Chapter 1

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, Müller, 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
Evidence: the Burdell and Various Other 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.

I.--THE CAUSES OF CRIME.

Crime is the transgression by individuals of rules made by the
community. Wrong-doing may be either intentional or accidental--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 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 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 paraphrase a great saying, some achieve crime, some
have it thrust upon them; but most of us (we may make the statement
without 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 predisposition.
"Assuredly external factors and circumstances count for 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
possessing 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.

.

(_From Photographs at the Black Museum._)]

However it may originate, there is still little doubt of the
universality, 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; to deal with its
commission, the motives that have caused it, the methods by which it has
been perpetrated, the steps taken--sometimes extraordinarily ingenious
and astute, sometimes foolishly forgetful and ineffective--to conceal
the deed and throw the pursuers 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 large in
all ages, has been cursed with crime. To deal with but a fractional part
of the evil deeds that have disgraced humanity would fill endless
volumes; where "envy, hatred, and malice, and all uncharitableness" 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 hesitation, and often for a miserably
small gain; will prepare great coups a 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 prosecution 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
prepared 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 ingenuity 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

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 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 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 adventure of the sea-rover flying his black flag in the face of the
world; by brigandage in new or distracted communities, imperfectly
protected 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, "winning" 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 on paper, has encouraged the trade of
the forger and fabricator, 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 see chances of aggrandisement, or of escape from pressing
embarrassments, 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
unpardonable 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 photography in counterfeiting signatures or
preparing banknote plates, ere long, perchance, of the Röntgen 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 falsification, 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 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,
unhesitating 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, unwearied patience,
abounding wit, sharp-edged intuition, 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 is often equally alert, no less gifted, no less astute;
his crime has 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
startling 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 France, 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 quoted in support of this view. Such people are
not necessarily in request; there may be a secret reason for
concealment, for dreading 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 be 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 five 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, landlady, "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 circumstance. The rapid dissemination of
news to the four quarters of 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 with the express intention of deceiving 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 away."

III.--THE PRESS AN AID TO THE POLICE.

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 brown 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 contained 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 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 Müller, 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 came forward to say he had
bought that very hat at that very maker's for a man named Müller. Müller
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 Müller 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 _signalement_, 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 progress 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 energetic reporters in Paris, more largely adopted here.
Without entering 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 and 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 we shall see. The best
method of procedure is clearly laid down in police manuals: an immediate
systematic investigation on the 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,
unexplained change of domicile, proved possession of substantial funds
after previous indigence--all these are detailed for the guidance of the
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 the
coat of a man in custody for another offence, and with the very place
from which it was torn. 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 been annihilated by fire,
as in the case of Dr. Webster of Boston.

In one clear case of murder, detection was aided by the 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, with fresh food by him, in the locked-up
apartment to which the occupier had never returned. The strongest
evidence against Patch, the murderer of Mr. Blight at Rotherhithe, 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 of a cellar had been
disturbed, 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 particular 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 body 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 patient 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 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 Galton, to whose researches this mode
of identification is due, has proved that finger prints, exhibited in
certain unalterable combinations, suffice to fix individual identity,
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 recorded by General Harvey,[1] where, in the plunder
of a native banker and pawnbroker in India, an entire pod of musk, just
as it had been excised 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,

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 disposed 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, was 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 disappeared 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[2] 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 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 wail 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 apprehended 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 without 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

or as encouragements to proceed. This superstitious belief in luck is
still prevalent. A notorious banknote forger in France carefully
abstained from counterfeiting notes of two values, those for 500 francs
and 2,000 francs, being convinced that they would 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 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 mediæval story of the dog of Montargis may be mere
fable, but it rests on historic tradition that after Macaire had
murdered Aubry de 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 combat, in which the dog triumphed.

It has been sometimes suggested that the instinct of animals might be
further utilised in the pursuit of criminals. Something more than the
well-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 inconvenient restlessness no doubt
led to his own destruction, for Wainwright 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 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 precision 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 instituted, 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.

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 contain 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 protested 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 northward. These took
him to a gully or dry watercourse, in the centre of which was a high
pile 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 convincing 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 from the hut the
greater part of the morning of the murder. They were executed at
Melbourne.

This extraordinary faculty of following a trail is characteristic of all
the Australian blacks. It was remarkably illustrated in a Queensland
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 suspicious 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,
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 everyone 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 horseback 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 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 dilapidated sheep-yard, which had been
burnt by the station overseer. This man, it should have been premised,
had all along been suspected 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 corresponding to that found in the
first water-hole. Thus the marvellous sagacity of the black trackers had
solved the mystery of the shepherd'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 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 slain 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 understood 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 homeward 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 ostentation: the reckless
display of much cash by those who were, seemingly, 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 in a
great criminal and his detection through his own foolishness occurred in
the case of the Stepney murderer, who betrayed himself 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 suspicious
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 knockings, but her strange
habits were well known; moreover, the neighbourhood 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.

While they were 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 conduct. He had watched him, had frequently
seen him leave his cottage and proceed stealthily to a neighbouring
brickfield, laden on each occasion with a parcel he did not bring back.
Mullins, after giving this information quite unsought, 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 his own act
he would never have been arrested. It may be interesting 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 plasterer'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 steadfastly 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 himself 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 ingeniously 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, 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 forthcoming, 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 discovered, but that the case failed before an
artfully planned _alibi_. Sometimes an arrest is made on grounds that
afford strong _primâ-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

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 accusation 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 apprehended 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 developed 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 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, was believed to be
insane or on the borderland of insanity, and he disappeared immediately
after the last murder, that in Miller's Court, on the 9th of November,
1888. On the last day of that year, 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 fiendish 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
disagreed 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 mysterious 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
rebuffs. 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 trial, 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 Rupprecht, a notorious
usurer of Munich, who was killed in 1817 in the doorway of a public
tavern not fifty yards from his own residence. Yet his murderer was
never discovered. The tavern was called the "hell"; it was a place of
evil resort, for Rupprecht, a mean, parsimonious old curmudgeon, was
fond of low company and spent most of his nights here, swallowing beer
and cracking jokes with his friends. One night the landlord, returning
from his cellar, heard a voice in the street asking for Rupprecht, and,
going up to the drinking saloon, conveyed the message. Rupprecht went
down to see his 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! the axe!
the axe!"

The wound had been inflicted by some sharp instrument, possibly a sword
or sabre, wielded by a powerful hand. The victim must 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 as good as one. Schmidt was at his mother-in-law's, and
was known to have gone home a little before the murder; soon after it,
his wife found him in bed and asleep. If he had committed the crime he
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 shown by trustworthy 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 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 time 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. But 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 Rupprecht has remained a mystery. The only 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 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 was 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 transpired. 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 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
fished out of the Manhattan well. Some thought she had committed
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 his life, but the case broke down, and the murder has always
baffled 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 in on
their father and found him sleeping peacefully. No noise disturbed the
house during the night, but early next 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
criminal. One of Mr. Nathan's sons was suspected, but his innocence was
clearly proved. Another person thought to be guilty was the 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 the ship
carpenter's "dog" was not a housebreaking tool. 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 financial 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[3]
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.

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 untouched: 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 interfered 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

and our own Whitechapel murders. The body of a female was washed ashore
upon the rocks below the foot of Severndroog, in the South Konkan
district. The fact was reported to Mr. Crawfurd, who found the body of a
fine healthy young Mahomedan woman, who had not been dead for more than
a couple of hours. The only injury to be seen was a severe extended
wound upon one temple, 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 fisherman who lived in a village hard
by, the port of which was filled with small 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 perpetrators 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 identification. 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.

Abdul Ali shrewdly surmised either that the woman was a perfect 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 Ali, 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 confession 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 the 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 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 resolved to get rid of it by
removing it to the spot on which it was found.[4]

The tale of undiscovered murders can never be ended, and additions are
made to it continually. In this country fresh cases crop up year after
year, and it would take volumes to catalogue them all. I will mention
but one or two more, merely to point the moral that the police are often
at fault still, even in these latter days of enlightened research, where
so much makes in favour of the law. Thus the Burton Crescent murder, in
December, 1878, must always be remembered against the police. An aged
widow, named Samuel, lived at a house in Burton Crescent, but she kept
no servant on the premises, and took in a lodger, although she was of
independent means. The lodger was a musician in a theatrical orchestra,
away most of the day, returning late to supper. One evening there was no
supper and no Mrs. Samuel, but on making search he found her dead body
in the kitchen, lying in a pool of blood. The police summoned a doctor
to view the corpse, and it was found that Mrs. Samuel had been battered
to death with the fragment of a hat-rail in which many pegs still
remained. The pocket of her dress had been cut off, and a pair of boots
was missing, but no other property. Nothing could have happened till
late in the afternoon, as three workmen, against whom there was
apparently no suspicion, were in the house till then, and the maid who
assisted in the household duties had left Mrs. Samuel alive and well at
4 p.m. Only one arrest was made, that of a woman, one Mary Donovan, who
was frequently remanded on the application of the police, but against
whom no sufficient evidence was forthcoming to warrant her committal for
trial. The Burton Crescent murder has remained a mystery to this day.

So has that of Lieutenant Roper, R.E., who was murdered at Chatham on
the 11th of February, 1881. This young officer, who was going through
the course of military engineering, was found lying dead at the bottom
of the staircase leading to his quarters in Brompton Barracks. He had
been shot with a revolver, and the weapon, six-chambered, was picked up
at a short distance from the body, one shot discharged, the remaining
five barrels still loaded with ball cartridges. The only presumption was
that the murderer's object was plunder, personal robbery. Mr. Roper had
left the mess at an earlier hour than usual, between 8 and 9 p.m., on
the plea that he had letters to write home announcing his approaching
arrival on short leave of absence. A brother officer accompanied him
part of the way to Brompton Barracks, but left him to attend some
entertainment, Roper declining to go at once, for the reason given, but
promising to join him later.

The unfortunate officer was quite unconscious when found, and although
he survived some forty minutes, he never recovered the power of speech,
so that he could give no indication as to his assailant. A poker
belonging to Mr. Roper was found by his side, and it was inferred that
he had entered his room before the attack, and had seized the poker as
the only instrument of self-defence within reach. Not the slightest clue
was ever obtained which would help to solve this mystery; rewards were
offered, but in vain, and the police had at last to confess themselves
entirely baffled. Mr. Roper was an exceedingly promising young officer;
he had but just completed his course of instruction with considerable
credit, and he was said to have been in perfect health and spirits on
the fatal evening, so that there was nothing whatever to support, and
indeed everything to discredit, any theory of suicide.

IX.--A GOOD WORD FOR THE POLICE.

Taking a general view of the case as between hunted and hunters, it may
be fairly considered that the ultimate advantage is with the latter. Let
it be remembered that we hear more of one instance of failure on the
part of the police than of ninety-nine successes. The failure is
proclaimed trumpet-tongued, the successes pass almost unnoticed into the
great garner of criminal reports and judicial or police statistics.

At the very least it must be said that we are bound, in common justice,
to give due credit to the ceaseless activity, the continual, painstaking
effort of the guardians of the public weal. Their methods are the
outcome of long and patient experience, developed and improved as time
passes, and they have deserved, if not always commanded, success. It may
be that the ordinary detective works a little too openly--at least, in
this country; that his face and, till lately, his boots were well known
in the circles generally frequented by his prey. Again, there may be at
times slackness in pursuit, neglect or oversight of early clues.
Well-meaning but obstinate men will not keep a perfectly open mind: they
may cling too long and too closely to a first theory, wresting their
opinions and forcing acquired facts to fit this theory, and so travel
farther and farther along the wrong road. "Shadowing" suspected persons
does not always answer, and may be carried too far; more, it may be so
clumsily done as to put the quarry on his guard and altogether defeat
the object in view. But to lay overmuch stress on such shortcomings as
these would surely savour of hypercriticism. It is more just to accept
with gratitude the overwhelming balance in favour of the police, and
give them the credit due to them for the results achieved.