chambermaids at the Saracen's Head Hotel, at Norwich, I ventured to let
one of them see the picture of the man I wanted. I saw at a glance that
no tender regard for him was felt by this female observer. I noticed
something like pique, or it might be disgust for him. This was enough
for me. I frankly told the young woman that I wanted to track and punish
him for a mean and vile crime. I saw that, although chambermaid at an
inn, she had a woman's sense of propriety. However, to make doubly sure
of her aid, I appealed to her by another argument, which might be
supposed to have some influence with a young woman who had to live upon
small fees and perquisites. I offered her 5_l._ reward if she enabled me
to discover him, and in earnest of my sincerity and means of so
rewarding her I handed her a sovereign at once. She told me she thought
my photograph was a copy of the features of Mr. John Brown, who
travelled in the cigar line, who had been at that inn some time ago,
and who might be expected again in a week or a fortnight at most, as the
time for his visit to Norwich must have almost come round. She said she
would show the photograph to the other servants, if I would lend it to
her, and as I could easily get another, I did so. The rest of the
servants agreed that that portrait was not exactly like Mr. John Brown,
but it was something like him too. "Very like him," one said. Next
morning's delivery brought to the hotel, among other letters for
expected people (which letters where placed in a rack in the commercial
room), two for Mr. John Brown of London. The next day Mr. John Brown of
London arrived, and I was struck by the resemblance of the man as he
opened the door of the commercial room, in which I was then sitting, a
little anxiously watching for his arrival. It is needless to take the
reader through the subsequent steps of my investigation. He will see
that I had almost bagged my game. It is enough to say that a few
inquiries upon the subject elicited the fact that a regular traveller
(on the road in which the town of ---- and the Griffin's Head Hotel were
situated) being suddenly taken ill, and many accounts being due to the
house he travelled for on that line, Mr. John Brown was ordered to do
the midland journey for him a few times. It was on one of these journeys
that he found his evil opportunity for seducing the domestic of the inn,
and playing off upon her the mean trick which led to the summons against
Mr. Delmar, the reckless testimony the complainant bore as to his
identity, and his condemnation by the justices. It is only necessary to
add, that the decision against Mr. Delmar was quashed at the Quarter
Sessions; and that his character as a man of unblemished honour and
domestic virtue was, if possible, strengthened by the ordeal he had to
pass through.
AN UNSCRUPULOUS WOMAN.
Some years ago I was retained to penetrate the mystery of a case in many
respects not very unlike the celebrated Road murder; and I was to bring
the criminal to justice if possible. It was a case of child murder. The
house in which the horrid deed was perpetrated was a cottage, standing
in the midst of ample grounds--perhaps ten acres in extent--communicating
with a turnpike-road, not much used or frequented, and along which no
vehicles passed, except those going to or from the cottage or an
adjacent farm-house.
I feel that I am at liberty to indicate the locality of this deed no
further than to say, it was in a south of England county.
In order to explain the nature of the case I should, however, remark,
that the occupiers of the cottage were, a gentleman who had retired from
a business in London, his wife, children, and servants.
The man was cynical, misanthropical, and morbidly disposed to seclusion.
He was an eccentric man, and he every where excited prejudices against
himself. Even the retirement of this cottage was not so complete as to
exclude him wholly from contact with the world, or to shut him in from
these prejudices.
He had married--much later in life than is usual with prosperous
men--about a year before he took up his abode in the place I have
described. His wife had been a poor young woman, although rather
beautiful, and, in my opinion, her amiability and goodness compensated
to such a man for her lack of intellectual qualifications.
At the time I speak of there were living in this cottage Mr. Robinson,
his wife, their two infant children, and two general domestic
servants--one of whom, a young woman about twenty-three years of age,
they had brought with them from London to this retreat in the south of
England.
One morning in June, Mrs. Robinson arose from her bed about half-past
six o'clock, and before dressing herself, as was her custom, she crossed
the straggling passage and drawing and dining room to a chamber beyond,
in which her children and the servant, who performed the duties of
nursemaid, were supposed to be sleeping. Two of them were sleeping. She
was, however, astonished to observe that one appeared cold to the touch.
In amazement and horror the poor woman discovered that the third--her
youngest child--was sleeping in the embrace of death!
The bereaved mother rushed frantically to her husband, who was just
awakening from his slumbers, and she roused him to perfect consciousness
by her shrieks and wild ejaculations. The husband was soon astir, and
every body seemed, as every body ought to have been, affected by intense
grief.
The loudest interest and most demonstrative agony was that poured out
in sobs, tears, interjections, and apostrophes--all vague, incoherent,
indefinite--by the nursemaid.
I will not dwell upon the frightful incident, nor attempt to sketch in
detail the lamentations and misery of that household. It may suffice to
observe, that wicked rumour said all sorts of uncharitable things. The
local gossips were immensely dissatisfied with the proceedings at the
inquest;--the acumen of the coroner, or the want thereof; and the
sagacity of his jurymen, or its deficiency. Among the dreadful facts
asserted by rumour (which, let me observe, is, in nineteen out of twenty
cases, altogether wrong in her suspicions and asseverations) in this
case, were charges of improper intimacy between the nursemaid and the
master, and jealousy on the part of this girl towards her mistress,
which had, it was suggested, led up to the perpetration of the crime,
through a desire to wreak vengeance out of a mother's agony. One
ingenious theorist--a sort of local oracle in the estimation of many,
and the possessor of all wisdom in his own--hinted that the mean,
selfish, egotistical tradesman, Mr. Robinson, afraid lest his children
should encroach too rapidly on his accumulated profits, had hit upon the
Turkish expedient for thinning families; using, in this case, the hand
of his dishonoured servant to carry out his infamous design.
The surgeon who made a post-mortem examination--a man by no means
unskilful in his profession--who declined to say whether the inclination
of his belief favoured the theory of an accidental death or of wilful
murder, did, however, upon oath, admit that it was possible the child
might have been smothered by its nurse in the course of a night quite
accidentally.
The coroner's jury were for two hours very much divided in opinion about
what verdict they should return. Some were for a verdict of wilful
murder against Mr. Robinson. One man would have liked to have brought in
a verdict that would have handed over his wife to the tender mercies of
Jack Ketch. In justification of the eleven others I may add, that a
strong disposition was felt, amid the solemnity of that investigation,
to inflict corporal punishment upon the stupidest fellow. A very strong
desire was felt in the breast of more than the majority to return a
verdict of wilful murder against the nurse, either with or without
yoking her master in that condemnation. The coroner was consulted, and,
with an immense amount of circumlocution, which mightily puzzled and
confused his sapient aids, that functionary gave it as his opinion that
no evidence before the jury was sufficient to justify a verdict of
wilful murder against any one. He also ventured to tell the jury that
they had better, perhaps, find what he called "an open verdict;" that is
to say, one of "wilful murder," without divining the culprit, or one of
"found dead," and leave the cause of death an obviously more open
question still.
About this time I was consulted by a gentleman, without the intervention
of any lawyer, and I was requested to look up the facts in an impartial
manner; my directions being to nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in
malice.
Who was this gentleman? What his motive? What the latent desire he
really had? Who did he wish to clear, and upon whom may he have desired
to fix the doom of punishment attaching to the supposed crime, I must be
excused from stating.
Just before my visitor called upon me to undertake this matter, I had
received instructions to investigate a case of forgery upon a bank, to a
large extent. I was to receive, as a reward for my services in this case
of forgery, a very liberal fee; and I had also, as I have always had, a
distaste for investigations into the mystery of deeds of blood. I have
never been the agent through whom a culprit's neck has been encircled by
a halter. That is an awful responsibility (for fear of mistake) that I
have always shrunk from. Frankly, let me say, I would rather have
avoided this engagement altogether, and I did, I think, very gracefully
escape from personal action in the matter, by showing my visitor a
letter enclosing an instalment of one hundred pounds on account of my
fee over the forgery case. He was a man of business, and saw at once
that I could not be expected to give up a lucrative and comparatively
easy job of that kind for the less remunerative, and in any event less
agreeable, inquiry he desired me to prosecute. I, however, took his
retainer, upon the understanding and condition that I should act in this
case by a deputy, and simply overlook and generally superintend or
advise and direct my assistant's labours.
The reader may as well be informed, that through the intervention of a
friend of my visitor's, my assistant was provided with lodging in the
cottage, and was told to use that sequestered retreat of commercial
ease as the central point of his investigations.
I accordingly employed the best man I could get or spare from the other
case I had in hand, in which I needed some assistance, and sent that
person down to the south of England.
I don't think this man was quite up to his work. Of course I had not
formed that opinion when I set him about the job; but a review of what
transpired now inclines me to think he made a too palpable show of his
suspicions. He made no secret of his quality, or the work he had in
hand; but for this he _may_ have had adequate reasons.
Mr. and Mrs. Robinson were both convinced that the murder (if murder it
was) had not been committed by any one in their household. They were
both prepared to spend any amount of money in defence of their suspected
servant, if she had been arrested on suspicion. They had come to the
conclusion that the sad affair was the result of an accident,--which was
not an over-strained hypothesis.
If, however, it was a case of murder, for which there seemed no apparent
motive, it must have been committed by somebody obtaining access from
the outside to the room in which the child was sleeping; and a cursory
examination of the place showed my man it was by no means a difficult
thing to obtain both access and egress through a window opening upon a
side of the cottage. My man would have arrived at the conclusion very
soon that the death of the poor child had been caused by accident, and
would have returned to London, but for the not over recondite
suspicions generated under his own eye in the cottage itself.
Very curious to know his opinion, very eager in the suggestion of
contrary and improbable theories, and very profuse in expressions of
regard for Mrs. Robinson and "dear little Willie," was the nursemaid.
She followed my man about with a closeness which seemed to indicate a
kind of fascination or terror. At least this is what he told me he
thought of her conduct. This alone marked out that girl as the murderess
to his mind, and he resolved to linger as long as he could, with a
decent show of appearances, in the cottage, thoroughly confident that
something would turn up to fix the crime on her, and perhaps somebody
else in connexion with her.
The room assigned to him was a rather capacious and tolerably
comfortable one, adjoining that through which the little child passed to
heaven, and some distance from the chamber in which its nurse had slept
since the "accident." Of course my man was not superstitious, and had no
unnatural fears--to which circumstance, perhaps, may be ascribed the
fact that he left his dressing-case open and his razors loose during his
stay at the cottage.
My man was moreover not afraid of ghosts, which perhaps was fortunate.
The window-catch was broken, and the lock of the door was so dilapidated
that it would have kept no impudent dog or cat from entering, and it
afforded the room no protection against intruding spirits.
One night, about a week after his arrival at the cottage, he had fallen
into a sleep,--such a sleep as a man of his profession might be allowed,
a sort of permanent half-wakefulness, in which the footfall of an elf
would have aroused consciousness without stirring a muscle or raising an
eyelid, and from which a salute of artillery could not have disturbed
him abruptly enough to produce a quiver or a twitch of skin or
muscle,--when that insecure door did open, and the form of a woman, in
her night-dress, appeared at his bedside.
Her step excited the wakefulness of my man as he lay with his face to
the door. He gently opened his eyes wide enough to enable him to examine
and measure the form of the nocturnal visitor, without permitting her to
notice the effect of her presence. He saw her glance round the room,
which the beams of the moon lighted up sufficiently to exhibit the
several articles on the toilet-table and elsewhere. My man thought his
interrupter's eyes fell upon the loose razors, and he availed himself of
the opportunity afforded by the turning of her face aslant from his bed
to disengage his arms somewhat from the bedclothes. He was now prepared
to meet an attack upon him by her with his own material weapons.
He had misunderstood the woman's object in visiting his bedchamber that
night.
She turned again in the direction of the bed. He now thought it prudent
to let her see that she was noticed. He coolly raised himself up on his
haunches, and fixed his eyes upon her.
"What do you want here?" he rather sternly inquired; and the words
seemed to alarm her.
She replied, in faltering accents and spasmodic sentences, "What? I want
to see you. Why do you look at me all day? What do you mean by looking
at me as you do? Do you mean to say that I killed Willie? Say any thing
against me, and I will ruin you. Promise me you won't say any thing
against me, or I will scream out."
Then steadily glancing at him, she uttered what no doubt were about the
only words she had intended to say, "If you don't promise me here, as
you are sitting in that bed, that you don't suspect me, that you won't
say any thing against me, that you won't look at me as you do and try to
make people suspect me, I will cry out. I will say that you have taken
improper liberties with me; that you have seduced me; that I have been
awakened in my sleep by conscience, and am afraid of your other evil
designs."
"Oh, you will, will you? And what then?"
"What then? Why, won't people say that, after getting me to come here
and sleep with you, you denounced me in order to cover your own improper
conduct?"
My man admits that he thought this "devilish clever." If he had not been
the intended victim, I believe he was so enamoured of the skill of this
young woman that he might have offered to take her into a detective
partnership, and set up in business with her in opposition to me. But he
saw his danger, and did not like being made the object of an experiment
with such very fatal incidents surrounding it.
He seized her wrists with one hand, and with the other thrust her from
the bedside, placed his hands in so doing over her lips, seized one of
the razors lying on the table, and held it before her eyes to terrify
her, saying nothing, however, which had reference to that instrument;
then he suddenly dropped it near the spot where they were standing,
seized her again, and shouted with all his might.
My man was not to be outwitted.
He charged this young woman with having stolen into his bedroom, knowing
it to be unfastened, when she calculated that he would be asleep, and
knowing also that he had been imprudent enough during his stay in the
house to leave his razors on the toilet-table. He declared that he awoke
just as she was in the act of putting the razor to her own throat,
intending to commit suicide in his room, with the intention, it was
suggested, of fastening upon him the crime of her murder.
It will only be necessary to further inform the reader, that although no
evidence could be procured sufficient to maintain an indictment for
wilful murder against this nurse, and although it was generally believed
that she had committed the murder (a fact about which I had my doubts,
for I believe the child was accidentally smothered in its sleep, as
children often are), no evidence was offered to the jury in support of
an indictment for the capital offence; but she was accused and punished
for the attempted suicide.
THE INCENDIARY GANG
In the year 1833 I was engaged to investigate the circumstances
attending a fire--one of a series--which had ended in claims upon
several of the great London offices, and which fires were believed to
have arisen out of wilful fraud.
The present fire broke out on a Monday afternoon between one and two
o'clock, in a warehouse belonging to an extensive bonnet manufactory
near Dunstable, in Bedfordshire.
Among the peculiar circumstances of this case was the somewhat
remarkable fact, that the business of the manufactory had just been
transferred from one proprietor to another, and that the policy of
insurance was in the hands of the company's officers, at its
headquarters in London, for the purpose of having a transfer of the
contract endorsed thereon.
The new proprietor informed the fire-office that he had resolved upon
enlarging his premises, in order to extend his business.
In a letter to the company he indeed stated, in precise terms, that he
then had on hand several large export orders to complete. The policy,
which had covered an insurance of 3000_l._ hitherto, was now increased
to 4500_l._
Shortly after this another letter was received by the office, in which
the writer stated that 4500_l._ would, he found, not cover the value of
all his improvements, machinery, and stock-in-trade, so that he proposed
to still further increase the insurance to 6000_l._
As this was an unusually heavy risk on a country policy, and as the
premises were only about thirty miles from town, the board determined
that the surveyor for the office should go down and report upon the case
before the last proposal was accepted.
Mr. Phillimore, the surveyor, accordingly went down. He arrived about
eleven o'clock in the forenoon, and was very politely received by the
firm--Newton Brothers--who showed him over the premises, which he
examined with his usual critical minuteness, and was subsequently
invited up-stairs into the manager's residence on the works, where he
consented to partake of a glass of sherry and a sandwich while he
awaited a return train to Town.
It was now a few minutes after one o'clock, and the people employed in
the manufactory had all quitted the premises for dinner.
The younger member of the firm, Mr. Albert Newton, left the room for the
sherry, returned in a few minutes, and had been chatting with the
surveyor about half or three-quarters of an hour, when the workpeople
began to return.
Before many of the hands had arrived, a cry of "Fire!" was raised. It
was discovered that a portion of the old building, which adjoined the
new, was in a blaze, and that a large quantity of straw hats and bonnets
had been ignited. With immense rapidity the flames extended up the
sides of the warehouse, in which there was, it appeared, stored a large
quantity of manufactured goods. Appearances were, however, a little
deceptive in this respect. The stock had been so distributed in racks
(it might have been for convenience of classification) that the bulk
appeared greater than it really was. Perhaps this circumstance, however,
rather aided than retarded the progress of devastation; for the flames
diffused themselves with more ease through the interstices or spaces in
which the parcels were stored, than might have been possible had they
been more densely packed.
A confusion and panic seized the few persons in the lower part of the
building, and terror paralysed their efforts for a while. Moreover, they
did not know that any persons were in the rooms above; and, if they
paused in their alarm to consider at all about this matter, they
probably thought that they alone, and the new arrivals from dinner, were
the only persons within scope of the fire. They accordingly rushed out
into the town, and, with commendable prudence--that is, as soon as
calmness and reason were restored--sought to procure assistance in
quenching the flames. The rest of the work-people, as they arrived,
either went off on similar errands, or clustered round the outside of
the building.
Meanwhile the devouring element pursued its unchecked course, and
spreading with the rapidity already indicated, it soon enveloped the
whole of the ground-floor. The flames had, indeed, begun to consume the
staircase, and had singed the rafters, before notice of their peril
reached the few occupants of the upper story.
Mr. Newton and the surveyor of the office were first alarmed by a
subdued murmur or buzz produced by the conversation of the mass of
people who were below looking on at the spectacle.
The attitude and conduct of the crowd was afterwards the subject of much
inquiry and no little suspicion, but there really was no ground for
either doubt or astonishment. If the fire had broken out at night, there
is every reason to believe that the natural tones of alarm would have
taken a louder form of demonstration. If such a fire had broken out in
London, where persons are customarily to be found at all times on every
floor of a large warehouse, and where the comparative familiarity of
people with such incidents leads them to take wiser steps than
provincials, the shout of "Fire! fire!" would probably have been at once
raised even in broad daylight. But that people unaccustomed to such
things, paralysed by terror to a large extent, and in a still greater
degree stupefied by wonderment, made no shouts loud enough to arrest the
conversation of the endangered little party above, is not, it appears to
me, very remarkable.
The sounds which first greeted the ears of Mr. Albert Newton and his
guest caused them to listen, and simultaneously one man in the mob (for
a mob had by this time formed) did shout "Fire!" A smell of singed
material also greeted the nostrils of the little party.
It is needless to say, that these persons immediately rushed to the
window with the view of ascertaining what was the matter, and
determining the course to be pursued if, as they had already almost
ascertained, their own lives were in jeopardy.
The appearance of Mr. Albert Newton at the window elicited a shriek from
the women and girls, and a corresponding cry of alarm from the men
below.
"My God!" exclaimed Mr. Albert Newton, "our place is on fire."
As he spoke, the flames burst through the lower windows in a dense mass;
and although the part of the building in which the manufacturer and his
guest were standing was considerably to the east of that part on which
the fire had taken its principal hold, there was sufficient palpable
cause of danger to whiten the cheeks of both men, and to cause the
proprietor--who had, of course, far less experience in such matters than
the surveyor, Mr. Phillimore--to betray a degree of confusion which gave
that worthy gentleman perhaps more anxiety than the fire alone could
have done.
With a degree of calmness and self-possession worthy of the crisis, Mr.
Phillimore asked Mr. Newton what means of escape they had, and implored
him to be calm, as it might need all their self-possession as well as
their courage to extricate themselves.
"Shall we leap out of the window?" exclaimed the embarrassed man.
"No," was the firm reply.
"Do you think we can safely descend the staircase?"
"Let us try."
The party then descended one flight of stairs, but found a dense vapour
issuing up the staircase,--an impassable difficulty.
"We are lost!" exclaimed Mr. Newton.
The surveyor's countenance betrayed intense anxiety as he apprehended
that the terrified man's ejaculation involved an awful truth.
"Let us seek the roof. Have you any rope at hand?"
"Yes," returned Mr. Newton.
Silently and rapidly they flew rather than ran up the stairs, Newton
leading the way to where a quantity of stout hempen rope, of a quarter
of an inch diameter, was lying in a corner of a room devoted to empty
packages and waste.
The surveyor's experienced eye measured the extent and capacity of this
medium of escape with considerable accuracy, and saw that it would
suffice for the purpose of liberating them, if they had the discretion
to wisely use the means at their disposal.
Scarcely a word was exchanged between the two men. In almost total
silence Mr. Phillimore drew out the first piece of rope and fastened it
adroitly round the waist and under the arms of the proprietor of the
establishment, and then fastened another length of the cord to the one
which encircled his terrified companion. The third end was joined in the
same manner.
"That will, I think, serve our purpose," were the first words uttered,
and these were spoken by the surveyor.