to know. Others went up to the lady herself, who
said, "I am truly the Marquise de Douhault, but my brother will not
acknowledge me or admit me to the château."
[Illustration: LESURQUE ON THE SCAFFOLD (p. 96).]
Then followed formal recognition. People were summoned by sound of drum
to speak to her identity, and did so "to the number of ninety-six, many
of them officials, soldiers, and members of the municipality." The lady
gave many satisfactory proofs, too, speaking of things that "only a
daughter of the house could know." Thus encouraged, she proceeded to
serve the legal notice on her brother and claim her rights--her share of
the property of Champignelles as co-heir, and a sum in cash for back
rents during her absence when supposed to be dead.
Where had she been all this time? Who had died, if not she? Her story,
although clear, precise, and supported by evidence, was most
extraordinary. To understand it we must go back and trace her history
and that of the Champignelles family as given in the memoir prepared by
the claimant for the courts.
[Illustration: GRAND FRONT OF LA SALPÊTRIÈRE ASYLUM, PARIS.]
Adelaide Marie had been married at twenty-three to the Marquis de
Douhault, who coveted her dowry, and did not prove a good husband. He
was subject to epileptic fits, eventually went out of his mind, and,
after wounding his wife with a sword, was shut up in Charenton. The wife
led an exemplary life till his death, which was soon followed by that of
her father. Her brother now became the head of the family, and is said
to have been a frank blackguard, the real cause of his father's death.
He proceeded to swindle his mother, who was entitled by settlement to a
life interest in the Champignelles estates, subject to pensions to her
children, and he persuaded her to reverse that arrangement--she to
surrender her property, he to pay her an annual allowance. He had gained
his sister's concurrence by obtaining her signature to a blank document,
which he filled up as he wished.
The son, of course, did not pay the allowances, and very often the
mother was in sad straits, reduced at times to pawn her jewels for food.
She appealed now to her daughter, who naturally sided with her, and
wrote in indignant terms to her brother. There was an angry quarrel,
with the threat of a lawsuit if he did not mend his ways. For the
purpose of conferring with her mother, whom she meant to join in the
suit, the Marquise de Douhault proposed to start for Paris.
[Illustration: THE DUCHESS OF POLIGNAC.
(_From the Contemporary Portrait by Mme. Le Brun._)]
Having a strange presentiment that this journey would be unlucky, she
postponed it as long as possible, but went at length on the day after
Christmas Day, 1787. Arrived at Orleans, she accepted the hospitality of
a M. de la Roncière and rested there some days. On the 15th of January,
1788, she was to continue her journey, but in the morning she took a
carriage drive with her friends. All she remembered afterwards was that
Madame de la Roncière offered her a pinch of snuff, which she took, and
that she was seized with violent pains in the head, followed by great
drowsiness and stupor; the rest was a blank.
When she came to herself, she was a prisoner in the Salpêtrière. Her
brain was now clear, her mind active. She protested strongly, and,
saying who she was, demanded to be set at large. They laughed at her,
telling her her name was Buirette, and that she was talking nonsense.
Her detention lasted for seventeen months, and she was denied all
communication with outside. At last she managed to inform a friend, the
Duchess of Polignac, of her imprisonment, and on the 13th of July, 1789,
she was released, to find herself alone in Paris in the midst of the
horrors of the Revolution.
She was friendless. Her brother, to whom she at once applied, repudiated
her as an impostor; an uncle was equally cruel; she asked for her
mother, and was told she had none. Then she ran to Versailles, where
many friends resided, found refuge with the Duchess of Polignac, and was
speedily recognised by numbers of people, princes, dukes, and the rest,
all members of that French aristocracy which was so soon to be dispersed
in exile or to suffer by the guillotine. They urged her not to create a
scandal by suing her brother, but to trust to the king for redress. Soon
the king himself was a prisoner, and presently died on the scaffold.
Her case was taken up, however, by certain lawyers, who advanced her
funds at usurious rates, and planned an attack on her brother, under
which, however, they contemplated certain frauds of their own. When she
hesitated to entrust them with full powers one of these lawyers
denounced her to the Committee of Public Safety, and she narrowly
escaped execution. Bailly, the mayor of Paris, was a friend of hers, but
could not save her from imprisonment in La Force, where she remained a
month, then escaping into the country. Here she learnt that her mother
was not dead, and returned to Paris to see her at her last gasp. After
that she wandered to and fro in hiding and in poverty till, in 1791, she
reappeared at Champignelles.
Such was the case the claimant presented to the courts.
A story is good till the other side is heard, and her brother, M. de
Champignelles, clever, unscrupulous, and a friend of the Republican
Government, had a very strong defence. His first answer was to accuse
his sister, or the person claiming to be his sister, of having tried to
seize his château by force of arms, declaring that she had come backed
by three hundred men to claim her so-called rights, and that he had
appealed to the municipality for protection.
This plea failed, and his second was to accuse the claimant of being
someone else. He asserted that she was a certain Anne Buirette, who had
been an inmate of the Salpêtrière from the 3rd of January, 1786. This
date was a crucial point in the case. The claimant had adopted it as the
date of her entry into the Salpêtrière, yet it was clearly shown that at
that time the Marquise de Douhault was alive, and that she resided on
her property of Chazelet through 1786 and 1787. On other points the
claimant showed remarkable knowledge, remembered names, faces of people,
circumstances in the past; and all this tended to prove that she was the
Marquise. But
[Illustration: RELEASING PRISONERS AT LA SALPÊTRIÈRE, PARIS. DURING THE
FRENCH REVOLUTION.
_Photo by permission of Messrs. Goupil et Cie_.
(_From the Painting by Tony Robert-Fleury._)]
this error in dates was serious, and it was strengthened by a mistake in
the Christian names of the deceased Marquis de Douhault.
[Illustration: CHAPEL OF LA SALPÊTRIÈRE.]
The case came on for trial before the Civil Tribunal of St. Fargeau,
where the commissary of the Republic stated it fully, and with a strong
bias against the claimant. As he put it: "One side asked for the
restitution of a name, a fortune, of which she had been despoiled with a
cruelty that greatly added to the alleged crime; the other charged the
claimant with being an impostor seeking a position to which she had no
right whatever." Between these two alternatives the court must decide,
and either way a crime must be laid bare.
Was it all a fraud? The defence set up was certainly strong.
It rested first on the death of the Marquise. This was supported by the
certificates of the doctors who attended her in her last illness,
documents attested by the municipality of Orleans, which bore witness to
both illness and death. Another document testified that extreme unction
had been administered, and that the burial had been carried out in the
presence of many relatives. The family went into mourning, and the
memory of the Marquise was revered among the honoured dead.
There was next the suspicious commencement of the claim: a letter
addressed by the claimant to the curé of Champignelles, two years and a
half after the death above recorded, asking for a baptismal certificate
and another of marriage. This letter was full of faults of spelling and
grammar, and was signed Anne Louis Adelaide, formerly Marquise de
Grainville, names that were not exact. It was asserted that the real
Marquise was a lady of great intelligence, cultured, highly educated as
became her situation, knowing several languages, and a good musician,
and especially that she was well able to write prettily and correctly.
Then for the identity of the claimant with Anne Buirette there was
seemingly conclusive evidence, the strongest part of it being her own
statement of the date on which she was received at the Salpêtrière. All
the story of her release through the appeal to the Duchess of Polignac
was declared to be untrue. The past life of this Anne Buirette was raked
up, and it was demonstrated that she was a swindler who had been sent to
gaol for an ingenious fraud which may be narrated here. When in 1785, on
the occasion of the birth of a royal prince, the queen wished charitably
to redeem a number of the pledges in the Mont de Piété, the woman
Buirette, being unauthorised, drove round in a carriage, calling herself
a royal attendant, to collect pawn tickets from poor people. She
recovered the sums necessary to redeem the pledges and applied the money
to her own use. For this she was sent to the Salpêtrière, from which she
was released in October, 1789, and not, as she stated, on the day of the
barricades.
From this moment, according to the defence, the fraud began, whether at
her own instance or not could not be shown. Her movements were traced
from place to place as she went about seeking recognition and
assistance, now accepted, more often rejected, by those to whom she
appealed. Finally the commissary closed the case by pointing to the
physical dissimilarity between the two women, the Marquise and the
claimant. The first was known as a lady of quality, distinguished in her
manners, clever, well-bred; the second was obviously stupid and
low-born, stained with vices, given to drink. The Marquise was of frail,
delicate constitution, the claimant seemed strong and robust; the first
had blue eyes, the second black; the first walked lame, the second
showed no signs of lameness.
Yet the claimant persisted, and her counsel upset much that had been
urged. It was shown that the death certificate was not produced; that
the ill-written letters so condemnatory were copies, not originals; that
the official documents purporting to set forth the past life of Anne
Buirette were irregular in form and probably not authentic. The claimant
showed that she was lame, that her eyes were blue; more, that she
carried the scar of the sword wound made by her mad husband years
before. It was all to no purpose. The tribunal refused to enter into the
question of the alleged falsity of the documentary evidence, and taking
its stand upon the date of entry into the Salpêtrière, declared that the
claimant could not be the Marquise de Douhault.
Then followed a long course of tedious litigation. The claim was
revived, carried from court to court, heard and re-heard; one decree
condemned the claimant, and recommended that the case should be dropped;
after five years the Supreme Court of Appeal sent it for a new trial to
the Criminal Court of Bourges. The points referred were: first, to
verify the death of the Marquise de Douhault; second, to establish
whether or not the claimant was Anne Buirette, and if not, third, to say
whether she was the Marquise.
There were now great discrepancies as to the date and the circumstances
of death. Some said it occurred on the 17th of January, 1788, some on
the 18th, some again on the 19th. Other facts also were disputed. As to
the second query, 18 witnesses swore that the claimant was Anne
Buirette; 14 saw no resemblance between Anne Buirette and her, and among
these was Anne Buirette's own husband. As to the third point, 153 out of
224 witnesses declared positively that this was the Marquise herself;
but 53 said either that she was not or that they had never seen the
claimant, whilst among the number were several who had been satisfied as
to her identity in the first instance.
These inquiries were followed by others as to handwriting, and many new
and surprising facts came out. It was asserted by experts that the
letters written before her alleged death by the Marquise and after it by
the claimant were in one and the same hand; that the documents the
claimant was said to have written or signed were forgeries, and must
have been concocted with fraudulent intention.
Now, too, the claimant explained away the famous date of entry into
prison, and laid it to her poor memory, enfeebled by so many
misfortunes.
There seemed enough in all this to reverse the decision of St. Fargeau,
but the Court of Bourges upheld it. The Procureur-Général pronounced his
opinion, formed at the imperious demands of his conscience, that the
claimant was not the Marquise de Douhault; more, that "between her and
that respectable lady there was as much difference as between crime and
virtue."
The law was pitilessly hostile to the very end. On the revival of the
case the claimant was successful in proving that she was certainly not
Anne Buirette, but although she published many memoirs prepared by some
of the most eminent lawyers of the day, and was continually before the
courts during the Consulate and First Empire, she was always unable to
establish her identity. The law denied that she was the Marquise de
Douhault, but yet would not say who she was. To the last she was
nameless, and had no official existence. When she died the authorities
would not permit any name to be inscribed on her tomb.
JUDGE GARROWS STORY.
Our own criminal records abound with cases of disputed or mistaken
identity. Among the most remarkable of them is the one which Judge
Garrow was fond of recounting on the Oxford circuit. He described how a
man was being tried before him for highway robbery, and the prosecutor
identified him positively. The guilt of the accused seemed clear, and
the jury was about to retire to consider their verdict, when a man rode
full-speed into the courthouse yard, and forced his way into the court,
with loud cries to stop the case; he had ridden fifty miles to save the
life of a fellow-creature, the prisoner now at the bar.
[Illustration: "A MAN ... FORCED HIS WAY INTO THE COURT" (p. 104).]
This strange interruption would have been resented by the judge, but the
new arrival called upon all present, especially the prosecutor, to look
at him. It was at once apparent that he was the living image of the
prisoner; he was dressed in precisely similar attire, a green coat with
brass buttons, drab breeches, and top boots. The likeness in height,
demeanour, and especially in countenance, was so remarkable that the
prosecutor was dumbfoundered; he could no longer speak positively as to
the identity of the man who had robbed him. All along, the prisoner had
been protesting his innocence, and now, of course, the gravest doubts
arose as to his guilt. The prosecutor could not call upon the second man
to criminate himself, and yet the jury had no alternative but to acquit
the first prisoner. In this they were encouraged by the judge, who
declared that, although a robbery had certainly been committed by one of
two persons present, the prosecutor could not distinguish between them,
and there was no alternative but acquittal.
[Illustration: SIR WILLIAM GARROW.
(_From the Engraving by J. Parden._)]
So the first man got off; but now a fresh jury was empanelled, and the
second was put upon his trial; his defence was simple enough. Only the
day previous the prosecutor had sworn to one man as his robber. Could he
now be permitted, even if he wished, to swear away the life of another
man for the same offence? All he could say was that it was his belief
that it was the last comer that robbed him; but surely if the jury had
acquitted one person to whom he had sworn positively, could they now
convict a second whom he only believed to be guilty? The jury could not
but accept the force of this reasoning, and as the second man would make
no distinct confession of guilt, he was suffered to go free. But the
truth came out afterwards. The two men were brothers; the first had
really committed the crime, and the whole scene had been got up between
them for the purpose of imposing on the Court.
A CASE AT YORK.
A very similar case occurred at York. A gentleman arrived there during
the assize, and having alighted at a good hotel, where he dined and
slept, asked the landlord next morning if he could find anything of
interest in the town. Hearing that the assizes were in progress, he
entered the court, just as a man was being tried for highway robbery.
The case seemed strong against the prisoner, who was much cast down, for
he had been vehemently protesting his innocence. Suddenly, on the
appearance of the stranger, he rose in the dock and cried, "Here, thank
God, is someone who can prove my innocence." The stranger looked
bewildered, but the prisoner went on to declare that he had met this
very gentleman, at a distant place, Dover, on the day of the alleged
robbery, and he now reminded him that he had conveyed his luggage on a
wheelbarrow from the Ship Inn to the packet for Calais. The stranger was
now interrogated, but could not admit that he had been in Dover on that
day, nor had he any distinct recollection of the prisoner. The judge
then inquired whether he was in the habit of keeping a diary, or of
recording the dates of his movements. The gentleman replied that he was
a merchant and made notes regularly in his pocket-book of his
proceedings. This pocket-book was at that moment locked up in his trunk
at the inn, but he would gladly surrender his keys and allow the book to
be fetched, to be produced in Court.
So a messenger was despatched for the book, and in the meantime the
prisoner at the bar questioned the stranger, recalling facts and
circumstances to his mind, with the result that their meeting in Dover
was pretty clearly proved. The stranger had given his name as a member
of a very respectable firm of London bankers, and altogether his
credibility appeared beyond question. Then came the book, which fixed
the date of his visit to Dover. All this remarkable testimony, arrived
at so strangely, was accepted by the jury, and the prisoner was
forthwith discharged. Within a fortnight, the gentleman and the
ex-prisoner were committed together to York Castle, charged with a most
daring act of house-breaking in the neighbourhood!
HOAG OR PARKER?
A very remarkable case of the difficulty of identification is to be
found in American records, under date 1804. A man was indicted
[Illustration: YORK CASTLE (USED AS PRISON), WITH ASSIZE COURT ON LEFT
_Photo: Frith & Co., Reigate._]
for bigamy, the allegation being that he was a certain James Hoag. The
man himself said that he was Thomas Parker. At the trial, Mrs. Hoag, the
wife, and many relations, with other respectable witnesses, swore
positively that he was James Hoag; on the other hand, Thomas Parker's
wife, and an equal number of credible witnesses, swore to the other
contention. Whereupon the Court recalled the first set of witnesses, who
maintained their opinion, being satisfied that he was James Hoag, his
stature, shape, gestures, complexion, looks, voice, and speech leaving
no doubt on the subject; they even described a particular scar on his
forehead, underneath his hair, and when this was turned back there, sure
enough, was the scar. Yet the Parker witnesses declared that Thomas
Parker had lived among them, worked with them, and was with them on the
very day he was supposed to have contracted his alleged marriage with
Mrs. Hoag. Now Mrs. Hoag played Her last card, and said that her husband
had a peculiar mark on the sole of his foot; Mrs. Parker admitted that
her husband had no such mark. So the court ordered the prisoner to take
off his shoes and stockings and show the soles of his feet; there was no
mark on either of them. Mrs. Parker now claimed him with great
insistency, but Mrs. Hoag would not give up her husband, and there was a
very violent discussion in court. At last a justice of the peace from
Parker's village entered the court and gave evidence to the effect that
he had known him from a child as Thomas Parker, and had often given him
employment. So Mrs. Parker carried off her husband in triumph.
A MILWAUKEE MYSTERY.
An extraordinary case of mistaken identity occurred some fifty years ago
in Milwaukee, in the States, for the details of which I am indebted to a
gentleman of that city, Mr. John W. Hinton. No fewer than ten reputable,
straightforward witnesses swore positively to a dead body as that of a
man with whom they were intimately acquainted and in more or less daily
intercourse. They based their identification upon certain physical facts
of the most unmistakable kind. They were not only satisfied as to the
general features--the height, shape, size, the colour of the hair and
eyes--but there were other peculiar and distinctive marks, such as
scars, loss of teeth, a missing eye, that carried absolute conviction to
the witnesses. Yet they were all absolutely and entirely wrong;
completely deceived by the remarkable resemblance, the strange, almost
incredible similarity of personal traits in two different people.
The case arose out of a mysterious crime. About 9 a.m. on the morning of
the 14th of April, 1855, a party of rag-gatherers were seeking their
harvest from the river just below one of the Milwaukee bridges. A mass
of floating _débris_--chips, scraps of timber, and general rubbish--was
collected in an eddy at the water's edge, and amidst it a boy espied
what he at first thought to be a bag, and afterwards a bundle of rags.
He dragged it on shore with his boat-hook and began to examine it. All
at once he dropped the parcel with a loud yell and took to his heels.
Some of his more courageous fellows then tore it open and exposed its
ghastly contents. Inside was the trunk of a human body, with the head
all but severed, and held only by a few ligaments. The brains had been
dashed out by a blow on the back of the skull, which made a deep
indentation several inches long. A great gash had been made in the
throat; the left eye protruded; both legs had been chopped off and were
gone. The bottom of the bag, as the cover proved to be, had been frayed
out or forced open by the action of the water, and the missing portions
of the trunk had fallen through or been washed out of the aperture.
The Milwaukee police, headed by the Deputy-Sheriff, who had been at one
time Chief of Police, were soon upon the scene. The cause of death was
plain. The weapon used was indicated by the wounds; it was evidently an
axe which had cut into the skull, and the protruding eye had been sliced
out by the same instrument. Close scrutiny of the bag revealed one or
two clues of importance. The bag was a wheat sack, with the name of
"Vogt" stamped upon it; it had been securely tied by peculiar knots,
which an expert eye recognised as French, knots tied by no one but
Frenchmen, and French sailors to boot. Weights had evidently been
inserted in the "slack" of the bag, which had been thus knotted, and
portions of the rope remained attached to the bag. The weights were
gone, and had no doubt been detached at the bottom of the river, with
the result that the corpse had risen to the surface.
The first step towards the detection of the murderer was to identify the
body, and trace back the victim's habits, acquaintances, and
surroundings. Here followed the marvellous mistake made by persons who
on the face of it could not be believed to be in error. A mass of
testimony was immediately forthcoming, all stating in the most explicit,
positive terms that the deceased was a certain John Dwire, well known in
Milwaukee. All who spoke did so definitely, declaring their reasons,
which appeared conclusive. They knew Dwire well, they recognised his
face and its features, his body, the colour of his hair and eyes. This
last was a weak point, however. Dwire was said to have only one eye; the
corpse had two. Although one had been nearly cut away by the axe stroke,
it was still hanging to the head. The witnesses were not to be silenced
by this discrepancy; they pointed triumphantly to other physical proofs:
a scar or burn mark on the left cheek, the size of a sixpence, "a
five-pointed starry scar" which all deposed that Dwire bore; again, he
had lost two front teeth--one in the upper, the other in the lower jaw,
just as was seen in the corpse; the whiskers, of the leg of mutton
pattern, were Dwire's; the bald head also, for hair was growing round
the base of the skull only, curly, and of a sandy hue, as in the case of
Dwire. There was a cut, made in shaving the chin, Dwire's; scars on one
finger of the left hand and on the thumb of the right hand, again
Dwire's; and a nose slightly inclined to one side, also Dwire's. Such
was the evidence of the witnesses, corroborating each other in every
particular, the testimony of people who had known him for years, the
woman of the house where he lodged, the keeper of the boarding-house
where he fed, whom he had not paid in full, the associates who worked
with him and frequented the same haunts.
Yet while the inquest before which these statements were made was
proceeding, unequivocal evidence was adduced which entirely falsified
the story as told. The John Dwire supposed to have been murdered was
alive and well at no great distance from Milwaukee. A whisper to this
effect had been put about, and some of the officials, another
deputy-sheriff, and the city marshal travelled to a point higher up the
river, some sixteen miles distant, where Dwire had been seen at work
since the discovery of his supposed corpse in the stream. He was living
near Kemper's Pier, and had been there uninterruptedly for months--since
the previous Christmas, indeed. Had the Court hesitated to accept this
startling news, all possible doubt must have disappeared by the next
incident. John Dwire himself walked into the court, saying with some
humour, "Lest anyone here should still think I'm dead I have come in
person to assure him that I am not the corpse found in the river last
Saturday morning."
His reappearance, of course, dumbfoundered all present, more
particularly those who had sworn so positively to his mortal remains. It
had another and more beneficial result: it saved an innocent man from
arrest and probable conviction. The first act of the police on the
mistaken identification of the body had been to commence a search in
certain low haunts where Dwire had at times been seen, and they had come
upon an axe recently used lying on a wood-pile in the possession of a
French sailor, commonly called "Matelot Jack," who was the bar tender of
a drinking-shop. The Frenchman had disappeared, but suspicion fell upon
another foreigner, a German, who was an associate of Dwire's, and had
accompanied him when the latter left Milwaukee. This German had come
into the lodging-house asking for Dwire's clothes; he came twice, the
second time armed with a letter from Dwire authorising him to receive
the clothes, but they were impounded for moneys owing. Steps were being
taken to arrest this German, and had not Dwire shown up it might have
gone hard with the suspected person. It had been in Dwire's mind at one
time to leave the neighbourhood, and had he done so the case against the
German would have been pretty complete.
[Illustration: THE RIVER AT MILWAUKEE.]
That there had been a murder still remained self-evident, but it was
never positively known by whom it was committed, nor who was the actual
victim. Some years later a man was arrested on suspicion as a thief; he
was carrying a bag heavily laden, and it was found to contain a number
of copper articles, all of them stolen. The bag was inscribed with the
same name, "Vogt," as that picked up in the river. A farmer named Vogt
now came forward and stated that about the time of the picking up of the
unknown corpse he had sent his carter in with a load of wheat packed in
bags such as the two mentioned. The man was supposed to have delivered
his load, driven his team outside the city, the waggon filled with the
empty sacks, and then made off with the price of the wheat. A more
probable theory was that he had been murdered and rifled, his body being
then thrust into one of his own bags, which was thrown into the river.
The case was never carried through to the end, and neither the thief who
was caught with the second bag nor the French sailor, Matelot Jack, was
tried, presumably from want of sufficiently clear evidence to warrant
prosecution.
A SCOTTISH CASE.
Our next case of mistaken identity occurred in Scotland many years ago,
when a farmer's son, a respectable youth, was charged with
night-poaching on the evidence of a keeper, who swore to him positively.
It was a moonlit night, but cloudy. Other witnesses were less certain
than the keeper, but they could speak to the poacher's dress and
appearance, and they saw him disappearing towards the farmer's house.
An attempt to set up an _alibi_ failed, and the prisoner, having been
found guilty by the jury, was sentenced to three months' imprisonment.
On his release, feeling that he was disgraced, he left the country to
take up a situation at the Cape of Good Hope.
Soon afterwards the keepers whose evidence had convicted the wrong man
met the real culprit in the streets of the county town. He was in
custody for theft, and was being escorted to the courts. His name was
Hammond. The keepers followed, and after a longer look were more than
ever satisfied of the mistake they had made, and they very rightly gave
information in the proper quarter. Then a witness came forward who, on
the night of the trespass, had seen and spoken with this man Hammond,
when he had said he was going into the woods for a shot. Hammond
himself, knowing he could not be tried for an offence for which another
had suffered, now voluntarily confessed the poaching. Great sympathy
was shown towards the innocent victim, and the gentleman whose game had
been killed offered to befriend him. But the young man had already made
for himself a position at the Cape of Good Hope, and would not leave the
colony, where indeed he eventually amassed a fortune. On his return to
Scotland, many years later, he was presented with a licence to shoot for
the rest of his days over the estates he was supposed to have poached.
KARL FRANZ.
We now come to the famous Kingswood Rectory case. On the 11th of June,
1861, Kingswood Rectory, in Surrey, was broken into, in the absence of
the family, and the caretaker murdered. The unfortunate woman was found
in her nightdress. She was tied with cords, and had been choked by a
sock used as a gag and stuffed halfway down her throat. There had been
no robbery; the house had been entered by a window in the basement, but
nothing was missing from it, although the whole place had been
ransacked. Trace enough was discovered to establish the identity of one
at least of the murderers. A packet of papers was found lying on the
floor of the room, and it had evidently dropped from the pocket of one
of the men.
This packet contained six documents: a passport made out in the name of
Karl Franz, of Schandau, in Saxony; a certificate of birth, and another
of baptism, both in the name of Franz; a begging letter with no address,
but signed Krohn; and a letter from Madame Titiens, the great singer, in
reply to an appeal for help. Besides these, there was a sheet of paper
on which were inscribed the addresses of many prominent personages; part
of the stock-in-trade of a begging-letter writer. All these papers
plainly implied that one of the criminal intruders into Kingswood
Rectory was a German. Moreover, within the last few days several German
tramps had been seen in the neighbourhood of Kingswood, one of whom
exactly answered to the description on the passport.
A few weeks later, a young German, in custody in London for a trifling
offence, was recognised as Karl Franz. He himself positively denied that
he was the man, but at last acknowledged that the documents found in
Kingswood Rectory were his property. He was, in due course, committed
for trial at the Croydon assizes. The prosecution seemed to hold very
convincing evidence against him. A Saxon police officer was brought
over, who identified him as Karl Franz, and swore that the various
certificates produced had been delivered to him on the 6th of April of
the same year. Another witness swore to Franz as one of the men seen in
the neighbourhood of the rectory on the 11th of June; while a third
deposed to having met two strangers in a wayside public-house, talking a
foreign language, and identified Franz as one of them. This recognition
was made in Newgate, where he picked out Franz from a crowd of
prisoners. Yet more: the servant of a brushmaker in Reigate deposed that
two men, speaking some unknown tongue, had come into the shop on the day
of the crime, and had bought a hank of cord. One of these men she firmly
believed to be the accused. This was the same cord as that with which
the murdered woman was bound.
What could the accused say to rebut such seemingly overwhelming
evidence? He had, nevertheless, a case, and a strong case. He explained
first that he had changed his name because he had been told of the
Kingswood murder, and of the discovery of his papers. They were
undoubtedly his papers, but they had been stolen from him. His story was
that he had landed at Hull, and was on the tramp to London, when he met
two other Germans by the way, seamen, Adolf Krohn and Muller by name,
and they all joined company. Muller had no papers, and was very anxious
that Karl Franz should give him his. On the borders of Northamptonshire
the three tramps spent the night behind a haystack. Next morning Franz
awoke to find himself alone; his companions had decamped, and his papers
were gone. He had been robbed also of a small bag containing a full suit
of clothes.
This story was discredited. It is a very old dodge for accused persons
to say that suspicious articles found on the scene of a crime had been
stolen from them. Yet Franz's statement was suddenly and unexpectedly
corroborated from an independent source. The day after he had told his
story, two vagrants, who were wandering on the confines of
Northamptonshire, came across some papers hidden in a heap of straw.
They took them to the nearest police-station, when it was found that
they bore upon the Kingswood case. One was a rough diary kept by the
prisoner Franz from the moment of his landing at Hull to the day on
which he lost his other papers. The inference was that it had been
stolen from him too, but that the thieves, on examination, found the
diary useless, and got rid of it. Another of the papers was a
certificate of confirmation in the name of Franz. Now, too, it was
proved beyond doubt that the letter written by Madame Titiens was not
intended for the accused. The recipient of that letter might no doubt
have been an accomplice of the accused, but then it must have been
believed that these men kept their papers together in one lot, which was
hardly likely.
[Illustration: Inspector.
Captain.
Foot Gendarme.
SAXON POLICE.]
Another curious point on which the prosecution relied also broke down. A
piece of cord had been found in Franz's lodgings, exactly corresponding
with that bought at Reigate, and used in tying the victim. But now it
was shown that this cord could only have been supplied to the Reigate
shop by one rope-maker, there being but one manufacturer of that kind of
cord; and this fact rested on the most positive evidence of experts.
Franz had declared that he had picked up this bit of cord in a street in
Whitechapel, near his lodgings, and opposite to a tobacconist's shop. On
further inquiry it was not only found that the rope factory which alone
supplied this cord was situated within a few yards of Franz's lodgings,
but his solicitor, in verifying this, picked up a scrap of the very same
cord in front of a shop in that same street!
THE CANNON STREET CASE.
A very narrow escape from wrongful conviction occurred in the case
generally known as the Cannon Street murder, which happened in April,
1866. Here the suspected murderer was tried for his life, and the
circumstantial evidence against him was so exceedingly strong that but
for a very able defence conducted before Mr. Baron Bramwell, one of the
strongest judges England has had, the prisoner would surely have been
convicted.
A certain Sarah Milson was housekeeper at Messrs. Bevington's, the
well-known furriers and leather dressers of Cannon Street. She was a
widow, and had been employed by the firm for several years. It was her
duty to occupy the premises at night when the working hands had left the
house. She was not alone, for a female cook also lived on the premises.
It was the rule of the house that the porter, a man named Kit, should
lock the doors when the day's work was over, and hand over the keys,
including those of the safe, to Mrs. Milson.
On the night of the 11th of April, 1866, Kit performed this duty, and
then called upstairs through the speaking-tube to Mrs. Milson, who came
down to receive the keys. His last act was to extinguish the light in
the lobby, after which he was shown out of the front door by Mrs.
Milson.
A little later the same evening the cook, who was upstairs in her
bedroom, heard a ring at the door-bell, and was on the point of
answering it when Mrs. Milson, who was sitting in the dining-room,
called out that the bell was for her, and she accordingly went down.
This was about ten minutes past nine. The unfortunate housekeeper was
never again seen alive. Later that night the cook, on going downstairs
with a lighted candle in her hand, found Mrs. Milson dead at the foot of
the stairs. The police were at once called in, and found that death was
caused by the battering in of the woman's head, and a large quantity of
blood was spattered over the stairs. A crowbar was found close to the
body, and was probably the instrument by which the murder had been
effected, although it was unstained with blood.
[Illustration: "FOUND MRS. MILSON DEAD AT THE FOOT OF THE STAIRS" (p.
117).]
An inquiry was at once set on foot by the police, who ascertained
certain facts. First, the cook declared that a man came constantly to
call upon the housekeeper, that she herself had never seen the man, but
that on one occasion, just before his expected arrival, Mrs. Milson had
borrowed two sovereigns from her, which had afterwards been repaid. The
identity of this man was discovered next day when a letter was found in
one of the boxes of the deceased, signed "George Terry." This letter, a
claim made upon Mrs. Milson for the repayment of certain moneys she
owed, expressed great indignation, and threatened that unless Mrs.
Milson could offer satisfactory terms the writer would complain to Mr.
Bevington of his housekeeper's indebtedness. Attached to this letter was
a receipt signed "William Denton, on behalf of George Terry, 20, Old
Change."
It was not difficult to follow up George Terry from the address given,
and he was presently found as an inmate of St. Olave's Workhouse. He
readily told the story of his relations with Mrs. Milson. She had been
acquainted with his wife, and as she was in difficulties, he had helped
her to get a loan from a certain Mrs. Webber, the total amount being
£35. Mrs. Webber appears to have been very urgent about repayment, and
so Terry sent Mrs. Milson the letter which was found, but which he did
not write himself, having secured the services of a fellow-lodger whom
he knew by the name of Bill. "Bill" wrote the letter, went with it to
Cannon Street, signed the receipt for such money as he received, and
brought back the money. This had occurred some three months before. The
man calling himself Denton was then traced, and proved to be a certain
William Smith, who lived at Eton, at 6, Eton Square. The City detectives
who had charge of the case went at once to Eton with the letter and the
receipt, which were shown to William Smith and acknowledged to be in his
handwriting.
There was enough in this to warrant the man Smith's arrest on suspicion,
but the police soon had stronger evidence. A woman, Mrs. Robins, who
acted as housekeeper at No. 1, Cannon Street, volunteered some very
damaging information. She stated that on the night of the murder she
returned to No. 1 at ten minutes to ten. As she was on the point of
entering her house she heard the door of No. 2 violently slammed.
Looking round, she saw a man go down the steps and pass her on the
right. He was dressed in dark clothes and wore a tall hat. The light of
the hall lamp shone on the man's face, so that she was able to know it;
she noticed that he walked in a very hurried manner, leaning forward as
he went along. In order to see whether Mrs. Robins could identify this
man, William Smith was taken from Bow Street to the Mansion House
through Cannon Street. He was between two police officers, but there was
nothing to show that he was in custody. Mrs. Robins had been warned by
the police to stand at her door at the time the party passed, and she
was asked to say whether she could recognise her man. She made out Smith
without hesitation; but to strengthen her evidence, she was sent for to
the Mansion House, where the prisoner was placed amongst a number of
people in a room through which Mrs. Robins was invited to pass. As she
crossed the room for the second time she pointed to Smith and said,
"This is the man I saw in Cannon Street."
Another very damaging witness was a boat-builder, Henry Giles, of Eton,
who deposed that he met the prisoner Smith in an alehouse on the night
of the 11th of April. Giles asked Smith to play a game of dominoes, but
Smith replied that he had to travel forty miles that night. "How can you
do that?" asked Giles. "Easy enough," was the reply; "if I go to London
and back, that would make forty miles." Giles then said, "But you are
not going to London, are you?" and Smith replied, "Yes, I am," at which
Giles laughed and called him a liar. Another witness declared that he
had seen Smith hurrying towards Slough Station about 7 p.m. The prisoner
was said to be wearing dark clothes, a black coat, and a tall black hat.
The evidence of railway officials proved that a train had left Slough at
7.43 and reached Paddington at 8.40. There was also a train down at
10.45, which arrived at 11.43. It was said in evidence that the interval
of two hours was quite sufficient to allow Smith to go into the City by
the Metropolitan Railway, commit the crime in Cannon Street, and return
_viâ_ Bishop's Road to Paddington. Further evidence against the man
Smith consisted of spots upon his coat which were believed to be
blood-stains, but which he accounted for by alleging that he had cut
himself in shaving.
Here was a man of indifferent character, an idle ne'er-do-well, known to
have had dealings with the murdered woman, against whom very clear
circumstantial evidence had been adduced. He was shown to have said he
was going to London; he was seen close to the station where a train was
on the point of starting for London; he was recognised by a respectable
woman at just the time he could have reached the house in Cannon Street
had he travelled up to Paddington as alleged, and added to all this
there were the blood-stains on his coat.
Yet the whole case broke down on the production of the most complete and
unquestionable _alibi_. It was proved beyond all question that Smith did
not go to London from Slough by the 7.43 train. The prisoner admitted
that he had walked in the direction of Slough Station with the idea of
meeting a friend. But he was certainly in company with a man named
Harris in Eton Square a little before 6.30, and the two remained
together until ten minutes past ten.
[Illustration: THE MANSION HOUSE JUSTICE ROOM, WHERE THE CASE WAS FIRST
HEARD.]
A number of other witnesses corroborated this statement--a brazier, a
photographer, a gardener, a bootmaker, and so on. Ten or twelve men in
all had had Smith under their eyes through the whole of the time that he
was supposed to be killing the woman in Cannon Street. One had been
drinking with him, three others had played cards with him, an
alehouse-keeper's wife had served him with beer after 11 p.m.
It was altogether absurd to suppose that these witnesses had combined
to perjure themselves on behalf of Smith. But even if such a combination
had been possible, although no motive for it had been produced, there
was other evidence that spoke unconsciously for the prisoner. If Smith
had really committed the crime he would never have denied that he went
to London, as he did deny it; he would have made some excuse for his
going, feeling sure that the fact would be discovered. Another curious
fact was that, as he was undoubtedly at Eton at 7.30, he must have gone
at great speed to catch the 7.43 train at Slough, a full mile distant.
There was not the least necessity for it either, as the Windsor Station
was only a few yards from where he had been seen. A defence of this kind
was perfectly unanswerable; the judge summed up entirely in favour of
the prisoner, and directed the jury to find him not merely "Not guilty,"
but actually innocent of the crime.
I cannot leave this interesting case, in which there was nearly a
miscarriage of justice from mistaken circumstantial evidence, without
relating a curious fact within my own knowledge that grew out of this
murder. In December, 1869, when I was acting as Controller of the
Convict Prison at Gibraltar, a convict came before the Visitors who
appeared under strong emotion, and who told me in a broken voice, with
tears in his eyes, that he wished to give himself up as one of the
Cannon Street murderers. I cannot remember the man's name, but I will
call him X. After hearing what he had to say, the Visitors asked him
what had induced him to make this confession. "Because," said he, "I
didn't do the job alone. My accomplice, Y" (as I will call him), "has
just come out in the last draft from England. I have not yet spoken to
him, but I am greatly afraid that he might forestall me in my
confession." The man spoke with such evident contrition and good faith
that the Visitors felt bound to accept his story; but they sent for the
other, meaning to confront them.
Y started violently when he came into our presence and saw X standing
there, but he positively denied his complicity in the murder. For some
time, too, he refused to acknowledge that he knew X, and then followed a
strange altercation between the two, X earnestly imploring Y to make a
clean breast of it, as he himself had done; Y as stoutly repudiating all
connection with the matter. Just when we had made up our minds to
dismiss both the men and report the case home for instructions, Y's
better nature seemed to triumph, and he admitted thus tardily that he
had been concerned in the murder of Mrs. Milson. Our next step was to
order both men into separate and solitary confinement until instructions
could be received from home. We fully expected to hear in due course
that both men were to be sent home to stand their trial for the Cannon
Street murder.
I am not ashamed to confess that we had been completely humbugged. A
full and searching inquiry had been instituted by the Home Office
authorities, more particularly into the antecedents and movements of the
two convicts, and it was established beyond all doubt that neither of
them could have possibly committed the crime, seeing that both were in
custody for another offence on the day of the murder. I am free to admit
that in the many years I have since spent in the charge and control of
criminals, I have been very loath, after this experience, to accept
confessions, although I have had many made to me. Mine is not a singular
experience, as most police and prison officials will say. Indeed, the
general public themselves must have noticed that there are few
mysterious crimes committed which are not confessed to by persons who
could not possibly have been guilty. In the case of X and Y, the whole
trick had been devised for the simple purpose of escaping daily labour
and gaining a few weeks' complete idleness in the cells.
False confessions, it may be added, are a frequent source of trouble to
the police. Whenever some great criminal mystery has shocked the public
mind, silly people, whether from constant brooding over the fact or from
sheer imbecility, are driven to surrender themselves as the criminals.
It will be remembered that at the time of the Whitechapel murders
numbers of people stood self-confessed as the perpetrators of these
crimes, eager to take upon themselves the criminal identity of the
mysterious "Jack the Ripper." I have recorded elsewhere[7] a curious
case in which a lady of good position, married, having many children and
a perfectly happy home, became possessed with the idea that she had
committed murder--that of a soldier in garrison in the town where she
lived. At length she wrote to Scotland Yard, and made full confession of
her crime, adding that she meant to arrive in London next day, where she
was prepared to submit herself to arrest, trial, and whatever penalty
might be imposed. All she asked was that she might not be separated from
her children, and that if they could not accompany her to gaol they
might at least be permitted to visit her frequently. Next day she
arrived as she had threatened, and drove up to Scotland Yard in a cab,
herself and children inside, her portmanteaux and a huge bath on the
box. There she sat, and positively refused to move anywhere except to
gaol. The police authorities, after vainly arguing with her, were on the
point of taking charge of her as a wandering lunatic, and sending her
home, but the Assistant Commissioner hit upon a happy device for getting
rid of her. This was to tell her that if she went to gaol she must be
separated absolutely from her children. If, however, she would sign a
paper promising to appear whenever called upon, she might remain with
her children in her own home. The ruse was successful; she signed the
promise, and returned as she had come.
[Illustration: THE CONVICT PRISON AT GIBRALTAR (MARKED BY A *).]
A NARROW ESCAPE.
An innocent man narrowly escaped death through an artful plot which led
to a mistake of identity, but which fortunately, at the eleventh hour,
was brought home to its criminal contrivers. A certain Mr. Henderson, a
respectable merchant of Edinburgh, was in 1726 charged with the forgery
of an acceptance, signed by the Duchess of Gordon, although, as a matter
of fact, he was ignorant of the whole affair. In the year mentioned it
was discovered that a man named Petrie, who filled the post of town
officer or constable in Leith, held a bill for £58 which purported on
the face of it to have been drawn by George Henderson on the Duchess of
Gordon, accepted by her, and paid over by Henderson to a Mrs. Macleod.
This Mrs. Macleod owed a sum of money to Petrie, and she begged him for
a further advance, which he made, to the amount of £6, Mrs. Macleod
lodging with him as security the acceptance which she had received from
Henderson. Petrie took no action on the bill in the way of demanding
payment from the Duchess of Gordon; this was at the instance of Mrs.
Macleod, who assured him that her Grace was at that time engaged in
special devotional exercises, and that the Duchess's agent was absent
from Edinburgh. Petrie was put off with other excuses. Mrs. Macleod
continued to beg him to hold over the bill, and brought him a letter to
the same effect purporting to come from Henderson. Petrie, although
suspicious as to the genuineness of the bill, took no steps, and the
matter came out otherwise; whereupon the Edinburgh magistrates issued a
warrant for the arrest of the three parties--Petrie, Henderson, and Mrs.
Macleod. Petrie was almost immediately exonerated, but Mrs. Macleod gave
such evidence against Henderson that he was held to be fully
incriminated, and was put back for trial. Mrs. Macleod asserted
positively that the bill had been given her by Henderson.
In due course Henderson was arraigned. Several witnesses swore
positively that they had seen Henderson sign documents, especially an
acknowledgment of a debt to Mrs. Macleod. One, a man named Gibson,
declared that the signature had been given in his own house by
Henderson, and in his presence and that of other witnesses. He appears
to have identified Henderson in the dock, asserting that he had often
previously seen him and been in his company. Gibson further declared
that Henderson wore a suit of dark-coloured clothes, and a black wig
such as he now appeared in.
Henderson's defence was that he knew absolutely nothing of the whole
proceeding. His counsel adduced in his favour that he was a man of
excellent character, and his demeanour at the trial, his straightforward
answers to all interrogatories, and the outward appearance of truth in
all his details, no doubt made an impression upon the Court. The Lord
Advocate, his prosecutor, pressed hard for a conviction, on the ground
that the forgery of the bill had been fully proved. The judges, however,
stayed proceedings, and postponed decision until the following session.
Now, when the case looked blackest against Henderson, a mere chance
interposed to save him. The Lord Advocate, who seems to have had no
doubt of his guilt, was on his way northward to spend the recess, when
he paid a visit on the way to a Mr. Rose, of Kilravock. One day Mr. Rose
took his lordship to see a house he was building, and while inspecting
it Mr. Rose missed one of the carpenters. On inquiring what had become
of him, the foreman took Mr. Rose aside and privately told him that the
man, hearing the Lord Advocate was at Kilravock, had absconded, saying
it was time for him to leave the country. The man in question, by name
David Household, had gone to the coast, proposing to take ship for
London. Mr. Rose felt it his duty to inform the Lord Advocate, and the
foreman was questioned as to whether the carpenter had been guilty of
any crime. The answer was that Household was suspected of being
accessory to a forgery. The Lord Advocate forthwith despatched a
messenger to the coast, who apprehended Household, and carried him
prisoner to Edinburgh. Household was brought before the Court at the
beginning of the winter session and questioned, when he confessed that
he had been party to a very scandalous and deliberate fraud. Early in
the year Mrs. Macleod had come to him and asked him to write out for her
the very bill or acceptance for the forgery of which George Henderson
was charged. Household admitted that he had penned the whole document,
and had imitated the signatures of Henderson, both as drawer and
endorser of the bill, but that he had not written the name of Gordon.
Household further deposed that he had assumed, at Mrs. Macleod's
request, the identity of George Henderson; that she had given him for
the personation a coat belonging to her husband, and a black-knotted
periwig; that she had carried him to a gardener's house at the
Water-Gate, where she had dictated to him a part of the obligation which
had been produced in court; and had then taken him on to a house in the
Canon-Gate (Gibson's), where he (Household) had written the rest of the
document, and signed it
[Illustration: "MRS. MACLEOD WENT TO HER EXECUTION DRESSED IN A BLACK
ROBE" (p. 128).]
"George Henderson" in the presence of the various witnesses whom Mrs.
Macleod had produced. He also confessed that he had written the letter
which Mrs. Macleod had given Petrie as coming from George Henderson.
Finally, after Mrs. Macleod's arrest, a Highlander had come to him with
a message from Mr. Macleod urging him to leave the country for his own
safety. Household, however, did not take flight until the appearance of
the Lord Advocate at Kilravock; then he went to Leith, and hid himself
on board ship, where he was discovered by a Customs officer, and
eventually arrested.
This evidence changed the whole character of the trial, and the Lord
Advocate was the first to admit that Henderson was innocent of the
forgery, which was now fixed upon Mrs. Macleod. The records of the case
do not give any definite information as to who actually signed the
Duchess's name to the bill, but when Mrs. Macleod was finally arraigned
this forgery was laid to her charge, and her offence must have been
satisfactorily proved to the jury, for she was found guilty and
sentenced to death. Two law officers, the Lord Advocate and the
Solicitor-General, characterised the whole "as an artful and horrid
contrivance, only discovered by the good providence of God." It is
stated in the account published that Mrs. Macleod went to her execution
dressed in a black robe with a large hoop, and a white fan in her hand.
When on the gallows she herself took off the ornamental parts of her
dress, and put the fatal cord about her neck with her own hands. She
persisted to the last in denying her guilt.
The Duchess of Gordon in this case was Lady Henrietta Mordaunt, daughter
of the celebrated Charles Earl of Peterborough, and wife of Alexander,
second Duke, whom she married in 1706, twenty years before the
occurrences recorded.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER III.
PROBLEMATICAL ERRORS.
Captain Donellan and the Poisoning of Sir Theodosius Boughton:
Donellan's Suspicious Conduct: Evidence of John Hunter, the great
Surgeon: Sir James Stephen's View: Corroborative Story from his
Father--The Lafarge Case: Madame Lafarge and the Cakes: Doctors
differ as to the Presence of Arsenic in the Remains: Possible Guilt
of Denis Barbier: Madame Lafarge's Condemnation: Pardoned by
Napoleon III.--Charge against Madame Lafarge of stealing a School
Friend's Jewels: Her Defence: Conviction--Madeleine Smith charged
with Poisoning her _Fiancé:_ "Not proven": the Latest Facts--the
Wharton-Ketchum Case in Baltimore, U.S.A.--The Story of the Perrys.
CAPTAIN DONELLAN.
"Few cases," says Sir James Stephen,[8] "have given rise to more
discussion than that of the alleged poisoning of Sir Theodosius Boughton
by his brother-in-law, Captain Donellan, in 1781." It was long deemed a
mystery, and even now the facts are not considered conclusive against
the man who actually suffered for the crime. Donellan was found guilty,
and in due course executed, but to this day the justice of the sentence
is questioned, and the case, in the opinion of some, should be classed
with judicial errors. This is not the view of Sir James Stephen, who has
declared that the evidence would have satisfied him of Donellan's guilt.
"Why should he not have been found guilty?" asks the eminent judge. "He
had the motive, he had the means, he had the opportunity; his conduct,
from first to last, was that of a guilty man."
Sir Theodosius Boughton was a young baronet who, on his majority, came
into an estate of £2,000 a year. In 1780 he was living at Lawford Hall,
Warwickshire, with his mother and sister, the latter having married
Captain Donellan in 1777. Mrs. Donellan was her brother's heir; if he
died childless everything would go to her. Donellan claimed afterwards
to have been quite disinterested. He had all his wife's fortune settled
on her and her children, and would not even keep a life interest in her
property in case she predeceased him. This settlement extended not only
to what she had but to what she expected, and his conduct in this matter
was one of the points made by the defence in his favour.
[Illustration: CAPTAIN JOHN DONELLAN.
(_From a Contemporary Print._)]
Boughton was suffering from a slight specific disorder, but was
otherwise well; Donellan wished to make it appear otherwise. Talking of
him to a friend, he described his condition as such that the friend
remarked the young man's life would not be worth a couple of years'
purchase. "Not one," promptly corrected Donellan. On the 29th of August,
1780, a country practitioner who was called in pronounced Sir Theodosius
in good health and spirits, but prescribed a draught for him: jalap,
lavender water, nutmeg, and so forth. The remainder of the day was spent
in fishing, and the baronet went to bed, having arranged that his mother
should come to him and give him his medicine at seven o'clock next
morning. He had been neglectful about taking it; it had been kept locked
up in a cupboard, but, at his brother-in-law's suggestion, it was now
left on the shelf in another room--where, as the prosecution declared,
anyone, Captain Donellan in particular, might have access to it.
At six a.m. on the morning of the 30th a servant went in and saw Sir
Theodosius about some business of mending a net. The young baronet then
appeared quite well. At seven Lady Boughton came up with the medicine,
which she found on the shelf. Sir Theodosius tasted and smelt it,
complaining that it was very nauseous. His mother then smelt it, and
noticed that it was like bitter almonds, but she persuaded her son to
drink off a whole dose. "In about two minutes or less," she afterwards
deposed, "he struggled violently and appeared convulsed, with a
prodigious rattling in his throat and stomach." When he was a little
better the mother left him, but returned in five minutes to find him
with his eyes fixed, his teeth clenched, and froth running out of his
mouth.
The doctor was forthwith summoned. Now Donellan came in, and Lady
Boughton told him that she was afraid she had given her son something
wrong instead of the medicine. Donellan asked for the bottle, took it,
poured in some water, then emptied the contents into a basin. Lady
Boughton protested, declaring that he ought not to have meddled with the
bottle. Donellan's reply was that he wished to taste the stuff. Again,
when a maid-servant came in he desired her to remove the basin and the
bottles, while Lady Boughton directed her to let them alone. But now Sir
Theodosius was in his death-throes, and while she was engaged with him
the bottles disappeared.
Donellan, after the event, wrote to the baronet's guardian, Sir William
Wheler, notifying the death, but giving none of the peculiar
circumstances of the case. Three or four days later the guardian replied
that as the death had been so sudden, and gossip was afloat concerning a
possible mistake with the medicine, it was desirable to have a
_post-mortem._ "The country will never be satisfied else, and we shall
all be very much blamed," wrote Sir William Wheler. "Although it is late
now it will appear from the stomach whether there is anything corrosive
in it.... I assure you it is reported all over the country that he was
killed either by medicine or by poison." The step was all the more
necessary in the interest of the doctor who prescribed the draught.
Donellan replied that Lady Boughton and he agreed "cheerfully" to the
suggestion. Sir William wrote again, saying he was glad they approved,
and gave the names of the doctors who should perform the autopsy.
When they came, Donellan showed them the second letter, not the first;
the mere desire for a _post-mortem_, not the grounds for it, as set
forth in the first, that poison was suspected. Decomposition was far
advanced, the doctors were not pleased with the business, and, knowing
no special reason for inquiry, made none. After this Donellan wrote to
Sir William Wheler, conveying the impression that the _post-mortem_ had
actually taken place. Later, another surgeon offered to open the body,
but Donellan refused, on the plea that it would be disrespectful to the
two first doctors. Sir William, too, having learnt that nothing had been
done, reiterated his desire for a _post-mortem_, and two more doctors
arrived at Lawford Hall on the very day of the funeral. Donellan took
advantage of a misconstruction of a message, and the body was buried
without being opened.
Three days afterwards it was exhumed in deference to growing suspicions
of poison, but it was too late to verify foul play. But the doctors
formed a strong opinion of the cause of death, and later, when it came
to the trial, they agreed that the draught, after swallowing which
Boughton died, was poison, and the immediate cause of death. One said
that the nature of the poison was sufficiently clear from Lady
Boughton's description of the smell. But the great surgeon, John Hunter,
would not admit that the appearance of the body gave the least suspicion
of poison. As to the smell, a mixture of the very same ingredients, but
with laurel water added, was made up for Lady Boughton at the trial, and
she declared it smelt of bitter almonds exactly like the draught.
The introduction of the laurel water followed the important discovery
that Donellan had a private still in a room which he called his own, and
that he distilled roses in it. A curious bit of evidence not mentioned
in the report of the trial is preserved,[9] which shows how a single
number of the "Philosophical Transactions" was found in Donellan's
library, and the only leaves in the book that had been cut were those
that gave an account of the making of laurel water by distillation.
Donellan's still figured further in the case, for it was proved that he
had taken it into the kitchen, and asked the cook to dry it in the oven.
This was two or three days after the baronet's death, and the
presumption was that he had desired to take the smell of laurel water
off the still. It also appeared that Donellan was in the habit of
keeping large quantities of arsenic in his room, which he used,
seemingly with but little caution, for poisoning fish.
Donellan's defence did not help him greatly. It was written, after the
custom of those days, and did not attempt to explain why
[Illustration: "NOW DONELLAN CAME IN" (p. 131).]
he had washed or made away with the bottles. He submitted that he had
urged the doctors to the _post-mortem_ by producing Sir William Wheler's
letter; but it was the second, not the first letter. On other points he
maintained a significant silence. What went against him also were
unguarded confidences made to a fellow-prisoner while he was awaiting
trial. He said openly that he believed his brother-in-law had been
poisoned, and that it lay among themselves: Lady Boughton, himself, the
footman, and the doctor. Another curious story is preserved by Sir James
Stephen, whose grandfather had long retained a strong belief in
Donellan's innocence, and had written a pamphlet against the verdict
which attracted much notice at the time. Mr. Stephen changed his opinion
when he had been introduced to Donellan's attorney, who told him that he
also had firmly believed in Donellan's innocence until one day he
proposed to his client to retain Dunning, the eminent counsel, for his
defence. Donellan agreed, and referred the attorney to Mrs. Donellan for
authority to incur the expense of the heavy fee required. Mrs. Donellan
demurred, thinking the outlay unnecessary, and when this was reported to
the prisoner, Donellan burst into a rage, crying, "And who got it for
her?" Then, seeing that he had committed himself, he stopped abruptly,
and said no more.
Donellan was convicted and executed, and to those who aver that the
verdict was wrong Sir James Stephen replies that every item of evidence
pointed to Donellan's guilt, and did, in fact, satisfy the jury. The
want of complete proof is the chief basis of the argument in Donellan's
favour, backed by the opinion of so eminent a scientist as Hunter. He
deposed that he did not see the slightest indication of poisoning, and
while he admitted that death following so soon after the draught had
been swallowed was a curious fact, yet he could see no necessary
connection between the two circumstances. The symptoms, as described to
him, and the state of the internal organs, were perfectly compatible
with death from epilepsy or apoplexy. Public opinion at the time was, no
doubt, adverse to Donellan, and the jury may have been prejudiced
against him. He was deemed an adventurer, a fortune-hunter, who had
gained a footing in a good family by somewhat discreditable means, and
it was assumed that he was prepared to go any length to feather his nest
further.
This was a rather exaggerated view. Donellan was a gentleman. He had
borne the king's commission, and was a son of a colonel in the army. To
haunt fashionable society in London and the chief pleasure resorts in
search of a rich _partie_ was a common enough proceeding, and implied
self-seeking, but not necessarily criminal tendencies. He got his chance
at Bath by doing a civil thing, and made the most of it. Lady Boughton
was unable to find accommodation in the best hotel, and Donellan, who
was there, promptly gave up his rooms. The acquaintance thus pleasantly
begun grew into intimacy, and ended in his marrying Miss Boughton. So
far the circumstances were not very strong against him. It was his
conduct after the event that told, and, though there is an element of
doubt in the case, most people, probably, who review the facts will come
to the same conclusion as did Sir James Stephen.
MADAME LAFARGE.
One of the greatest poisoning trials on record in any country is that of
Madame Lafarge, and its interest is undying, for to this day the case is
surrounded by mystery. Although the guilt of the accused was proved to
the satisfaction of the jury at the time of trial, strong doubts were
then entertained, and still possess acute legal minds, as to the justice
of her conviction. Long after the event, two eminent Prussian jurists,
councillors of the criminal court of Berlin, closely studied the
proceedings, and gave it as their unqualified opinion that, according to
Prussian law, there was absence of proof. They published a report on the
case, in which they gave their reasons for this opinion, but it will be
best to give some account of the alleged poisoning before quoting the
arguments of these independent authorities.
In the month of January, 1840, an iron-master, residing at Glandier, in
the Limousin, died suddenly of an unknown malady. His family, friends,
and immediate neighbours at once accused his wife of having poisoned
him. This wife differed greatly in disposition and breeding from the
deceased. Marie Fortunée Capelle was the daughter of a French artillery
colonel, who had served in Napoleon's Guard. She was well connected, her
grandmother having been a fellow-pupil of the Duchess of Orleans under
Madame de Genlis; her aunts were well married, one to a Prussian
diplomat, the other to M. Garat, the general secretary of the Bank of
France. She had been delicately nurtured. Her father had held good
military commands, and was intimate with the best people, many of them
nobles of the First Empire, and the child was petted by the Duchess of
Dalmatia (Madame Soult), the Princess of Echmuhl (Madame Ney), Madame de
Cambacères, and so forth.
Colonel Capelle died early, and Marie's mother, having married again,
also died. Marie was left to the care of distant relations; she had a
small fortune of her own, which was applied to her education, and she
was sent to one of the best schools in Paris. Here she made bosom
friends, as schoolgirls do, and with one of them became involved in a
foolish intrigue, which, in the days of her trouble, brought upon her
another serious charge, that of theft. Marie grew up distinguished-looking
if not absolutely pretty; tall, slim, with dead-white complexion,
jet-black hair worn in straight shining pleats, fine dark eyes, and a
sweet but somewhat sad smile. These are the chief features of
contemporary portraits.
To marry her was now the wish of her people, and she was willing enough
to become independent. Some say that a suitor was sought through the
matrimonial agents, others positively deny it. In any case, a proposal
came from a certain Charles Pouch Lafarge, a man of decent family but
inferior to the Capelles, not much to look at, about thirty, and
supposed to be prosperous in his business. The marriage was hastily
arranged, and as quickly solemnised--in no more than five days. Lafarge
drew a rosy picture of his house: a large mansion in a wide park, with
beautiful views, where all were eager to welcome the bride and make her
happy. As they travelled thither the scales quickly fell from Marie's
eyes. Her new husband changed in tone; from beseeching he became rudely
dictatorial, and he seems to have soon wounded the delicate
susceptibilities of his wife.
The climax was reached on arrival at Glandier, a dirty, squalid place.
Threading its dark, narrow streets, they reached the mansion--only a
poor place, after all, surrounded with smoking chimneys: a cold, damp,
dark house, dull without, bare within. The shock was terrible, and
Madame Lafarge declared she had been cruelly deceived. Life in such
surroundings, tied to such a man, seemed utterly impossible. She fled to
her own room, and there indited a strange letter to her husband, a
letter that was the starting-point of suspicion against her, and which
she afterwards explained away as merely a first mad outburst of
disappointment and despair. Her object was to get free at all costs from
this hateful and unbearable marriage.
This letter, dated the 25th of August, 1839, began thus: "CHARLES,--I am
about to implore pardon on my knees. I have betrayed you culpably. I
love not you, but another...." And it continued in the same tone for
several sheets. Then she implored her husband to release her and let her
go that very evening. "Get two horses ready: I will ride to Bordeaux and
then take ship to Smyrna. I will leave you all my possessions. May God
turn them to your advantage--you deserve it. As for me, I will live by
my own exertions. Let no one know that I ever existed.... If this does
not satisfy you I will take arsenic--_I have some_.... Spare me, be the
guardian angel of a poor orphan girl, or, if you choose, slay me, and
say I have killed myself.--MARIE."
[Illustration: MADAME LAFARGE.
(_From a Contemporary Print_.)]
This strange effusion was read with consternation not only by Lafarge,
but by his mother, his sister, and her husband. A stormy scene followed
between Lafarge and his wife, but at length he won her over. She
withdrew her letter, declaring that she did not mean what she wrote, and
that she would do her best to make him happy. "I have accepted my
position," she wrote to M. Garat, "although it is difficult. But with a
little strength of mind, with patience, and my husband's love, I may
grow contented. Charles adores me, and I cannot but be touched by the
caresses lavished on me." To another she wrote that she struggled hard
to be satisfied with her life. Her husband under a rough shell possessed
a noble heart; her mother-in-law and sister-in-law overwhelmed her with
attentions. Now she gradually settled down into domesticity, and busied
herself with household affairs.
M. Lafarge made no secret of his wish to employ part of his wife's
fortune in developing his works. He had come upon an important discovery
in iron smelting, and only needed capital to make it highly profitable.
His wife was so persuaded of the value of this invention that she lent
him money, and used her influence with her relatives to secure a loan
for him in addition. Husband and wife now made wills whereby they
bequeathed their separate estates to each other. Lafarge, however, made
a second will, almost immediately, in favour of his mother and sister,
carefully concealing the fact from his wife. Then he started for Paris,
to secure a patent for his new invention, taking with him a general
power of attorney to raise money on his wife's property. During their
separation many affectionate letters passed between them.
The first attempt to poison, according to the prosecution, was made at
the time of this visit to Paris. Madame Lafarge now conceived the tender
idea of having her portrait painted, and sending it to console her
absent spouse. At the same time she asked her mother-in-law to make some
small cakes to accompany the picture. They were made and sent, with a
letter, written by the mother, at Marie Lafarge's request, begging
Lafarge to eat _one_ of the cakes at a particular hour on a particular
day. She would eat one also at Glandier at the same moment, and thus a
mysterious affinity might be set up between them.
A great deal turned on this incident. The case containing the picture
and the rest was despatched on the 16th of December, by _diligence_, and
reached Paris on the 18th. But on opening the box, one large cake was
found, not several small ones. How and when had the change been
effected? The prosecution declared it was Marie's doing. The box had
undoubtedly been tampered with; it left, or was supposed to leave,
Glandier fastened down with small screws. On reaching Paris it was
secured with long nails, and the articles inside were not placed as they
had been on departure. Lafarge tore off a corner of the large cake, ate
it, and the same night was seized with violent convulsions. It was
presumably a poisoned cake, although the fact was never verified, but
Marie Lafarge was held responsible for it, and eventually charged with
an attempt to murder her husband.
In support of this grave charge it was found that on the 12th of
December, two days before the box left, she had purchased a quantity of
arsenic from a chemist in the neighbouring town. Her letter asking for
it was produced at the trial, and it is worth reproducing. "Sir," she
wrote, "I am overrun with rats. I have tried nux vomica quite without
effect. Will you, and can you, trust me with a little arsenic? You may
count upon my being most careful, and I shall only use it in a linen
closet." At the same time she asked for other drugs, of a harmless
character.
Further suspicious circumstances were adduced against her. It was urged
that after the case had been despatched to Paris she was strangely
agitated, her excitement increasing on the arrival of news that her
husband was taken ill, that she expressed the gravest fears of a bad
ending, and took it almost for granted that he must die. Yet, as the
defence presently showed, there were points also in her favour. Would
Marie have made her mother-in-law write referring to the small cakes,
one of which the son was to eat, if she knew that no small cakes, but
one large one, would be found within? How could she have substituted the
large for the small? There was as much evidence to show that she could
not have effected the exchange as that she had done so. Might not
someone else have made the change? Here was the first importation of
another possible agency into the murder, which never seems to have been
investigated at the time, but to which I shall return presently to
explain how Marie Lafarge may have borne the brunt of another person's
crime. Again, if she wanted thus to poison her husband, it would have
been at the risk of injuring her favourite sister also. For this sister
lived in Paris, and Lafarge had written that she often called to see
him. She might, then, have been present when the case was opened, and
might have been poisoned too.
Lafarge so far recovered that he was able to return to Glandier, which
he reached on the 5th of January, 1840. That same day Madame Lafarge
wrote to the same chemist for more arsenic. It was a curious letter, and
certainly calculated to prejudice people against her. She told the
chemist that her servants had made the first lot into a clever paste
which her doctor had seen, and for which he had given her a
prescription; she said this "so as to quiet the chemist's conscience,
and lest he should think she meant to poison the whole province of
Limoges." She also informed the chemist that her husband was
indisposed, but that this same doctor attributed it to the shaking of
the journey, and that with rest he would soon be better.
But he got worse, rapidly worse. His symptoms were alarming, and pointed
undoubtedly to arsenical poisoning, judged by our modern knowledge.
Madame Lafarge, senior, now became strongly suspicious of her
daughter-in-law, and insisted on remaining always by her son's bedside.
Marie opposed this, and wished to be her husband's sole nurse, and,
according to the prosecution, would have kept everyone else from him.
She does not seem to have succeeded, for the relatives and servants were
constantly in the sick-room. Some of the latter were very much on the
mother's side, and one, a lady companion, Anna Brun, afterwards deposed
that she had seen Marie go to a cupboard and take a white powder from
it, which she mixed with the medicine and food given to Lafarge. Madame
Lafarge, senior, again, and her daughter, showed the medical attendant a
cup of chicken broth on the surface of which white powder was floating.
The doctor said it was probably lime from the whitewashed wall. The
ladies tried the experiment of mixing lime with broth, and did not
obtain the same appearance. Yet more, Anna Brun, having seen Marie
Lafarge mix powder as before in her husband's drink, heard him cry out,
"What have you given me? It burns like fire." "I am not surprised,"
replied Marie quietly. "They let you have wine, although you are
suffering from inflammation of the stomach."
Yet Marie Lafarge made no mystery of her having arsenic. Not only did
she speak of it in the early days, but during the illness she received a
quantity openly before them all. It was brought to her at Lafarge's
bedside by one of his clerks, Denis Barbier (of whom more directly), and
she put it into her pocket. She told her husband she had it. He had been
complaining of the rats that disturbed him overhead, and the arsenic was
to kill them. Lafarge took the poison from his wife, handed it over to a
maid-servant, and desired her to use it in a paste as a vermin-killer.
Here the facts were scarcely against Marie Lafarge.
As the husband did not improve, on the 13th his mother sent a special
messenger to fetch a new doctor from a more distant town. On their way
back to Glandier, this messenger, the above-mentioned Denis Barbier,
confided to the doctor that he had often bought
[Illustration: "ON THIS THE MOTHER DENOUNCED MARIE TO THE NOW DYING
LAFARGE" (p. 142).]
arsenic for Marie Lafarge, but that she had begged him to say nothing
about it. The doctor, Lespinasse by name, saw the patient, and
immediately ordered antidotes, while some of the white powder was sent
for examination to the chemist who had originally supplied the arsenic.
The chemist does not seem to have detected poison, but he suggested that
nothing more should be given Lafarge unless it had been prepared by a
sure hand.
On this the mother denounced Marie to the now dying Lafarge as his
murderess. The wife, who stood there with white face and streaming eyes,
heard the terrible accusation, but made no protest. From this time till
his last moments he could not bear the sight of his wife. Once, when she
offered him a drink, he motioned, horror stricken, for her to leave him,
and she was not present at his death, on the 14th of January. A painful
scene followed between the mother and Marie by the side of the still
warm corpse--high words, upbraidings, threats on the one side, indignant
denials on the other. Then Marie's private letters were seized, the lock
of her strong-box having been forced, and next day, the whole matter
having been reported to the officers of the law, a _post-mortem_ was
ordered, on suspicion of poisoning. "Impossible," cried the doctor who
had regularly attended the deceased. "You must all be wrong. It would be
abominable to suspect a crime without more to go upon." The
_post-mortem_ was, however, made, yet with such strange carelessness
that the result was valueless.
It may be stated at once that the presence of arsenic was never
satisfactorily proved. There were several early examinations of the
remains, but the experts never fully agreed. Orfila, the most eminent
French toxicologist of his day, was called in to correct the first
autopsy, and his opinion was accepted as final. He was convinced that
there were traces of arsenic in the body. They were, however,
infinitesimal; Orfila put it at half a milligramme. Raspail, another
distinguished French doctor, called it the hundredth part of a
milligramme, and for that reason declared against Orfila. His
conclusion, arrived at long after her conviction, was in favour of the
accused. The jury, he maintained, ought not to have found her guilty,
because no definite proof was shown of the presence of arsenic in the
corpse.
This point was not the only one in the poor woman's favour. Even
supposing that Lafarge had been poisoned--which, in truth, is highly
probable--the evidence against her was never conclusive, and there were
many suspicious circumstances to incriminate another person. This was
Denis Barbier, Lafarge's clerk, who lived in the house under a false
name, and whose character was decidedly bad. Lafarge was not a man above
suspicion himself, and he long used this Barbier to assist him in shady
financial transactions--the manufacture of forged bills of exchange,
which were negotiated for advances. Barbier had conceived a strong
dislike to Marie Lafarge from the first; it was he who originated the
adverse reports. At the trial he frequently contradicted himself, as
when he said at one time that he had volunteered the information that he
had been buying arsenic for Marie, and at another, a few minutes later,
that he only confessed this when pressed.
Barbier, then, was Lafarge's confederate in forgery; had these frauds
been discovered he would have shared Lafarge's fate. It came out that he
had been in Paris when Lafarge was there, but secretly. Why? When the
illness of the iron-master proved mortal, Barbier was heard to say, "Now
I shall be master here!" All through that illness he had access to the
sick-room, and he could easily have added poison to the various drinks
given to Lafarge. Again, when the possibilities of murder were first
discussed, he was suspiciously ready to declare that it was not _he_ who
gave the poison. Finally, the German jurists, already quoted, wound up
their argument against him by saying, "We do not actually accuse
Barbier, but had we been the public prosecutors we should rather have
formulated charges against him than against Madame Lafarge."
Summing up the whole question, they were of opinion that the case was
full of mystery. There were suspicions that Lafarge had been poisoned,
but so vague and uncertain that no conviction was justified. The proofs
against the person accused were altogether insufficient. On the other
hand, there were many conjectures favourable to her. Moreover, there was
the very gravest circumstantial evidence against another person. The
verdict should decidedly have been "Not proven." But public opinion,
hastily formed, condemned Madame Lafarge in advance, and the machinery
of the French criminal law helped to create a new judicial error,
through obstinate reliance on a preconceived opinion.
Marie Lafarge was sentenced to hard labour for life, after exposure in
the public pillory. The latter was remitted, but she went into the
Montpelier prison and remained there many years. During her seclusion
she received some six thousand letters from outside, the bulk of them
sympathetic and kindly. Many in prose or verse, and in several
languages, were signed by persons of the highest respectability. A large
number offered marriage, some the opportunities for escape and the
promise of happiness in another country. She replied to almost all with
her own hand. Her pen was her chief solace during her long imprisonment,
and several volumes of her work were eventually published, including her
memoirs and prison thoughts. At last, having suffered seriously in
health, she appealed to Napoleon III., the head of the Second Empire,
and obtained a full pardon in 1852.
[Illustration: IN THE PUBLIC PILLORY.
(_From the Engraving by Victor Adam._)]
THE STOLEN JEWELS.
The sad story of Madame Lafarge would be incomplete without some account
of another mysterious charge brought against her shortly after her
arrest for murder. When her mother-in-law accused her of poisoning her
husband, one of her old schoolmates declared that she had stolen her
jewels. This second allegation raised the public interest to fever
pitch. All France, from court to cottage, all classes, high and low,
were concerned in this great _cause célèbre_, in which the supposed
criminal, both thief and murderess, belonged to the best society, and
was a young, engaging woman. The question of her guilt or innocence was
keenly discussed. Each new fact or statement was taken as clear proof of
one or the other, and each side found warm advocates in the public
Press.
[Illustration: MAÎTRE LACHAUD.]
The charge of theft, although the lesser, took precedence of that of
murder, and Madame Lafarge was tried by the Correctional Tribunal of
Tulle before she appeared at the assizes to answer for her life. She was
prosecuted by the Vicomte de Leautaud on behalf of his wife. The
accusation was clear and precise. Madame de Leautaud's diamonds had
disappeared for more than a year; the Vicomte believed that Madame
Lafarge, when Marie Capelle, had stolen them when on a visit to his
house, the Château de Busagny, and he prayed the court to authorise a
search to be made at Glandier, Madame Lafarge's residence until her
recent arrest.
When arraigned and interrogated, Marie at once admitted that the
diamonds were in her possession. She readily indicated the place where
they would be found at Glandier, and made no difficulty as to their
restitution. But she long refused positively to explain how she had come
by them, declaring it to be a secret she was bound in honour to keep
inviolate. At last, under the urgent entreaties of her friends, she
confided the secret to her two counsel, Maître Bac and Maître Lachaud
(at that time on the threshold of his great and enduring renown), and
sent them to Madame Leautaud beseeching her to allow a full revelation
of the facts. The letters she then wrote her school friend have been
preserved. The first was brief, and merely introduced Maître Bac as a
noble and conscientious person, who had her full confidence, and on whom
Madame de Leautaud might rely in discussing an affair that concerned
them both so closely. The second was a pathetic appeal to tell the whole
truth about the diamonds, and it is not easy to say on reading it
whether it was inspired by extraordinary astuteness or by genuine
emotion. It ran:
MARIE,--May God never visit upon you the evil you have done me.
Alas, I know you to be really good, but weak. You have told
yourself that as I am likely to be convicted of an atrocious crime
I may as well take the blame of one which is only infamous. I kept
our secret. I left my honour in your hands, and you have not chosen
to absolve me.
The time has arrived for doing me justice. Marie, for your
conscience' sake, for the sake of your past, save me!... Remember
the facts; you cannot deny them. From the moment I knew you I was
deep in your confidence, and I heard the story of that intrigue,
begun at school and continued at Busagny by letters that passed
through my hands.
You soon discovered that this handsome Spaniard had neither fortune
nor family. You forbade him to love, although you had first sought
his love, and then you entered into another love affair with M. de
Leautaud.
...The man you flouted cried for vengeance.... The situation became
intolerable, but money alone could end it. I came to Busagny, and
it was arranged between us that you should entrust your diamonds to
me, so that I might raise money on them, with which you could pay
the price he demanded.
The letter proceeds in similar terms, and need not be reproduced at
length. Marie Lafarge continues to implore her old friend to save her,
reminding her that only thus can she save herself. Otherwise all the
facts must come out.
Remember [and here we seem to get one glimpse of the cloven foot] I
have all the proofs in my hands. Your letters to him and his to
you, your letters to me.... Your letter, in which you tell me that
he is singing in the chorus at the opera, and is of the stamp of
man to extort blackmail.... There is one thing for you to do now.
Acknowledge in writing under your own hand, dated June, that you
consigned the diamonds to my care with authority to sell them if I
thought it advisable. This will end the affair.
As Madame de Leautaud still positively denied the truth of these
statements, Marie, in self-defence, made them to the judge. She told the
whole story of how the diamonds had been given her to sell, that she
might remit the amount to a young man in poor circumstances and of
humble condition, whose revelations might prove inconvenient. Madame de
Leautaud had assisted Marie to take the jewels out of their settings, so
as to facilitate their sale. If they had not as yet been sold, it was
because she had found it very difficult to dispose of them, both before
and after her marriage. She still had them; and they were, in fact,
found at Glandier, in the place she indicated. There was never any
question as to the identity of the stones, which were recognised in
court by the jeweller who had supplied them, and who spoke to their
value, some £300, independently of certain pearls which were missing.
The prosecution certainly made out a strong case against Marie Lafarge.
The jewels, it was stated, were first missed after a discussion between
the two ladies on the difference between paste and real stones. At first
Madame de Leautaud made little of her loss. She was careless of her
things, and thought her husband or her mother had hidden her jewels
somewhere to give her a fright. But they both denied having played her
any such trick, and as the jewels were undoubtedly gone, the police were
informed, and many of the servants suspected. Suspicion against Madame
Lafarge had always rankled in Madame de Leautaud's mind, and it was soon
strengthened by her strange antics with regard to the jewels. On one
occasion she defended a servant who had been suspected, promising to
find him a place if he were dismissed, as she knew he was innocent. One
of her servants told the de Leautauds that her mistress said laughingly
she had stolen the jewels and swallowed them. Again, Madame Lafarge had
submitted to be mesmerised by Madame de Montbreton, Madame de Leautaud's
sister, and had fallen into an evidently simulated magnetic trance;
when, being questioned about the missing jewels, she said they had been
removed by a Jew, who had sold them. Other circumstances were adduced as
strongly indicating Marie's guilt. It was observed in Paris, before her
marriage, that she had a quantity of fine stones, loose, and she
explained that they had been given her at Busagny. Once after her
marriage M. Lafarge had asked her for a diamond to cut a pane of glass,
and, to his surprise, she produced a number, saying she had owned them
from childhood, but that they had only been handed over to her lately by
an old servant.
These contradictory explanations told greatly against Madame Lafarge.
She made other statements also that were at variance. When first taxed
with the theft she pretended that the diamonds had been sent her by an
uncle in Toulouse, whose name and address she was, however, unable to
give. Next she brought up the story contained in her appealing letter to
Madame de Leautaud. It was the story of the young man, Félix Clavé, son
of a schoolmaster, with whom the girls had made acquaintance. Having
frequently met him when attending mass, they rashly wrote him an
anonymous letter, giving him a rendezvous in the garden of the
Tuileries. Marie Lafarge declared that the encouragement came from
Madame de Leautaud, which the latter denied, and retorted that it was
Marie Lafarge who had been the object of the young man's devotion.
Then Clavé disappeared to Algeria, so Marie declared, as he had written
to her from Algiers. Madame de Leautaud said this was impossible, as she
had seen him on the stage of the opera. A few months later, Marie
alleged, when her friend was with her at Busagny, Madame de Leautaud
brought out the diamonds and implored Marie to sell them for her, as she
must "absolutely" have money to buy Clavé's silence. What followed,
according to Marie Lafarge, has already been told, except that Madame de
Leautaud went through a number of devices to make it appear that the
diamonds had been stolen from her, and that then M. de Leautaud was
informed of the supposed theft. The gendarmes actually came to search
the château and to investigate the robbery next day, although at that
time the diamonds were safe in her possession, entrusted to her by
Madame de Leautaud.
According to the prosecution, these statements were quite untrue. There
had been a theft, and it was soon discovered. The chief of the Paris
detective police, M. Allard, had been summoned to Busagny to
investigate, and he was satisfied that the robbery had been committed by
someone in the château; and, as the servants all bore unimpeachable
characters, M. Allard had asked about the other inmates, and the guests.
Then M. de Leautaud mentioned Marie Capelle (Lafarge), and hinted that
there were several sinister rumours current concerning her, but would
not make any distinct charge then. M. Allard now remembered that there
had been another mysterious robbery at the house of Madame Garat, Marie
Lafarge's aunt, in Paris, a couple of years before, when a 500 franc
note had been stolen, and he had been called in to investigate, but
without any result. What if Marie Capelle (Lafarge) had had something to
do with this theft?
[Illustration: "HER OWN MAID ELECTED TO GO WITH HER TO PRISON" (p.
150).]
It must be admitted that these charges, if substantiated, made the case
look black against Marie Lafarge. But one, at least, fell entirely to
the ground when she was on her defence. It was clearly shown that she
could not have stolen the banknote at her aunt's, Madame Garat's, for
she was in Paris at the time. As regards the diamonds, her story, if she
had stuck to one account only--that of the blackmail--would have been
plausible, nay probable, enough. It was positively contradicted on oath
by the lady most nearly concerned, Madame de Leautaud, and it was not
believed by the court; and Marie Lafarge was finally convicted of having
stolen the diamonds, and sentenced to two years' imprisonment. She
appealed against this finding, and appeared no less than four times to
seek redress, always without success. Meanwhile the graver charge of
murder had been gone into and decided against her; so that the shorter
sentence for theft was merged into the life sentence.
There were many who believed in Marie's entire innocence to the very
last. Her own maid elected to go with her to prison, and remained by her
side for a year. A young girl, cousin of the deceased M. Lafarge, was
equally devoted, and also accompanied her to Montpelier gaol. Her
advocate, the eminent Maître Lachaud, steadfastly denied her guilt, and
years later, when the unfortunate woman died, he regularly sent flowers
for her grave.
[Illustration: MADELEINE SMITH.
(_From a Portrait taken in Court during her Trial._)]
MADELEINE SMITH.
The eldest daughter of a Glasgow architect, Madeleine Smith was a girl
of great beauty, bright, attractive, and much courted. But from all her
suitors she singled out a certain Jersey man, Pierre Émile l'Angelier,
an _employé_ in the firm of Huggins, in Glasgow--a small, insignificant
creature, altogether unworthy of her in looks or position. The
acquaintance ripened, and Madeleine seems to have become devotedly
attached to her lover, whom she often addressed as her "own darling
husband." They kept up a clandestine correspondence, and had many stolen
interviews at a friend's house. In the spring of 1856 Madeleine's
parents discovered the intimacy, and peremptorily insisted that it
should end forthwith. But the lovers continued to meet secretly, and
Madeleine threw off all restraint, and was ready to elope with her
lover. The time was indeed fixed, but she suddenly changed her mind.
Then a rich Glasgow merchant, Mr. Minnock, saw Madeleine, and was
greatly enamoured of her. Early in January, 1857, he offered her
marriage, and she became engaged to him. It was necessary, now, to
break with l'Angelier, and, mindful of the old adage to be off with the
old love before she took on with the new, she wrote to him, begging him
to return her letters and her portrait. L'Angelier positively refused to
give them or her up. He had told many friends of his connection with
Madeleine Smith, and some of them had now advised him to let her go.
"No; I will never surrender the letters, nor, so long as I live, shall
she marry another man." On the 9th of February he wrote her a letter,
which must have been full of upbraiding, and probably of threats, but it
has not been preserved. Madeleine must have been greatly terrified by
it, too, for her reply was a frantic appeal for mercy, for a chivalrous
silence as to their past relations which he was evidently incapable of
preserving. She was in despair, entirely in the hands of this mean
ruffian, who was determined not to spare her; she saw all hope of a good
marriage fading away, and nothing but ignominious exposure before her.
As the result of the trial, when by-and-by she was arraigned for the
murder of l'Angelier, was a verdict of "Not Proven," it is hardly right
to say that she now resolved to rid herself of the man who possessed her
guilty secret. But that was the case for the prosecution, the basis of
the charge brought against her. She had made up her mind, as it seemed,
to extreme measures. She appeared to be reconciled with l'Angelier, and
had several interviews with him. What passed at these meetings of the
11th and 12th of February was never positively known, but on the 19th he
was seized with a mysterious and terrible illness, being found lying on
the floor of his bedroom writhing in pain, and likely to die. He did, in
fact, recover, but those who knew him said he was never the same man
again. He seems to have had some suspicion of Madeleine, for he told a
friend that a cup of chocolate had made him sick, but said he was so
much fascinated by her that he would forgive her even if she poisoned
him, and that he would never willingly give her up.
Rumours of the engagement and approaching marriage now reached his ears,
and called forth fresh protests and remonstrances. Madeleine replied,
denying the rumours, and declaring that she loved him alone. About this
time the Smith family went on a visit to Bridge of Allan, where Mr.
Minnock followed them, and, at his urgent request, the day of marriage
was fixed. Then they all returned to Glasgow, and missed l'Angelier, who
also had followed Madeleine to Bridge of Allan. He remained at
Stirling, but, on receiving a letter from her, he went on to Glasgow,
being in good health at the time. This was the 22nd of February, a
Sunday, on which night, about eight p.m., he reached his lodgings, had
tea, and went out. As he left, he asked for a latchkey, saying he "might
be late." He expressed his intention of going back to Stirling the
following day.
That same night, or rather in the small hours of the morning, the
landlady was roused by a violent ringing of the bell; and, going down to
the front door, found l'Angelier there, half doubled up with pain. He
described himself as exceedingly ill. A doctor was sent for, who put him
to bed and prescribed remedies, but did not anticipate immediate danger.
The patient, however, persisted in repeating that he was "worse than the
doctor thought"; but he hoped if the curtains were drawn round his bed,
and he were left in peace for five minutes, he would be better. These
were his last words. When the doctor presently reappeared; l'Angelier
was dead. He had passed away without giving a sign; without uttering one
word to explain how he had spent his time during the evening.
A search was made in his pockets, but nothing of importance was found;
but a letter addressed to him signed "M'eine," couched in passionate
language, imploring him "to return." "Are you ill, my beloved? Adieu!
with tender embraces." The handwriting of this letter was not
identified, but a friend of l'Angelier's, M. de Mean, hearing of his
sudden death, went at once to warn Madeleine Smith's father that
l'Angelier had letters in his possession which should not be allowed to
fall into strange hands. It was too late: the friends of the deceased
had sealed up his effects and they refused to surrender the letters.
Later M. de Mean plainly told Madeleine Smith, whom he saw in her
mother's presence, that grave suspicion began to overshadow her. It was
known that l'Angelier had come up from Bridge of Allan at her request,
and he implored her to say whether or not he had been in her company
that night. Her answer was a decided negative, and she stated positively
that she had seen nothing of him for three weeks. She went farther and
asserted that she had neither seen nor wanted to see him on the Sunday
evening; she had given him an appointment for Saturday, but he had not
[Illustration: "THE LANDLADY WAS ROUSED BY A VIOLENT RINGING OF THE
BELL." (p. 152).]
appeared, although she had waited for him some time. This appointment
had been made that she might recover her letters. All through this
painful interview with de Mean, Madeleine appeared in the greatest
distress. Next morning she took to flight.
Madeleine was pursued, but by her family, not by the police, and was
overtaken on board a steamer bound for Rowallan. Soon after her return
to Glasgow the contents of her letters to l'Angelier were made public,
and a _post-mortem_ had been made. The body had been exhumed, and the
suspicious appearance of the mucous membrane of the stomach, together
with the history of the case, pointed to death by poison. The various
organs, carefully sealed, were handed over to experts for analysis, and
it may be well to state here the result of the medical examination.
Dr. Penny stated in evidence that the quantity of arsenic found in the
deceased amounted to eighty-eight grains, or about half a, teaspoonful,
some of it in hard, gritty, colourless, crystalline particles. It was
probable that this was no more than half the whole amount the deceased
had swallowed, for under the peculiar action of arsenic a quantity,
quite half a teaspoonful, must have been ejected.
The chief difficulties in the case were whether anyone could have taken
so much as a whole teaspoonful of arsenic unknowingly, and how this
amount could have been administered. The question was keenly debated,
and it was generally admitted that the poison could have been given in
chocolate, cocoa, gruel, or some thick liquid, or mixed with solid food
in the shape of a cake. This was not inconsistent with the conjectures
formed that l'Angelier had met Madeleine Smith on the Sunday night.
The case against her became more formidable when it was ascertained that
she had been in the habit of buying arsenic, but with the alleged
intention of taking it herself, for her complexion. She was now arrested
and sent for trial at Edinburgh, on a charge of poisoning l'Angelier.
Her purchases of arsenic were proved by the chemist's books under date
of the 21st of February, and again on the 6th and 18th of March, this
last date being four days before the murder.
It was also proved that she wanted to buy prussic acid a few weeks
before her arrest. There was nothing to show that she had obtained or
possessed any arsenic at the time of l'Angelier's first illness, on the
19th of February. But it was proved in evidence that, on the night of
his death, Sunday, the 22nd of March, l'Angelier had been seen in the
neighbourhood of Blythswood Square, where the Smiths lived; again, that
he had himself bought no arsenic in Glasgow.
Madeleine's plucky demeanour in court gained her much sympathy; she
never once gave way; only when her impassioned letters were being read
aloud did she really lose her composure. She stepped into the dock as
though she were entering a ballroom and although she was under grave
suspicion of having committed a dastardly crime, the conduct of
l'Angelier had set the public strongly against him, so that a vague
feeling of "served him right" was present in the large crowd assembled
to witness the trial. The case for the prosecution was strong, but it
failed to prove the actual administration of poison, or, indeed, that
the accused had met the deceased on the Sunday night.
The judge, in summing up, pointed out the grave doubts that surrounded
the case, and the verdict of the jury was "Not proven," by a majority of
votes.
This result was received with much applause in court, and generally
throughout Glasgow, although a dispassionate review of all the facts in
this somewhat mysterious case must surely point clearly to a failure of
justice. However, Madeleine triumphed, and won great favour with the
crowd. The money for her defence was subscribed in Glasgow twice over,
and even before she left the court she received several offers of
marriage.
Since writing the foregoing I have had an interesting communication from
a lady, who has told me the impressions of one who was present in court
during the whole of Madeleine Smith's trial. This gentleman was an
advocate, trained and practised in the law, and according to his
opinion, unhesitatingly expressed, there could be no shadow of doubt but
that Madeleine was l'Angelier's wife, by the law of Scotland. As he has
put it, in Scotland two people who ought to be married can generally be
joined together, and there was little doubt that the sanction of
matrimony was needed for this connection. Both Madeleine and l'Angelier
were in the habit of addressing each other as husband and wife. This
explains l'Angelier's insistence on the point that "so long as he lived
Madeleine should never marry another man."
The verdict of "Not proven" was brought in by the jury on the grounds
that it was not established that the two had actually met on the Sunday
night preceding l'Angelier's last illness. Nevertheless, it is certain
that a pocket-book of l'Angelier's was offered as evidence to the judge,
Lord Fullerton, who examined it, but ruled it out because it was not a
consecutive diary and the entries had been made in pencil. This book was
placed, after the proceedings, in the hands of the legal gentleman above
mentioned, and he saw in it an unmistakable entry made by l'Angelier to
the effect that he had been in Madeleine's company on the Saturday
night.
[Illustration: "SHE STEPPED INTO THE DOCK AS THOUGH SHE WERE ENTERING A
BALL-ROOM" (p. 155).]
Full corroboration is given by my informant of the engaging and
attractive appearance of Madeleine Smith. She was so excessively pretty
and bewitching that, to use his own words, no one but a hard-hearted
old married man could have resisted her fascinations. He had no doubt
whatever in his own mind of her guilt.
THE WHARTON-KETCHUM CASE.
General W. E. Ketchum, of the United States army, was a man somewhat
past the prime of life, but still sound and strong. Mrs. Wharton was the
widow of an army man, and was upwards of fifty years of age. The two
were intimate friends, and the General, who had amassed a modest
competence, had lent various sums to Mrs. Wharton, amounting to some
$2,600 (£520). She was not well off, as it was thought, and, just before
the events about to be recorded, she was unable to pay an intended visit
to Europe from insufficient funds and inability to obtain her letter of
credit.
On the 23rd of June, 1871, General Ketchum came from Washington to her
house in Baltimore, to see the last of her, believing her about to start
on her long journey, and to collect his debt of $2,600. He was in
excellent health when he left home, but very soon after arriving at
Baltimore he was taken very ill. He rallied for a time, but again
relapsed, and on the 28th of June he died. Suspicions were aroused by
his sudden decease, and certainly the symptoms of his illness, as
reported, were singular and obscure. Whilst he lay there sick unto
death, another gentleman residing in the same house was also suddenly
prostrated with a strange and unaccountable sickness, and narrowly
escaped with his life.
After General Ketchum's death his waistcoat was not to be found, nor the
note for $2,600. Mrs. Wharton declared that she had repaid him what she
owed him and that he had then given her back the note of hand, which was
destroyed there and then. She furthermore claimed from his estate a sum
of $4,000 in United States Bonds, which, as she asserted, she had
entrusted to the General's safe keeping; yet there was not the slightest
mention of any such transaction in his papers--a strange omission,
seeing that he was a man of unquestionable integrity, and most
scrupulously exact in all matters of account.
Chemical analysis of the stomach of the deceased disclosed the presence
of antimonial poison--one of the constituents of tartar emetic. The same
poison had been found in a tumbler of milk punch prepared by Mrs.
Wharton for General Ketchum, and in a tumbler of beer offered by Mrs.
Wharton to the other invalid in her house, Mr. van Ness. Mrs. Wharton
had been known to buy tartar emetic during the very week when these
singular illnesses occurred among the guests under her roof.
In these suspicious facts people easily found materials for believing in
a crime, and a story was soon spread to the effect that Mrs. Wharton had
succeeded in poisoning General Ketchum, and had tried to poison Mr. van
Ness. Meanwhile she resumed her preparations for her voyage to Europe;
but on the very day of departure, the 10th of July, 1871, a warrant for
her arrest was issued, and she was taken into custody. In the trial
which followed, a great many of the known facts were ruled out as
inadmissible. It was argued, and accepted in law, that an accusation of
murdering one man could not be supported by evidence of an attempt to
kill another, although almost at the same time and by the same means.
The charge of poisoning General Ketchum was tried as if there had been
no van Ness, as if no other person had been taken ill in Mrs. Wharton's
house. But by reason of the predisposition of the public mind, the case
was transferred from Baltimore to Annapolis, and there tried.
The first witness was a Mrs. Chubb, who had accompanied General Ketchum
to Baltimore, and who testified that he had fallen ill directly he
arrived. He was seized with vomiting, giddiness, and general nausea,
which lasted for three days. A doctor was then called in, who prescribed
medicine, but Mrs. Wharton broke the bottle, whether by accident or
intentionally it was impossible to say. Distinct evidence was first
afforded of the possession of tartar emetic by Mrs. Wharton. Mrs. Chubb,
who went out to get a fresh bottle of medicine for the General, was
asked to buy the antimony also, which Mrs. Wharton said she wanted for
herself.
The invalid's condition improved a little the next day, and arrangements
were made to remove him to his own home. However, he relapsed and became
worse than ever. The doctor prescribed medicine, which was to be given
him at intervals, but before the time for taking the second dose, Mrs.
Wharton appeared with it, or something like it, yet different, and more
of it than was prescribed. This she strenuously urged the General to
swallow, and succeeded in inducing him to do so. Within fifteen minutes
he was racked with terrible pain. He tore with his fingers at his
throat, chest, and stomach until he broke the skin, then followed
fierce convulsions, at the end of which he died.
Fresh evidence was forthcoming, but not accepted, against Mrs. Wharton.
At her suggestion Mrs. van Ness, who had been nursing her brother, had
concocted some milk punch. This was made in two portions. One was given
to Mr. van Ness, and produced symptoms very similar to those exhibited
by the unfortunate General Ketchum; the other had been left in a
refrigerator by the General's bedside, and when what was left had been
examined by Mrs. van Ness, she declared it had been tampered with; there
was a strange muddy deposit at the bottom of the tumbler, and when
tasted it was metallic, leaving a curious grating sensation in the
mouth. The original constituents had been no more than whisky, milk, and
sugar. This testimony was ruled out of order, as belonging to an
entirely different case.
The doctor who had attended the General gave evidence as to the symptoms
he observed and the remedies applied. At first sight he thought him to
be suffering from Asiatic cholera; but later developments were more
those of apoplexy, and then again he feared paralysis. He at length had
his suspicions aroused, and hinted at poison. The remains of the
suspected tumbler were shown him, and his doubts became convictions.
With regard to the poisonous action of tartar emetic, the doctor
testified that he had noticed all its symptoms in the deceased, although
there was a strong similarity between them and those of cholera. Other
medical opinion was to the effect that death might have been due to
cerebro-spinal meningitis, and some stress was laid upon the absence of
antimonial poison in many of the internal organs, although it was
contended it had been found in small quantities in the stomach. The same
lethal drug had been also detected by analysis in the sediment at the
bottom of the tumbler of milk punch.
The verdict of the jury was "Not guilty," but it did not satisfy public
opinion, and it was generally felt that Wharton's counsel had by no
means established her innocence; none of the incriminating facts had
been entirely disproved, nor had the exact truth in regard to the money
transactions been elicited. No doubt the accused escaped chiefly owing
to the fact that chemical experts, called by her counsel, were not
satisfied, beyond the possibility of all reasonable doubt, that antimony
had been found in the vital organs of General Ketchum. At the time of
this trial another indictment was also pending against Mrs. Wharton,
charging her with an attempt to kill Mr. van Ness by administering
poison. But some months later the counsel for the State entered a _nolle
prosequi_, for what reasons was never generally or distinctly known.
THE STORY OF THE PERRYS.
Truth is stranger than fiction, as we have heard often enough, but in
this extraordinary case we shall never know how much is fiction, how
much truth. If justice failed, it was misled by a series of the
strangest circumstances, some of which have remained a mystery to the
present hour. The following details are taken from an account written by
a magistrate resident near the scene of the occurrence, and by name Sir
Thomas Overbury, the direct descendant of the unfortunate Overbury
poisoned in the Tower.
[Illustration: RUINS OF OLD CAMPDEN HOUSE, WITH THE BANQUETING HALL ON
THE LEFT.]
The village of Campden, in Gloucestershire, some five-and-twenty minutes
from the cathedral town and county seat, gave its name to the
Viscountess Campden, the lady of the manor. Her steward and agent, a
certain William Harrison, a man of seventy years, started from Campden
on the 16th of August, 1660, to walk over to the neighbouring village of
Charringworth, where he wished to collect rents due to his mistress. As
he had not returned according to his wont between 8 and 9 p.m., Mrs.
Harrison, his wife, despatched a servant named John Perry along the road
to meet him and bring him safely home. Neither Perry nor his master
returned that night. Next morning Edward Harrison, the son, proceeded to
Charringworth to inquire for his father, and on his way met Perry, the
servant, coming from that village. Perry told Edward Harrison that Mr.
Harrison had not been heard of, and the two together visited another
village, Ebrington, and there got some news. A villager stated that the
elder Harrison had paid him a passing call the night before, but had
made no stay.
They next went to Paxford, a mile thence, where further news met them.
They heard that a poor woman had picked up, in the high road between
Ebrington and Campden, a hat, a hat-band, and a comb, and seeking her
out, they found her "leasing" or gleaning in a field, whereupon she
delivered up the articles, and they were at once identified as Mr.
Harrison's. The woman was forthwith desired to point out the spot where
she had picked them up, and she showed it them on the road "near unto a
great furze brake." As the hat-band was bloody and the comb all hacked
and cut, it was reasonably concluded that their owner had been murdered.
Mr. Harrison's disappearance so greatly alarmed his wife that she
conceived he had met with foul play at the hand of John Perry, the
servant whom she had sent to convoy him home. At her instance,
therefore, Perry was seized and carried before a justice, who
straightway bade him explain why he had stayed absent the whole of the
night he had been sent to look for his master. Perry's story was that he
had not gone "a land's length" towards Charringworth when it came on so
dark he was afraid to go forward, and he returned to the Harrisons'
house, meaning to take out his young master's horse. But he did no more
than make another false start, and then, without informing his mistress
that he was still on the premises, he lay down to rest in the hen-roost,
where he continued for an hour or more, "but slept not." About midnight
he turned out again, and the moon having now risen he really started for
Charringworth. Once more he was stopped; this time by a great mist, in
which he lost his way, and finally he took refuge under a hedge, where
he slept till daybreak. At last he reached Charringworth, and learning
that his master had been there the previous day, followed his movements
as he went from house to house receiving monies for rent. There were,
however, no signs of the missing man in the village now.
Most of Perry's statements were verified by other witnesses; but the
case was black against him, and he was detained by the law until
something definite came out concerning Mr. Harrison. A week passed,
during which Perry was lodged "sometimes in an inn in Campden, sometimes
in the common prison," and all the time he was devising different
stories to account for his master's disappearance. One was that a tinker
had killed him; another that the servant of a neighbouring squire had
robbed and murdered him; and thirdly, that he had been killed in
Campden, where his body was hidden in a bean-rick, which was searched,
but no body found. On further examination, being pressed to confess, he
again insisted that Mr. Harrison had been murdered, "but not by him."
Then the justice said if he knew of the murder he must know also the
perpetrators, and this John Perry presently allowed by putting the whole
blame on his own mother and brother.
He charged these near relatives with having constantly "lain at him"
ever since he was in Mr. Harrison's service, urging him to help them
with money, reminding him how poor they were, and how easy it was for
him to relieve them; he need do no more than give them notice when his
master went to receive his rents, and they could then waylay him and rob
him. Perry went on to say that he met his brother Richard on the very
morning that Mr. Harrison went to Charringworth, and that the brother,
hearing of the rent collection, was resolved to have the money; that
when he (John Perry) started by his mistress's order to bring Mr.
Harrison safely home, he again met his brother Richard, who was lying in
wait at a gateway leading from Campden Churchyard into the "Conygree,"
certain private grounds and gardens of Lady Campden's place. By-and-bye,
having entered this "Conygree," which was possible only to those who had
the key, he found that his master was being attacked; he was "on the
ground, his brother upon him, and his mother standing by." He begged
hard that they would not hurt his master, who was crying, "Ah, rogues,
you will kill me!" but his brother Richard replied: "Peace, peace! you
are a fool," and so strangled him, "which having done, he took a bag of
money out of his (Mr. Harrison's) pocket, and threw it into his mother's
lap," and then he and his mother consulted what to do with the body.
[Illustration: VIEWS OF CAMPDEN AS IT IS NOW.
1. Buildings just inside the "Conygree," where Harrison was said to have
been strangled.
2. The "Great Sink" or Mill Pond into which Harrison's body was said to
have been thrown.
3. Entrance to the "Conygree" (right of the steps).]
It was decided that they should drop it into the Great Sink, behind
certain mills near the garden, and this they did. John Perry told all
this most circumstantially, making it agree with his own movements and
the various facts that had come to light, describing how he had gone
into the hen-roost but could not sleep; how he had taken with him the
hat, band, and comb (and cut the latter with his knife), how he had cast
them down upon the highway where they were found, giving as his reason
that he hoped it might be believed that his master had been robbed and
murdered.
The justices, on this confession, sent to search the Sink at the mill,
but without success; "the fish pools likewise in Campden were drawn and
searched, but nothing could be there found," so that "some were of
opinion the body might be hid in the ruins of Campden House, burnt in
the late wars, and not unfit for such concealment, where was likewise
search made, but all in vain." No time was lost, however, in securing
the other Perrys--Joan, the mother, and Richard, both of whom were
informed of the accusation brought against them, which "they denied with
many imprecations." John, nevertheless, persisted that he had spoken
nothing but truth. Suspicion was strengthened against Richard Perry by
his being seen to drop a ball of "inkle," which he declared was his
wife's "hair lace," but which John, when it was shown to him, said he
knew to his sorrow, for it was the string his brother had strangled Mr.
Harrison with. Other significant evidence was quoted, as that Richard's
nose "fell a-bleeding" when he met his children, being on his way to be
admonished by the minister in church. Again, it was remembered that a
year before there had been a robbery at Mr. Harrison's, when £140 was
stolen from the house at noonday; and John Perry was now asked if he
knew aught of the matter. His answer was that his brother Richard was
the thief, that he, John Perry, had given him notice that the money was
in a room that could be reached by a ladder to the window, and that
Richard had stolen it while the master was in church with his whole
family "at lecture."
The three Perrys, Joan, John, and Richard, were arraigned at the next
assizes on two separate counts: house-breaking and robbery (of £140),
and again robbery and the murder of William Harrison. The judge would
not allow the second charge to be proceeded with, as no body had been
found, but they acknowledged, indeed, pleaded guilty to it, begging for
the king's pardon under the recent Act of Oblivion. The charge of murder
was again advanced at the next assize before another judge, and allowed;
it ended in a verdict of guilty, mainly on the strength of John's
confession, although by this time John had gone out of his mind. This
was enough to satisfy those who administered the law; and the three,
Joan, John, and Richard Perry, were all sentenced to be hanged. The
execution was carried out without delay on Broadway Hill, in sight of
Campden, where John was also hung in chains.
The strangest part of this affair has yet to be told. William Harrison
was not dead; he had been much misused, but had not been murdered, and
three years later he reappeared in the flesh. His was a marvellous tale,
and its veracity was questioned at the time, but we cannot discredit it
entirely.
The account he gave of himself is found in a letter he addressed to Sir
Thomas Overbury, whose narrative has been followed throughout.
On the day in question, Thursday, the 16th of August, 1660, he went to
Charringworth to collect Lady Campden's rents, but as harvest was in
progress the tenants did not come home from the fields till late, and he
was kept at Charringworth till nightfall. He received no more than £23,
although he had expected a very considerable sum. With this in his
pocket he took his road home, and reached at length the Ebrington
Furzes, where the tract passed through a narrow passage. Here he was
suddenly faced by a man mounted on horseback, and fearing to be ridden
down he struck the horse over the nose, whereupon the horseman drew his
sword and attacked him, Harrison making what defence he could with his
cane. Then came another behind him, who caught him by the collar and
dragged him towards the hedge, and after him a third. They did not rob
him of his money, but two of them lifted him into the saddle behind the
third, and forcing his arms around the rider's middle, fastened the
wrists together "with something that had a spring lock to it as I
conceived by hearing it give a snap as they put it on." After this they
threw a cloak over him, and carried him away, riding some distance till
they halted at a stone pit, into which they tumbled him, having now
taken all his money. An hour later they bade him come out of the pit,
and when he asked what they would do with him they struck him, then
mounted him again in the same manner; but before riding away they filled
his pockets with a great quantity of money, which incommoded him much in
riding, so that by next afternoon, when they again drew rein, he was
sorely bruised.
They had come now to a lone house upon a heath, where he was carried
upstairs, and they stayed the night. The woman of the house was told
that he was much hurt, and was being carried to a surgeon; they laid him
on cushions on the floor, and gave him some broth and strong waters.
Next day, Saturday, they rode on as before and they lay that night at a
place where there were two or three houses, where again he slept on
cushions. The next day, Sunday, they reached Deal, and halted by the
seaside. One of them kept guard over the prisoner while the two others
entered into conference with a man who was awaiting them. This man,
whose name he afterwards heard was Renshaw, was afraid that Harrison
would die before he could be got on board, but he was put into a boat
and carried to a ship, where his wounds were dressed, and in a week's
time "he was indifferently recovered." Now the master of the ship came
one day to say that they were chased by Turkish pirates, and when all
offered to fight in defence of the ship he would not suffer it, but
handed them over prisoners to the Turks. They were lodged in a dark
hole, and remained there in wretched plight, not knowing how long it was
before they landed, nor where they were put on shore, except that it was
a great house or prison. Presently they were called up and viewed by
persons who came to buy them, and Harrison, having said that he had some
skill in physic, was taken by an aged physician who lived near Smyrna,
and who had at one time resided in England, at Crowland, in
Lincolnshire. Harrison was set to keep the still-room, and was fairly
well treated, except on one occasion, when his master, being displeased,
felled him to the ground, and would have stabbed him with his stiletto.
After nearly two years' captivity Harrison's master fell sick and died,
but before the end he liberated his captive, and bade him shift for
himself. Harrison made his way to a seaport about a day's journey
distant, where he met two men belonging to a Hamburg ship, and now about
to sail for Portugal. He implored them to give him passage, but they
replied that they did not dare, nor would they yield for all his
importunity. At last a third man from the same ship consented to take
him on board provided he would lie down above the keel, and remain
hidden till they got to sea. They carried him safely to Lisbon, where
they put him on shore, penniless and friendless, as he thought, but he
happened fortunately on three Englishmen, one of whom took compassion on
him, provided him with lodging and diet, and at last procured him a
passage home.
Harrison's story was published in 1676, together with the original
narrative of Sir Thomas Overbury, and certain critical remarks were
appended. It was said that many people doubted whether Harrison had ever
been out of England. Nevertheless, it was certain that he had absented
himself from his home and friends for a couple of years, and unless he
was carried forcibly away there is no plausible
[Illustration: "FELLED HIM TO THE GROUND AND WOULD HAVE STABBED HIM" (p.
166).]
explanation of his disappearance. It seemed on the face of it highly
improbable that a man who bore a good character, who was in comfortable
circumstances, the esteemed servant of an honourable family for nearly
fifty years, would have run away without the least warning, and
apparently for no sort of reason. He was already seventy years of age,
and he left behind him a very considerable sum of Lady Campden's money.
That he was seized and sequestrated can hardly be doubted, but how or by
whom, except so far as he himself describes, was never satisfactorily
known. It was thought that his eldest son, hoping to succeed him in the
stewardship to Lady Campden, might have compassed his father's removal.
This view was supported by the fact that when he did become steward he
betrayed his trust. Yet again, to suppose that the elder Harrison would
allow the Perrys to suffer death for a crime of which he knew they must
be innocent was to accuse him of the deepest turpitude.
The conclusion generally arrived at was that the facts actually did
happen very much as they were related, yet the whole story is involved
in mystery. The only solution, so far as Perry is concerned, is that he
was mad, as the second judge indeed declared. But we cannot account for
Harrison's conduct on any similar supposition. If his own story is
rejected as too wild and improbable for credence, some other explanation
must be found of his disappearance. Unless he was out of the country, or
at least beyond all knowledge of events at Campden, it is difficult to
understand what motive would have weighed with him when he heard that
three persons were to be hanged as his murderers. The only possible
conclusion, therefore, is that he was carried away, and kept away by
force.
CHAPTER IV.
POLICE MISTAKES.
The Saffron Hill Murder: Narrow Escape of Pellizioni: Two Men in
Newgate for the Same Offence--The Murder of Constable Cock--The
Edlingham Burglary: Arrest, Trial, and Conviction of Brannagan and
Murphy: Severity of Judge Manisty: A new Trial: Brannagan and
Murphy Pardoned and Compensated: Survivors of the Police
Prosecutors put on their Trial, but Acquitted--Lord Cochrane's
Case: His Tardy Rehabilitation.
No human institution is perfect, and the police are fallible like the
rest. They have in truth made mistakes, all of them regrettable, many
glaring, many tending to bring discredit upon a generally useful and
deserving body. If they would freely confess their error they might, in
most cases, be forgiven when they go wrong; but there have been
occasions when only the pressure of facts which there was no disputing
has elicited from them a reluctant admission that they have been on the
wrong track. One or two instances of their persistence in error will now
be adduced.
PELLIZIONI.
In the Pellizioni case, 1863-4, there might have been a terrible failure
of justice, as terrible as any hitherto recorded in criminal annals.
This was a murder in a public-house at Saffron Hill, Clerkenwell. The
district then, as now, was much frequented by immigrant Italians, mostly
of a low class, and they were often at variance with their English
neighbours. A fierce quarrel arose in this tavern, and was followed by a
deadly fight, in which a man named Harrington was killed, and another,
Rebbeck, was mortally wounded. The police were speedily summoned, and,
on arrival, they found an Italian, Pellizioni by name, lying across
Harrington's body, in which life was not yet extinct. Pellizioni was at
once seized as the almost obvious perpetrator of the foul deed. He
stoutly proclaimed his innocence, declaring that he had only come in to
quell the disturbance, that the murdered man and Rebbeck were already on
the ground, and that in the scuffle he had been thrown on the top of
them. But the facts were seemingly against him, and he was duly
committed for trial.
[Illustration: "FOUND AN ITALIAN ... LYING ACROSS HARRINGTON'S BODY" (p.
169).]
The case was tried before Mr. Baron Martin, and although the evidence
was extremely conflicting, the learned judge said that he thought it
quite conclusive against the prisoner. He summed up strongly for a
conviction, and the jury brought in a verdict of guilty, whereon
Pellizioni was sentenced to be hanged. This result was not accepted as
satisfactory by many thoughtful people, and the matter was taken up by
the Press, notably by the _Daily Telegraph_. Some of the condemned
convict's compatriots became deeply interested in him. It was known that
in the locality of Saffron Hill he bore the repute of a singularly quiet
and inoffensive man. Ultimately, a priest, who laboured among these poor
Italians, saved Justice from official murder by bringing one of his
flock to confess that he and not Pellizioni had struck the fatal blows.
This was one Gregorio Mogni, but he protested that he had acted only in
self-defence.
Mogni was forthwith arrested, tried, and convicted of the crime, with
the strange result that now two men lay in Newgate, both condemned,
independently not jointly, of one and the same crime. If Mogni had
struck the blows, clearly Pellizioni could not have done so. Moreover, a
new fact was elicited at Mogni's trial, and this was the production--for
the first time--of the weapon used. It was a knife, and this knife had
been found some distance from the scene of the crime, where it could not
have been thrown by Pellizioni. And again, it was known and sworn to as
Mogni's knife, which, after stabbing the men, he had handed to a friend
to take away.
The gravamen of the charge against the police was that they had found
the knife before Pellizioni was tried. It was at once recognised all
through Saffron Hill that it was Mogni's knife, and with so much current
gossip it was hardly credible that the police were not also informed of
this fact. Yet, fearing to damage their case (a surely permissible
inference), they kept back the knife at the first trial. It was
afterwards said to have been in court, but it certainly was not
produced, while it is equally certain that its identification would have
quite altered the issue, and that Pellizioni would not have been
condemned. The defence, in his case, went the length of declaring that
to this questionable proceeding the police added false swearing. No
doubt they stuck manfully to their chief and to each other, but they
hardly displayed the open and impartial mind that should characterise
all officers of justice. In any case, it was not their fault that an
innocent man was not hanged.
WILLIAM HABRON.
The strange circumstances which led to the righting of this judicial
wrong must give the Habron case a pre-eminence among others of the
kind. The mistake arose from the ungovernable temper of the accused, who
threatened to shoot a certain police officer, under the impression that
he had been injured by him.
In July, 1875, two brothers, William and John Habron, were taken before
the magistrates of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, near Manchester, charged with
drunkenness. Grave doubts, were, however, expressed in court as to the
identity of William Habron. The chief witness, constable Cock, was very
positive; he knew the man, he said, because he had so often threatened
reprisals if interfered with. But the magistrates gave William the
benefit of the doubt, and discharged him. As he left the court he passed
Cock and said, "I'll do for you yet. I shall shoot you before the night
is out."
[Illustration: COCK, THE MURDERED CONSTABLE.
(_From a Photograph._)]
Others heard the threat, but thought little of it, among them
Superintendent Bent, of the Manchester police. That same night Bent was
roused out with the news that Cock had been shot. He ran round to West
Point, where the unfortunate officer lay dying, and although unable to
obtain from him any distinct indication of the murderer, he concluded at
once that John Habron must be the man. He knew where the brothers
lodged, and taking with him a force of police, he surrounded the house.
"If it is anyone," said the master of the house and employer of the
accused, "it is William--he has such an abominable temper." All three
brothers--William, John, and Frank Habron--were arrested in their beds
and taken to the police-station. In the morning a strict examination of
the ground where Cock had been shot revealed a number of footmarks. The
Habrons' boots were brought to the spot and found to fit these marks
exactly.
The evidence told chiefly against William Habron, who was identified as
the man who had bought some cartridges in a shop in Manchester. Both
William and John brought witnesses to prove an _alibi_, but this failed
under cross-examination. Again, they sought to prove that they had gone
home to bed at nine o'clock on the night of the murder, while other
witnesses swore to seeing them drinking at eleven p.m. in a public-house
which Cock must have passed soon after that hour on his way to West
Point, the spot where he was found murdered. The fact of William
Habron's animus against the constable was elicited from several
witnesses, but what told most against the prisoners was the
contradictory character of the defence. William Habron alone was
convicted, and sentenced to penal servitude.
Years afterwards the notorious Charles Peace, when lying under sentence
of death in Leeds prison, made full confession to the writer of these
pages that it was he who had killed constable Cock on the night in
question. The case was taken up at once, and after thorough
investigation of the facts, as stated by Peace, Habron received a full
pardon and an indemnity of £800.
THE EDLINGHAM BURGLARY.
Almost at the very time that William Habron was receiving tardy justice
a new and still more grievous error was being perpetrated in the North
of England. The Edlingham burglary case will always be remembered as a
grave failure of justice, and not alone because the circumstantial
evidence did not appear sufficient, but because the police, in their
anxiety to secure conviction, went too far. As the survivors of the
Northumberland police force concerned in this case were afterwards put
upon their trial for conspiracy and acquitted, they cannot be actually
charged with manufacturing false evidence, but it is pretty clear that
facts were distorted, and even suppressed, to support the police view.
The vicarage at Edlingham, a small village near Alnwick, was broken into
on the 7th of February, 1879. The only occupants of the house were Mr.
Buckle, the vicar, his wife, an invalid, his daughter and four female
servants. The daughter gave the alarm about one a.m., and roused her
father, a still sturdy old gentleman although seventy-seven years of
age, who slipped on a dressing-gown, and seizing a sword he had by him,
rushed downstairs, candle in hand, to do battle for his possessions. He
found two men rifling the drawing-room, and thrust at them; one rushed
past him and made his escape, the other fired at the vicar and wounded
him. The same shot (it was a scatter gun) also wounded Miss Buckle. This
second burglar then jumped out of the drawing-room window on to the soft
mould of a garden bed.
The alarm was given, the police and a doctor were summoned. The latter
attended to the wounds, which were serious, and the police, under the
orders of Superintendent Harkes, an energetic officer, immediately took
the necessary steps to discover the culprits. Officers were despatched
to visit the domiciles of all the poachers and other bad characters in
Alnwick, while a watch was set upon the roads into the town so that any
suspicious persons arriving might be stopped and searched. Then Mr.
Harkes drove over to Edlingham to view the premises. He found the window
in the drawing-room through which the burglars had entered still open,
and the room, all in confusion, ransacked and rifled. One of the
servants gave him a chisel which she had found in an adjoining room,
another handed over a piece of newspaper picked up just outside the
dining-room door. The police-officer soon saw from the marks made that
the chisel had been used to prise open the doors, and so soon as
daylight came he found outside in the garden the print of feet and the
impress of hands and knees upon the mould.
Meanwhile, the officers in Alnwick had ascertained that two men, both of
them known poachers, had been absent from home during the night. Their
names were Michael Brannagan and Peter Murphy; both were stopped on the
outskirts of the town about seven o'clock on the morning of the 8th.
There was nothing more against them at the moment than their absence
during the night, and after having searched them the police let them go
home. Brannagan was quickly followed, and arrested as he was taking off
his dirty clogs. Murphy, who lodged with his sister, had time to change
his wet clothes and boots before the officers appeared to take him. A
girl to whom he was engaged, fearing
[Illustration: MR. BUCKLE SURPRISING THE BURGLARS.]
something was wrong, quickly examined the pockets of his coat, and,
finding some blood and fur, tore these pockets out, and hid the coat.
When the police returned and asked for the clothes he had been wearing,
she gave them a jacket belonging to Peter's brother-in-law, an old man
named Redpath.
At the police-station, the prisoners were stripped and examined. There
was no sign of a sword wound on either of them, nor any hole or rent
that might have been made by a sword-thrust through their clothes. That
same day the prisoners were taken to Edlingham, and everything was
arranged as during the burglary. But Mr. Buckle could not identify
either of them, nor could Miss Buckle. The case against the prisoners
was certainly not strong at this stage. Moreover, there was this strong
presumption in their favour--that people engaged in such an outrage as
burglary and wounding with intent would not have returned openly to
their homes within a few hours of the commission of the crime. When
brought before the magistrates for preliminary inquiry, the prisoners
found fresh evidence adduced against them. The police, in the person of
Mr. Harkes, had traced foot-marks going through the grounds of the
vicarage, and out on to the Alnwick road. Plaster casts were produced of
these footmarks, also the boots and clogs of the prisoners, and all were
found to correspond. The chisel found in the vicarage had been traced to
Murphy. His brother-in-law, old Redpath, had been induced to identify it
as his property. This admission had been obtained from Redpath by a
clever ruse, as the police called it, although they had really set a
trap for him, and he had owned to the chisel although it was not his at
all. Another damning fact had been elicited in the discovery of a scrap
of newspaper in the lining of Murphy's coat (which, as we know, was not
Murphy's, but Redpath's), which fragment fitted exactly into the
newspaper picked up in the vicarage. This scrap of paper was unearthed
from the coat on the 16th of February, by an altogether independent and
unimpeachable witness, Dr. Wilson, the medical gentleman who attended
the Buckles. It may be observed that the coat itself had been in the
possession of the police for just nine days; so had the original
newspaper.
The evidence was deemed sufficient, and both prisoners were fully
committed for trial at the Newcastle spring assizes of 1879. It is now
known that certain facts, damaging to the prosecution, had been brought
to the notice of the police. They had positive information that other
persons had been abroad from Alnwick that night; they had received a
statement, made with much force by one who had good reason to know, that
the wrong men had been arrested; while there were witnesses who had met
the prisoners soon after the burglary on the other side of Alnwick. On
the other hand, fresh evidence against them was forthcoming at the
trial. This was the discovery of a piece of fustian cloth with a button
attached, which had been picked up by a zealous police-officer under the
drawing-room window, a month after the burglary. Here again was damaging
evidence, for this scrap of cloth was found to fit exactly into a gap in
Brannagan's trousers. It was said afterwards, at the trial of the
police, that they had purposely cut out the piece; and it was proved in
evidence that a tailor of Alnwick, to whom the trousers and piece were
submitted, expressed his doubts that the accident could have happened in
jumping out of the window. The tear would have been more irregular, the
fitting-in less exact. Moreover, the piece of cloth was perfectly fresh
and clean when found, whereas, if it had lain out for nearly a month in
the mud and snow, it must have become dark and dirty, and hard at the
edges, as corduroy goes when exposed to the weather. As, however, the
judge would not allow the cloth and button to be put in evidence, they
played no important part in the case until the subsequent prosecution of
the police, except possibly in prejudicing the minds of the jury against
Brannagan and Murphy.
The prisoners were ably defended by Mr. Milvain, afterwards a Q.C. His
case was that Mr. Buckle (who had corrected his first denial, and,
later, had identified the men) was mistaken in the confusion and
excitement of the burglarious attack; and that the police had actually
conspired to prove the case with manufactured evidence, so as to avoid
the reproach of another undetected crime. In support of this grave
charge he argued that even if the footprints had not been made
deliberately with the boots and clogs in their possession, there had
been a great crowd of curious folk all around the house after the crime,
any of whom might have made the marks. But a still stronger disproof was
that there were no distinct footmarks under the drawing-room window,
only vague and blurred impressions; a statement borne out long
afterwards, when it was found that the real burglars had taken the
precaution to cover their feet with sacking. Again, the evidence of the
newspaper was altogether repudiated on the grounds that it had not been
sooner detected, and had been put with malicious intention where it was
found. Lastly, several witnesses swore that they had never seen in the
possession of old Redpath any chisel such as that produced; while as to
the gun, it was denied that either prisoner had ever possessed any
firearms. Their poaching was for rabbits, and they always used a clever
terrier.
[Illustration: EDLINGHAM RECTORY.
_Photo: Cassell & Co., Limited._]
The judge (Manisty) summed up strongly against the prisoners, but the
jury did not so easily agree upon their verdict. They deliberated for
three hours, and at last delivered a verdict of guilty, whereupon the
judge commended them, and proceeded to pass the heaviest sentence in his
power, short of death. He sought in vain, he said, "for any redeeming
circumstance" that would justify him in reducing the sentence. Had Mr.
or Miss Buckle succumbed to their wounds, he must have condemned the
prisoners to death. It is clear, then, that Judge Manisty was only saved
by mere accident from making as grievous a mistake as any into which a
judge ever fell.
Brannagan and Murphy were removed from court protesting their innocence.
They went into penal servitude with the same disclaimer.
Seven years dragged themselves along, and there seemed no near prospect
of release, "life" convicts being detained as a rule for at least twenty
years. But now, by some unseen working of Providence, a light was about
to be let in on the case. It came to the knowledge of a young solicitor
in Alnwick that a certain George Edgell had been "out" on the night of
the Edlingham burglary, and that when he came in, a little before the
general alarm, his wife had begged their fellow-lodgers to say nothing
about his absence. Mr. Percy, Vicar of St. Paul's, Alnwick, through
whose unstinting exertions justice at last was done, knew Edgell and
questioned him, openly taxing him with complicity in the now nearly
forgotten crime. Edgell at first stoutly denied the imputation, but
seemed greatly agitated and upset. Added to this, it was stated
authoritatively that Harkes, the police superintendent, who was now
dead, admitted that he had been wrong, but that it was too late to
rectify the mistake.
There was some strong counter influence at work, and Mr. Percy found
presently that another man, named Charles Richardson, was constantly
hanging about Edgell. The reason came out when at last Edgell made full
confession of the burglary, and it was seen that this Richardson was his
accomplice. They had been out on a poaching expedition, but had had
little success. Then Richardson proposed to try the vicarage, and they
forced their way in. Richardson used a chisel which he had picked up in
an outhouse to prise open the windows and doors. All through he had been
the leader and moving spirit. He it was who had first thought of the
burglary, who had carried off the only bit of spoil worth having, Miss
Buckle's gold watch, and this, by a curious Nemesis, afforded one of the
strongest proofs of his guilt. A seal or trinket had been attached to
the chain, and years afterwards, the jeweller to whom he had sold it
came forward as a witness against him. The watch itself he had been
unable to dispose of, he said, and he threw it into the Tyne. Richardson
was a burly ruffian of great stature, and possessed of enormous
strength; a quarrelsome desperado, who had already been tried for the
murder of a policeman but acquitted for want of sufficient legal proof.
The matter was now taken up by Mr. Milvain, Q.C., who, it will be
remembered, defended Brannagan and Murphy, and who had become Recorder
of Durham. At his earnest request, backed by strong local
representations, the Home Secretary at length ordered a Commission of
Inquiry, admitting that the circumstances of the case were "most
singular and unprecedented." A solicitor of Newcastle was appointed to
investigate the whole matter, and the fresh facts, with Edgell's
confession, were set before him. On his report the conviction was
quashed. It was now seen that the evidence which had condemned those
innocent men to a life sentence was flimsy, and much of it open to
doubt. All the weak points have been already set forth, and it is enough
to state that Brannagan and Murphy were forthwith released, and returned
in triumph to Northumberland. The Treasury adjudged them the sum of £800
each, as some slight compensation for their seven years spent in durance
vile, and the money was safely invested for them by trustees. Brannagan
at once obtained employment as a wheelwright, the handicraft he had
acquired in prison, and Murphy, who was a prison-taught baker, adopted
that trade, and married the girl Agnes Simm, who had befriended him in
regard to the coat on the morning after the burglary.
The real offenders were in due course put upon their trial at Newcastle,
before Mr. Baron Pollock, were found guilty, and sentenced each to five
years' penal servitude. A petition, with upwards of three thousand
signatures, was presented to the Home Secretary, praying for a
mitigation of sentence on the ground that Edgell's voluntary confession
had righted a grievous wrong. The reply was in the negative, and this
decision can no doubt be justified. But it is impossible to leave this
question of sentence without commenting upon the extraordinary
difference in the views of two of her Majesty's judges in dealing with
precisely the same offence. There is no more glaring instance on record
of the inequality in the sentences that may be passed than that of Mr.
Justice Manisty inflicting "life" where Mr. Baron Pollock thought five
years sufficient.
Another trial was inevitable before this unfortunate affair came to an
end. The conduct of the police had been so strongly
[Illustration: CONVICTS AT WORK.
1. Mat-making.
2. Boot-making.
3. Serving Dinner.
4. Basket-weaving.
5. Carpentry in Cell.
_Photos: W. H. Grove, Brompton Road, S.W._]
impugned that nothing less than a judicial investigation would satisfy
the public mind. A Scotland Yard detective, the well-known and highly
intelligent Inspector Butcher, had been sent down to Northumberland to
verify, if possible, strong suspicions, and hunt up all the facts. He
worked upon the problem for a couple of months, and a criminal
prosecution was ordered on his report. Harkes was now dead, but four of
his constables, Harrison, Sprott, Gair, and Chambers, were charged with
deliberately plotting the conviction of two innocent men. They were
accused of making false plaster casts of footprints; of entrapping
Redpath into a mistaken recognition of the chisel; of tearing a piece of
the newspaper found in the vicarage and feloniously placing it in the
lining of what they believed to be Murphy's coat; and lastly, of tearing
or cutting out from Brannagan's trousers a piece of cloth, which they
placed in the vicarage garden, to show that Brannagan had been there and
had jumped through the window. The real burglars, Edgell and Richardson,
were brought in their convict garb to give evidence against the
policemen by detailing their proceedings on the night of the crime.
Edgell's story was received with respect, coming as it did from a man
who was suffering imprisonment on his own confession. It was credibly
believed that Richardson had picked up the chisel, and all the
probabilities corroborated their statement that they had covered up
their feet with sacking. The defence was that the confession was all a
lie, and that the men who made it were worthless characters. In summing
up, Mr. Justice Denman showed that the evidence of deliberate conspiracy
was wanting, and that the police might be believed to have been honestly
endeavouring to do their duty in securing a conviction.
[Illustration: EX-SUPERINTENDENT BUTCHER, THE OFFICER WHO INVESTIGATED
THE EDLINGHAM CASE.]
The verdict was "Not guilty," and was generally approved, more perhaps
on negative grounds of want of proof than from any positive evidence of
innocence. But the result was no doubt influenced by the fact that the
principal person in the plot, if plot there was, had passed beyond the
reach of human justice. The chief mover in the prosecution was
Superintendent Harkes, and the rest only acted at his instigation.
LORD COCHRANE.
The prosecution and conviction of Lord Cochrane in 1814 may well be
classed under this head, for it was distinctly an error of _la haute
police_, of the Government, which as the head of all police, authorises
the detection of all wrong-doing, and sets the criminal law in motion
against all supposed offenders. It has now, been generally accepted that
the trial and prosecution of Lord Cochrane (afterwards Earl of
Dundonald) was a gross case of judicial error. He was charged with
having conspired to cause a rise in the public funds by disseminating
false news. There were, no doubt, suspicious circumstances connecting
him with the frauds of which he was wrongfully convicted, but he had a
good answer to all. His conviction and severe sentence, after a trial
that showed the bitter animosity of the judge (Ellenborough) against a
political foe, caused a strong revulsion of feeling in the public mind,
and it was generally believed that he had not had fair play. The law,
indeed, fell upon him heavily. He was found guilty, and sentenced to pay
a fine of £500, to stand in the pillory, and to be imprisoned for twelve
months. These penalties involved the forfeiture of his naval rank, and
he had risen by many deeds of conspicuous gallantry to be one of the
foremost officers in the British Navy. His name was erased from the list
of Knights of the Bath, and he was socially disgraced. How he lived to
be rehabilitated and restored to his rank and dignities is the best
proof of his wrongful conviction.
The story told by Lord Cochrane himself in his affidavits will best
describe what happened. Having just put a new ship in commission,
_H.M.S. Tonnant_, he was preparing her for sea with a convoy. He was an
inventive genius, and had recently patented certain lamps for the use of
the ships sailing with him. He had gone into the city one morning, the
21st of February, 1814, to supervise their manufacture, when a servant
followed him with a note. It had been brought to his house by a military
officer in uniform, whose name was not known, nor could it be
deciphered, so illegible was the scrawl. Lord Cochrane was expecting
news from the Peninsula, where a brother of his lay desperately wounded,
and he sent back word to his house that he would come to see the officer
at the earliest possible moment. When he returned he found a person he
barely knew, who gave the name of Raudon de Berenger, and told a strange
tale.
He was a prisoner for debt, he said, within the rules of the King's
Bench, and he had come to Lord Cochrane to implore him to release him
from his difficulties and carry him to America in his ship. His request
was refused--it could not be granted, indeed, according to naval rules;
and de Berenger was dismissed. But before he left he urged piteously
that to return to the King's Bench prison in full uniform would attract
suspicion. It was not stated how he had left it, but he no doubt implied
that he had escaped and changed into uniform somewhere. Why he did not
go back to the same place to resume his plain clothes did not appear.
Lord Cochrane only knew that in answer to his urgent entreaty he lent
him some clothes. The room was at that moment littered with clothes,
which were to be sent on board the _Tonnant_, and he unsuspiciously gave
de Berenger a "civilian's hat and coat." This was a capital part of the
charge against Lord Cochrane.
De Berenger had altogether lied about himself. He had not come from
within the rules of the King's Bench but from Dover, where he had been
seen the previous night at the Ship hotel. He was then in uniform, and
pretended to be an aide-de-camp to Lord Cathcart, the bearer of
important despatches. He made no secret of the transcendent news he
brought. Bonaparte had been killed by the Cossacks, Louis XVIII
proclaimed, and the allied armies were on the point of occupying Paris.
To give greater publicity to the intelligence, he sent it by letter to
the port-admiral at Deal, to be forwarded to the Government in London by
means of the semaphore telegraph. The effect of this startling news was
to send up stocks ten per cent., and many speculators who sold on the
rise realised enormous sums.
De Berenger, still in uniform, followed in a post-chaise, but on
reaching London he dismissed it, took a hackney coach, and drove
straight to Lord Cochrane's. He had some slight acquaintance with his
lordship, and had already petitioned him for a passage
[Illustration: BOW STREET POLICE COURT IN 1808.
(_From a Contemporary Print by Rowlandson and Pugin._)]
[Illustration: LORD COCHRANE.
(_From the Painting by Stroehling._)]
to America, an application which had been refused. There was nothing
extraordinary, then, in de Berenger's visit. His lordship, again,
claimed that de Berenger's call on him, instead of going straight to the
Stock Exchange to commence operations, indicated that he had weakened in
his plot, and did not see how to carry it through. "Had I been his
confederate," says Lord Cochrane in his affidavit, "it is not within the
bounds of credibility that he would have come in the first instance to
my house, and waited two hours for my return home, in place of carrying
out the plot he had undertaken, or that I should have been occupied in
perfecting my lamp invention for the use of the convoy, of which I was
in a few days to take charge, instead of being on _the only spot_ where
any advantage to be derived from the Stock Exchange hoax could be
realised, had I been a participator in it. Such advantage must have been
immediate, before the truth came out; and to have reaped it, had I been
guilty, it was necessary that I should not lose a moment. It is still
more improbable that being aware of the hoax, I should not have
speculated largely for the special risk of that day."
[Illustration: _De Berenger._--
(_From Cruikshank's Etching._)]
We may take Lord Cochrane's word, as an officer and a gentleman, that he
had no guilty knowledge of de Berenger's scheme; but here again the luck
was against him, for it came out in evidence that his brokers had sold
stock for him on the day of the fraud. Yet the operation was not an
isolated one made on that occasion only. Lord Cochrane declared that he
had for some time past anticipated a favourable conclusion to the war.
"I had held shares for the rise," he said, "and had made money by sales.
The stock I held on the day of the fraud was less than
[Illustration: "GAMBLING IN THE STOCKS."
(_From Cruikshank's Etching._)]
I usually had, and it was sold under an old order given to my brokers to
sell at a certain price. It had necessarily to be sold." It was clear to
Lord Cochrane's friends--who, indeed, and rightly, held him to be
incapable of stooping to fraud--that had he contemplated it he would
have been a larger holder of stock on the day in question, when he
actually held less than usual. On these grounds alone they were of
opinion that he should have been absolved from the charge.
[Illustration: LORD COCHRANE AS HE APPEARED IN COURT.
(_From Cruikshank's Etching._)]
Great lawyers like Lords Campbell, Brougham, and Erskine have commented
on this case, all of them expressing their belief in Lord Cochrane's
innocence. Lord Campbell was of opinion that the verdict was "palpably
contrary to the first principles of justice, and ought to have been
reversed." The late Chief Baron, Sir Fitzroy Kelly, in criticising the
trial, ends by expressing his regret that "we cannot blot out this dark
page from our legal and judicial history." These are the opinions of
legal luminaries who were in the fullest mental vigour and acumen at the
time of the trial. They were intimately acquainted with all the facts,
and we may accept their judgment that a great and grievous wrong had
been done to a nobleman of high character, who had not spared himself in
the service of the State. Their view was tardily supported by the
Government in restoring Lord Cochrane to his rightful position in the
Navy.
The part taken by the late Lord Playfair in the rehabilitation of Lord
Dundonald has been told by Sir Wemyss Reid in his admirable "Memoirs"
of Playfair. Lord Dundonald died in October, 1860, and by his last will
bequeathed to his grandson, the present gallant earl, whose brilliant
achievements as a cavalry leader in the great Boer War have shown him to
be a worthy scion of a warrior stock, "all the sums due to me by the
British Government for my important services, as well as the sums of pay
stopped under perjured evidence for the commission of a fraud upon the
Stock Exchange. Given under my trembling hand this 21st day of February,
the anniversary of my ruin."
Lord Playfair was an intimate friend of the much-worried admiral, and
while he was a member of the House of Commons he made a strenuous effort
to carry out the terms of the above will by recovering the sums
mentioned in it. He moved for a Select Committee of the House, which
could not be refused, "as," to quote Playfair, "the whole world had come
to the conviction that Dundonald was entirely innocent." The Committee
was appointed, and was composed of many excellent men, including Spencer
Walpole, Russell Gurney, and Whitbread.
What followed shall be told in Playfair's own words. "I declined to go
upon the Committee," he writes in his Autobiography, as edited by Sir
Wemyss Reid, "as my feelings of friendship were too keen to make me a
fair judge. The Committee felt perfectly satisfied of Lord Dundonald's
innocence, but they hesitated as to their report from lack of evidence;
at the critical point an interesting event occurred.
"In 1814 Lord Dundonald and Lady X were in love, and though they did not
marry, always held each other in great esteem for the rest of their
lives. Old Lady X was still alive in 1877, and she sent me a letter
through young Cochrane, the grandson, authorising me to use it as I
thought best. The letter was yellow with age, but had been carefully
preserved. It was written by Lord Dundonald, and was dated from the
prison on the night of the committal. It tried to console the lady by
the fact that the guilt of a near relative of hers was not suspected,
while the innocence of the writer was his support and consolation.
"The old lady must have had a terrible trial. It was hard to sacrifice
the reputation of her relative; it was harder still to see injustice
still resting upon her former lover. Lord Dundonald had loved her and
had received much kindness from her relative, so he suffered calumny
and the injustice of nearly two generations rather than tell the true
story of his wrong.
"I had long suspected the truth, but I never heard it from Lord
Dundonald. The brave old lady tendered this letter as evidence to the
Committee, but I declined to give it in, knowing that had my friend been
alive he would not have allowed me to do so. At the same time I showed
the letter to the members of the Committee individually, and it had a
great effect upon their minds, and no doubt helped to secure the report
recommending that the Treasury should pay the grandson the back salary
of the admiral.
[Illustration: LORD COCHRANE IN CUSTODY.
(_From Cruikshank's Etching._)]
"The interesting letter itself I recommended should be put in the
archives of the Dundonald family, and this I believe has been done."
Part III.
POLICE--PAST AND PRESENT.