_A lie, then eternity--A promise made to the dying--Insurance money
tempts them--"Have not betrayed"--The innocent who die for the
guilty--The girl who lives as a boy_
|AS the world knows nothing of its greatest men, so the world knows
nothing of its greatest mysteries. No hint or rumour of them ever
reaches the public ear. There are strange things happening every day in
this vast, mysterious world that we call London of which no word will
ever be spoken. One or two human beings will know the secret, but it
will remain hidden away in their hearts to the end.
Sometimes from the lips of a dying man or woman comes a confession that
startles and shocks the few interested relatives gathered round
the bedside. Sometimes even in these deathbed revelations--the last
despairing effort of the burthened conscience to find relief while still
a flicker of life remains--there is still a reticence and a reservation.
The nearest and dearest are not trusted with the secret, even in that
supreme hour. The full confession is made only to the priest, upon whose
lips is the seal of silence.
The knowledge that in death there is often this desire to clear the
conscience by a confession, has caused many people to believe that
mysteries which to the world still remain unfathomed have been revealed
by criminals dying on the scaffold. There are people who still remember
the confession Neill Cream made with the rope round his neck.
"I am Jack the ---------" he gasped, and then his lips closed in the
eternal silence. This confession, like others of a similar kind, has
been generally accepted as a desperate attempt to prolong life. The
wretched man imagined that by making this statement his execution might
be stayed in order that his story might be inquired into, for he knew
that all the world was eager to have that mystery of mysteries cleared
up. But there were facts known to those on the scaffold which stamped
the statement as a lie--a lie uttered on the brink of eternity.
In the dead of night, in the ward of one of our great hospitals, some
time ago, the nurse in charge was sitting by the stove at the end of the
room when she heard a faint cry from one of the beds.
She went at once, and found that one of the patients, a man of fifty who
was not expected to live, had taken a sudden turn for the worse. She saw
that the man was dying, and was about to summon the doctor on night-duty
when the dying man grasped her hand.
"Don't go, for God's sake!" he gasped. "Listen!--I'm dying--I want to
tell you something--something that when I am gone you will keep as a
sacred secret."
The nurse, somewhat alarmed by the man's manner, gave the promise. She
bent down to hear what he had to say. Then with a white face she went
hurriedly to the telephone and called to the doctor.
The man died shortly afterwards. He died and left the nurse in
possession of a secret which she would have given a great deal never to
have heard. She gave a solemn promise to a dying man not to reveal it,
and yet she has confessed that the temptation to do so is great. She
asserts that if she opened her lips a mystery which startled London, and
which is still unsolved, would be a mystery no more. But the dying man
gave her his confession as the professional nurse by his bedside and
under an oath of secrecy, and she holds that she is bound by it. There
is one person in the world who knows the secret of that mystery--and
only one. And she will probably carry it with her to the grave.
There is many a mystery, of which no word has ever been breathed abroad,
hidden away under the marble tombs and flower-decked graves of our great
cemeteries.
It has happened that a belated traveller, passing the gates of a
cemetery in the hours of darkness, has been startled to see among
the distant tombs dim lanterns moving here and there. He has probably
hurried away, for not many of us are brave enough to overcome the dread
of watching a city of the dead after nightfall.
But he has only seen the preparations for the carrying out of the Home
Secretary's order for exhumation. An unsuspected crime is believed to
have been hidden away in the graveyard.
Something has come to light which has aroused suspicion, and the proverb
that "Murder will out" is about to be justified again.
But there are mysteries of crime which lie in the cemeteries never to
be brought to the light of day, and there are mysteries of romance lying
there unsuspected too.
The allegations in the famous Druce-Portland mystery startled England.
They remain allegations, for the Home Secretary has persistently refused
to allow the truth of the tomb to be laid bare. But there are empty
coffins in family vaults and under splendid monuments, and there are
coffins tenanted by men and women who never bore the name that is upon
the coffin-plate.
The sham funeral always conceals a mystery which is not likely to be
revealed, for those who have arranged it have the best of reasons for
keeping lifelong silence.
The sham or substituted burial takes place, as a rule, in connection
with insurance frauds.
I have given chapter and verse in a former chapter with regard to the
substitution of bodies, and quoted from the evidence given before a
Parliamentary Commission to prove that fraud under our present system
of death certification is not only possible but quite easy of
accomplishment.
Here is a case which will prove to the doubting reader how simple it is
to bury a man with all formalities satisfied, while he is still alive.
A doctor had been attending a man who was seriously ill. He called
one morning, found the patient apparently much worse, and told the
relatives--poor people!--that he would look in again in the evening
about nine o'clock.
At eight o'clock the man's wife came to the doctor's house, told him the
patient had passed away, and asked for a certificate. The doctor, who
expected the man to die, and had been attending him for some time, gave
it.
Before the wife got home the doctor's assistant, who that evening was
going the doctor's rounds for him, as he--the doctor--had a private
matter which made him anxious not to leave his home, called on the
patient, whose name was on the list he had copied from the doctor's
visiting-book.
He found the man much better and sitting up in bed chatting with his
brother, who was drinking his health from a newly-opened bottle of
whisky. This accidental visit of the assistant spoilt a neatly-arranged
scheme of fraud.
The patient was insured for £100. Shortly after the doctor's visit he
took a remarkable turn for the better, and towards evening was on the
road to recovery. The crisis had passed, and he was out of danger.
The husband's brother came in, and suggested to the man and his wife
that it would be a pity to lose the £100 that would have come to
the family if the patient had died. So the wife went out and got the
certificate.
These facts are in the Report of the Commission. The doctor who attended
the case told the story himself in the course of his evidence.
It was some time afterwards that the plan for the false burial was
discovered. The money for it was to be drawn from the burial club on the
doctor's certificate. The relatives had managed to get possession of a
shell. This was to be filled with stones and bricks, securely wrapped
up to prevent their moving, and packed in a sack to represent the man's
weight.
The shell was to be closed, and then, "in consequence of a dispute with
the first undertaker," the order for the coffin and the interment was to
be given to another undertaker.
There was no reason he should refuse the business. The production of
the doctor's certificate would justify him in taking the order and
concluding the arrangements.
There are coffins in the London cemeteries which contain no bodies. Over
some of the graves there are memorial stones, and, as in Wilkie Collins'
famous story, "The Woman in White," it sometimes happens that the "dead
person" goes to the cemetery and reads the touching tribute to his or
her virtues.
It may even be--I have heard the story told--that the dear departed will
go to the cemetery once a year and lay a memorial wreath upon her own
grave.
These are the mysteries of the dead. The mysteries of the living are
hidden away, sometimes in their own hearts, sometimes in the keeping of
the family solicitor, who has many a startling romance locked away in
the safes and tin boxes that line the walls of his quiet office.
I sat the other day in the private office of a famous solicitor who is
the confidant of the secrets of many of our titled families, and of some
of the most prominent members of the Smart Set.
As I chatted pleasantly with the famous lawyer, I could not help
thinking what a marvellous series of "Mysteries of modern London" he
could write if he were not, by reason of his office and his own high
sense of personal honour, bound to preserve silence.
In the quiet, old-fashioned little room in which I sat, looking out upon
an ancient burial ground, some of the most sensational stories of the
day have been told, and, by the skill of the diplomatic solicitor,
brought to a satisfactory last chapter, and then consigned to the
oblivion of the locked safe, of which he alone carries the key.
For most of the mysteries that have been brought to this cosy little
room have been settled there. They have not had to endure the glare of
the Law Courts and the fierce publicity of the Press. Had they done so
the world would have had some startling sensations, which would have put
many that are thrillingly headlined by the popular Press far back into
the shade.
It is not often in this country that we have the mystery of the
concealed identity in the criminal dock. No advocate rises at the Old
Bailey and endeavours to influence a jury by hinting that the prisoner
on trial for his life is the son of some great personage. "If you knew
who I was," exclaimed Prado, "you would be astounded," and his advocate
repeated his words.
We have no guilty wretches posing in the dock and pretending that by
their silence they are screening a name which is dearer to them than
life. Something of that kind was, it is true, attempted by Mrs. Pearcy
(Mary Eleanor Wheeler), the murderess of Mrs. Hogg and her child, who
arranged that after her death an advertisement should be inserted in all
the principal Madrid papers.
The advertisement duly appeared:
"M. E. C. P. Last wish of M. E. W. Have not betrayed."
The story of the murder of Mrs. Hogg was only half told. Mrs. Pearcy
practically acknowledged her guilt when she said that her sentence was
just; but there was always an unfathomed mystery in the case which was
intensified by the last request of the woman on the brink of eternity,
that someone in a foreign land should be notified that she had "not
betrayed."
Yet innocent persons have suffered for others and have not betrayed.
An innocent man has stood in the shadow of the scaffold and refused to
say the words which would have cleared him, because they would have
imperilled the life of one whom he was determined not to betray.
Innocent men and innocent women have confessed to crimes and paid the
penalty. The story told by the French novelist of the man in the last
stage of consumption who confessed to a murder by arrangement with the
relatives of the real murderer has its counterpart in fact. The man, who
proved that truth is stranger than fiction, feared a public trial. He
committed suicide, and left a confession behind him which tallied with
all the ascertained facts. His confession could well bear the impress of
truth, for the details were communicated to him by the actual author
of the crime. The man took the eternal shame upon himself for a sum of
money assured to those who, had he died of the disease that must soon
have been fatal, would have been left in the direst poverty. It was
not until some years after the suicide of the supposed murderer that
suspicion was aroused as to the genuineness of the confession by certain
circumstances which came accidentally to the knowledge of a retired
police-officer. And then it was useless to move further in the matter.
To obtain the conviction of another man would, in the circumstances,
have been almost impossible.
In the old days physical torture wrung a false confession of guilt from
hundreds of men and women. To-day it is mental torture that now and
again causes an innocent person to plead guilty to crimes that can
be purged with imprisonment, but more frequently there is a solid and
substantial benefit as the temptation.
Occasionally, when in some famous case of elaborate fraud there is a
suspicion that the person arrested is a man of good family fallen into
evil ways, there is a hint in the Press of the mystery of identity. But
it is rarely more than a hint. No one knows the truth but the unhappy
man himself and his still unhappier relatives, who throughout the trial
are in terror lest the accused should, in a moment of weakness, betray
himself, and fix the shame of his evil-doings upon the name they bear.
But, as a rule, the well-born man who has fallen low respects his
family, and the mystery of the identity of many a criminal who passes
from the dock to the convict gaol has been as well preserved, as far as
the great public are concerned, as the identity of the Man in the Iron
Mask.
One reads old stories of women who all their lives have passed without
suspicion as men, and accepts them as possible in the past. But
sometimes the world is startled by the discovery that this mystery of
sex is still maintained by women even in the lowlier walks of life,
where one would think romance of the kind would have no place.
Not long since a working-man, grey-haired and wrinkled, came before a
London magistrate, and was proved to be a woman. She had passed as a man
and laboured as a man for nearly forty years, and no one had suspected
the truth.
In some cases, for good and sufficient reasons, this form of fraud--for
in a sense it is fraud--is aided and abetted by relatives, who keep the
secret to the end.
One has only to remember that large sums of money and vast estates
pass away from families in default of an heir male to understand how
sometimes the girl-child is dressed and brought up as a "boy" from the
earliest period.
The fraud _must_ sooner or later be found out, you would think. But with
money to back it up there is no absolute reason that it should be.
Many of these men-women have been married to "wives," and the wife has
kept the secret. There are a dozen cases known and authenticated to
prove it.
In most instances the secret has been discovered or confessed at last.
But there are some cases in which the secret is kept undivulged through
life and passed on to the eternal silence of the grave.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Mysteries of Modern London, by George R. Sims