LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO 6233 X MYSTERIES OF POLICE AND CRIME CC Q o X X o H MYSTERIES OF POLICE AND CRIME BY MAJOR ARTHUR GRIFFITHS FOBMKBLY ONE OP H.M. INSPECTORS OP PRISONS ; JOHN HOWARD GOLD MEDALLIST ; AUTHOR OP " MEMORIALS OP MILLBANK," " CHRONICLES OP NEWGATE," ETC. PROFUSEL Y ILL US TEA TED IN THREE VOLUMES VOL. I. SPECIAL EDITION CASSELL AND COMPANY, LIMITED LONDON, PARIS, NEW YORK $ MELBOURNE ALL EIGHTS BE8EEVED CONTENTS. part I. A GENERAL SURVEY OF CRIME AND ITS DETECTION PAOE Crime Distinguished from La w- breaking IJhe General Liability to Crime Preventive Agencies Plan of thd 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, Muller, 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 E vidence : the Great Coi am 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 Burton Crescent Murder : the Murder of Lieutenant Roper The Balance in Favour of the Police 1 fart 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 Suilmaker of Deal and the alleged Murder of a Boatswain Brunei, the Innkeeper Du Moulin, the Victim of a Gang of Coiners The Famous Galas 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 vi CONTENTS. FADE Two Wives A Milwaukee Mystery A Scottish Case The Kingswood Kectory Murder The Cannon Street Murder A Narrow Escape . . 95 CHAPTER III. PROBLEMATICAL ERRORS. Captain Doncllan and the Poisoning of Sir Theodosius Boughton : Donellan's Suspicious Conduct : Evidence of John Hunter, the great Surgeon : Sir James Stephen's View : Corrohorative 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 Burbier : 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 Fiance ; " Not Proven " : the Latest Facts The \Vharton-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 fart ill. POLICE PAST AND PRESENT. CHAPTER V. EARLY POLICE : FRAKCE. 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, Heiault, D'Ombreval, Berryer The Famous de Sartines Two In- stances 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 Fouche : 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 Fouche's return to Power : Some Views of his Character . . 191 CONTENTS. vii CHAPTER VI. EARLY POLICE (continued) : ENGLAND. PAGE Early Police in England Ed ward 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 ^,1. 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 Bkck Museum of New York The Identification Department Effective Control of Crime ; 268 CHAPTER X. MODERN POLICE (continued) : EUSSIA. 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 viii CONTENTS. CHAPTER XL MODERN POLICE (continued): INDIA. PAOI 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 B.idly 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. Wil- liamson Inspector Melville Sir C. Howard Vincent Dr. Anderson Mr. Macnaghten Mr. Me William 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 |3art 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. Helene : 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: Trans- ported to Botany Bay 387 CHAPTER XV. SWINDLERS OF MORE MODERN TYPE. Richard Coster Sheridan, the American Bank Thief Jack Canter The Frenchman Allmaycr, a typical Nineteenth Century Swindler Paraf The Tainmany Frauds CONTENTS. ix PAGB 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 Shiriburn 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 Trades- men : Sentenced to Penal Servitude A Viennese Impostor Big Bertha, the " Confidence Queen " 447 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, Muller, and Lefroy The Importance of Small Clues " -Alan 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 Bui-dell and Various Other Murders : the Probable Identity of ''Jack the Ripper" Undiscovered Murders: the Hupprocht, Mary Rogers, Nathan, and other Cases: Similar Cases in India : the Burton Crescent Murder : the Murder of Lieutenant Koper 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 acci- dental 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 J 2 MYSTERIES OF POLICE AND CRIME. 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 TYPES OF MALE CRIMINALS. (From Plwtograplis preserved at the Black Museum, New Scotland Yard.) 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. 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 para- phrase a great saying, some achieve crime, some have it thrust upon them ; but most of us (we may make the statement with- out 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 predis- position. "Assuredly external factors and circumstances count for PERENNIAL ACTIVITY OF OKI HE. 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 pos- sessing 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. However it may originate, there is still little doubt of the uni- versality, 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 ; TYPES OF FEMALE CKIMIXAL*. (From Photographs at the Elude Museum.) to deal with its commission, the motives that have caused it, the methods . by which it has been perpetrated, the steps taken some- times extraordinarily ingenious and astute, sometimes foolishly forgetful and ineffective to conceal the deed and throw the pursuers 4 MYSTERIES OF POLICE AND CRIME. 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 largo in all ao-es, has been cursed with crime. To deal with but a frac- O ' tional part of the evil deeds that have disgraced humanity would fill endless volumes; where "envy, hatred, and malice, and all unchari- tableness" 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 hesi- tation, and often for a miserably small gain ; will prepare great coups u 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 prosecu- tion 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 pre- pared 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 in- genuity 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 LACEXAIRE THE MURDEREU. 5 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 CRIMINALS' WEAPONS : REVOLVERS, KNUCKLE DUSTERS, AND LIFE PRESERVERS IX THE BLACK MUSEUM. 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 6 MYSTERIES OF POLICE AND CRIME. 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 ad- venture of the sea-rover flying his black flag in the face of the world ; by brigandage hi new or distracted communities, imperfectly pro- tected 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, "whining" 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 INGENUITY AND INDUSTRY OF CRIMINALS. 7 on paper, has encouraged the trade of the forger and fabri- cator, 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 seo chances of aggrandisement, or of escape from pressing embar- rassments, 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 unpardon- able 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 photo- graphy in counterfeiting signatures or preparing banknote plates, ere long, perchance, of the Rontgen 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 falsifica- tion, 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 MYSTERIES OF POLICE AXD (J It IMF. POLICE OR, HUE GAZETTE; AND CRY. -FKIDAY, JANUARY [Pi -- e if *U t*f~* i frnl u C* f.-F'bua, .. J .Vnlrw. clot '; orf .I"'"' lltnicrntf StJt* .W<. trffkj T/U,<. flheOfrat. TV .V<* ./ !",/-< tlarjtj. l. r, ., Lit ly f** CM trtdtw.t, J. Tite .Vawt i / .If r./J.* "" < WOOIWICH DIVISION. ^VnrHJ ii l..ili I ,TI. fc(.r-i ii ntuxiiK,] lollXI\n. !!..! Ul tic ,.>.... I V..r..l ). .11.1 Ptr.n.Ur llU. MluUlk J.i.* a* luwa iMbMt)htj kmiikrcd fcy MMM jwr*H. br '"' 1 '''""' > ''" '" .] to noun 111. l~t JCIIOOO \. , , i ll* Pcno fc or tUir.Vi")Ji<> r^ilWr rw;rnt. l:.aij a ONK Hi MilsriP I'.rl Ml> i. k.l.1., oB.lld 1} IkC PJI1> SL.<:il:*ii.iUF,aJ. wj St. Cri^c. lUooa^ awy |^IM MU*('Mdh'AlC*Kiy k ;/:.'.: S: "':'. I 'LtVrkikTt be ruiclia.r iL^'imrt. 1 '.-... ..... . i. ..-.,'"!! I-. U ;A,,. 1. Mr.Strf.rt. r C''il- :i I'. ..N.te Oi'-.f, ti;'l ll'wat'l ol 1m _ .... a Mr. * .! Uh.Mcv.ur, iid.. Lij rirk. a :: i. . j.i, .. > L.i.at,. M^cnx <-. \WH-J. i. tw . wt li.k., a l. |itlabaii. aciMur*. t k.ik k.> lull., i i., .ic- ic. U. . lk >r>rt*J fan M^, Mtk] At u (artkcT JJUEStrUWXC. m^l. Ik. [ Jl.,.i.- ,.. .,.1, iltNtiltr.li l-.-l N:.^. I v REDUCED FAC-SIMILE OF PART OF FRONT PAGE OF THE FIRST NUMBER OF THE "POLICE GAZETTE" (p. 13). honest occupation will give infinite time and pains to compass his criminal ends. 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, un- hesitating 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, umvearied patience, abounding wit, sharp-edged in- tuition, 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 THE DIFFICULTY OF DISAPPEARING. 9 is often equally alert, no less gifted, no less astute; his crime lias 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 start- ling 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 Franco, 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 10 MYSTERIES OF POLICE AXD CRIME. quoted in support of this view. Such people are not necessarily in request; there may be a secret reason for concealment, for dread- ing 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 bo 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 rive 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, land- lady, " 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 circum- stance. The rapid dissemination of news to the four quarters of THE PRESS A DETECTIVE AGENOT, 11 III. THE PRESS AX AID TO THE POLICE. DC8, but off the in had red gen- imble in petrator rer, was ice were making >reakfast :h to pay However, md thus tarted in y, how free. It reached route to make a nquirie*. fternoon :h, after- tliat ho between out to be ttementi. IB line, in 'the knife the crime being di- > hat was of under- ooncald its on the i lively as- we give a sketch portnul by a gen- tleman who knew Lefroy and had frequent op- portunities of noting his characteristics. It has been attested a* an excellent likeness by aeveral persona with whom Lefroy came into cloee con tact. 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 Avith the express intention of deceiv- ing 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 iiway." The police havo brcod tha following further notice : Murder. Percy Lefror Mipleton, wboe appreheciion ought for murder on the Brighton Rajlwjr. left the fntt Hospital at LJiacton. t: 9.SO on the momi/ig of to his as&ai had reckoi active and ensued, ar: best of it, ] his fellow I he would capitulated, but a tt more rcso window wi guard, secu after many scoundrel I juncture tl forty miles :t cornj the windoi lady, who him, the a the next i thought he came this way ) down the to lecure a ment from happened, helping hi.'. the belief ady passer: :reme terror The tram m and when i demind tH. ten only 1 t the stati THE PORTRAIT WHICH LEI) TO LEl'ROY's AUREST (p. 12). (By permission of the "Daily Ttlegraph") 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 broAvn 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 con- tained 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 12 MYSTERIES OF POLICE AND CRIME. 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 Miiller, 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 carne forward to say he had bought that very hat at that very maker's for a man named Miiller. Miiller 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 Miiller 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 siynalement, 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 pro- gress 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 SEARCHING FOR CLUES. IS energetic reporters in Paris, more largely adopted here. Without enter- ing 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 und 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 wo shall see. The best method of procedure is clearly laid down in police manuals : an immediate systematic investigation on tho 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, un- explained change of domicile, proved possession of substantial funds after previous indigence all these are detailed for the guid- ance of tho 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 tho coat of a man in custody for another offence, and with the very place from which it was torn. 14 MYSTERIES OF POLICE AND GR1MK. 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 beei, annihilated by fire, as in the case of Dr. Webster of Boston. In one clear case of murder, detection was aided by th< 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, Avith fresh food by him, in the locked-up apart- ment to Avhich the occupier had never returned. The strongest evidence against Patch, the murderer of Mr. Blight at Rotherhitbe, 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 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.) FINGER-PRINTS AXD FOOT-MARKS. 15 TAKING MEASUKEMKX7S OF CRIMINALS (HKKTILI.OX SYSTEM). of a cellar had been dis- turbed, 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 par- ticular 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 bedy had been buried by emptying a can of water on the uneven stones and following the channels in which it ran. 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 pattent 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 MYSTERIES OF POLICE AND CRLMK. EAH AND HEAD MEASURERS (THE BERTILLOX SYSTEM). 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 Gallon, to whose researches this mode of identifi- cation is due, has proved that finger prints, exhibited in certain unalterable combinations, suffice to fix individual iden- tity, and his system of notation, as now practised in England, will soon provide a general register of all known criminals in the country. 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 re- corded by General Harvey,* where, in the plunder of a native banker and pawnbroker in India, an entire pod of musk, just as it had been ex- cised 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, * " Records of Indian Crime," ii. 158. Loop. Whorl. MR. GALTON S TYPES OK FINGEK-P1UXTS. 'AFTER A SHORT STRUGGLE . 2 TJIE THIEVES SEIZED THE OPIUM" (p. 18). 18 MYSTERIES OF POLICE AND CBJMH. 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 dis- posed 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, w r as 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 dis- appeared 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 * 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 * " Medical Jurisprudence of India," p. 21. THE INFLUENCE OF "LUCK." ID 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 Avail 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 appre- hended 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 with- out 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 20 MYSTERIES OF POLICE AND CRIMK. or as encouragements to proceed. This superstitious belief in luck is still prevalent. A notorious banknote forger in France care- fully abstained from counterfeiting notes of two values, those for iE COMBAT D"lIW OKnUT COL.-''.* ITU *-t- B-T i. nrnfcr >vr. '- Jaatj U rr.me &_> CJtaritfY. cjl THE FIGHT HETWEEX MACAIRE AND THE I)OG OF MONTARGIS. (From an Old Print.) 500 francs and 2,000 francs, being convinced that they Avould 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 ANIMAL INSTINCT AND CRIME. 21 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 mediaeval story of the dog of Montargis may be mere fable, but it rests on historic tradition that after Macaire had murdered Aubry dc 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 com- bat, in which the dog triumphed. It has been sometimes suggested that the instinct of animals might be further utilised in the pursuit of crim- inals. Something more than the Avell- 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 incon- venient restlessness no doubt led to his own destruction, for Wain- wright 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 SUMATRAX THIEVES CALENDAR (BRITISH MUSEUM) FOR CAL- CULATING LUCKY DAYS. 22 MYSTERIES OF POLICE AND CRIME. 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 pre- cision 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 insti- tuted, 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 AN AUSTRALIAN* NATIVE TRACKING. (A Sketch from Life.) 21 MYSTERIES OF POLICE AND CRIME. 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 con- tain 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 pro- tested 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 northwaid. These took him to a gully or dry watercourse, in the centre of which was a high pile AUSTRALIAN NATIVES AS TRACKERS. 25 >rgiM> AVSTRALIAX SHEPHERD S I1VT. 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. The shepherds were put on their trial, and the evidence thus accumulated was deemed con- vincing 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 i'rom the hut the greater part of the morning of the murder. They Avcre executed at Melbourne. This extraordinary faculty of following a trail is characteristic of all the Australian blacks. It Avas remarkably illustrated in a Queens- land 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 sus- picious 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, MYSTERIES OF POLICE AXD CXI Ml-:. generally dull and bleary, could imagine that they possessed such visual powers, or that their owners were so shrewdly observant. 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 every- one 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 horse- back 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 AUSTRALIAN XATIVE TYPES. DISAPPEARANCE OF A SHEPHERD. 27 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 dilapi- dated sheep-yard, which had been burnt by the station overseer. This man, it should have been premised, had all along been sus- pected 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 corre- sponding to that found in the first water-hole. Thus the marvellous sagacity of the black trackers had solved the mystery of the shep- herd'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 28 MYSTERIES OF POLICE AND CRIME. 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 slam 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 under- stood 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 home- ward 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 osten- tation : the reckless display of much cash by those who were, seem- ingly, 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 29 hi a great criminal and his detection through his own foolishness occurred in the case of the Stepney murderer, who betrayed him- self 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 sus- picious 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 knock- ings, but her strange habits were well known ; moreover, the neigh- bourhood 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. 30 MYSTERIES OF POLICE AND CRIME. \Yhile they Avcre 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 con- duct. He had watched him, had frequently seen him leave his cottage and proceed stealthily to a neighbouring brick- field, laden on each oc- casion with a parcel he did not bring back. Mullins, after giving this information quite un- sought, 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. 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 " HAD . . . FREQUENTLY SEEN HIM . . . PROCEED STEALTHILY TO A NEIGHBOURING BRICKFIELD." THE STEPNEY MURDER. 31 his own act he would never have been arrested. It may be inter- esting 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 plas- terer'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 stead- fastly 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 him- self 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 in- geniously 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, 32 MYSTERIES OF POLICE AND CRIME. 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 forth- coming, 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 dis- covered, but that the case failed before an artlully planned alibi. Sometimes an arrest is made on grounds that afford strong primd- 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 34 MYSTERIES OF POLICE AND CRIME. 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 accusa- tion 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 appre- hended 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 de- veloped 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 UNDISCOVERED CRIMES. 85 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, Avas believed to be insane or on the borderland of insanity, and he dis- appeared immediately after the last murder, that in Miller's Court, on the 9th of November, 1888. On the last day of that }*ear, 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 iiendish 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 dis- agreed 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 mys- terious 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 rebuff's. 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 tsial, 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 llupprecht, a notorious usurer of Munich, who was killed in 1817 in the door- way of a public tavern not fifty yards from his own residence. M >>/'/; i; //:.-> of I'ULKJK AND Yet "hell": of evil precht, his murderer was never discovered. The tavern was called the ; it was a place resort, for liup- a mean, parsi- monious old curmudgeon, was fond of low com- pany and spent most ot his nights here, swallow- ing beer and cracking jokes with his friends. One night the land- lord, returning from his cellar, heard a voice in the street asking forRupprecht, and, going up t o the drinking saloon, conveyed the rnes- s a g e. R u p - precht w e n t down to " FOUXli THE OLD MAX LYING IX A 1'OOL OF BLOOD." gQQ 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 1 the axe I the axe ! " The wound had been inflicted by some sharp instrument, possibly a sword or sabre, wielded by a powerful hand. The victim must A MYSTERIOUS MURDER. 37 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 33 MYSTERIES OF POLICE AND CRIME. as food as one. Schmidt was at his mother-in-law's, and was known to have gone homo a little before the murder; soon after it, his wife found him in bed and asleep. If he had committed the crime ho 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 shoAvn by trust- worthy 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 A MYSTERIOUS MURDER. 39 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 timo 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. ]>ut 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. The murder of this Rup- precht has remained a mystery. The onl_y 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 'II EH liODY . . . WAS FOfXD IX THE WATZK ' ' (p. 40). 40 MYSTERIES OF POLICE AND CRUfE. 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 w r as 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 trans- pired. 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 UNDETECTED MUEDERS IN NEW YOltK. 41 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 tished out of the Manhattan well Some thought she had com- mitted 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 Ids life, but the case broke down, and the murder has always bafiied 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 hi on their father and found him sleeping peacefully. No noise disturbed the house during the night, but early nezt 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 40 MYSTERIES OF POLICE AND CRIME. criminal One of Mr. Nathan's sons was suspected, but his innocence was clearly proved. Another person thought to be guilty was tho 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 tho ship carpenter's "dog" was not a housebreaking tocl. 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 iinancial 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* 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 * "Reminiscences of an Indian Police Official," p. 66. AN INDIAN MURDER CASE. 43 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 un- touched: 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 inter- fered 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 44 .\/V> //: /.'//>' OF POLICE AM> fill Mi'.. and our own Whitechapel murders. The body of a female was \vasli,-d ashore upon the rocks below the foot of Scvemdroog, in the S.mili Ivonkan district. The fact was reported to Mr. Crawfurd, who found the body of a tine healthy young Mahomedan Avoman, who had not been dead tor more than a couple of hours. The only injury to be seen was a severe extended wound upon one temple, Photo : Kapp & Co., Calcutta. PRISONERS AT THE PRESIDENCY GAOL CALCUTTA. 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 tisherman who lived in a village hard by, the port of which was rilled with small AN INDIAN MURDER CASE. 45 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 perpe- trators 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 identi- fication. 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. 46 MYSTERIES OF POLICE AND CRIME. Abdul All shrewdly surmised either that the woman was a per- fect 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 All, 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 con- fession 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 tho 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 THE PAREL MURDER. 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 "THEY WKRE ACCORDINGLY TAKEN INTO CTSTUDY "' (?. 40). ' resolved to get rid of it by removing it to the spot on which it was found.* The tale of undiscovered murders can never be ended, and * Some other very creditable exploits of this Indian detective, Abdul Ali, in cluci- dating murder mysteries will be given in a later chapter when dealing witt police. 4'2). doubt was actually innocent. When he saw that the evidence was insufficient, amounting to no more than xemi 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. < 'ambo was now perfectly satisfied ; the accused, innocent in fact, was guilty according to law, and having thus satisfied himself that, -TKRIES OF POLICE AXD 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." The sad truth caine 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 Cainbo 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 inno- cent man to an ignominious death sooner than 01Tl , UE rIX(T do violence to his own legal scruples. The Grand utou THE Master was of a more liberal mind, and condemned CHATELET rmsox.* 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. Circum- stantial evidence was accepted as conclusive proof in spite of the un- blemished character and the high social position of the accused. The Marquis d'Anglade and his wife lived in the same house with the Cointe and Comtesse de Mont- gomerie; it was in the Rue Royale, BRANDING IUOXS, . KUOM THE CHATELET 1'IUSONV * In the possession of Mdme. Tu'ssaud & Sens, Ltd. THE D'ANGLADE CASE. 55 trie 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, fre- quently visited, and accepted each other's hospitality. When the (Jomte and Comtesse went to their country house, the D'Anglades of ten accompanied them. 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 Mont- gomeries went alone, but took most of their ser- vants with them. When they returned to Paris, a day earlier than they were expected, they found the door of their apartments open, al- though 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 FRENCH CONVICTS EN CHAiXE." (From a Drawing by Moanet.) 66 MYSTERIES OF POLICE AND CHIME. 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. nnd 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 Chatelet, the other in the Fors 1'Eveque 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 chaine, the gang of convicts drafted to Toulon, and, having suffered inconceivably on the road, he died of exhaustion at Marseilles. His wife was con- signed 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'Ano-kdes, THE CASE OF LADY MAZEL. 57 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 Montgonaerie's almoner, a priest called Gaynard, who had stolen the money, aided by accom- plices, mainly by one Belestre, who, from being in great indigence i 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 manu- factured which opened the strong box. Belestre was also proved to be in possessi