Murder for a few shillings—living on their wits—The value of a handshake—Where the money came from—The mystery of a large income —Price of a lost letter—An unwelcome burglar

ONE half of the world does not know how the other half lives." That is a stock phrase which has been worn threadbare by over-use. And if you analyse it, it appears so self-evident that one wonders at the daring of the person who first put it forward as an original observation. Very few people really know how their next-door neighbours live. They may think they do, but they are often entirely wrong in the conclusion they have arrived at.

One of the great mysteries of a vast city is how all the people in it manage to get a living. If you take a day of London life, apart from its work, and consider the hundreds of thousands of people who are merely amusing themselves and spending collectively a sum of money in the process which, if put in round figures, would astound you, you are faced with a greater mystery still.

Who are the people who during the working hours of the day can assemble in their tens of thousands at the popular race-meetings, the great cricket-matches, the afternoon performances at the theatres, the Palaces of Variety, the concert-rooms, the exhibitions, and the side-shows?

I never see a great match at Lord's or at the Oval and look around at the packed masses of spectators without wondering how the great majority arrange to have the leisure on a working day, and how some of them manage to have the price of admission to spare.

It would be a wild flight of imagination to suppose that to get the money to attend a cricket match some of the spectators had committed a crime. And yet, a few years ago, two little boys paid their sixpence each at the pay-box at Lord's and passed in, enjoyed the game, applauded the big hits, and in the evening went back to the room in which their mother lay dead, and slept in it, tired out with the day's enjoyment.

These little boys were shortly afterwards, owing to certain suspicious circumstances, arrested, and they then confessed that their mother being ill in bed they had murdered her in order to rob her of a few shillings. It was with a portion of this money they had spent a happy day at Lord's watching a cricket match.

It is a gruesome idea to associate with cricket, but the trail of tragedy passes even over the green patch on which the national pastime is played.

I have in my possession the last letter a well-known groundsman ever wrote. It was written in the condemned cell in Bedford Gaol the night before his execution. The last words of that letter, written as a P.S. after the unhappy man's signature, are "No more cricket."

Who that sat near those two little boys as they cheered a boundary hit would have thought that they had that morning murdered their mother? Who that saw this unfortunate groundsman bowling at the nets to some famous batsman of the day would have imagined that he was shortly to end his life on the gallows for cruelly and deliberately murdering his young wife and her mother?

One of the spectators at a great football match at the Crystal Palace was Alfred Stratton, the "mask" murderer. He paid his fare and his admission money to the football ground with the cash he had obtained by killing Mr. and Mrs. Farrow.

As we sit in the packed theatre or music-hall, or mix with the crowd on the race-course, to how many of us does it present itself as a probability that some of the people present are enjoying themselves with money obtained by murder?

Here is a well-known West End cafÉ. In the same building is a restaurant. The best people in London are among the frequenters of both. The company present when we enter is not of a kind to excite the slightest suspicion in our minds. The natural assumption is that they are all good citizens of unimpeachable character, and that the money they are spending is legitimately theirs.

But, looking round the crowded room, I can, from my own personal knowledge of facts, select half a dozen specimens of the mystery of the money spent.

A tall, military-looking man leaves one of the tables as we enter and comes across and shakes hands with me.

It would be rude of me to say "I don't know you" in a public room. He sees my hesitation and exclaims, "Ah! you don't remember me, I see. I am Sir —————. I used to see you very often at the old Pelican Club."

I make a conventional reply and pass to the other end of the room. My impression of Sir ————— is not a favourable one.

I remember having heard something about him, and I am a little uneasy at this public claiming of acquaintanceship. The Baronet is with a lady—a very charming lady, to judge by her appearance. I ask an habituÉ of the cafÉ, who is a friend of mine, if he knows anything about Sir —————.

"I don't think much of him," is the reply. "He was here with that lady the day before yesterday, and he got up and shook hands with Colonel ———— just as he did with you. The Colonel told me afterwards he was sure he had never met the man before."

Two weeks later the reason for this little comedy of acquaintanceship was made clear. The Baronet appeared at Bow Street police court and turned out to be no baronet at all, but an adventurer who had imposed his title upon confiding tradespeople and unsuspecting women. He had victimized half a dozen of the former and married two of the latter. And from both he had obtained a considerable amount of money.

Sir ———— got his living by frequenting the haunts of well-known people, shaking hands with some of them, and so establishing himself in the confidence of his dupes, one or other of whom he was in the habit of inviting to lunch at the restaurant and to sit in the cafÉ with him afterwards.

The "trick" is not a new one. A high police official whose features are well known once told me of a case in which he had been selected for the "old acquaintance" dodge. A gentleman in a restaurant came up to the official and shook him warmly by the hand. "Ah! my dear ————. How are you?" he said in a loud voice. "I hope Mrs. ———— is better."

The official's wife had been very ill, and the question at once disarmed him. He returned the hand-shake, imagining that the man really was an acquaintance whose face he failed to recall.

On the strength of that hand-shake the "acquaintance" succeeded in victimizing a gentleman who witnessed the interview to the extent of £500. A high police official would hardly shake hands in a public place with a swindler.

But let us take another look round the cafÉ in which the sham Baronet claimed acquaintance with me.

At a table in the far corner three smartly-dressed men are seated. They are smoking the most expensive cigars and drinking the oldest liqueur brandy in the establishment.

To them there enters presently an elegantly-dressed lady. She is past her first youth and is inclining to stoutness, but she is still attractive, and her manners are perfect.

The three men rise and salute her with almost Continental effusiveness. They address her as "Countess." Presently the little party of friends are conversing earnestly together, but in an undertone, as is the custom with people in good society who talk together in a place of public resort.

The three men are accomplished and clever rascals. One of them is a card-sharper of "distinction," another has made blackmailing a fine art. The third is a solicitor who has not yet been struck off the rolls. The lady is a "Monte Carlo Countess"; it is possible that she may have been married at one time of her life to a Polish Count, but her present occupation is that of a professional fiancÉe. The solicitor at the little table has settled three breaches of promise for her without any of them coming into court. Both in this matter and in the little parties which the Countess gives at her luxuriously-furnished flat the other gentlemen at the table are exceedingly useful to her. It is needless to add they receive their share of the stakes for bringing down the bird which the Countess "puts up."

In the days when the Vaudeville was a burlesque house a popular burlesque actress appearing there became engaged to a young gentleman who was lavish in his generosity in the matter of presents. He hardly allowed a week to pass without giving her some costly article of jewellery.

The sudden wealth of this young gentleman astonished Mr. Robert Reece, the author of the burlesque, who had known him as a clerk in a West-end bill discounter's office. Mr. Reece spoke to the young actress and begged her to make sure of her fiancÉes position and prospects before she married him.

She had no necessity to act on this advice, as the very next evening the young gentleman was arrested while waiting at the stage door for her. He was accused of having forged and discounted bills to the amount of £15,000. His legitimate earnings at the time he was making the young lady such costly presents amounted to £3 a week. In her dressing-room at the Vaudeville Theatre the actress handed over to the police all the jewellery she had received. It was valued in court at several thousand pounds.

The sudden possession of funds by a thief known to the police always attracts their unpleasant attention. Such a man must carefully avoid ostentation in his own neighbourhood. He does not even risk changing a sovereign in the public-houses that he "uses" lest the action should be observed by a "nark."

But there is a class of more or less "shady" individuals who, being habitually in possession of money, can indulge in extra extravagance without running any extra risk.

The Bogus Charity Collecting Brigade has all classes in its ranks. There are men and women of decent appearance, good manners, and good education, who make this form of fraud their means of livelihood. They have no other occupation and no other source of income, and every penny of the money they spend in food, clothing, and rent, is earned by false pretences. But it is only those who practise frauds upon the benevolent upon a large scale, live luxuriously on the proceeds, and generally, sooner or later, find themselves the subject of a personal memoir in "Truth," who are interesting to the public.

When a director of the Great Northern Railway saw a peer shake hands at a railway station with a man whom the director knew to be a clerk in the company's office he was astonished. He was considerably more astonished when the peer explained that the friend he had just greeted gave the best dinners in London.

It was that accidental meeting that brought the famous Red-path forgeries to light.

The mystery of the money spent disappeared when a well-dressed, well-groomed gentleman came up the steps into the dock at Clerkenwell Police Court.

I knew a man for twenty years who was respected and beloved by a wide circle of friends. He was an unostentatious man, but he had a beautiful house, he spent large sums in collecting works of art, and his benevolence was unbounded. He was secretary to a charitable institution, but it was supposed that he only retained the office because he loved the work.

The salary was a small one, but that did not matter. He had acquired riches by marrying a wealthy wife. He married this wealthy lady when he was five-and-thirty, and he was over sixty when he was one day called out of his dining-room just as he was sitting down to entertain a large party of friends, and failed to return.

His wife, who had taken her seat at the table, was sent for a minute or two after her husband had quitted the company, and she also failed to return.

The guests sat for a time, wondering what had happened. They wondered still more when a servant came back with a message that Mr. ————— had received a very important communication which compelled him to ask his guests to quit the house.

The next day the wealthy secretary of the charitable institution appeared at the police-court, and the evening papers contained the statement that he was charged with having robbed the institution of over sixty thousand pounds, the defalcations extending over a number of years.

At the trial it was elicited that the lady he had married was a young woman to whom he had been left guardian, and that he had spent every farthing of her money before he proposed to her, and made her his wife in order to cover up his crime.

Some years ago I knew a man who used to hang about racecourses and outside certain sporting clubs when any sporting event was on. He had a bad record, and used it to get his living. If, on a race-course, you lost a valuable article of jewellery—a gold watch or a diamond pin, or something valued for its associations—this man could generally be relied upon to trace it and get it back "at a price."

I saw him one night loafing about outside a sporting club, evidently hard up. A year later I saw him in fine feather and quite the "sporting gent.," as he would have said, at Nice races, and that night I met him again in evening dress at the roulette tables at Monte Carlo. He was living luxuriously at one of the best hotels. I met him a year or two later in a railway carriage coming back from Newmarket after the Cambridgeshire, and I gathered from his conversation with another passenger that he was going to try Egypt for his winter trip.

The "mystery of the money spent" in this case was not to be accounted for by any sudden stroke of luck on the Turf. The man had a good, solid income which enabled him to live at ease all the year round. His change of fortune dated from the day he was put on to try and recover a pocket-book which had been stolen from the rooms of an exceedingly wealthy young man, well known in sporting circles.

The pocket-book was recovered, with the bank-notes which it had contained missing, but a certain letter which the owner had placed in it still there. The letter must have been a very important one. The bargain struck for its restoration started the restorer on the road to fortune.

A professional burglar—a man who had been a skilled mechanic, earning good wages, in early life, but had taken to evil ways—broke into a West End mansion in the small hours. It happened that the tenant of the mansion had been making a very late night of it with some friends, and, entering his house with his latchkey at 4 a.m., he came upon the burglar in the dining-room.

The next morning the burglar went to the tenement house in which he was living with his wife, flung a handful of gold into her lap, told her to go and buy herself some good clothes while he went and got himself decently rigged out. She was to meet him in the afternoon at a given place. The husband and wife met, well dressed, and set out to look for a villa residence in the suburbs. They took a nice house, furnished it elegantly, if somewhat showily, engaged servants, and settled down into easy suburban well-to-do-ness. They had a horse and trap, and were looked upon by their neighbours as retired tradespeople, who had made their money and were living on a well-earned competency.

The ex-burglar and his wife enjoyed themselves. They had an occasional week at Brighton, or Margate, or Yarmouth; and in the summer they went away for a month or six weeks.

How did their change of fortune come? How did a burglar who was so badly off that he lived with his wife in one room in a tenement house suddenly develop into a well-to-do retired tradesman with plenty of money to spend?

The secret of the sudden access of wealth lay in the chance meeting of the burglar and the burgled in that West End mansion.

The tenant was a man of fifty, who had recently returned with a large fortune from South Africa. When he found a burglar on his premises he seized him by the throat. But as the light fell upon his assailant the burglar uttered a cry, not of terror, but of astonishment.

"Jack!" he exclaimed.

Five minutes later the two men were quietly discussing the new situation.

Twenty years previously they had met in a convict prison, where both were undergoing punishment—one for breaking into a jeweller's shop, the other for embezzling the money of his employer. They had been "pals" in prison, and had remained pals for a time after their liberation.

The burglar continued in his evil courses, but the clerk, getting assistance from some relatives, went out to South Africa. Being a ticket-of-leave man who had neglected to report himself at Scotland Yard, he was liable to be arrested on his return and sent back to prison to complete the remitted portion of his sentence. He had taken a new name in South Africa, and in this new name had made his fortune.

The police were not likely to associate the wealthy tenant of the West End mansion with the ex-convict who had failed to observe the terms of his license, and he was safe. That is to say, he was safe until the burglar who had broken into his house recognized him.

The silence of the old fellow "lag" was worth a good deal to the millionaire, and he paid it. This is how the ex-burglar was able to settle down as a respectable citizen in a pretty villa residence and deny himself nothing in the way of comfort or enjoyment.

Hush-money as a source of income is not confined to the class we usually associate with it. There are plenty of men and women moving in what is called good society who find it a profitable occupation to hold their tongue.