DETECTION AND CAPTURE OF THE CRIMINAL
Contrasts between Eighteenth, Nineteenth and Twentieth
Centuries--Margaret Catchpole--Tawell--Crippen--Portraits and the
Press--Charlesworth Case--Bloodhounds--Police Dogs--Circumstantial
Detection.
In the days of the stage-coach a fugitive had a better chance of escaping
than in the present age of steam power on land and sea. For then, slow as
were the ways of escape, the ways of advertising the crime were slower
still, and once on board a ship a runaway was comparatively safe from
arrest.
The story of Margaret Catchpole, which has now become almost classic, may
be cited as a good illustration of the way in which the pursuers were
handicapped, when the fugitive had had a few hours' start.
It was in 1797 that Margaret Catchpole, a servant-maid at Ipswich, stole a
horse from the stable of her master, in order to join her lover, and
disguised as a lad rode all the way to London in eight and a half hours,
with only a single stop at Marks Tey, in Essex.
A few hours later the horse was missed, and handbills describing it and
offering a reward for the capture of the thief were hurriedly printed and
sent out of Ipswich by every vehicle that left the town.
Two men were also despatched in pursuit along the London road, but being
falsely directed were about to turn off in the direction of Maldon, when
they chanced to meet a man who had seen Margaret riding to London. But
for this chance meeting Margaret would probably have escaped capture.
As it was, the pursuers reached London the following day and Margaret was
arrested just as she had concluded a sale of the horse with a dealer.
She was tried at the Bury Assizes and sentenced to death, but through the
influence of her former master the sentence was commuted to a term of
imprisonment.
Three years later her lover, Laud, who was a smuggler, assisted her to
escape from Ipswich gaol, and again handbills for her arrest were issued.
She was captured on the beach while in the act of embarking in Laud's
boat, and Laud himself was killed in the fight. For the second time she
was sentenced to death, and was once more reprieved, her sentence now
being transportation to Botany Bay. There she married, and died many years
later.
The introduction of the railway did not materially change the relative
position of pursuer and pursued; for although the fugitive could travel
more rapidly than before, and thus when chance favoured him could get to
the coast and on board a ship about to sail, he had against him the more
speedy notification of the crime in all directions, which was also
rendered possible by the railway.
It was not until a means of communication infinitely more rapid than the
steam engine had been discovered, that the balance turned decisively
against the man endeavouring to elude the grasp of the law.
It is strange to reflect that it was not until it had been employed in the
capture of a criminal that it was recognised in how many directions the
electric telegraph might be of service to mankind.
Prior to that time the invention had been little better than a failure
from a commercial point of view, for, although the railway companies had
some time before this realised the advantages of the new system of
communication, the Government had refused to have anything to say to it.
It was thus little short of a revelation to the public when, in 1845, the
news was made known that a suspected murderer had been arrested through
the agency of the telegraph.
A woman had been brutally murdered not far from Slough, and a neighbour,
who had heard her screams, rushed to the spot with a lighted candle in her
hand just in time to see a man in Quaker garb hurrying away.
This man, John Tawell by name, a former member of the Society of Friends,
succeeded in escaping unchallenged to the station and in catching a train
to London, and had it been two years earlier would probably have managed
to get out of England; for news still travelled slowly in those times, and
the train service to London was very infrequent.
But the police bethought them of the telegraph, which had not long been
established on the Great Western Railway, and a description of the wanted
man was sent over the wires to London. Although Tawell had had a good
start, the message arrived long before him, and detectives were awaiting
the arrival of the train at Paddington. He was followed from the station
to the Bank, and from there to an eating-house, where he had a meal,
and finally to a lodging-house in Cannon Street, where he meant to pass
the night. Here, much to his amazement, he was quietly arrested. His trial
followed in due course, and he was convicted and executed.
[Illustration: WAR PLAN SENT BY WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY
_By kind permission of Mr. Thorne-Baker and "The Daily Mirror"_]
There were several points of scientific interest in his trial, which are
described on another page.
Last year, sixty-five years after the sensational capture of Tawell, the
attention of the whole world was rivetted upon an Atlantic steamer on its
way from Antwerp to Canada.
It had on board a man and a woman, who disguised as a Quebec merchant and
his son, were expecting to reach Canada without detection. For a week
previously search had been made for them in every corner of Europe, and
once on board a ship sailing from a foreign port they might reasonably
have anticipated that they were safe.
But their portraits had been so widely circulated by the newspapers that
their faces were familiar wherever English papers were read, and the ship
was only a few miles on its journey when their disguise was penetrated by
the captain.
The vessel was fitted with a wireless installation, and now for the first
time since its invention wireless telegraphy played the leading part in
the capture of fugitives from the land.
The police in London were thus immediately acquainted with the whereabouts
of the wanted pair, and an officer was sent off by a swifter steamer to
greet them on their reaching Canada. Day by day, with almost feverish
excitement, the progress of the _Montrose_ across the ocean was followed,
and the chief topic of public interest was the race between the police
officer on one steamer and the fugitives upon the other.
The inspector won easily, and was ready waiting to arrest Crippen and his
companion at the first approach of the _Montrose_ to the Canadian shore.
The trial that followed had many features of scientific interest to which
reference is made in another place.
The recent advances in the methods of telegraphing a facsimile of a
specimen of handwriting or a sketch, or of reproducing a photograph at a
distance have greatly increased the difficulties of criminals escaping
detection, and the telectrograph, as it is termed, will prove a powerful
weapon in the hands of the detective.
The selenium machines of Professor Korn were employed by the _Daily
Mirror_ in transmitting the portraits of the chief actors in the Steinheil
case, and one of these photographs, which was received in London while the
Court was still sitting in Paris, is shown in the accompanying picture.
A still more practical telectrograph is that invented by Mr. Thorne Baker,
which weighs only about twenty-four pounds. This has been simplified to
such an extent that the photograph may be printed upon a flexible plate
with a backing of lead foil, and by attaching this to the transmitting
cylinder the thousands of minute points which go to make up the image will
be exactly reproduced upon a receiving cylinder at the other end of a
telephone wire.
The instrument may also be used with wireless installations for the
transmission of simple pictures or diagrams, and by its means it would be
easy for a ship at sea to send or receive portraits of an individual under
suspicion.
[Illustration: PHOTO SENT BY TELEGRAPH FROM PARIS
_By kind permission of "The Daily Mirror"_]
The accompanying illustrations, which are reproduced here by the
permission of Mr. Thorne Baker and the _Daily Mirror_, show a portrait of
King Edward VII and an outline war map which were thus transmitted by
"wireless" telegraphy.
Mr. Thorne Baker states that the use of his instrument renders "tapping"
impossible, since by merely making a slight alteration in the speed of
running the machines, in accordance with a signal arranged beforehand, the
pictures would be so distorted as to be unrecognisable.
As an early instance of the use made by the police of a portrait in
identifying a suspected individual the case of Arden, who was executed for
murder at the beginning of last century, may be mentioned.
Arden had given a drawing of himself to a youth, and this was handed to
the police who were thus able to identify the accused in London a month
later.
The general use of photography in the press has frequently come to the aid
of the police, and instances of photographs of a wanted individual being
employed for this purpose will occur to everyone. At any police station
may now be seen reproductions of photographs of missing individuals, and
these being circulated all over the world, reduce to a small compass the
limits within which a suspect may go without detection.
Reference may be made to two recent cases by way of illustration. A nurse
had kidnapped a child and all traces of her whereabouts were lost for some
days. Her portrait was published in all the leading papers, and being seen
by the proprietor of an hotel in the Midlands was recognised as that of
one of his guests.
Acting on this information a police inspector suddenly accosted the
suspected woman and addressed her in her real name, and she, taken off her
guard, answered his remarks naturally, and was at once arrested.
In January of 1908, Miss Violet Charlesworth succeeded in filling pages of
every English paper by suddenly vanishing from her creditors, under
circumstances intended to suggest that she had been killed. She arranged a
motor-car "accident" upon the cliffs at Penmaenbach, and ostensibly was
flung through the glass screen of the car into the sea.
As no trace of the body could be found it was soon suspected that there
had been no accident, and that before long the victim would come to life
again. Her portraits were published in hundreds of papers, and were posted
at police stations all over the United Kingdom, and amateur detectives by
the score endeavoured to discover her whereabouts.
She was recognised from the portraits in half a dozen parts of the country
at the same time, but it was not until a fortnight later that she was
positively identified at Oban.
The anti-climax of the farce was reached, when, a few days later, she paid
a visit to the London office of her solicitor, and was attended from the
station by a string of motor-cars each containing the special
representative of a London paper.
[Illustration: PORTRAIT SENT BY WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY
_By kind permission of Mr. Thorne-Baker and "The Daily Mirror"_]
Two years later she was found guilty of having defrauded a poor landlady
of a large sum of money at the time when everyone had accepted her great
"expectations" at her own valuation.
There have been frequent failures in the use of bloodhounds to detect a
criminal, but this must be attributed, in part at all events, to the
circumstance that the dogs have often not been employed until every other
means has failed.
In the Luard case, for instance, in 1908, bloodhounds were set upon the
track of the supposed assailant of the murdered woman, but the trial was
not made immediately after the discovery of the crime. The scent had
become faint, and it was therefore not surprising that the dogs, after
starting hotly upon the trail, soon lost it again.
The writer is indebted to Major Richardson for the accompanying photograph
of his trained bloodhound, "Pathan," and for his kind permission to quote
the graphic description of actual man hunts from his fascinating book upon
the subject.[1]
[1] _War, Police, and Watch Dogs_, by Major E. Richardson (Blackwood
and Sons).
"On one occasion, when searching for the body of a woman, I used two
collies and a bloodhound. It was summer, and the police, after patrolling
the entire countryside, had narrowed the search down to a mountain covered
with a dense wood and undergrowth of rhododendron bushes. It happened in
mid-summer, and the day was very hot. The collies worked industriously
for almost two hours, keeping well ahead, but after that time they began
to flag, and soon refused to leave my heel. The bloodhound, on the
contrary, continued persistently to search ahead of me all through the
hottest part of the day, until the woman's body was found on the top of
the mountain.
"As further illustrating the persistency of the bloodhound when on the
trail, I may mention the case of a murder to which I was called in to
assist the police in Scotland. As I and my hounds were in England at the
time, it was seventeen hours after the murder when we reached the scene.
Not only this, but severe frost had intervened during the night, rendering
the ground very unfavourable for scenting purposes. The murder had taken
place in a town, but evidences were found that the criminal had been at a
certain spot outside the town on the cliffs where he had discarded certain
belongings.
"I took my hounds to this spot and laid them on the trail, first giving
them the scent from the discarded articles. They went clear away for some
distance, and leaving the main road crossed some fields through a wood to
a cottage. Here they seemed to be at fault, and ran about whimpering. On
inquiry at the cottage it appeared that a man had shortly after the murder
called there for some water.
"Feeling the hounds were right so far I cast them round about in hopes of
their picking up the trail again. After working persistently for a little
time one of them, 'Solferino,' opened to a line beyond the wood, and went
off at a steady rate followed by the other hound, 'Waterloo,' who also
found the line himself. They held to this for a while until checked by a
main road.
[Illustration: MAJOR RICHARDSON'S MAN-TRACKER "PATHAN"
_By kind permission of Major Richardson_]
"The murderer had evidently walked along the road some distance, until,
perhaps, scared by a pedestrian or vehicle, and he then evidently took to
the fields again.
"Although checked by the road, where the trail became obliterated, the
hounds, nothing daunted, kept steadily onwards, casting all the time on
each side, until they found it again in the fields. By steadily working in
this manner they led us for four miles, partly across country, and partly
on the road, to a populous town, and to the vicinity of a railway station.
Here the trail was completely obliterated, and it was evident that by this
time the murderer had got clear away, probably by train, and was not
hiding in the neighbourhood.
"The chief constable testified to the excellent work of the hounds on this
occasion, and there is not the slightest doubt, that had this town been
supplied with a bloodhound which could have been put on the trail
immediately on the discovery of the murder, the murderer would have been
quite easily run to earth."
In Moscow a bloodhound is systematically used by the police to discover
stolen property, and some of his "finds" have been recorded in all the
European papers. In the early part of March of last year this police dog,
"Tref," recovered a number of bank-notes and a quantity of silver plate
that had been taken from the house of a Moscow gentleman.
"Tref," having been put upon the scent, followed the trail through
several streets until he came to a night-shelter. Here he made for a coat
that belonged to a house-painter, and in the pockets of this were found
the missing notes. He then left the shelter and followed the trail to the
shop of a dealer in old silver, and here the stolen plate was discovered.
In addition to their occasional use as detectives, dogs are now being
systematically employed as scouts to accompany the police on their rounds
and to aid in the capture of evil-doers.
The Paris dogs, which are specially trained for the police by Mademoiselle
Arlette Clary, are cross-bred hounds described as "wolf-shepherd hounds,"
and "brindled mastiff bulls." They are powerful beasts weighing upwards of
twelve stone, and can easily overthrow and master a man.
When attacking, they at once make for the right arm, so as to guard
against a pistol bullet, and they are also trained to refuse food except
from the hands of those they know, so as to safeguard them against
poisoning. As a proof of their efficiency, Mademoiselle Clary informed the
writer that one of her police dogs had captured nine apaches in one night.
Last year a demonstration was given in London before the most eminent
representatives of the Metropolitan police force, the apache being
represented by a man thickly padded to protect him from the teeth of the
dogs. When the man attempted to escape over a screen representing a wall
the great hound, "Max," promptly caught him and dragged him down again, as
is shown in the accompanying photograph which is here reproduced by
permission of Mdlle. Clary and the _Daily Mirror_. The dog also easily
cleared this wall, which was 8 ft. 10 in. high, in one bound, and captured
a "padded apache" as he climbed down on the other side.
[Illustration: FRENCH POLICE DOG
_By kind permission of Mdlle. Clary and "The Daily Mirror"_]
Police dogs trained on these lines have for some time past been used to
assist the police in Glasgow, and within the last few months Nottingham
has strengthened its police force by the addition of dogs.
The dogs used in this country are powerful cross-bred animals of the
Airedale terrier type, specially reared and trained by Major Richardson.
The first dog used for the purpose in this country was given to the
Berkshire Constabulary, and its duties are to accompany a policeman on his
rounds at Windsor, to protect him from attack, and, if necessary, to
capture escaping criminals.
From two to three months are required to train the dogs for this purpose.
In what may be described as circumstantial detection a very faint clue has
sometimes resulted in the discovery of a criminal. One of the most
striking examples of the kind was seen in 1864, when a gentleman named
Briggs was murdered on the North London railway, for the sake of his watch
and money.
The murderer succeeded in escaping without having been noticed by anyone,
and the crime would probably have made another in the long list of
unsolved mysteries, but for several slips that were made by him.
He had changed hats with his victim and his soft felt hat, which was found
upon Mr. Briggs, was one of the chief factors in his subsequent
identification.
Hats of this particular shape, by the way, were for many years afterwards
popularly known as "Müllers."
The watch and chain of the murdered man were soon traced to the shop of a
London jeweller, who stated that he had given another watch and chain in
exchange for them. He remembered the man and was able to give a
description of his appearance, although he had no knowledge of his name or
whereabouts.
At this point all further signs of the trail were lost, for all efforts to
discover the jeweller's customer proved fruitless.
Some time afterwards, however, a man called at Scotland Yard with a
jeweller's small cardboard box, which, he said, a man who had recently
been lodging at his house had given to his little girl. On this box was
stamped the jeweller's name, which, ominously enough, was "Death," and
this man was the very jeweller to whom Mr. Briggs' watch had been taken.
Thanks to this clue Müller was tracked first to Liverpool and then to New
York, where he was arrested and extradited.
At the trial the changed hat found upon the victim helped to prove his
identity with the murderer, and he was convicted and hanged at Newgate.
No more extraordinary instance of a single circumstance leading to the
detection of a criminal can be offered than in what was known as the
"Yarmouth Murder."
On September 23rd, 1900, a woman was found lying dead upon the beach at
Yarmouth, and from the appearance of the body she had evidently been
strangled. On her fingers were some rings, but with the exception of the
laundry mark upon her clothes, there was no clue by which she could
possibly be identified. She had been staying for some days in lodgings in
the town, and was known to her landlady as Mrs. Hood. While she was there
letters bearing a Woolwich postmark had come addressed to her by that
name. Only a day or two before her death she had had her photograph taken
upon the beach.
All investigation to discover who the woman really was or to trace her
murderer proved unavailing, and at the coroner's inquest a verdict was
brought in of wilful murder against some person unknown.
Subsequently it was discovered that the laundry mark upon the dead woman's
clothes, 599, was that put by a laundry upon the clothes sent to them from
a particular house in Bexley Heath. Further inquiry showed that a woman
named Bennett had formerly lived there, and she was identified as the
original of the photograph that had been taken at Yarmouth.
This led, early in November, to the arrest of the dead woman's husband,
Bennett, who was a workman in Woolwich Arsenal, and he was committed for
trial on the charge of murder. He denied all knowledge of the crime, and
asserted that he had never been to Yarmouth. This was disproved, however,
by collateral evidence, and many facts were brought forward connecting the
prisoner with the murder.
The motive alleged for the crime was that Bennett might be free to marry
another woman. The date of the wedding had been fixed, and it was shown
that his behaviour after the night of the murder pointed to his having a
knowledge of his wife's death. So convincing was the whole of the
circumstantial evidence, that after a short deliberation the jury brought
in a verdict of "Guilty," and Bennett was executed.