CHAPTER II

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DETECTION AND CAPTURE OF THE CRIMINAL

Contrasts between Eighteenth, Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries—Margaret Catchpole—Tawell—Crippen—Portraits and the Press—Charlesworth Case—Bloodhounds—Police Dogs—Circumstantial Detection.

In the days of the stage-coach a fugitive had a better chance of escaping than in the present age of steam power on land and sea. For then, slow as were the ways of escape, the ways of advertising the crime were slower still, and once on board a ship a runaway was comparatively safe from arrest.

The story of Margaret Catchpole, which has now become almost classic, may be cited as a good illustration of the way in which the pursuers were handicapped, when the fugitive had had a few hours’ start.

It was in 1797 that Margaret Catchpole, a servant-maid at Ipswich, stole a horse from the stable of her master, in order to join her lover, and disguised as a lad rode all the way to London in eight and a half hours, with only a single stop at Marks Tey, in Essex.

A few hours later the horse was missed, and handbills describing it and offering a reward for the capture of the thief were hurriedly printed and sent out of Ipswich by every vehicle that left the town.

Two men were also despatched in pursuit along the London road, but being falsely directed were about to turn off in the direction of Maldon, when they chanced to meet a man who had seen Margaret riding to London. But for this chance meeting Margaret would probably have escaped capture.

As it was, the pursuers reached London the following day and Margaret was arrested just as she had concluded a sale of the horse with a dealer.

She was tried at the Bury Assizes and sentenced to death, but through the influence of her former master the sentence was commuted to a term of imprisonment.

Three years later her lover, Laud, who was a smuggler, assisted her to escape from Ipswich gaol, and again handbills for her arrest were issued. She was captured on the beach while in the act of embarking in Laud’s boat, and Laud himself was killed in the fight. For the second time she was sentenced to death, and was once more reprieved, her sentence now being transportation to Botany Bay. There she married, and died many years later.

The introduction of the railway did not materially change the relative position of pursuer and pursued; for although the fugitive could travel more rapidly than before, and thus when chance favoured him could get to the coast and on board a ship about to sail, he had against him the more speedy notification of the crime in all directions, which was also rendered possible by the railway.

It was not until a means of communication infinitely more rapid than the steam engine had been discovered, that the balance turned decisively against the man endeavouring to elude the grasp of the law.

It is strange to reflect that it was not until it had been employed in the capture of a criminal that it was recognised in how many directions the electric telegraph might be of service to mankind.

Prior to that time the invention had been little better than a failure from a commercial point of view, for, although the railway companies had some time before this realised the advantages of the new system of communication, the Government had refused to have anything to say to it.

It was thus little short of a revelation to the public when, in 1845, the news was made known that a suspected murderer had been arrested through the agency of the telegraph.

A woman had been brutally murdered not far from Slough, and a neighbour, who had heard her screams, rushed to the spot with a lighted candle in her hand just in time to see a man in Quaker garb hurrying away.

This man, John Tawell by name, a former member of the Society of Friends, succeeded in escaping unchallenged to the station and in catching a train to London, and had it been two years earlier would probably have managed to get out of England; for news still travelled slowly in those times, and the train service to London was very infrequent.

But the police bethought them of the telegraph, which had not long been established on the Great Western Railway, and a description of the wanted man was sent over the wires to London. Although Tawell had had a good start, the message arrived long before him, and detectives were awaiting the arrival of the train at Paddington. He was followed from the station to the Bank, and from there to an eating-house, where he had a meal, and finally to a lodging-house in Cannon Street, where he meant to pass the night. Here, much to his amazement, he was quietly arrested. His trial followed in due course, and he was convicted and executed.

WAR PLAN SENT BY WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY

By kind permission of Mr. Thorne-Baker and “The Daily Mirror”

There were several points of scientific interest in his trial, which are described on another page.

Last year, sixty-five years after the sensational capture of Tawell, the attention of the whole world was rivetted upon an Atlantic steamer on its way from Antwerp to Canada.

It had on board a man and a woman, who disguised as a Quebec merchant and his son, were expecting to reach Canada without detection. For a week previously search had been made for them in every corner of Europe, and once on board a ship sailing from a foreign port they might reasonably have anticipated that they were safe.

But their portraits had been so widely circulated by the newspapers that their faces were familiar wherever English papers were read, and the ship was only a few miles on its journey when their disguise was penetrated by the captain.

The vessel was fitted with a wireless installation, and now for the first time since its invention wireless telegraphy played the leading part in the capture of fugitives from the land.

The police in London were thus immediately acquainted with the whereabouts of the wanted pair, and an officer was sent off by a swifter steamer to greet them on their reaching Canada. Day by day, with almost feverish excitement, the progress of the Montrose across the ocean was followed, and the chief topic of public interest was the race between the police officer on one steamer and the fugitives upon the other.

The inspector won easily, and was ready waiting to arrest Crippen and his companion at the first approach of the Montrose to the Canadian shore.

The trial that followed had many features of scientific interest to which reference is made in another place.

The recent advances in the methods of telegraphing a facsimile of a specimen of handwriting or a sketch, or of reproducing a photograph at a distance have greatly increased the difficulties of criminals escaping detection, and the telectrograph, as it is termed, will prove a powerful weapon in the hands of the detective.

The selenium machines of Professor Korn were employed by the Daily Mirror in transmitting the portraits of the chief actors in the Steinheil case, and one of these photographs, which was received in London while the Court was still sitting in Paris, is shown in the accompanying picture.

A still more practical telectrograph is that invented by Mr. Thorne Baker, which weighs only about twenty-four pounds. This has been simplified to such an extent that the photograph may be printed upon a flexible plate with a backing of lead foil, and by attaching this to the transmitting cylinder the thousands of minute points which go to make up the image will be exactly reproduced upon a receiving cylinder at the other end of a telephone wire.

The instrument may also be used with wireless installations for the transmission of simple pictures or diagrams, and by its means it would be easy for a ship at sea to send or receive portraits of an individual under suspicion.

PHOTO SENT BY TELEGRAPH FROM PARIS

By kind permission of “The Daily Mirror”

The accompanying illustrations, which are reproduced here by the permission of Mr. Thorne Baker and the Daily Mirror, show a portrait of King Edward VII and an outline war map which were thus transmitted by “wireless” telegraphy.

Mr. Thorne Baker states that the use of his instrument renders “tapping” impossible, since by merely making a slight alteration in the speed of running the machines, in accordance with a signal arranged beforehand, the pictures would be so distorted as to be unrecognisable.

As an early instance of the use made by the police of a portrait in identifying a suspected individual the case of Arden, who was executed for murder at the beginning of last century, may be mentioned.

Arden had given a drawing of himself to a youth, and this was handed to the police who were thus able to identify the accused in London a month later.

The general use of photography in the press has frequently come to the aid of the police, and instances of photographs of a wanted individual being employed for this purpose will occur to everyone. At any police station may now be seen reproductions of photographs of missing individuals, and these being circulated all over the world, reduce to a small compass the limits within which a suspect may go without detection.

Reference may be made to two recent cases by way of illustration. A nurse had kidnapped a child and all traces of her whereabouts were lost for some days. Her portrait was published in all the leading papers, and being seen by the proprietor of an hotel in the Midlands was recognised as that of one of his guests.

Acting on this information a police inspector suddenly accosted the suspected woman and addressed her in her real name, and she, taken off her guard, answered his remarks naturally, and was at once arrested.

In January of 1908, Miss Violet Charlesworth succeeded in filling pages of every English paper by suddenly vanishing from her creditors, under circumstances intended to suggest that she had been killed. She arranged a motor-car “accident” upon the cliffs at Penmaenbach, and ostensibly was flung through the glass screen of the car into the sea.

As no trace of the body could be found it was soon suspected that there had been no accident, and that before long the victim would come to life again. Her portraits were published in hundreds of papers, and were posted at police stations all over the United Kingdom, and amateur detectives by the score endeavoured to discover her whereabouts.

She was recognised from the portraits in half a dozen parts of the country at the same time, but it was not until a fortnight later that she was positively identified at Oban.

The anti-climax of the farce was reached, when, a few days later, she paid a visit to the London office of her solicitor, and was attended from the station by a string of motor-cars each containing the special representative of a London paper.

PORTRAIT SENT BY WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY

By kind permission of Mr. Thorne-Baker and “The Daily Mirror”

Two years later she was found guilty of having defrauded a poor landlady of a large sum of money at the time when everyone had accepted her great “expectations” at her own valuation.

There have been frequent failures in the use of bloodhounds to detect a criminal, but this must be attributed, in part at all events, to the circumstance that the dogs have often not been employed until every other means has failed.

In the Luard case, for instance, in 1908, bloodhounds were set upon the track of the supposed assailant of the murdered woman, but the trial was not made immediately after the discovery of the crime. The scent had become faint, and it was therefore not surprising that the dogs, after starting hotly upon the trail, soon lost it again.

The writer is indebted to Major Richardson for the accompanying photograph of his trained bloodhound, “Pathan,” and for his kind permission to quote the graphic description of actual man hunts from his fascinating book upon the subject.[1]

“On one occasion, when searching for the body of a woman, I used two collies and a bloodhound. It was summer, and the police, after patrolling the entire countryside, had narrowed the search down to a mountain covered with a dense wood and undergrowth of rhododendron bushes. It happened in mid-summer, and the day was very hot. The collies worked industriously for almost two hours, keeping well ahead, but after that time they began to flag, and soon refused to leave my heel. The bloodhound, on the contrary, continued persistently to search ahead of me all through the hottest part of the day, until the woman’s body was found on the top of the mountain.

“As further illustrating the persistency of the bloodhound when on the trail, I may mention the case of a murder to which I was called in to assist the police in Scotland. As I and my hounds were in England at the time, it was seventeen hours after the murder when we reached the scene. Not only this, but severe frost had intervened during the night, rendering the ground very unfavourable for scenting purposes. The murder had taken place in a town, but evidences were found that the criminal had been at a certain spot outside the town on the cliffs where he had discarded certain belongings.

“I took my hounds to this spot and laid them on the trail, first giving them the scent from the discarded articles. They went clear away for some distance, and leaving the main road crossed some fields through a wood to a cottage. Here they seemed to be at fault, and ran about whimpering. On inquiry at the cottage it appeared that a man had shortly after the murder called there for some water.

“Feeling the hounds were right so far I cast them round about in hopes of their picking up the trail again. After working persistently for a little time one of them, ‘Solferino,’ opened to a line beyond the wood, and went off at a steady rate followed by the other hound, ‘Waterloo,’ who also found the line himself. They held to this for a while until checked by a main road.

MAJOR RICHARDSON’S MAN-TRACKER “PATHAN”

By kind permission of Major Richardson

“The murderer had evidently walked along the road some distance, until, perhaps, scared by a pedestrian or vehicle, and he then evidently took to the fields again.

“Although checked by the road, where the trail became obliterated, the hounds, nothing daunted, kept steadily onwards, casting all the time on each side, until they found it again in the fields. By steadily working in this manner they led us for four miles, partly across country, and partly on the road, to a populous town, and to the vicinity of a railway station. Here the trail was completely obliterated, and it was evident that by this time the murderer had got clear away, probably by train, and was not hiding in the neighbourhood.

“The chief constable testified to the excellent work of the hounds on this occasion, and there is not the slightest doubt, that had this town been supplied with a bloodhound which could have been put on the trail immediately on the discovery of the murder, the murderer would have been quite easily run to earth.”

In Moscow a bloodhound is systematically used by the police to discover stolen property, and some of his “finds” have been recorded in all the European papers. In the early part of March of last year this police dog, “Tref,” recovered a number of bank-notes and a quantity of silver plate that had been taken from the house of a Moscow gentleman.

“Tref,” having been put upon the scent, followed the trail through several streets until he came to a night-shelter. Here he made for a coat that belonged to a house-painter, and in the pockets of this were found the missing notes. He then left the shelter and followed the trail to the shop of a dealer in old silver, and here the stolen plate was discovered.

In addition to their occasional use as detectives, dogs are now being systematically employed as scouts to accompany the police on their rounds and to aid in the capture of evil-doers.

The Paris dogs, which are specially trained for the police by Mademoiselle Arlette Clary, are cross-bred hounds described as “wolf-shepherd hounds,” and “brindled mastiff bulls.” They are powerful beasts weighing upwards of twelve stone, and can easily overthrow and master a man.

When attacking, they at once make for the right arm, so as to guard against a pistol bullet, and they are also trained to refuse food except from the hands of those they know, so as to safeguard them against poisoning. As a proof of their efficiency, Mademoiselle Clary informed the writer that one of her police dogs had captured nine apaches in one night.

Last year a demonstration was given in London before the most eminent representatives of the Metropolitan police force, the apache being represented by a man thickly padded to protect him from the teeth of the dogs. When the man attempted to escape over a screen representing a wall the great hound, “Max,” promptly caught him and dragged him down again, as is shown in the accompanying photograph which is here reproduced by permission of Mdlle. Clary and the Daily Mirror. The dog also easily cleared this wall, which was 8 ft. 10 in. high, in one bound, and captured a “padded apache” as he climbed down on the other side.

FRENCH POLICE DOG

By kind permission of Mdlle. Clary and “The Daily Mirror”

Police dogs trained on these lines have for some time past been used to assist the police in Glasgow, and within the last few months Nottingham has strengthened its police force by the addition of dogs.

The dogs used in this country are powerful cross-bred animals of the Airedale terrier type, specially reared and trained by Major Richardson. The first dog used for the purpose in this country was given to the Berkshire Constabulary, and its duties are to accompany a policeman on his rounds at Windsor, to protect him from attack, and, if necessary, to capture escaping criminals.

From two to three months are required to train the dogs for this purpose.

In what may be described as circumstantial detection a very faint clue has sometimes resulted in the discovery of a criminal. One of the most striking examples of the kind was seen in 1864, when a gentleman named Briggs was murdered on the North London railway, for the sake of his watch and money.

The murderer succeeded in escaping without having been noticed by anyone, and the crime would probably have made another in the long list of unsolved mysteries, but for several slips that were made by him.

He had changed hats with his victim and his soft felt hat, which was found upon Mr. Briggs, was one of the chief factors in his subsequent identification.

Hats of this particular shape, by the way, were for many years afterwards popularly known as “MÜllers.”

The watch and chain of the murdered man were soon traced to the shop of a London jeweller, who stated that he had given another watch and chain in exchange for them. He remembered the man and was able to give a description of his appearance, although he had no knowledge of his name or whereabouts.

At this point all further signs of the trail were lost, for all efforts to discover the jeweller’s customer proved fruitless.

Some time afterwards, however, a man called at Scotland Yard with a jeweller’s small cardboard box, which, he said, a man who had recently been lodging at his house had given to his little girl. On this box was stamped the jeweller’s name, which, ominously enough, was “Death,” and this man was the very jeweller to whom Mr. Briggs’ watch had been taken.

Thanks to this clue MÜller was tracked first to Liverpool and then to New York, where he was arrested and extradited.

At the trial the changed hat found upon the victim helped to prove his identity with the murderer, and he was convicted and hanged at Newgate.

No more extraordinary instance of a single circumstance leading to the detection of a criminal can be offered than in what was known as the “Yarmouth Murder.”

On September 23rd, 1900, a woman was found lying dead upon the beach at Yarmouth, and from the appearance of the body she had evidently been strangled. On her fingers were some rings, but with the exception of the laundry mark upon her clothes, there was no clue by which she could possibly be identified. She had been staying for some days in lodgings in the town, and was known to her landlady as Mrs. Hood. While she was there letters bearing a Woolwich postmark had come addressed to her by that name. Only a day or two before her death she had had her photograph taken upon the beach.

All investigation to discover who the woman really was or to trace her murderer proved unavailing, and at the coroner’s inquest a verdict was brought in of wilful murder against some person unknown.

Subsequently it was discovered that the laundry mark upon the dead woman’s clothes, 599, was that put by a laundry upon the clothes sent to them from a particular house in Bexley Heath. Further inquiry showed that a woman named Bennett had formerly lived there, and she was identified as the original of the photograph that had been taken at Yarmouth.

This led, early in November, to the arrest of the dead woman’s husband, Bennett, who was a workman in Woolwich Arsenal, and he was committed for trial on the charge of murder. He denied all knowledge of the crime, and asserted that he had never been to Yarmouth. This was disproved, however, by collateral evidence, and many facts were brought forward connecting the prisoner with the murder.

The motive alleged for the crime was that Bennett might be free to marry another woman. The date of the wedding had been fixed, and it was shown that his behaviour after the night of the murder pointed to his having a knowledge of his wife’s death. So convincing was the whole of the circumstantial evidence, that after a short deliberation the jury brought in a verdict of “Guilty,” and Bennett was executed.


                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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