I am not in the habit of seeing the _Household Words_ regularly; but a
friend, who lately sent me some of the back numbers, recommended me to
read “all the papers relating to the Detective and Protective Police,”
which I accordingly did—not as the generality of readers have done, as
they appeared week by week, or with pauses between, but consecutively,
as a popular history of the Metropolitan Police; and, as I suppose it
may also be considered, a history of the police force in every large
town in England. When I had ended these papers, I did not feel disposed
to read any others at that time, but preferred falling into a train of
reverie and recollection.
First of all I remembered, with a smile, the unexpected manner in which
a relation of mine was discovered by an acquaintance, who had mislaid
or forgotten Mr. B.’s address. Now my dear cousin, Mr. B., charming as
he is in many points, has the little peculiarity of liking to change
his lodgings once every three months on an average, which occasions
some bewilderment to his country friends, who have no sooner learnt the
19, Belle Vue Road, Hampstead, than they have to take pains to forget
that address, and to remember the 27½, Upper Brown Street, Camberwell;
and so on, till I would rather learn a page of _Walker’s Pronouncing
Dictionary_, than try to remember the variety of directions which I
have had to put on my letters to Mr. B. during the last three years.
Last summer it pleased him to remove to a beautiful village not ten
miles out of London, where there is a railway station. Thither his
friend sought him. (I do not now speak of the following scent there
had been through three or four different lodgings, where Mr. B. had
been residing, before his country friend ascertained that he was now
lodging at R——.) He spent the morning in making inquiries as to Mr.
B.’s whereabouts in the village; but many gentlemen were lodging there
for the summer, and neither butcher nor baker could inform him where
Mr. B. was staying; his letters were unknown at the post-office,
which was accounted for by the circumstance of their always being
directed to his office in town. At last the country friend sauntered
back to the railway-office, and while he waited for the train he made
inquiry, as a last resource, of the book-keeper at the station. “No,
sir, I cannot tell you where Mr. B. lodges—so many gentlemen go by the
trains; but I have no doubt but that the person standing by that pillar
can inform you.” The individual to whom he directed the inquirer’s
attention had the appearance of a tradesman—respectable enough, yet
with no pretensions to “gentility,” and had, apparently, no more urgent
employment than lazily watching the passengers who came dropping in to
the station. However, when he was spoken to, he answered civilly and
promptly. “Mr. B.? tall gentleman, with light hair? Yes, sir, I know
Mr. B. He lodges at No. 8, Morton Villas—has done these three weeks or
more; but you’ll not find him there, sir, now. He went to town by the
eleven o’clock train, and does not usually return until the half-past
four train.”
The country friend had no time to lose in returning to the village, to
ascertain the truth of this statement. He thanked his informant, and
said he would call on Mr. B. at his office in town; but before he left
R——station, he asked the book-keeper who the person was to whom he had
referred him for information as to his friend’s place of residence.
“One of the Detective Police, sir,” was the answer. I need hardly say
that Mr. B., not without a little surprise, confirmed the accuracy of
the policeman’s report in every particular.
When I heard this anecdote of my cousin and his friend, I thought that
there could be no more romances written on the same kind of plot as
Caleb Williams; the principal interest of which, to the superficial
reader, consists in the alternation of hope and fear, that the hero
may, or may not, escape his pursuer. It is long since I have read the
story, and I forget the name of the offended and injured gentleman,
whose privacy Caleb has invaded; but I know that his pursuit of
Caleb—his detection of the various hiding-places of the latter—his
following up of slight clues—all, in fact, depended upon his own
energy, sagacity, and perseverance. The interest was caused by the
struggle of man against man; and the uncertainty as to which would
ultimately be successful in his object; the unrelenting pursuer, or the
ingenious Caleb, who seeks by every device to conceal himself. Now,
in 1851, the offended master would set the Detective Police to work;
there would be no doubt as to their success; the only question would
be as to the time that would elapse before the hiding-place could be
detected, and that could not be a question long. It is no longer a
struggle between man and man, but between a vast organized machinery,
and a weak, solitary individual; we have no hopes, no fears—only
certainty. But if the materials of pursuit and evasion, as long as
the chase is confined to England, are taken away from the store-house
of the romancer, at any rate we can no more be haunted by the idea
of the possibility of mysterious disappearances; and any one who has
associated much with those who were alive at the end of the last
century, can testify that there was some reason for such fears.
When I was a child, I was sometimes permitted to accompany a relation
to drink tea with a very clever old lady, of one hundred and twenty—or,
so I thought then; I now think she, perhaps, was only about seventy.
She was lively, and intelligent, and had seen and known much that was
worth narrating. She was a cousin of the Sneyds, the family whence Mr.
Edgeworth took two of his wives; had known Major André; had mixed in
the Old Whig Society that the beautiful Duchess of Devonshire and “Buff
and Blue Mrs. Crewe” gathered round them; her father had been one of
the early patrons of the lovely Miss Linley. I name these facts to show
that she was too intelligent and cultivated by association, as well as
by natural powers, to lend an over-easy credence to the marvellous; and
yet I have heard her relate stories of disappearances which haunted
my imagination longer than any tale of wonder. One of her stories was
this:—Her father’s estate lay in Shropshire, and his park-gates opened
right on to a scattered village of which he was landlord. The houses
formed a straggling irregular street—here a garden, next a gable-end of
a farm, there a row of cottages, and so on. Now, at the end house or
cottage lived a very respectable man and his wife. They were well known
in the village, and were esteemed for the patient attention which they
paid to the husband’s father, a paralytic old man. In winter, his chair
was near the fire; in summer, they carried him out into the open space
in front of the house to bask in the sunshine, and to receive what
placid amusement he could from watching the little passings to and fro
of the villagers. He could not move from his bed to his chair without
help. One hot and sultry June day, all the village turned out to the
hay-fields. Only the very old and the very young remained.
The old father of whom I have spoken was carried out to bask in the
sunshine that afternoon as usual, and his son and daughter-in-law
went to the hay-making. But when they came home in the early evening,
their paralysed father had disappeared—was gone! and from that day
forwards, nothing more was ever heard of him. The old lady, who told
this story, said with the quietness that always marked the simplicity
of her narration, that every inquiry which her father could make was
made, and that it could never be accounted for. No one had observed any
stranger in the village; no small household robbery, to which the old
man might have been supposed an obstacle, had been committed in his
son’s dwelling that afternoon. The son and daughter-in-law (noted too
for their attention to the helpless father) had been a-field among all
the neighbours the whole of the time. In short, it never was accounted
for; and left a painful impression on many minds.
I will answer for it, the Detective Police would have ascertained every
fact relating to it in a week.
This story from its mystery was painful, but had no consequences
to make it tragical. The next which I shall tell (and although
traditionary, these anecdotes of disappearances which I relate in this
paper are correctly repeated, and were believed by my informants to be
strictly true), had consequences, and melancholy ones too. The scene of
it is in a little country-town, surrounded by the estates of several
gentlemen of large property. About a hundred years ago there lived in
this small town an attorney, with his mother and sister. He was agent
for one of the squires near, and received rents for him on stated days,
which of course were well known. He went at these times to a small
public-house, perhaps five miles from ——, where the tenants met him,
paid their rents, and were entertained at dinner afterwards. One night
he did not return from this festivity. He never returned. The gentleman
whose agent he was, employed the Dogberrys of the time to find him,
and the missing cash; the mother, whose support and comfort he was,
sought him with all the perseverance of faithful love. But he never
returned; and by-and-by the rumour spread that he must have gone abroad
with the money; his mother heard the whispers all around her, and could
not disprove it; and so her heart broke, and she died. Years after, I
think as many as fifty, the well-to-do butcher and grazier of —— died;
but, before his death, he confessed that he had waylaid Mr. —— on the
heath close to the town, almost within call of his own house, intending
only to rob him, but meeting with more resistance than he anticipated,
had been provoked to stab him; and had buried him that very night deep
under the loose sand of the heath. There his skeleton was found; but
too late for his poor mother to know that his fame was cleared. His
sister, too, was dead, unmarried, for no one liked the possibilities
which might arise from being connected with the family. None cared if
he was guilty or innocent now.
If our Detective Police had only been in existence!
This last is hardly a story of unaccounted-for disappearance. It is
only unaccounted for in one generation. But disappearances never to be
accounted for on any supposition are not uncommon, among the traditions
of the last century. I have heard (and I think I have read it in one of
the earlier numbers of _Chambers’s Journal_), of a marriage which took
place in Lincolnshire about the year 1750. It was not then _de rigueur_
that the happy couple should set out on a wedding journey; but instead,
they and their friends had a merry jovial dinner at the house of either
bride or groom; and in this instance the whole party adjourned to the
bridegroom’s residence, and dispersed, some to ramble in the garden,
some to rest in the house until the dinner-hour. The bridegroom, it is
to be supposed, was with his bride, when he was suddenly summoned away
by a domestic, who said that a stranger wished to speak to him; and
henceforward he was never seen more. The same tradition hangs about
an old deserted Welsh Hall standing in a wood near Festiniog; there,
too, the bridegroom was sent for to give audience to a stranger on his
wedding-day, and disappeared from the face of the earth from that time;
but there, they tell in addition, that the bride lived long,—that she
passed her three-score years and ten, but that daily during all those
years, while there was light of sun or moon to lighten the earth, she
sat watching,—watching at one particular window which commanded a view
of the approach to the house. Her whole faculties, her whole mental
powers, became absorbed in that weary watching; long before she died,
she was childish, and only conscious of one wish—to sit in that long
high window, and watch the road, along which he might come. She was as
faithful as Evangeline, if pensive and inglorious.
That these two similar stories of disappearance on a wedding-day
“obtained,” as the French say, shows us that anything which adds to
our facility of communication, and organization of means, adds to
our security of life. Only let a bridegroom try to disappear from an
untamed _Katherine_ of a bride, and he will soon be brought home, like
a recreant coward, overtaken by the electric telegraph, and clutched
back to his fate by a detective policeman.
Two more stories of disappearance, and I have done. I will give you
the last in date first, because it is the most melancholy; and we will
wind up cheerfully (after a fashion). Some time between 1820 and 1830,
there lived in North Shields a respectable old woman, and her son, who
was trying to struggle into sufficient knowledge of medicine, to go
out as ship-surgeon in a Baltic vessel, and perhaps in this manner to
earn money enough to spend a session in Edinburgh. He was furthered in
all his plans by the late benevolent Dr. G——, of that town. I believe
the usual premium was not required in his case; the young man did many
useful errands and offices which a finer young gentleman would have
considered beneath him; and he resided with his mother in one of the
alleys (or “chares,”) which lead down from the main street of North
Shields to the river. Dr. G——had been with a patient all night, and
left her very early on a winter’s morning to return home to bed; but
first he stepped down to his apprentice’s home, and bade him get up,
and follow him to his own house, where some medicine was to be mixed,
and then taken to the lady. Accordingly the poor lad came, prepared the
dose, and set off with it some time between five and six on a winter’s
morning. He was never seen again. Dr. G—— waited, thinking he was at
his mother’s house; she waited, considering that he had gone to his
day’s work. And meanwhile, as people remembered afterwards, the small
vessel bound to Edinburgh sailed out of port. The mother expected
him back her whole life long; but some years afterwards occurred
the discoveries of the Hare and Burke horrors, and people seemed to
gain a dark glimpse at his fate; but I never heard that it was fully
ascertained, or indeed more than surmised. I ought to add that all
who knew him spoke emphatically as to his steadiness of purpose, and
conduct, so as to render it improbable in the highest degree that he
had run off to sea, or suddenly changed his plan of life in any way.
My last story is one of a disappearance which was accounted for after
many years. There is a considerable street in Manchester leading from
the centre of the town to some of the suburbs. This street is called
at one part Garratt, and afterwards, where it emerges into gentility
and, comparatively, country, Brook Street. It derives its former name
from an old black-and-white hall of the time of Richard the Third, or
thereabouts, to judge from the style of building; they have closed in
what is left of the old hall now; but a few years since this old house
was visible from the main road; it stood low on some vacant ground,
and appeared to be half in ruins. I believe it was occupied by several
poor families who rented tenements in the tumble-down dwelling. But
formerly it was Gerard Hall, (what a difference between Gerard and
Garratt!) and was surrounded by a park with a clear brook running
through it, with pleasant fish-ponds, (the name of these was preserved
until very lately, on a street near,) orchards, dovecotes, and similar
appurtenances to the manor-houses of former days. I am almost sure that
the family to whom it belonged were Mosleys, probably a branch of the
tree of the lord of the Manor of Manchester. Any topographical work of
the last century relating to their district would give the name of the
last proprietor of the old stock, and it is to him that my story refers.
Many years ago there lived in Manchester two old maiden ladies, of high
respectability. All their lives had been spent in the town, and they
were fond of relating the changes which had taken place within their
recollection, which extended back to seventy or eighty years from the
present time. They knew much of its traditionary history from their
father, as well; who, with his father before him, had been respectable
attorneys in Manchester, during the greater part of the last century:
they were, also, agents for several of the county families, who, driven
from their old possessions by the enlargement of the town, found some
compensation in the increased value of any land which they might
choose to sell. Consequently the Messrs. S——, father and son, were
conveyancers in good repute, and acquainted with several secret pieces
of family history, one of which related to Garratt Hall.
The owner of this estate, some time in the first half of the last
century, married young; he and his wife had several children, and
lived together in a quiet state of happiness for many years. At last,
business of some kind took the husband up to London; a week’s journey
in those days. He wrote and announced his arrival; I do not think he
ever wrote again. He seemed to be swallowed up in the abyss of the
metropolis, for no friend (and the lady had many and powerful friends)
could ever ascertain for her what had become of him; the prevalent idea
was that he had been attacked by some of the street-robbers who prowled
about in those days, that he had resisted, and had been murdered. His
wife gradually gave up all hopes of seeing him again, and devoted
herself to the care of her children; and so they went on, tranquilly
enough, until the heir came of age, when certain deeds were necessary
before he could legally take possession of the property. These deeds
Mr. S—— (the family lawyer) stated had been given up by him into the
missing gentleman’s keeping just before the last mysterious journey
to London, with which I think they were in some way concerned. It was
possible that they were still in existence; some one in London might
have them in possession, and be either conscious or unconscious of
their importance. At any rate, Mr. S——’s advice to his client was
that he should put an advertisement in the London papers, worded so
skilfully that any one who might hold the important documents should
understand to what it referred, and no one else. This was accordingly
done; and although repeated at intervals for some time, it met with
no success. But at last a mysterious answer was sent; to the effect
that the deeds were in existence, and should be given up; but only
on certain conditions, and to the heir himself. The young man, in
consequence, went up to London, and adjourned, according to directions,
to an old house in Barbican, where he was told by a man, apparently
awaiting him, that he must submit to be blindfolded, and must follow
his guidance. He was taken through several long passages before he
left the house; at the termination of one of these he was put into a
sedan-chair, and carried about for an hour or more; he always reported
that there were many turnings, and that he imagined he was set down
finally not very far from his starting point.
When his eyes were unbandaged, he was in a decent sitting-room, with
tokens of family occupation lying about. A middle-aged gentleman
entered, and told him that, until a certain time had elapsed (which
should be indicated to him in a particular way, but of which the length
was not then named), he must swear to secrecy as to the means by which
he obtained possession of the deeds. This oath was taken; and then the
gentleman, not without some emotion, acknowledged himself to be the
missing father of the heir. It seems that he had fallen in love with a
damsel, a friend of the person with whom he lodged. To this young woman
he had represented himself as unmarried; she listened willingly to
his wooing, and her father, who was a shopkeeper in the City, was not
averse to the match, as the Lancashire squire had a goodly presence,
and many similar qualities, which the shopkeeper thought might be
acceptable to his customers. The bargain was struck; the descendant
of a knightly race married the only daughter of the City shopkeeper,
and became a junior partner in the business. He told his son that he
had never repented the step he had taken; that his lowly-born wife was
sweet, docile, and affectionate; that his family by her was large; and
that he and they were thriving and happy. He inquired after his first
(or rather, I should say, his true) wife with friendly affection;
approved of what she had done with regard to his estate, and the
education of his children; but said that he considered he was dead
to her, as she was to him. When he really died he promised that a
particular message, the nature of which he specified, should be sent to
his son at Garrett; until then they would not hear more of each other;
for it was of no use attempting to trace him under his incognito,
even if the oath did not render such an attempt forbidden. I dare say
the youth had no great desire to trace out the father, who had been
one in name only. He returned to Lancashire; took possession of the
property at Manchester; and many years elapsed before he received the
mysterious intimation of his father’s real death. After that, he named
the particulars connected with the recovery of the title-deeds to Mr.
S., and one or two intimate friends. When the family became extinct, or
removed from Garratt, it became no longer any very closely kept secret,
and I was told the tale of the disappearance by Miss S., the aged
daughter of the family agent.
Once more, let me say I am thankful I live in the days of the Detective
Police; if I am murdered, or commit bigamy, at any rate my friends will
have the comfort of knowing all about it.
A correspondent has favoured us with the sequel of the disappearance
of the pupil of Dr. G., who vanished from North Shields, in charge
of certain potions he was entrusted with, very early one morning, to
convey to a patient:—“Dr. G.’s son married my sister, and the young man
who disappeared was a pupil in the house. When he went out with the
medicine, he was hardly dressed, having merely thrown on some clothes;
and he went in slippers—which incidents induced the belief that he was
made away with. After some months his family put on mourning; and the
G.’s (_very_ timid people) were so sure that he was murdered, that
they wrote verses to his memory, and became sadly worn by terror. But,
after a long time (I fancy, but am not sure, about a year and a half),
came a letter from the young man, who was doing well in America. His
explanation was, that a vessel was lying at the wharf about to sail in
the morning, and the youth, who had long meditated evasion, thought it
a good opportunity, and stepped on board, after leaving the medicine at
the proper door. I spent some weeks at Dr. G.’s after the occurrence;
and very doleful we used to be about it. But the next time I went they
were, naturally, very angry with the inconsiderate young man.”
London: Printed by SMITH, ELDER & Co., 15½, Old Bailey, E.C.