The River of Death—How the hooligan works—The story of a man who escaped—"Found drowned"—The tragedy of vengeance—The mystery of John Wilson—The woman in the case

A THIN mist wraps London in a shroud of grey this dismal winter afternoon as we pick our path carefully along the miry roads and sodden footways that lead us to the gloomy little building where the mysteries of the quiet water come to the light of day again.

We have come by a region of desolation, across waste land and black patches of marshy earth where men sow seed and dig and wait patiently for a few stunted vegetables to reward their toil. Here and there under the black archways, above which the trains of a great railway thunder and shriek, we have seen a group of pale-faced, scantily-clad urchins kicking a black and battered football about among broken glass and rubbish heaps, and perhaps finding as much joy in the game as the famous performers who make a goal amid the cheers of tens of thousands of spectators.

And so, gradually—always in the mist, always in the mud—we have come to a low-lying, far-stretching expanse of dingy houses and black palings and damp, oozy walls—a bit of Holland, as it were, in which the land and the water meet upon a dead level, and the only reliefs for the wearied eye are the glimmering lights of the barges and the timber ships lying far down the quiet canal.

If we turned off the muddy road and passed inside the black palings we should be by the waterside, and on the broad towing-path that, dotted here and there with lonely little houses and black, mysterious-looking sheds and outbuildings, in the gathering night suggests that river of the nether regions over which the souls of the departed pass.

And to call this silent water-way, glistening darkly where here and there a ray of lamp-light falls upon it, the Styx, would be no wild flight of fancy, for surely to those who know its record this is a River of Death.

The humid, mud-trampled pathways that run on either side are the highways of tragedy—the beaten track of the last footsteps. Here by the water-way that brings the golden freight from the great river to the heart of the busy town is the parting of the ways of Time and Eternity for many a one who lays down the burthen of life.

Not a pleasant place this, on a night of gloom, to linger and look and think. One raises one's eyes from the black water and sees far off the lights of the vehicles that cross the bridges in a steady stream, and the movement of busy life is a relief at once.

Beyond the refuge of despair the world is alive with hope, and the hum of patient toil and the stir of brave endeavour paint us a brighter picture of humanity.

But we have come as students to mark and to learn. We have looked upon the scene of sorrow, where many a tragedy of life comes to its last act. Let us hear the story of some of these tragedies of the water-way that are among the mysteries of modern London.

A few steps from the waterside and we are by a quiet grey church railed off from the road. We pass through a little gateway into a courtyard that leads to a building where those who have sought the waters of forgetfulness rest for a while before they are laid reverently to their last rest.

Not all who come here from the watery depths have taken their own lives. About the tragedies of which the law here seeks to know the truth there is often a mystery that is never penetrated.

Of the three hundred and eighty-six men and women who lay in this hostel of the dead in one year a large number were brought in from the canal. Of these, evidence in thirty-two cases did not, in the opinion of the juries, justify a verdict of suicide. Neither did it justify a verdict of murder, though in many cases the circumstances were more than suspicious.

The ugly wounds might be accounted for by passing barges; but wounding is not, as a rule, part of the process of waterside murder.

The victim is either pushed in in the course of a struggle or first stunned with a blow on the head or garotted, and then thrown in. In the first case there will be no positive signs after a few days' immersion. In the case of garotting there are also difficulties of proof. It is only when there is the mark of the knife or the pistol-shot, or some injury that points conclusively to deliberate infliction, that the worst construction can be placed on the tragedy.

Garotting was the method adopted by the hooligans who at one time infested the canal side, and made it so perilous a place that now the banks are patrolled by plain-clothes officers.

The gangs of young roughs who gather in secluded parts of the banks, where they are hidden by sheds or stacks of material, are there to gamble. They have such a well-organized system of guarding against the unwelcome intrusion of the policeman by well-placed "scouts," that in order to circumvent them it has become necessary to employ detectives for the tow-path.

These disguise themselves in such a way that they can pass without attracting the suspicion of the sentinels posted at a convenient distance from the muddy Monte Carlo. Most of the youths are hooligans of the worst class, and occasionally the little game of pitch-and-toss is only indulged in to reassure the stranger who, coming alone in the gloaming, or at night, might not like the look of the band, and so might take precautionary measures.

On a quiet Sunday afternoon some little time back a young man walking along the path in broad daylight was suddenly set upon by one of these gangs. He escaped the fate intended for him, and lived to tell the tale. He was going to tea with some friends, and was dressed in a frock-coat, and had on a watch and chain and a scarf-pin, and he had some loose silver in his pocket. He came upon a group of young roughs playing cards behind a stack of timber, looked at them, and passed on. It never occurred to him that on a bright Sunday afternoon in the heart of London a man could be robbed and murdered.

But before he had gone half a dozen paces farther he felt his throat clutched from behind, and two powerful hands trying to throttle him. At the same time two roughs seized his arms, while another of the gang took the watch and chain and pin and went over the victim's pockets.

But the victim was a strong young fellow, and fought desperately, though a hand thrust over his mouth prevented him from calling out.

"Throw him in!" exclaimed one of the gang.

There was a desperate struggle on the tow-path. The man, knowing that he would be stunned and pushed into the canal, to be found there perhaps days afterwards and looked upon as a suicide, fought furiously for his life.

He managed by a desperate effort to fling off his assailants, and then he took to his heels and fled. He reached his home in a condition of such exhaustion that there he fainted. The usage he had received was so brutal that he was compelled to keep his bed for a week.

That is the story of a man who escaped. The men, and the women, too, who have been less fortunate in their encounters with waterside assassins have been "found drowned."

It is a remarkable thing that there is hardly ever any money on the bodies that are brought from the canal to the mortuary. Every article found is entered in a book kept for that purpose by the official in charge. If you turn over the pages, you will find against almost every entry in which the word "drowned" occurs the words "no money" also.

To this last Guest House on the road to God's Acre there come again and again the mysteries of the unclaimed dead. Someone lies there waiting to be identified, and waits in vain. Neither kith nor kin come forward. The man has mattered so little to anyone that he has been able to pass out of life without a fellow-creature troubling as to why his home and his accustomed haunts know him no more.

Sometimes the identity of the dead upon whom the curious or the anxious come to gaze is violently disputed. Not long since two women claimed one man as a missing husband, and in the end it was proved that he belonged to neither of them. Yet both recognized the features and the clothes, and both gave certain indications as to marks which were found to exist on the body. Only those who have official knowledge of the number of people who come to identify a body "found drowned" are aware of the vast number of men and women who leave their homes and make no communication to their relatives as to their whereabouts. And these people are not always of the poorest class.

Here lay some time ago a man done to death—a foreigner shot in the streets of London. The man had been tracked by an assassin sent by a secret society from his native land. The society's agent came to London with orders to shoot the condemned man on sight.

Soon after the news of the crime got into the papers, two men of the victim's own nationality came to the mortuary to see if they could identify him.

One glance was sufficient. As they turned shuddering away, one muttered to the other, "This fate is for us, too; we shall be the next." A few days later those men met their doom, and came to lie side by side with the first victim.

The murderer being eventually discovered in the neighbourhood, and brought to bay, shot himself as he was on the point of being arrested. He was brought to this mortuary, too, and made up a gruesome quartette.

This tragedy of vengeance, as thrilling as any story that is told of the Italian Vendetta or the Russian Terrorism, happened in a quiet London suburb. These people lived in modest apartments, without a vestige of romance about them to suggest to the landlady, or the servant girl who waited on them, that they were men whose death-sentence had been pronounced by the committee of a secret society in Eastern Europe, and that one by one they were to fall to the pistol-shot of the man who had drawn the lot which made him their executioner. It reads like a page tom from a wildly sensational story. It happened in a popular London suburb, among the trams and 'buses, the crowded streets and the busy shops.

A portion of the truth was told in the court of the coroner, a good deal that lay behind the tragedy was imagined; but there were elements of mystery in this romance of the East, transplanted to the West, which yet remain to be solved.

Year in, year out, all days of the week, the mysteries of life and death come to this building of sad significance.

At the iron gate that shuts it off from the roadway the mortuary-keeper stood one summer evening. A young workman came along the street whistling. It was the young fellow's wont as he passed every evening on his way home to exchange greeting with the mortuary-keeper if he happened to be at the gate. His greeting was generally a grim joke: "All right, John," he used to say, "I'm not coming in just yet."

This summer evening as he passed he nodded and made his usual joke. "I'm not coming in just yet," he said, and went laughing on his way. He had not gone ten paces before he tottered and fell suddenly to the ground. Almost before the echo of his laughter at his own grim joke had died away, he was carried through the gates.

These are the mysteries of life and death that find their way to the House of Rest by the waterside. They are mysteries perhaps only in the sense that they are phases of the great human drama of which the busy world sees little. We pass our way without a thought of the strange happenings hidden from us by a few thin walls. Upon the mimic stage the fourth wall is always down. On the stage of life it stands and hides from all the working out of the great scheme of things. It is the fourth wall that makes many a mystery over which the world puzzles unexplainable.

There is a mystery in connection with this waterside mortuary for which an explanation has been sought in vain. The story is simple, and yet it has in it all the elements of a modern detective romance.

Just before the Coronation Day that was to have been, a man about fifty, fairly well dressed, came along the side of the canal and looked at the water. It was a broiling hot day, and it was by no means uncommon for people to leave the roadway to take a stroll nearer the cool-looking canal.

The man was seen by passers-by and people who were loitering about, but no idea was entertained that he was going to commit suicide.

Suddenly he flung off his hat and leapt into the water.

The alarm was given. A little crowd gathered on the tow-path and did their best, but failed to rescue the man. It was half an hour before the body was recovered and taken across the road to the mortuary.

The usual careful examination was made, and in the man's breast-pocket was found an envelope on which was written: "I am John Wilson of New York." I am not giving the man's real name. There was no property of any kind found, and nothing else to lead to identification. The usual public announcements were made, and the first discovery was that a man answering the description of the deceased had been to a local firm the evening previous to the suicide, had stated he was a carpenter, and had applied for a job to assist in erecting Coronation seats.

But the foreman who gave this information stated that the man was a complete stranger to him, and only said that he was a carpenter.

The next person who came forward was a lady, apparently in good circumstances. She stated that she had seen a newspaper report, and had no doubt that the man was her brother. Before being allowed to proceed to identification, she was asked for further particulars. She produced a photograph and showed it to the official. The photograph was certainly not that of the dead man, and the official said so.

The lady was sure it must be. The name published as found on the envelope was that of her brother, who had come to this country some little time before from New York. He was not a carpenter, or anything of that sort, and she could not understand how he could have applied for work, unless, as she supposed, his mind had become affected. She had not seen him for some little time.

The photograph not being like the man, the lady was asked, as she was so positive, if she could give any indications which would assist the authorities in accepting her statement.

"Yes," she said. "My brother always had a fear of something happening to him, and lest his papers should be taken from him, he was in the habit of writing his name on a slip of paper and sewing it up in the lining of his waistcoats."

The official went at once to the room in which the clothes were kept locked away, ripped open the lining of the waistcoat, and found inside it a slip of paper, on which was written in the same handwriting as that on the envelope: "I am John Wilson of New York."

There was nothing more to be said. The evidence was accepted as conclusive. The inquest was held, and the lady arranged the funeral.

As she stated that her brother was insured in New York for a large sum of money, and that she was his only relative, and entitled to the insurance, the matter passed into the hands of a firm of solicitors, and the necessary certificates of death and burial were supplied.

There the matter would have ended, so far as the police on this side were concerned, and would probably have been forgotten, but for the startling fact that some months later a communication came from New York which put an extraordinary complexion on the affair.

One of the insurance-offices declined to pay, and advised the solicitor who had acted in England that the person whose certificate had been forwarded was not John Wilson of New York, as John Wilson, the person whose life they had insured, had been found alive, and this John Wilson was the brother of the lady who claimed the insurance-money.

There the matter rests at present, so far as the mortuary authorities are concerned.

If the American statement is correct, then a man who was not John Wilson must have committed suicide with the name of John Wilson not only in his pocket, but with a second clue to identification sewn up in the lining of his clothing. John Wilson's sister had informed the authorities that it was there, and there they had found it.

The man was a carpenter by trade, according to his own last recorded statement. How did he come to sew another man's name in his clothing, and then deliberately commit suicide? Did he personate an insured person to oblige someone else? Or was it one of those extraordinary coincidences of two men of the same name and nationality having the same habit of preparing for identification in case of accident?

The night has fallen ere we pass through the iron gate, which closes behind us with a clang. Here and there a few shadowy figures move about in the mist that rises from the damp ground. In the yellow flicker of a lonely lamp the black palings that shut off the towpath shine with an oily lustre. Beyond, stretching away into the dim distance, the gloomy waters of the canal lie silent and motionless, hiding many a mystery still.