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Percy Lefroy Mapleton
I actually did do a great deal of newspaper and magazine research on this case at one point, but about ten years back a book on the case finally came out, "Trail of the Serpent". I've never read it so I can't testify as to how good it is, but there were some interesting background points on the killer that I learned, and which I believe are true.
At the time of the trial Mapleton was known to the public as a minor newspaper reporter and attempted fiction writer. He had been born in 1860, and been residing in Australia from 1877 or so to 1880. His parents met on the island of St. Helena, where his mother's family were well known in the local government affairs. His father Captain Mapleton was in the British Navy.
During the time he was stationed in St. Helena he and his fiancé - bride got to know a British Army officer named John Henry Lefroy. Lefroy was married at the time, and had been stationed in Canada (there is a mountain there that he explored that is named for him). Lefroy (as far as I could find out) did not have much contact with the Mapletons (who had two daughters before 1860), but in 1860 Lefroy (now a Colonel) was living in London as were the Mapletons. I bring this up because if you look at the Wikipedia article on John Henry Lefroy there is a picture of a painting of the man. There are some illustrations too of (in his article in Wikipedia) of Percy Lefroy Mapleton. The reason given for Percy having the middle name of Lefroy was that Colonel Lefroy was his godfather. Yet, when Percy tried to go out on his own from 1877 onward, he used the name "Arthur Lefroy" as his alias or pen name. This creates a kind of sensational type of situation.
I believe Percy is not a Mapleton but the child of his mother and Colonel Lefroy. Lefroy, by 1877, had become General Sir John Henry Lefroy, and had served as Governor of the colony of Bermuda in the early 1870s. In short, in his time General Lefroy was a big shot. Captain Mapleton, not Commander Mapleton, was not as big a shot. As Percy grew older his father began to notice Percy's amazing resemblance to his so-called "god-father". It dawned on the poor man that he had been cuckolded by his close friend. Percy's coming to his 18th year was signified by Commander Mapleton basically sending him to Australia (to write stories, or plays, or newspaper copy) with a small remittance. Percy of course had bigger ideas for himself. Since he used the "Lefroy" name in his writing, he presumably identified with his probable biological father more than his legal father. As for Commander Mapleton, Jonathan Goodman got me a copy of his death certificate (he died in 1879). Mapleton is said to have died (in Boase's "Modern English Biography" entry for Percy) of "softening of the brain". Actually he died from extreme alcoholism - very possibly caused by the discovery of how his wife and friend had made a cuckold of him.
Most of his estate went to the two daughters (whose parentage did not stretch into the same difficulties that Percy's did). Percy was stuck with Australia and the remittance. But in the 1870s and 1880s most people would have thought that Britain was the center of things, and not the Antipodes. Percy returned home to try to make a living for himself. As the articles you printed show, he failed miserably.*
*At his trial in November 1881, Percy was defended by the spirited barrister Montague Williams, who frequently was defense counsel in criminal cases at the time - later he was a magistrate. Williams wrote a book of memoirs, and has a chapter on Lefroy's case. But he added a long pair of addendum to the book showing two of Percy's very lacrimose short stories - somewhat connected, regarding a well loved performing clown in the music hall, and his fickle wife, and how she leaves him broken hearted and how (in the second story) years later when she is a poor, broken slut she comes back to him and dies after he forgives her. Believe me, hanging Lefroy did not deprive British Literature of a major fiction talent!!
He did do some theatre criticism and news reporting for minor newspapers in the counties, but nothing of major interest. Yet he had to go to the theatre, and he had to associate with theatre people - all of which cost money. How he got it one considers would not bear close scrutiny. He was close to his two sisters, so they may have given him something. As one was a wife and the other a nurse, probably very little. As for Sir John, he was in India at the time (1880) when towards the end of the year the gentleman was asked to get involved in a game of imperial musical chairs.
Ironically it was in the then crown colony of Tasmania, in the very area that Percy had just left to try the bright lights of Britain again. The current royal governor of Tasmania was resigning, and a replacement had been chosen from another crown colony - but the replacement could not come until the late summer/early autumn of 1881. Her Majesty's Government noted that a formerly tried and tested royal governor, Sir John Lefroy, was about to leave India, and they contacted him to go to Tasmania as "Acting Governor" of that colony until the man who was supposed to be the new governor could show up. Sir John did that, and so he was Royal "Acting" Governor of Tasmania.
If in this time Sir John heard from his "godson" he is not on record about it.
In February 1881 London was shaken by an unsolved murder case at the army barracks at Chatham. A young and promising officer, Lt. Percy Roper, was shot and killed in the barracks. The police tried to solve this case, and in the process (involving the suicide of a Sergeant in the barracks a month afterwards) failed to find out who shot the Lieutenant.
I should add something else I noted. The second article had a mistake in it - the first known British train murder, of Thomas Briggs by Franz Muller, was not in 1861 but in 1864. Percy's shooting of Mr. Gold was in late June 1881. It turns out that while there are no apparent deaths we know of on British railways from 1864 - 1881, it is incorrect to say murder or murderous crime was not known on the British trains in that period. In 1868 the Master of the Train Station at Dover was shot and killed by a man who was prevented by the victim from seeing his daughter. The perpetrator was hanged for that murder (historically interesting because it was the first murderer hung in a private ceremony in Britain). In 1875 (if you recall an earlier discussion on this thread) Colonel Valentine Baker was ruined in a peculiar incident with a single woman alone with him in a train carriage. Then in 1880 a man named Henry Perry was given a stiff prison sentence (over ten years) for trying to throw a man he had just robbed off a train. I suspect that Percy may have noted Perry's brush with the law, and planned accordingly.
Percy's escape was idiotic - he went to the home of his older sister, and was accompanied by a railway policeman (not a regular bobby) to the home, and told this policeman he was going in to get fresh clothing. He asked the policeman to wait outside, and the fool did. Percy did change his clothes, but left through the back door. Believe it or not, the name of this "brilliant" policeman was (of all things!!) "Holmes"!!!!
Percy was at large for eleven days, and he was finally captured because his landlady had gotten suspicious of his hiding until night, reading all the newspapers, and rarely coming down for dinner. His arrest was aided when (for the first time in British police history) a drawing of Percy in profile was put inside the Daily Mail and circulated. Most notably it should an excessively weak and recessive chin.
Now back in police custody, Mapleton began to prep for the November trial. In the meantime, in late July - early August, word reached Hobart, Tasmania of the recent doings in London. Suddenly Sir John Lefroy announced that regretfully he could not stay on until the actual new governor showed up. He submitted his resignation, and soon (late August) he and his wife and party were headed back to England.
This was 1881, and the transportation (even with steam driven liners) was slow, especially as this was a twenty thousand mile voyage around the Indian Ocean and the Suez Canal (from Tasmania, at the bottom of the Australian land mass) or by Cape Horn (it would not be until 1914 that the Panama Canal would be available for faster passage). Sir John did not reach England until the first week of December 1881. By then Percy was in his grave.
After his conviction Percy toyed with getting one of his sisters to send him the saw and file in a meat pie crust, but was undercut by the sister who felt that Percy should not do that but should fight to prove his innocence based on Montague Williams' theory (based on Percy's lies) about a third man in the coach who knocked out Percy (but did not kill him for some reason) and fought with Gold. Had it worked with the jury Percy would have been pleased - it did not work with them, and his sister's tearful insistence that they keep looking for this fiction of his must have annoyed him. He sat down and wrote out a confession - but not about Gold. He confessed to having shot and killed Percy Roper over an actress they were both rivals over. This confession was going to be given to the warden, and it was read (the details came out) but suddenly Percy repudiated it. Apparently he got some false feeling of impending reduction of sentence, and did not wish to muddy the chances. This proved chimerical, like that third man in the coach. So (on November 28th, 1881) Percy Lefroy Mapleton, a.k.a. "Arthur Lefroy" was hanged by William Marwood, public executioner. That wax effigy of Lefroy was out in 1992 at Tussaud's Chamber of Horrors, when I visited that famous wax museum - next to Marwood's statue.
Sir John, having come too late, did not die immediately, but lasted until 1887. He left legitimate family heirs.
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Two accounts of an 1881 railway murder which may have begun at the Merstham Tunnel. One allegedly by a railway worker who found a piece of evidence; the other from a man who may have escaped being the victim.
Survivor's Tales of Famous Crimes (London: cassell and Company, 1916), Pages 118-134
edited by Walter Wood
THE BRIGHTON RAILWAY MURDER
[in 1881 a profound sensation was caused throughout the country by the murder of Mr. Frederick Isaac Gold in a first-class compartment of an express train from London Bridge Station to Brighton. The murderer, Percy Lefroy, alias Mapleton, escaped from custody in the most astonishing manner, and remained in hiding for more than a week. His arrest was a matter of such intense interest that it was made known at the Lord Mayor's banquet and in the House of Commons. An important witness in the case was Mr. Thomas Picknell, and this is his story of the crime.]
Just on this spot where we are standing—-in the six-foot way—-I picked up a collar on the afternoon of June 27th, 1881. It was an ordinary turn-down collar of the type very common in those days, but there was an extraordinary thing about it, and it was this: the collar was covered with blood. I examined the collar, and so did my mate, who was with me. Having done so, I let it drop back into the six-foot way.
I was a ganger at that time, and it was my duty to examine a certain section of the line twice every weekday and once every Sunday. I was carrying out that task when I found the collar.
In spite of the stains I did not think much of the discovery, for I supposed that a passenger had scratched his neck and had taken the collar off and thrown it out of the window of a passing train. All sorts of odd things are disposed of in this manner.
After throwing the collar back into the six-foot way we walked on to Balcombe Station, about three-quarters of a mile away, and there I was startled to hear that another mate of mine, named Thomas Jennings, had found the dead body of a man in Balcombe Tunnel. Balcombe, as you see, is a quiet little country place, with not much going on, but it suddenly became very busy and famous, for a crime had been committed which filled the country with horror and was the thing that was mostly talked about for many a long day.
I soon learned what had happened. Jennings had walked through the tunnel to do some haymaking, and, having finished, he was walking back towards the station, carrying a naphtha lamp with him. He had got almost exactly in the middle of the tunnel when he found the body lying in the six-foot way-—that is, of course, the space between the two sets of metals. At that time the cause of death was not known, and I don't suppose that any time was lost in trying to find out. The main thing was to report the affair at the station and get the body out of the tunnel.
There was great excitement all at once. An engine and a brake were got—-a brake such as a guard uses on a goods train—-and the engine took a number of us into the tunnel to get the body up and bring it on to Balcombe. It was a gloomy business, and a strange scene it was as we gathered round the body in the six-foot way, working by the lights of our naphtha lamps—-just the sort of lamps you see at fairs and lighting costers' carts at night. The task was very difficult, too, because of the constant traffic through the tunnel, which caused us time after time to get into the manholes for shelter.
We were in the tunnel about an hour, because we had to wait for a policeman. At the end of that time we had got the body into the brake, and it was drawn by the engine to the station and carried to the "Railway Inn," where it was put in the coach-house.
When we first saw the body it was lying on its back, with the head towards Brighton. Even in the gloomy light of the tunnel it was evident that terrible injuries had been caused, for the face was covered with blood, and on this the black dust from passing engines and the ballast had settled thickly, making the features look as dark as a negro's. It was clear enough that murder had been done, and that there had been a long and fierce struggle before Mr. Gold was lying in the middle of Balcombe tunnel.
I first picked the collar up—-it was soon secured, of course, in view of the discovery of the body—at about a quarter to five. By that time an extraordinary thing had happened at Preston Park Station, just outside Brighton.
A ticket-collector, on opening the door of a first-class compartment, found a young man in it who had neither hat nor collar, who was covered with blood, and who was looking as if he had been badly knocked about. Blood was spattered all over the compartment, and the young man, Percy Lefroy, asked for a policeman to be sent for. When one came he declared that when he left London Bridge two men were in the compartment with him, one of them an elderly person, and the other looking like a countryman.
Lefroy said that on entering a tunnel he was murderously assaulted by one of the men and became insensible, and that he knew nothing more until he reached Preston Park. While he was telling his tale it was noticed that a watch-chain was hanging from his shoe, and on his attention being called to this circumstance he explained that he had put his watch there for safety.
Lefroy was allowed to keep the watch and chain and to go on to Brighton, the policeman being with him. He was taken to the Town Hall, where he made a statement, and he was then removed to the hospital, where his injuries were attended to. He showed a keen wish to get away, saying he wished to return to his home at Wallington, near Croydon, where he lived with a second cousin. He was given permission to go back, but the case looked very suspicious, and two railway policemen accompanied him. On the journey, at one of the stopping-places, the party learned that Mr. Gold's body had been found. This was stated by. an official of the company, and Lefroy heard it; but it does not seem that he was greatly upset by the tidings. He reached Wallington and the cousin's house; then he told the police that he was going out to see a doctor. Amazing as it seems, he was allowed to go, and from that moment, for more than a week, all trace of him was lost.
An inquest was held—-a tremendous affair it was for a little place like Balcombe, special wires being fitted so that long telegrams could be sent off to the newspapers—-and a verdict of wilful murder was returned against Lefroy. A reward, too, was offered for his arrest, and the whole country was thrown into a state of the most intense excitement and a lot of people were quite unnerved when it came to a question of travelling by train.
I spent many weary days at the inquest, at the police court proceedings, and at the trial at the assizes, so that every detail of the case became familiar to me, and I remember them pretty well even now. So I will just outline the actual story of what happened on that famous summer day in 1881.
Mr. Gold was a retired London business man, about sixty-four years old, and lived at Brighton. He was still interested in a business in London, and every Monday morning he went to town to get his share of the profits. This money he sometimes took home with him, and at other times he paid it into the bank. On this particular Monday morning he received £88 odd, and with the exception of the shillings and pence he put the money into the bank and then went to London Bridge Station, which he reached just before two o'clock.
The train, an express, left London Bridge at two o'clock, the only stopping-places being Croydon and Preston Park. Mr. Gold, who was a season ticket holder, was well known on the line. He occupied a seat in a first-class smoking compartment, and just before the train started Lefroy, who had been walking up and down the platform looking into the carriages, jumped in and seated himself in the compartment. At Croydon the guard noticed that Mr. Gold was apparently taking a nap, for he had a handkerchief over his head.
When the express reached Merstham Tunnel a passenger heard four reports, which he thought were fog-signals, but which proved to be revolver shots.
Lefroy had begun his murderous work by firing with a revolver which he had got out of pawn. Then began a long and terrible struggle, for Mr. Gold, though elderly, was a big, powerful man, and he defended himself in the most resolute manner.
Mile after mile the fight went on—-it was calculated afterwards that the struggle was continued over a distance of fourteen miles. It began when the train was about seventeen miles from London, and ended only in the middle of Balcombe Tunnel, about thirty-one miles from London Bridge, with the flinging out of the compartment of a man who by that time had one bullet in the head and about fourteen knife wounds on various parts of the body. The medical evidence showed that the actual cause of death was a fracture at the base of the skull, which was, no doubt, the result of the fall from the train into the six-foot way.
That there was a fierce struggle was shown by the statements of a woman who lived in a cottage at Horley, about eight miles from Merstham Tunnel. She was outside the cottage, and as the train dashed by she saw two men struggling in a compartment. They were standing up, and at first she did not know whether or not they might be engaged in the sort of horseplay which so often takes place in trains.
The train roared through Balcombe Tunnel and out into the open air and passed me on the line, but I took no more notice of it than I took of any of the scores of trains that went up and down in the course of a day.
By that time Lefroy had shut the door of the compartment and was speeding on to Preston Park, no doubt concocting the wonderful tale which he told when the train stopped for the collection of tickets. He had thrown his collar away, and his silk hat as well; doubtless also the revolver and the knife, for we found a knife in the tunnel near the body.
At Brighton he went to a shop to buy a collar, which proved to be the same size as the one I found; and he got a hat, also the same size as the one which was found on the line—-and an uncommon size, because Lefroy was an uncommon-looking person. He had a receding forehead and a very receding chin, and his teeth and gums showed prominenyly when he smiled. I had many opportunities of studying him, and he seemed to be the last person in the world to commit a murder, least of all the murder of a man like Mr. Gold. I should think that Mr. Gold was almost twice the size, taking all round, of Lefroy, but I dare say that the awful peril of his position and his determination to see his business through gave Lefroy the strength of a madman while he was doing his work. He was only about twenty-two years old, and was about five feet eight inches in height, but weedy looking and not very fit.
The murder had been done and the whole country was more or less panic-stricken because Lefroy had escaped. There was a tremendous outcry, and all sorts of theories were set afoot to account for his disappearance. He had committed suicide, gone abroad, had been seen in many towns in England, and so forth; but, as a matter of fact, he had made his way to London and taken lodgings in a small house in a little mean street in Stepney, giving out that he was an engineer from Liverpool.
It was afterwards known that Lefroy hid in the house for nearly eight days, never leaving it, and almost starving, certainly looking so miserable and wretched that he was enough to arouse pity in the heart of anyone who saw him. There was never a suspicion that he was a murderer.
In those days there were not the wonderful means that exist now of publishing photographs and particulars of people who were wanted by the police. It was a rare thing for a newspaper to give a portrait, but the Daily Telegraph had a picture of Lefroy which aroused enormous interest and was remarkably like him. He was so uncommon looking that if he had been at large I think it is pretty certain he would have been taken much sooner than was actually the case.
Lefroy had neither money nor luggage, and it became urgently necessary to secure the means to pay his bill. He managed to send a telegram off in the name of Clarke to an office in Gresham Street asking for money to be sent to him that night without fail. That was on Friday, July 8th, eleven days after the murder. By that time the published portrait had been seen and studied by great numbers of persons, and when the telegram was handed in at the post office information was given that a man strongly resembling the picture was lodging at the house in Stepney.
The police were communicated with, and, instead of the money reaching Lefroy, when the door opened he saw two police officers. He knew why they wanted him, and made no resistance, nor did he say much, except that he was not guilty of the crime.
Lefroy was taken to Stepney Police Station, then to Scotland Yard, and having spent the night at King Street Police Station, Westminster, he was hurried off to Victoria Station early next morning and taken to East Grinstead. The bloodstained clothes which he was wearing when he reached Brighton, and which he had exchanged for another suit while in the charge of the police, were carried down at the same time.
At that preliminary hearing the magistrates at Cuckfield, in which district the body had been found, sat in the Talbot Hotel, Lefroy being kept in Lewes Gaol, sixteen miles away. The magistrates' inquiry lasted four days, and each morning Lefroy was driven in a two-horse fly from the prison to the court, and each afternoon he was driven back. I do not think he was ever seen in public without being hooted. Lefroy was committed for trial at the Maidstone Assizes, and had to wait four months in prison before he appeared in the dock before the Lord Chief Justice. The hearing occupied four days.
Enormous interest was taken in one of the most striking things in connection with the crime, and that was the railway carriage in which the terrible struggle took place. This carriage was seen time after time by jurymen and others concerned in the case, and I became familiar with it. In the actual compartment there were abundant signs of the fight, and even on the footboard were marks of blood, which showed that to the very end Mr. Gold had fought for his life. He had apparently made a last frantic clutch as he was hurled out of the train.
The state of the carriage and the condition of the body showed at a glance how long and fierce the fight had been. As for the appearance of Lefroy at Preston Park and Brighton I cannot say anything, as I did not see him then, but when I did see him, soon after his arrest, there were not many signs that he had gone through such a desperate struggle. He seemed to have had matters pretty much his own way, but having a loaded revolver and a knife against an unarmed man gave him tremendous odds.
It was on Gunpowder Plot Day that the trial before the Lord Chief Justice began. By that time Lefroy had improved very much in looks and had had time to pull himself together. Considering the nature of the evidence against him and the almost utter hopelessness of an acquittal, he was amazingly cool; in fact, he seemed to be about the most unaffected person in court. There was no doubt that he had a mania for attracting public attention, and he made the extraordinary request that he should be allowed to get a dress suit out of pawn and wear it in the dock. This fancy was not gratified, but the young man made the best of his chances and was particularly attentive to a silk hat which he wore. Each morning when he was brought up into the dock from the cells below he bowed ceremoniously to the judge and the court generally. It seemed as if the prisoner's great object was to attract attention, and I was astonished that a man who stood in such peril of his life could find time or inclination for such trifles. But the fact was that to the very last moment Lefroy believed that he would be acquitted, and there were other people who actually persuaded themselves that he would be found not guilty. It may have been that they credited the story of the third man in the compartment, the person who looked like a countryman. All I can say on that point is that if there really was a third party in the compartment it was the Devil himself.
I got weary of the whole business long before it was finished—-though we had a day off in the course of the trial. That was on Lord Mayor's Day, when the judge had to go to London to take part in the ceremonies.
On the afternoon of the fourth day of the trial the judge had finished his long summing-up, and the jury retired to consider their verdict. That took them only a few minutes; they found Lefroy guilty, and he was sentenced to death. When he had been condemned he told the jury that some day they would learn that they had murdered an innocent man.
It was an odd circumstance that, after being so closely connected with the case for so long, I was not present in court when Lefroy was found guilty and sentenced. I had got tired of the oft-told story and the stuffy atmosphere, and when the summing up was going on I was wandering round the prison walls examining them. When I got back to the court all was over. Lefroy had been removed, and soon afterwards he was taken, handcuffed and under a strong police escort, to Lewes Gaol.
Even in the condemned cell Lefroy did not abandon hope, and he wrote a letter in which he asked for a file and a small saw to be sent to him concealed in the crust of a meat pie, his object evidently being to try and break out of prison, though how he expected to do that, when he was constantly guarded, is a mystery. He also tried to get poison sent in to him, but these attempts were fruitless.
A petition for a reprieve was signed, but no notice was taken of it. When, at the very last, Lefroy knew that his doom was certain he confessed to the murder. He said that he was so desperately in need of money that he was determined to go to any length to get it, even to the extent of murder. He walked up and down on the platform at London Bridge in the hope of finding a woman alone in a compartment. In that case he would have got in and demanded money from her, hoping that he would be able to escape and that it would not be necessary to do more than stun her. There was not, mercifully, any such solitary woman, and seeing Mr. Gold alone, and noticing that he looked prosperous, Lefroy jumped into the compartment just before the train started. The watch which he had in his shoe at Preston Park was Mr. Gold's. Before being arrested Lefroy threw the watch over Blackfriars Bridge.
Lefroy was hanged at Lewes by Marwood on November 29th, almost exactly five months after he murdered Mr. Gold.
I don't know what became of the collar. I saw it at the inquest and at the trial, but not afterwards; and I didn't wish to see it, for I had had enough of it.
As to the revolver, the police made a long and tiring search on the line and elsewhere, but they were not successful. After Lefroy was hanged a ganger found a revolver in a little hole at Earlswood, and that was supposed to be the weapon which was used. I dare say, there are many relics of the terrible affair; but most of the people who were connected with the trial have died. Of all the local people, I think I am the only one left, though Jennings is, I believe, still alive somewhere in America.
Well, that's the story of the famous Brighton train murder. Here we are on the very spot where I found the collar. Now we can go on picking primroses on the embankment. They're beautiful, aren't they? Balcombe primroses are said to be the finest in England, and, being a Balcombe man for fifty years, I honestly believe it.
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Temple Bar: A London Magazine for Town and Country Readers, Volume 76, January, 1886, Pages 73-82
On the Verge of a Tragedy
A True Narrative
by George Austin
“Lefroy’s account of the events that preceded the assassination of Mr.Gold, has perhaps never been surpassed in the thrilling history of murder. He says that the whole of the day on which the crime was perpetrated, from the time he left Wallington, the Devil was with him. While he was in the station before the train started, he put the question to the Devil which it was to be—-Poverty and Honour, or Wealth and Dishonour—-and while he was debating this choice, the Devil suggested the latter; whereupon he walked up the platform and got into a carriage in which there happened to be a passenger, alone. It was into this Lefroy entered, and not, as stated by the railway witness, that in which Mr. Gold was sitting. When he entered, the passenger apparently not caring that Lefroy should see him eating strawberries, put the fruit on the hat-rail, and. taking out his newspaper began to read. As he did so, Lefroy also took out his own paper, still however keeping an eye upon his fellow-passenger. Meanwhile he cautiously drew his revolver out of his pocket, concealing it under his paper to discover whether it was properly loaded, and this being ascertained, he then ‘full cocked’ it. He actually intended to take this gentleman’s life; but every time Lefroy looked up from his paper, he found his companion——to use his own words—-staring at him as much as to say, ‘I know what you are about.’ So near was this traveller to being a victim in the place of Mr. Gold! ”—Daily Telegraph, November, 28, 1882.
(If any apology were required for introducing to the reader the following true narrative, I think it would be found in the fact of some of the incidents related being of an extremely unusual and remarkable character. I may also add that I have been strongly urged, both by friends and strangers to whom I have related the story, to place it before the public)
IT was on a hot summer day, some few years ago, that, after a fatiguing morning’s work in the City, I was about to travel from London, by an early afternoon express train, to Brighton. Being somewhat exhausted by the heat of the weather, and with a parched throat, I had, before starting, purchased a basket of strawberries as a substitute for lunch. I had arrived at the station early, and having rather a desire to be alone, with a view to the enjoyment of a quiet siesta, I entered a first-class compartment otherwise unoccupied. At the last moment before the train was set in motion, the carriage door was suddenly opened, and a tallish, slight, young man sprang rapidly in, and placed himself in the corner seat on the opposite side of the carriage and farthest from me.
According to my casual observation, he was a man of not ungentlemanly mien, but conveyed the impression of one who was accustomed to late hours spent in a vitiated atmosphere.
I had just begun to eat my strawberries. My first impulse was to invite my fellow-passenger to partake of the fruit, but for some undefined reason I abstained from doing so.
I have often since endeavoured to account for the origin of my second impulse, and have been compelled to arrive at the humiliating conclusion that it must have been attributable to nothing more nor less than greediness. If I had been half-way through the strawberries, I should in all probability have obeyed the impulse of hospitality, but I was not self-sacrificing enough to let a stranger “revel free” amongst the larger specimens of fruit with which our fruiterers with commendable liberality invariably bait the top of the basket.
I was however so far sensitive on the subject, that I could not continue to enjoy the strawberries alone, and therefore placed the basket in the rack above my head, intending to resume my feast at a later period. It is important to mention this incident of the strawberries, because, as will be seen hereafter, it has a very significant bearing upon my narrative.
I then occupied myself with my newspaper, my fellow-traveller being apparently similarly engaged. It is necessary to state here that I am short-sighted, so that beyond a certain distance, say about eight or ten feet, according to the amount of light, I do not clearly recognise features, unless aided by glasses, which I do not always use. ' My readers may doubtless be aware that persons afiiicted with short-sight, have often apparently a habit of staring or gazing intently at the object which they are endeavouring to see. This is pre-eminently the case with me; so much so indeed that acquaintances have often indignantly exclaimed, “Why, I met you the other day in the street, you stared me out of countenance, and then passed on as if you did not know me!”——the real state of the case being that I had not recognised them at all. To resume my narrative, I recollect that I occasionally glanced at the stranger, who was just within the range of my vision, and that he appeared to be looking at me with a glittering eye; a fact to which I did not attach any importance at the time, and which would not have left any impression on my mind but for subsequent events.
The train stopped at Croydon Station (about ten miles from London), and there my fellow-passenger abruptly quitted the carriage, no conversation whatever having passed between us. I proceeded on my journey, and in due time arrived at Brighton, some fifty odd miles from London, and did not, during that day, hear of anything unusual having happened.
On the following morning I was again in the train accompanied by some friends travelling to London. On opening our newspapers we were much startled at reading:
“DREADFUL MURDER OF A GENTLEMAN YESTERDAY AFTERNOON ON THE BRIGHTON RAILWAY. BODY FOUND IN BALCOMBE TUNNEL.”
Then followed an account of a passenger alighting at Preston Station (which is within a short distance of Brighton) in a terribly shattered and forlorn condition; whose clothes were smeared with blood, whose general appearance indicated that he had been engaged in a struggle of a very severe and sanguinary nature, and who stated that he had been brutally attacked and robbed by a man in the carriage, who had then escaped while the train was still in motion.
His story being believed by the railway officials, although there were many circumstances which should have made them suspicious as to the truth of it, he was allowed to take his departure.
A few hours later, however, a report was received of the body of a gentleman having been found in Balcombe Tunnel, who, judging from his general appearance, had evidently been murdered.
The real state of the case appears then to have dawned upon the acute minds of the railway officials, who arrived at the intelligent conclusion, that instead of having been attacked, the dilapidated man who alighted at Preston Station, and whom they had so innocently allowed to depart, was, in fact, the murderer of the unfortunate gentleman whose body had been found in Balcombe Tunnel.
The newspaper report then proceeded to give a description of his personal appearance, height, dress, &c., and other particulars, to facilitate the endeavours of the police to effect his capture.
When I read this statement I was struck with amazement, and exclaimed, “Why, that is the exact description of the passenger in whose company I travelled yesterday afternoon, and by the train named, as far as Oroydon Station!” I then related to my friends the incident of the strawberries, and my greediness in connection therewith.
The murder naturally became the all-engrossing topic of conversation for several days, especially amongst those who were accustomed to travel on the Brighton Railway, and their friends; and a panic with regard to railway travelling with one other passenger only in the same carriage, took, for some time, possession of the mind of the public; and there arose considerable discussion, as to whether it Would not be advantageous, for the general safety, to adopt the American system, and to abolish compartments, thus throwing open all the carriages from one end of the train to the other. This idea however was soon abandoned, as the majority were of opinion that the luxury of our present system of comparative privacy is preferable. Moreover it must be remembered that no murder in a railway carriage had taken place for the previous seventeen years, and therefore that the chances against such an occurrence are many millions to one.
The story of my having travelled, as I believed, as far as Croydon Station with the suspected man, whose name turned out to be Lefroy, was not unnaturally often repeated in my family circle, and amongst my club, and other friends.
After the lapse of many days, Lefroy was traced to, and arrested in, an obscure lodging in the east of London, and in a very abject and dejected condition. He was then charged with the murder of 'the gentleman whose body had been found in Balcombe Tunnel, and evidence was taken in the usual way before a magistrate.
The ticket inspector at the London terminus swore that he knew the person of the prisoner very well, and that he put him into a carriage at that station with the gentleman whom he was charged with having murdered, and with whose personal appearance he was also perfectly well acquainted, as he was a constant traveller on the line. He likewise stated that the prisoner had on a “bowler hat.”
When I read that piece of evidence, I was compelled to come to the conclusion that the belief that I had travelled with the accused as far as Croydon Station was incorrect, as my fellow-passenger wore a “tall silk hat,” and that the similarity of dress and appearance in other respects was simply a coincidence, which however in any case would have been somewhat singular, as there were very few first-class passengers on that day in the train by which we travelled. On reading further however, I observed that the officials at Preston Station, where the prisoner alighted, swore that he wore a “tall silk hat.”
This evidence forcibly brought back my original impressions as to the identity of the man, and I was so much interested in the matter, that I took the trouble to seek out the ticket inspector at the London terminus, and asked him how he accounted for the discrepancy between his evidence, and that of the officials at Preston Station, with regard to the hat.
“Well, sir,” he said, “I may have possibly made a mistake about the hat, but I am positive that I put the accused into the carriage with the murdered gentleman at this station.”
Although, of course, somewhat shaken in my conviction by this renewed and unequivocal assertion of the ticket inspector, I nevertheless continued to entertain a strong instinctive feeling, almost amounting to certainty, of the correctness of my first impression.
I was never however sufficiently interested in the matter—-and this may appear strange to many of my readers—-to be induced to make a personal inspection of the prisoner, which fact was probably in a great degree attributable to the doubts which had been raised in my mind by the very positive assertions of the ticket inspector; moreover he would have been attired in such very different clothing to that in which my fellow-passenger was dressed, that it would most likely have been difficult to recognise him with any degree of certainty; and furthermore, any evidence which I could give would have been of no practical value, in addition to which police and criminal courts of law have never had any great attraction for me.
The result of the evidence was that the accused man Lefroy was committed for trial, which did not take place for some months afterwards, and in the crowd of events which are always so rapidly following each other, the matter was temporarily forgotten.
When however the time arrived for the trial to take place, the subject again occupied the attention of the public in a very intense degree. The trial lasted for some days, and terminated by the prisoner being found guilty, and sentence of death being passed upon him.
A day or two before that appointed for the execution, I was relating to my children the story of the murder, in the summer of 1861, and also in a railway carriage, of a gentleman named Briggs, the chief clerk in the bank of Messrs. Robarts, by a German called Muller. This murder created intense excitement at the time, as the murderer evaded the pursuit of the police, and actually escaped to America, where, however, he was arrested on arrival, and given up under the extradition treaty, brought back to this country, tried, condemned, and hanged. It is somewhat singular that a hat also played a prominent part in that tragedy. Up till the last moment, Muller asserted his innocence, even until the rope was actually round his neck, when, in answer to the last appeal of the German clergyman who was in attendance upon him, and who earnestly implored him not to rush into the presence of his Maker with a lie upon his lips, the unhappy man exclaimed, “ Ich habe es gethan!” (I did it.)
“Now,” said I, “the condemned man Lefroy may be equally obstinate; but should he make a detailed confession, I shall be very curious to see the particulars, as the conviction is still as strong as ever on my mind that I did travel in the same carriage with him on the day of the murder as far as Croydon Station, notwithstanding the evidence of the railway officials to the contrary.”
On the following afternoon, the day preceding that on which Lefroy was appointed to be hanged, on entering my club, the first man I saw was our cheery messmate, Captain Aquinas, distinguished for the dulcet tones in which he mastheads us when we revoke or trump his best card, or fail to see his “Peter” at whist.
Said he,“ Do you remember the story you told us on the day after the murder, expressing your belief that you had been a fellow-passenger with the murderer as far as Croydon Station, and your greediness about the strawberries?”
(Alas, nobody ever seems to forget that unhappy admission of mine!)
“Certainly,” replied I. “Perfectly well.”
“Well,” said he, “if you read the Daily Telegraph, you will see that Lefroy has made a statement in which he fully confirms your story.”
I accordingly sought out the statement in the Daily Telegraph, and there, sure enough, the prisoner made particular mention of the fact of his fellow-passenger having a basket of strawberries, and of his evident disinclination to continue eating them in his presence, and how he therefore placed them in the rack at the back of the carriage; how he then devoted himself to the perusal of his newspaper; how he, the prisoner, also had a newspaper, behind which he had a loaded revolver, cocked and ready for use; how he had been more or less under the influence of the Evil Fiend from the time he arose from his bed that morning, and how he had resolved to murder his fellow-passenger; but somehow, whenever he looked at him, the gentleman always appeared to be staring at him most intently, as much as ‘to say, “I know what you are about,” and that he, in consequence, became so unnerved that he felt quite incapable of carrying out his intention; and, on the arrival of the train at Croydon Station, he rushed from the carriage, and got into another, in which there was only one other passenger, whom he eventually murdered, casting the body into Balcombe Tunnel.
Poor unhappy wretch! Here was a man looking at him only occasionally, with indistinct and imperfect vision, and not having the most remote idea that he had any sinister intention in his mind; whilst the intending murderer in his distracted and guilty conscience, actually becomes impressed with the idea that the eye of that man is piercing him to the very soul! Why, if it were not a matter of such solemnity it would be almost ludicrous. But I will not attempt to solve this enigma. It affords at least an additional illustration that
“Men are the sport of circumstances, when
The circumstances seem the sport of men.”
I cannot quit this part of my narrative without dwelling for a moment on an episode in it which to my mind affords another singular subject for reflection; as indicating how in this world of anomalies, tragedy and farce may be in close proximity to each other, and even be mistaken one for the other.
Lefroy leaves me in the railway carriage perfectly unconscious of the peril which had been hanging over me, and while I am calmly and placidly, and slumberingly proceeding on my journey, he in the course of a few minutes, and within a few compartments from me, becomes engaged in a frightful struggle with the unfortunate gentleman whom he finally murders. This death struggle is observed by a woman and her daughter from the window of a cottage standing close to the railway; and they seeing the figures moving rapidly about in the carriage, are amused at what they believed to be two passengers engaged in skylarking. They looked upon a tragedy and absolutely believed it to be a farce!
The perusal of this statement of the condemned man in the columns of the Daily Telegraph, naturally created much excitement amongst those of my relations and friends who had become acquainted with my original story, and it was the unanimously expressed opinion that my preservation was attributable to my being short-sighted.
I certainly do not claim to possess a greater amount of physical courage, or indifference to danger than most men, and I suppose I may not be an imaginative man, for the terrible fate I so narrowly escaped has never given me any shock, or prevented a night’s rest, whilst another person, though only a slight acquaintance, on hearing of my fortunate escape from a cruel death, was so agitated as to be unable to sleep the whole night after hearing my narrative.
One of the most remarkable incidents connected with my narrative, is the fact that I had nearly forty pounds in my purse, of which the murderer might have possessed himself with very little difficulty had he remained in the carriage with me, as I should undoubtedly have slumbered during the journey between Croydon and Brighton; whereas he did not obtain as much as twenty shillings from the unfortunate gentleman whom he so cruelly slaughtered; and the fact of his being so short of money was the immediate cause of his being traced and arrested.
There is still another singular incident to relate, remarkable on account of the way in which it presented itself being purely accidental, and which would almost seem to be furnished for the purpose of supplying the final link in the chain of evidence which proves the truth and completeness of my story.
About a week after the unfortunate man was executed, a friend came to me and said, “A curious thing has happened this morning. I was walking in East Street, when I met my old friend, the Reverend Mr. Cole,* who is the chaplain of Lewes Gaol, in which Lefroy was imprisoned and banged. We naturally spoke of the recent event, and of the wretched man with whom the reverend gentleman had had the misfortune to be in such close association. I casually remarked, ‘By-the-way, there is a man in my club who was the passenger who travelled with Lefroy on the day of the murder as far as Croydon Station.’ ‘Indeed,’ exclaimed the chaplain, ‘that is very extraordinary! What is the name of that gentleman? I must ask you to place me in communication with him, as I have something very important to say to him.’” In reply to a letter of mine to Mr. Cole, I received the following communication:
“H. M. Prison, Lewes,
“Dec. 15, 1881.
“DEAR SIR,
“I am very glad to receive your letter, which corroborates most remarkably a statement made to me by the criminal Percy Lefroy Mapleton, after his sentence, that he entered at London Bridge, on the 27th of June last, a carriage occupied by a gentleman who was eating strawberries at the time, and who placed them in the rack above his head as he entered.
“He described the gentleman to me as apparently about forty years of age, slight, with dark hair, and with eyes which appeared to him so searching in their character that he felt obliged to abandon his intention of robbery and violence, and to change carriages at Croydon. The evidence of the ticket collector, Franks, was so positive that Lefroy entered the carriage with Mr. Gold at London Bridge, that the prisoner’s unsupported declaration to the contrary could only be accepted by me with reservation, but your testimony now offered, and corresponding as it does in minute particulars with his account, leaves no doubt in my mind as to his actually having been your fellow-passenger as far as Croydon, and I am also now aware that previous to his trial and long before the newspaper report appeared, he had given the same information for purposes of his defence whilst he was in close custody here, and therefore unable to hear, without the cognisance of the authorities, either directly or indirectly from yourself on the subject.
“It is a great satisfaction to me to be able by your aid thus to test the truthfulness of one of the statements of the dying man, as it leads me to hope that his account to me generally of the details of his terrible crime may have been equally truthful.
“I offer you my earnest congratulations on what I now fully believe to have been a providential escape, and I think it is only due to you that I should afford you the information which you request.
“I am, dear Sir,
“Yours very faithfully,
“(Signed) T. H. COLE
“(Chaplain).
"GEORGE Ausrm, Esq,
“Brighton.”
My friend then arranged that he and I should pay a visit to the reverend gentleman, and we accordingly went over to Lewes on the following day.
The chaplain requested me first to relate my version of the story, having heard which, he was able, from written statements of the condemned man, to confirm fully each detail of the occurrences which I had described, and especially the fact that the fixed and piercing manner in which he imagined his fellow-traveller was looking at him utterly unnerved him, and compelled him to abandon the intention which he had formed to assassinate and rob him.
The chaplain also possessed so accurate a description of my personal appearance, that my identity as the fellow-traveller of the murderer was established beyond question, and he moreover confided to me the following information.
“Shortly before the unhappy man was hanged, when he had abandoned all hope of his life being spared, and he was, in fact, making his confession, he was very anxious to convince me that he was not utterly incapable of speaking the truth. He was moreover very angry (although acknowledging the justice of the sentence passed upon him) at the inaccurate evidence of the ticket inspector, who so positively swore that he put him into the carriage with Mr. Gold at the London terminus. He then told me the story of riding with the passenger who was eating strawberries, as far as Croydon Station, and how, under the influence of his searching gaze, as he said, he rushed from the carriage in a state of distraction and panic, perfectly incapable of carrying out the crime which he had contemplated. He implored me, if ever I should meet that gentleman, to ascertain from him the truth of these assertions made by him, the condemned man.”
There is therefore no doubt that my short-sight was, under the providence of God, to whom I offer my most thankful acknowledgments, the means of my preservation from a horrible fate.
It will be remembered that I have stated, that so long as the sworn evidence of the railway official was opposed to, and apparently disproved, my theory of having ridden with the murderer, I was never induced to make a journey for the purpose of seeing him. But as soon as the announcement was made of the confession which confirmed my version of the matter, I conceived a strong wish to have a personal view of him; it was however too late, as he was to be hanged on the following morning.
Within a few days it was advertised that the effigy of the criminal was being exhibited at Madame Tussaud's.
Knowing how lifelike are the representations at that establishment, I was seized with an irresistible desire to see in scam the figure which I had not had the curiosity to inspect in the flesh.
I accordingly took the earliest opportunity of visiting Madame Tussaud’s, and there, in gazing on the features of the waxen image, I had additional confirmation of the correctness of my original belief. There, beyond a doubt, was the likeness of the man who had looked at me with a glittering eye!
As I stood in that grim chamber of horrors amongst the crowd of spectators, none of whom probably were more interested in the figure of Lefroy than in any of the other surrounding efligies 0f murderers, I could not help speculating on the reflections regarding him which might be passing through their minds, as compared with those which occupied my own!
[Note:] *Since writing this narrative I have seen the chaplain, and in course of conversation he mentioned, as a noteworthy circumstance, that until meeting our mutual friend in East Street, he had not seen him for some years, and he had not met him since. So that if one or other had passed a certain point a minute sooner or later, I should, in all probability, never have been brought into communication with the reverend gentleman, and should thus have been deprived of his most important testimony, which has contributed so largely to prove the truth of my narrative, and he would not have been afforded the opportunity of complying with the injunctions of the dying man.
----end
Austin mentions visiting Lefroy's effigy at Madame Tussaud’s wax museum. Here's a photo.
The Harmsworth Monthly Pictorial Magazine, Volume 1, 1899, Pages 656-660
Nature's Danger-Signals
A Study of the Faces of Murderers
by J. Holt Schooling
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I have not knowledge at all about the Crick Tunnel Case. It does sound very mysterious though.
JeffLeave a comment:
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Collins' follow-up article which includes discussion of the "Crick Tunnel mystery:"
The National Review, Volume 47, March 1906, Pages 145-159
THE MERSTHAM AND CRICK TUNNEL MYSTERIES: A COMPARATIVE STUDY
by J. Churton Collins
"You don't believe in the detective police?" "No, who can believe in them who reads his newspaper and remembers what he reads. Fortunately for the detective department the public in general forgets what it reads. Go to your club and look at the criminal history of our own time, recorded in the newspapers. Every crime is more or less a mystery. You will see that the mysteries which the police discover are, almost without exception, mysteries made penetrable by the commonest capacity through the extraordinary stupidity exhibited in the means taken to hide the crime. On the other hand, let the guilty man or woman be a resolute and intelligent person, capable of setting his (or her) wits fairly against the wits of the police—-in other words, let the mystery really be a mystery—-and cite me a case, if you can (a really difficult and perplexing case) in which the criminal has not escaped. Mind! I don't charge the police with neglecting their work. No doubt they do their best and take the greatest pains in following the routine to which they have been trained. It is their misfortune, not their fault, that there is no man of superior intelligence among them—-I mean, no man who is capable in great emergencies of placing himself above conventional methods and following a new way of his own."
—-So wrote Wilkie Collins nearly thirty years ago, and so writing he expressed what must be mournfully acknowledged to be no more than the truth—-truth which has during the last three months found very striking and very exasperating corroboration. When in these pages attention was drawn to the deplorable mismanagement of the Merstham case we were not at all surprised that no notice whatever was taken of the facts incontestably established by us, but we were, we own, surprised at the blind obstinacy with which adherence to demonstrably untenable theories on the part of responsible officials rendered, and still renders, all effort to re-open that inquiry nugatory. And now comes this second case, which, bungled in its first stage as miserably as its predecessor, would, but for the intervention of the Press, have gone the same way. Indeed, the indifference or incompetence of those who are officially entrusted with these inquiries has come to such a pass that if it were not for the newspapers no proper investigation of these tragical problems would be so much as attempted. But for the Press the Merstham mystery would have found a ridiculous solution in suicide. To a London daily paper it is solely owing that Mdlle. Rochaïd's death has attracted the attention it deserves. Whether it swelled the list of the atrocious crimes which the imbecility or carelessness of the police and of coroners have allowed to go unpunished, or whether it was the result of suicide or of accident, appears to have been a matter of profound unconcern to those whose duty it was to spare no pains to ascertain.
And now let us see what this means. The general public, naturally interested in anything which is sensational, and losing all confidence in those who are officially responsible for the conduct of these inquiries, encourage the Press to substitute its representatives for the representatives of the law. A trained journalist, with his keen powers of observation, his susceptibility of impression, and his plastic intelligence, is indeed likely to see very much further into such complicated problems as these cases present, than the most experienced detectives of the average order would be likely to do. Such officers are the slaves of habit and routine, and of all trainings for the solution of nice and difficult problems this is the worst. Their minds and tempers taking their ply from a constantly recurring circle of work and experience, cannot indeed fail to become stereotyped and mechanical. But intelligence without authority is of little avail, and that this interference on the part of the laity should be resented by those who have official dignity to preserve is natural enough. The one thing which would be desirable, but which appears to be impossible, is co-operation ; the two things which, unfortunately for the public interests, are only too glaringly apparent, are mutual distrust and mutual opposition. That the researches instituted by the Press in the Merstham case elicited new and most valuable information, that they furnished fresh clues, and that they also fully and clearly indicated where further clues, which the police only could follow up, might be found, is indisputable, is indeed matter of certain and common knowledge. But how did all this fare? Precisely as the evidence elicited at the inquest fared. Officialdom, ignoring and in defiance of what the Press had discovered, had made up its mind that Miss Money's death was the result of suicide, though the jury very properly returned an open verdict. Investigations were continued. With the assistance of the Press the additional evidence, to which I have referred, demonstrated with absolute •conclusiveness not merely the untenableness of the theory, but the probability in the very highest degree, of murder. Officialdom, however, was not to be shaken. Everything which could be perverted into giving plausibility to the theory adopted by it—-the theory of suicide—-was accepted, everything which demonstrated the impossibility of maintaining such a theory was ignored. Protest and plea were, and still are, unheeded, and in vain. Officialdom was on its dignity, and in consequence, as is all but certain, a murderer is at large.
No one would wish to speak disrespectfully of any staff officer belonging to our central detective department. A more intelligent, painstaking, and conscientious body of men, taking them as a whole, does not exist; but they have their limitations, and, what is more, though on attaining a certain rank they have equal weight and authority, the differences between them in point of competence and capacity are so extraordinary as to be scarcely conceivable. In the Merstham case, more than a week elapsed before assistance from Scotland Yard was applied for, and no blame, therefore, can be attached either to its chiefs or to its staff for the gross mismanagement of the inquiry at its initial stages. That belongs solely to those who were responsible for what occurred during the period intervening between the discovery of the body and the first inquest, and for the conduct of the inquest itself. But for what immediately preceded, accompanied, and followed the adjourned inquest and verdict, the official representative of Scotland Yard must certainly be held mainly responsible. The decision at which he arrived, and to which he obstinately adhered in the teeth of the evidence, in defiance of the equally incontestable testimony elicited by subsequent investigation, as well as of probability or, rather, of possibility, has effectually put the closure on further inquiry. An official, all officials to a man stand by him; in authority, all in authority are with him. The rest is silence.
Let us glance at the evidence. What said the two doctors who conducted the post-mortem examination of Miss Money's body?
There was a bruise on the upper part of the left arm and inside the forearm. Also a bruise on front part of upper part of right arm, and also another bruise on the inner side of the forearm. Several bruises on right hand and wrists, as if done by her being gripped. There was a reddish mark on the right side of the lower lip, close to the mouth;
—it will be remembered that when the body was found "ten or twelve inches " of the silk scarf which the poor girl was wearing were pulled out of the mouth, and pulled out with some difficulty, leading to the supposition that it had been jammed into the mouth presumably for the purpose of gagging her—-
these injuries are consistent with something having been pushed into the mouth.
So deposed the first doctor, Dr. Halkeyt Crickett. What said the expert from the Home Office?
There were three very distinct bruises around the mouth. The bruises were small, about half an inch in diameter, slightly raised on the surface and pale red in colour. One was on the upper lip, a little to the right of the middle line. One was close to the angle of the mouth on the right side. One was on the upper lip to the right of the middle line; this was distinct, but less pronounced than the corresponding bruise on the upper lip. ... I attac [sic] great importance to the slight but distinct bruises of a pale red or bluish colour present on the right arm and hand; also to the broken nail on the right forefinger; to the bruise under the right clavicle; to the scratches on the right shoulder and the bruise below, and also to the bruises round the mouth. These have not the appearance of being produced by a fall from the train. They are such as might have been caused by firm pressure, e.g., the grip of the fingers in a struggle with some person, or received as injuries in a struggle. It is significant that the above injuries should be present on the right hand and arm and around the mouth, while the bruises of this character are absent from the left hand and arm. It is usual to find more bruising on the right side in cases of a struggle where the right hand is used in self-defence.
Such was the medical evidence. The impossibility of opening the door of the railway-carriage more than eight inches at that part of the tunnel where the body was found; the marks on the walls of the tunnel; and the absence of any thick coating of grime on the gloves, as the expert from the Home Office pointed out, show that the unfortunate girl was either precipitated or tipped backwards through the window. That she got on to the line through the open door was demonstrated to be a physical impossibility. The evidence showed as conclusively, as any evidence short of ocular testimony could show, that her death succeeded a struggle with some powerful assailant, who either threw her or dropped her into the tunnel through the open window. It is all but certain that the train by which she travelled was the 9.13 from London Bridge. Now, a few miles from where the body was found a signalman saw in one of the compartments of that train a man and a woman who appeared to be struggling.
The man standing up and trying to force the woman on the seat. . . . The woman was about five feet four or five, stoutly built. I think she had on a black dress. I think the hat was black. She appeared to be wearing something white, which was hanging down from the back of her hat. The man had on a bowler hat and was broad.
This was an exact description of the deceased woman, the "something white" corresponding to a long white scarf whioh she was wearing when she left home, and which, or rather a portion of which, was found jammed in her mouth after her death. The way in which this important witness's evidence was received, and the comments which it elicited, are an excellent illustration of how this case fared generally with those who conducted it. It was assumed that, in a train passing the signalbox where he was stationed at thirty miles an hour, it was impossible for him to see what he alleged he did see. Now it would be no exaggeration to say, as every man on signal-service knows, that in a lighted train much exceeding that speed it is not only possible to see all that this witness asserts he saw, but very much more. If attention happened to be directed to a particular compartment in a carriage, any one could easily be identified; it could even be discerned whether a man had a moustache or not, or whether his complexion was fair or dark. The least that those who discredited the evidence of this witness could have done would have been to test his credibility by personal experiment.
With all this pointing to murder, what iota of evidence or indication is there pointing to suicide? By the general consent of literally every one who was intimately acquainted with the deceased woman,—-her companion and colleague who was with her on the day of her death, her employers, her many friends, her mother and her brothers, she was as contented and happy as any human being could possibly be. She had money in the bank, was in robust health, and had nothing to depress or disturb her. But assuming that all this evidence against such a theory did not exist, and that she might for some inscrutable reason have wished to destroy herself—-is it within the bounds of credibility that she would have left Clapham Junction and taken a ticket to Victoria or to London Bridge deliberately changed into another carriage at Croydon, and all this that she might hurl herself from a train when so many equally certain and less painful and revolting forms of death were within her choice? Is it conceivable that she would have thrown herself, and thrown herself backwards, out of the window, for that she went out of the window is certain, and that she went backwards out of it is all but certain?
Is it too much to say that a sane man who contended that this was a case of suicide must either have been lamentably ignorant of the facts, or if acquainted with them, as incompetent as Dogberry or Bumble to reason on them, or appear to be recklessly running some danger of justly exposing himself to sinister suspicion. As neither of these alternatives can, in fact, be the case, sheer perplexity at the turn things have taken is all that is left to us. What is certain is this. The acceptation of the theory of suicide on the part of those without whose assistance no really furthering steps towards the elucidation of this mystery can be taken, has paralysed every attempt to unravel it. Private investigation has since elicited fresh testimony of the utmost importance, but officialism is deaf to it. So inadequate and perfunctory was tht inquiry that there was scarcely a witness called who has not much, and very much, to add to what he then deposed. The family of the deceased girl are in possession of facts which they had no opportunity of communicating. But all was, and is, of no avail. The monstrous theory adopted by the officer who had all the weight and authority incident to his position gave the wrong turn to this inquiry at its most critical stage, and at no later stage is it likely, at least in official hands, to take the right one.
That the unfortunate woman met her death directly or indirectly at the hands, or in consequence of the conduct, of some one with whom she was travelling is as certain as anything dependent on circumstantial evidence can be; that she was, where she was when she met her death, by appointment; that that appointment had been made not by letter or telegram but by word of mouth; that it had been made with her assailant who was well known to her,that he was a broad man, in a bowler hat and a grey suit;* and that immediately before her journey she had had some meal at an hotel or restaurant, rests on evidence almost equally certain. It will be seen that we have here important particulars which, if properly investigated, might have furnished clues. How did this evidence fare? First, as we have seen, the whole of it was discredited by the adoption of the theory of suicide, the consequence being that the most crucial part of the inquiry was conducted, if my information be correct, in an incredibly loose and perfunctory way. What might have greatly assisted the identification of the murderer—-the evidence of the signalman—-was ignored on the assumption that it was physically impossible for him to see what he alleged he saw. The futility of the method adopted for ascertaining whether the deceased woman and her companion visited any restaurant on the night of the tragedy speaks for itself. Is it likely, considering what such an admission would involve, that any proprietor or waiter in such places as these would, if they possessed it, volunteer such information? Obtained it could be, no doubt, but only as it is obtained in Germany and France. The result of all has been exactly what might have been anticipated; another murderer is at large, another atrocious crime has been added to the ghastly list of its predecessors.
[Note:] •This detail was not given, or at least recorded, at the inquest, but was communicated by the witness to the present writer.
In this case, and herein lies its importance, we have a comprehensive illustration of the infirmities, or, to speak more correctly, of the imbecility of the present methods of criminal investigation. A body is found under circumstances which point conclusively to suicide or murder. The first thing done is to obliterate testimony which would have settled beyond doubt whether it was a case of the first or a case of the second by a stupid constable dragging out of the mouth of the corpse the long folds of a scarf, thus rendering it impossible to determine with certainty whether it had been forced in by external violence or whether it had worked itself in by some other means. Next the body is allowed to lie without any medical man being called to inspect it, until far past the noon of the day succeeding its discovery. Then comes the inquest. Though the case is confessedly pregnant with suspicion, the utmost laxity characterises the proceedings. One of the principal witnesses is not cross-examined at all; the statements of another, not less important, though plainly difficult to reconcile with probability, and certainly requiring corroboration, are accepted without question; that of a third, though of the utmost significance, is dismissed with ignorant contempt as irreconcilable with possibility; the evidence of the doctor who conducted the post-mortem examination, as well as that of an expert from the Home Office who assisted in that examination, is simply ignored. Everything points to murder, nothing points to suicide; but for some mysterious reason, "the officers in charge of the case" are adamant against the probability of the first and equally in favour of the probability of the second. The whole case cries aloud for further adjournment, at every step in it additional evidence being wanted and, it may be added, easy to procure.
Mismanagement and misdirection in the earlier stages of such inquiries as these, in the period, that is to say, preceding the inquest and at the inquest itself, are commonly irreparable. In a few days the scent cools, the tracks are covered; impressions made on witnesses become blurred; and, what is worse, mingled and confounded with impressions subsequently formed. The value of evidence, especially in the case of unskilled witnesses, is in exact proportion to its proximity to the experience of which it is the testimony. Nor should it be forgotten, as in these inquiries it too commonly is, that in the case of the great majority of witnesses the chances are that the evidence which is most important will not, for various reasons, be volunteered but must be elicited. Had this been remembered in the present case, had every witness-in-chief been closely and judiciously questioned, a very different issue would, in all probability, have resulted. Certainly the preposterous theory which is mainly responsible for the perverted turn things have taken would have been exploded.
There is, I repeat, no mystery about the manner in which Miss Money met her death. All the evidence adduced at the inquest, and all the evidence which has been collected since, place it beyond doubt that she was murdered, possibly deliberately, probably under circumstances which might conceivably reduce the crime to manslaughter.
But the death of Mdlle. Rochaïd is a mystery indeed. It may be questioned whether a problem of this kind, so elaborately complicated and so apparently insoluble, has ever before presented itself in real life. At first sight it might seem to have many analogies, and to admit of a very simple solution. But closer inspection will very soon disabuse us of any such idea, and the further we proceed in inquiry the greater becomes our perplexity. Its early history is the history of the Merstham case over again. A scandalously perfunctory inquiry—-uncomplicated, however, with ridiculous theories—-closing prematurely in an open verdict, would, but for the efforts of the Daily Mail, have relegated this tragedy to the limbo of undistinguished and unremembered casualties. Once again we owe to the Press what we have a right to expect, but too often expect in vain, from official responsibility—-the proper investigation of matters which are of the deepest concern to the security of society and the revision of misdirection.
As this extraordinary case is still under investigation, and as Mdlle. Rochaïd's friends and family do not yet despair of a solution of the mystery, it may be well to state the facts, disengaging them from the fictions which have already entangled them. Our readers may rest satisfied that no pains have been spared to secure exact accuracy in all the details here given. I am indebted for some, and for the verification of others, to the Vicomte de la Chapelle, and to personal interviews with almost every one, whether officials or private persons, who have been able of their own experience to assist inquiry.
Mdlle. Lily Yolande Marie Rochaïd was the only daughter of Count Rochaïd, Sans Souci, Dinard. She was eighteen years of age, and was a remarkably bright, healthy, and intelligent girl. For some two years and a half she had lived in England at Princethorpe Priory, the well-known Roman Catholic seminary, about eight miles from Rugby, where she was being educated. To Princethorpe and to her teachers and fellow pupils there she was warmly, indeed passionately, attached, regarding the Prioress as a second mother and the Priory as her home. Her Christmas holidays she spent in France, partly in Paris and partly with her father at Dinard. Her letters show that she was longing to return to Princethorpe, and early in the third week in January she was joyfully beginning to prepare for her journey. But before leaving Dinard she took rather a strange step. She visited the cemetery with a servant and selected a plot of ground, saying she would like to be buried there, "with plenty of white flowers," supposing "anything happened." She also requested an intimate friend to see that masses were said for her in the event of "anything happening," and further emphasising this request, instructed a servant to take some of her money from the bank for that purpose "should it be necessary." But this need not be supposed to have any particular significance, as she had recently been greatly depressed at the Hilda disaster, witnessing the funerals of the bodies washed up near Dinard and attending one of them. On Wednesday, January 24, she left St. Malo for Southampton, her father accompanying her to the boat. While on the boat she made the acquaintance of Miss Scally, a London lady, who was a hospital nurse and who had been staying at Dinard. "We were," said Miss Scally, "chatting together during the passage and she talked to me about Princethorpe and her friends there, and how she was looking forward to seeing them. She seemed to me a bright, level-headed girl, in no way worried, distressed, or agitated. The only fear she expressed was that the boat would be late and that she would miss the 12.15 train from Euston, and to this she referred more than once." It may be explained that if she missed that train she would lose the connection with the train which would take her from Rugby to Marton, and this, unless she chose to wait at Rugby or drive some nine miles, would involve a long wait of more than two hours at Euston. Miss Scally did not travel in the same carriage with her when the train left Southampton for Waterloo, but on arriving at that station, a minute or two before twelve o'clock, she saw her on the platform getting her luggage together preparatory to calling a cab. "We shook hands," said Miss Scally, "and said good-bye. She was in good spirits and gave no indication of agitation." A cab was procured and she was driven straight to Euston. The cabman who drove her says that "she was in good spirits and seemed a bright, businesslike girl used to travelling alone." On arriving at Euston she found she had missed the 12.15 train, and at once sent a telegram to Princethorpe. It was open to her to leave for Rugby either by the 1.30 or the 2 o'clock train, and the fact that she did not do so, though accounted for by the broken connection with Marton, is perhaps a little strange, especially when read in the light of what followed. It was certainly open to her to take a conveyance from Rugby to Princethorpe, as she had done, it seems, before, and Father Hand, who is the rector of Princethorpe, in his evidence expressed surprise that she had not taken this step. That her preference for a long wait at Euston was deliberate is proved by her telegram requesting that a cab should meet her at Marton at 5.20.
Everything which can throw light on her movements and on her state of mind between her arrival at Euston and her departure is obviously of the utmost importance. And these facts are certain. The remarkably firm and steady handwriting displayed in the original draft of the telegram despatched from Euston shows no sign of excitement or agitation, and in a young woman of Mdlle. Rochaïd's sensitive and somewhat neurotic temperament, this could not have failed to express itself had any such emotions possessed her. At Euston at least six persons, beside the cabman who drove her from Waterloo, had communication with her, five of whom have proffered evidence: the porter who conveyed her luggage from the cab, the porter who conveyed it to the train, the interpreter who conversed in French with her.the woman in charge of the ladies' waiting-room, the ticket-collector, and an unknown person who had a long conversation with her on the platform not long before the train started. With the exception of the ticket-collector, all these witnesses, except, of course, the unknown person who has not come forward, agree in saying that they noticed nothing unusual in her manner or expression. But this is obviously of no significance one way or the other. Porters confine themselves to their duties and are not observant; with the interpreter she exchanged only a few sentences. In one of the ladies' waiting-rooms she sat, indeed, for upwards of an hour, but her intercourse with the attendant began and ended with a request that she might wash her hands and brush her hair; and as the attendant happens to be a very old woman utterly indifferent to everything but her ordinary functions, it is not surprising that all she can communicate is of a negative kind. But two witnesses are able to communicate what may possibly contribute importantly to the solution of the mystery. Not very long before the train started a porter saw her in conversation with a lady, of whose appearance and dress he can give a very exact description. He watched them for some moments, and then, having to attend to his duties, he lost sight of them. What became of the unknown lady he does not know, but he is inclined to think she must have entered the train in which Mdlle. Rochaïd travelled, as he did not see her on the platform when the train left the station. Every effort has been made to trace and induce this lady to come forward, but without success. It is this circumstance which makes the evidence of the other witness, the ticket collector, who saw and talked with Mdlle. Rochaïd immediately after her interview with the stranger, so significant. I may preface what follows by observing that the testimony of this witness is the more valuable because of the proof he gave collaterally of the deliberation and accuracy of his observation. He said that he noticed on the seat near Mdlle. Rochaïd a newspaper, and he believed, though he could not certainly say, that it was the Daily Mail. It came out at the inquest that a newspaper was on the seat beside her, and it was that particular paper. I will give his evidence exactly as he gave it to me.
Mdlle. Rochaïd was in such an excited and agitated state that I could not help noticing it. I had to ask her twice for her ticket, and after I had examined and clipped it, I had again to direct her attention to the fact that I was returning it. She had a crumpled newspaper on the seat beside her, as though she had crumpled it up. She asked at what stations the train stopped between Euston and Rugby, and how long it would be before it stopped, and what time it got in—-and I told her. When I closed the door, I stood a short way from the carriage on the platform; I noticed that she got up from her seat two or three times, and looked out of both the windows, but kept looking out of the window next the platform, up and down the platform, and as the train moved out of the station she was still looking up and down the platform.
We have thus ample warrant for assuming that when she arrived at Euston she was perfectly cheerful and collected, but that when she was there something occurred which disturbed and excited her, and till the lady who had the interview with her comes forward and explains we are justified in supposing that her excitement was occasioned by something which passed in that interview. Her nervous and anxious scrutiny of the platform seems to imply that she wished to ascertain whether this person was remaining behind or had entered the train. She was in.the first compartment, second-class, facing the engine of the carriage in which she travelled, next behind it was a luggage box, and behind that a first-class, and then a second class smoking compartment, and these made up the coach, which was numbered 1156. Her seat faced the engine and would, on the train leaning the station, look on to the six-foot way, being however next the platform at Euston, Northampton, and Rugby, so that the door out of which she fell on to the line was the door nearest to her when she left Euston. She was certainly alone when she left Euston, unless some passenger was concealed under the seat, which was physically possible, as the space upwards from the floor was 9 1/2 inches, but improbable in the highest degree. Whether any one got in at Willesden, the first stop, cannot be ascertained. At Bletchley, the next stop, as there was a great rush of passengers for Northampton, it is probable that more than one passenger entered the carriage. Whether she was alone between Northampton and Crick is the all important point. This only is known. The station-master at Northampton was on the platorra when the train came in, but neither he, the guard, nor any of the station officials noticed any young woman in a second-class carriage, nor was any one seen to enter such a compartment at that station. Three second-class tickets were issued for the train at Northampton, but the owners, if I am rightly informed, have been identified. Of one thing the station-master was quite certain, that no carriage door was open, but that all the handles were in place and secure when the train left the station, and this was corroborated by the guard. The train entered the Crick tunnel at its usual high speed at or about 4.40. At 4.47 it steamed into Rugby, wh«n it was observed that the door of a second-class compartment was swinging wide open. On the carriage being inspected a handbag bearing Mdlle. Rochaïd's initials and a newspaper were found on the seat. There was not the slightest indication of any struggle, not the slightest misplacement of the carpet or of the cushions, nor has subsequent minute scrutiny discovered anything indicative of disturbance. It must, however, be noted that the carriage was not retained, but, going on with the train, continued to be used for ordinary traffic, so that it was not submitted to expert examination till all traces of any slight derangement would naturally have disappeared.
About six o'clock that evening the body of Mdlle. Rochaïd was found in Crick Tunnel. It was lying with the head against the rail of the up-line about 190 yards from the Northampton end. It had evidently been dragged about thirty yards from where it had first struck the ground, for at that distance from it there was a distinct indentation in the loose granite and rubble of the permanent way, while displaced stones marked the course of its terrible career. If she had been murdered robbery had not been the motive, for the money in her two purses was intact, and of her ornaments nothing was missing but one small and not valuable bracelet and a silver medal attached to a thin gold chain recording her admission to a religious guild. Nor, as the post-mortem inspection showed, had she been criminally assaulted. There were also—-such at least is the medical report—-no indications that she had received any injuries except those which could be accounted for by her fall from the train. It must, however, be remembered, and we may add regretted, that the autopsy was not conducted by an expert. All we have to rely on for evidence on which so much depended, is the report of a general practitioner casually called in and quite unassisted. Two things seem clear. So mutilated was the poorgirl's body,so torn, dishevelled,and soiled her clothes that had she had any struggle with an assailant its effects would have been indistinguishable from the effects resulting from the dragging by the train; and, secondly, as the front part of the body was comparatively free from injuries it seems highly probable that she must have been precipitated backwards on to the line.
Such is the evidence on which any attempted solution of this problem must be based: obviously all that can be deduced from it is the determination of the direction in which the balance of probability inclines. Mdlle. Rochaïd's terrible death must have been the result either of accident or of panic terror inducing her to fling herself on to the line, or of suicide deliberate or impulsive, or finally of murder. Accident, may surely be eliminated. We have it on evidence which cannot be questioned that when the train left Northampton all the doors of the carriages were closed and the door handles in place and secure. When the train arrived at Rugby the glass window of the carriage in which she travelled was up, therefore she could not have fallen out in her attempt to raise it on entering the tunnel, for the act could not possibly have been completed on her fall. Mr. G. R. Sims's ingenious theory that she fell on the line in attempting to disengage her dress, on a portion of which a passenger alighting at Northampton had closed the door, is surely equally improbable. In the first place, she was wearing a tight-fitting body [?] which closely compressed her dress, and so made such an accident practically impossible. In the second place, supposing some part of it the dress had got loose and become impeded, is it likely that she would have travelled some fifteen miles before she discovered the impediment. Had she opened the door, too, less than an inch—-which can be done in that tunnel, or in any tunnel, with perfect ease and safety—-it would have sufficed for her purpose, and we have it on evidence that she was used to travelling and remarkably self-possessed. It may therefore be questioned whether she would have taken such a step at all, if she took it we may be quite sure she would, knowing the peril she incurred, have been very cautious. The handle of the door, which is a double-locking safety handle, and somewhat stiff, too, in its working, could not by any;conceivable accident have got turned. The door must have been deliberately opened. That she jumped out through the panic caused by a sudden attack of claustrophobia is an hypothesis absolutely untenable, and by the general testimony of all who knew her most intimately too absurd to be discussed. Of such a disease, though constantly in positions where, had it existed, it could not have failed to disclose itself, she never showed the slightest symptom.
But the theory that she may have been alarmed by some one in the carriage is by no means improbable. Such a person might have entered at any stage in her journey, as there is no evidence that she was alone after leaving Willesden. If this was the case, the person responsible for what l«d to her death must have left the carriage between Crick Tunnel and Rugby. This was certainly possible, but the possibility is limited. The speed at which the train was running would have effectually prevented escape till the platform at Rugby was reached. The inspector who saw the opened door, as soon as the train came in, is confident no one left the carriage at any part of the platform within his view, and that no one could have left it by the off door, because an engine, with its driver and stoker, was standing on the off-rails, and there were other men about who must have seen any one descend. If such an escape was made, it must have been at the extreme end of the platform, when the train would have slackened speed to about six miles an hour. A person so descending would have been a conspicuous object, dusk though it was, and could not, moreover, unless hew as an expert, have done so without great peril of serious injury, for he must have left from the footboard, a distance 4 1/2 feet from the ground. It may, therefore, be assumed that if the carriage was left after Crick Tunnel was passed, it could only have been left by some one who was accustomed to such exploits, or who had studied the art of them, possibly by the foot-board into another compartment of the coach—-those next and next but one to Mile. Rochaïd were empty-—possibly on to the extreme end of the platform, or even before that was reached. A man who is accustomed to such things can easily alight from a train when it is running from twelve to fourteen miles an hour; a man who is not would incur peril if its speed exceeded four. On the whole, then, we may feel pretty sure that the person, if such person there was, who wished to escape from the consequences of having occasioned Mdlle. Rochaïd's death was no ordinary passenger.
In all these hypotheses we have not probability even in a low degree. But the evidence and presumption pointing to the probability of suicide or of murder by some one who was either used to, or who had studied the art of, leaping from a train travelling from six to eight miles an hour are much stronger, and certainly justify very serious consideration.
It is quite clear that Mdlle. Rochaïd was of a highly sensitive, keenly susceptible, impulsive, and if "self-possessed" yet of somewhat neurotic temperament. There is ample testimony that radiant and sunny as her disposition was, she suffered at times from great depression. Her action in the cemetery at Dinard a few days before her death, and her requests to one of her friends and to her servant, though capable of an explanation which may have no significance in this direction, are at least indicative of a certain morbidness. That she left Euston in a very agitated state cannot be doubted. Her passionate attachment to Princethorpe and to her teachers and fellow pupils there, in whom her strongest affections were evidently centred, seem to have inspired her with a passionate, haunting sense of regret that the time was not far off when she must leave them, and she was leaving them, it seems, at midsummer. If all this was in her mind, if, moreover, there was anything associated with the memories of the place, disturbing or distressing, it would be then, as she was nearing it, that, impulse would be most tyrannous. She must have known that tunnel well, for she had frequently passed through it, and had self-destruction occurred to her it was there that it would have been likely to have suggested itself. But to all this there is much, and very much, to oppose. There is no evidence at all that the idea of suicide had ever been in her mind, or that she had ever had any reason for entertaining it. She was not merely religious, but enthusiastically religious, and her religion must have taught her that such an act would be a sin of the greatest magnitude. There is, it is true, no accounting for the turn which impulsive natures, under a great stress of excitement, will take; even religion will be perverted into the justification of what it most condemns. But the balance of probability surely inclines, and inclines very decidedly, towards the theory which involves none of the difficulties involved in the theory of suicide. We have only to assume that her death was caused by a person who could descend from a train travelling from twelve to fourteen, or even from six to eight miles an hour, or who could, when it was in mid career, make his way along the footboard from one carriage to another. The man may have been a homicidal maniac, or he may have been a sane man with some definite object in making away with her. That many such miscreants as the first are at large is certain, and the police know it.
But putting aside the theory of homicidal mania, it surely ought to be ascertained whether any one had anything to gain by the death of Mdlle. RochaId. And no pains ought to be spared to identify the stranger who conversed with her at Euston, and whose conversation appears so greatly to have upset her. It is certainly within the limits of possibility that that person was a man in disguise, and that that person entering the train got access in the course of the journey to the compartment in which she travelled, and was her murderer. That if probabilities be weighed and balanced, probability points, and points decidedly, to murder, can admit of no question.
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That was the first case (it was not on a train like the second one), but that first case is like the matter that wrecked the reputation of Sir Basil Thompson, the Scotland Yard official who was also involved in a "peculiar" situation in Hyde Park, but with a prostitute (he claimed it was innocent, that he was there next to her to hear a speech by a left wing agitator, but he acted stupidly with the police). Thompson's Case was about the same time - but later after I wrote the article I was told that Hyde Park got a reputation at the time as too good a spot to pick up prostitutes, and that many other upper class types were caught in the same situation as Thompson (and Money) were.Originally posted by Rosella View PostLeave a comment:
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^ Jeff, I thought Sir Leo Money's big case, (before 1933 when he pestered a spinster on a train when it was going through a tunnel) was the Irene Savidge affair. That occurred in Hyde Park, when police pounced on both of them getting close and personal
. They were acquitted due to Sir Leo's status in the community but Irene accused the police of innuendo and improper questioning after Scotland Yard later conducted an internal inquiry on the arrest!Leave a comment:
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I forgot to mention what this is referring to. In 1896 there had been a prominent burglary murder case called "The Muswell Hill Murder". It is a classic "cut-throat" homicide because there are two burglars (Henry Fowler and Albert Milsom) who are involved in the killing of a retired, elderly engineer named Henry Smith who lived in a house at Muswell Hill in the London area, and who turned on each other when on trial.Originally posted by TradeName View Post
Smith was supposed to have a great deal of cash in his house, and was afraid of burglars so had set up a gun-trap against them. This was located by the burglars and unset. They entered the house, found and bound up the elderly Smith (probably threatened him) and then while Fowler searched the house for the loot, Milsom watched Smith. Exactly what happened has never been cleared up but Smith was killed, and as two sets of knives were near the body both men were legally equally guilty. Fowler was a remarkably strong individual, and somehow while I can see him threatening the old man I am inclined to think the weakling Milsom was more likely to go to far in hurting Smith - as a way of shoring up his own self-esteem. Anyway the two were hiding from the police for weeks (the police tracing them through a toy lamp that was found at the scene, belonging to Milsom's nephew, which was used as a flashlight). They were tracked down to a traveling circus, and (despite a ferocious fight by Fowler) subdued by the constables. Milsom decided to confess and blame the crime on Fowler, but he failed to approach the police with some offer to assist in return for reducing the punishment for himself to prison. Fowler, of course, denied his involvement. During the trial, there was a break in the courtroom procedures, and both men were in the same defendant's box. Fowler (who had stood up to stretch) demonstrated his fury and attacked Milsom (a really unique event in the history of the Old Bailey, where the trial was held). He almost killed him when a number of police came and dragged them apart, and then dragged Fowler out of court. At the end of the trial Fowler returned to hear the verdict, and started laughing when the jury returned a verdict of guilty of murder in the first degree for both defendants. While a flustered Milsom sputtered about a non-existant deal, Fowler mimicked him. Then, before the death sentence was passed, the Justice asked if there was anything either could say. Fowler said he wanted to confess to a pair of burglaries he committed that two other men were in prison for. This was checked out, but it turned out that Fowler had lied in court about this and was just trying to help two friends in jail. However, I have always held that it was another proof that Henry Fowler had a better side, and actually stood up for his friends, and one more reason to believe he was not the one who hurt and killed Henry Smith. Milsom seems more likely. However both were jointly sentenced to death.
It was a busy 1896 season for the Old Bailey. Another exciting burglary murder occurred at the time, as well as the trial of the notorious baby farmer murderer Amelia Dyer. But it is the burglary murder that is important as it is referred to here. An elderly Jewish man and his HOUSEKEEPER (not wife as the quote implies) were murdered in Whitechapel in this burglary. The Jewish man was a Mr. John Goodman LEVY (not "MYER") and the housekeeper Sarah Gale. Apparently the noise of the attack in the house drew a large crowd, led by Mr. Levy's relative - a Mrs. Lawson who had been invited to dinner - and this brought the police there. They broke in the door and found both Levy and Mrs. Gale dead and realized from noise on the second floor the killer was still inside. Both ran in and found the killer had fled to the roof. One of the constables was Frederick Wensley, later to be among the fabled "Big Four" in the early 20th Century at Scotland Yard. Wensley followed the killer to the roof and fought with him before restraining him until help came. The killer was an ex-convict named William Seaman, who had heard that Mr. Levy was rich (there is some suspicions he was involved in receiving stolen goods, but this was never made fully certain).
Seaman was tried, convicted and sentenced to be hanged too.
Supposedly, at the execution of the three men (a rarity - it was rare to execute more than two people at one time, and more usual to execute one only), the authorities and executioner decided to separate Milsom and Fowler by placing Seaman in the middle. Seaman had been deeply interested in the trial of the Muswell Hill Burglars, probably to see how the court was going to react, and read accounts in the newspapers. When the three were put on the scaffold, Milsom went first, then Seaman, and Fowler was brought out, and supposedly Fowler growled, "Is Milsom here?" and looked around Seaman and saw Milsom. Fowler said he was satisfied. Here we now enter legendary execution stories. Seaman looking on either side of him is reported to have said, "First time I've ever been a bloody peace-maker!". Just before the bags were placed over the heads of the men they were asked if they had anything further to say. Fowler - possibly amused by Seaman's statement, smiled and said, "First time I've ever been a bloody penitent!!" A moment later the trap was sprung. It is curious that in the situation one burglar murdered two people and two were tried and convicted of murdering one. Same number of victims and perpetrators.
As for Mrs. Dyer, the authorities decided not to make it a foursome (a super rarity) for the executioner. Instead she was taken for a ride in a prison van during the execution so she would not be aware of what happened, and returned to the prison, where she would be hanged by herself the next day.
JeffLast edited by Mayerling; 10-25-2015, 04:45 AM.Leave a comment:
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A lot of meat on the plate this time:
First, I was curious about that tour of Whitechapel and who were on it. The ones I recognized were Arthur Conan Doyle, John Churton Collins, Coroner S. Ingleby Oddie, Dr. Herbert Crosse of Norwich, but I don't know "Laurie" and "Dr. Gordon Browne", who sounds like a local man in the East End.
Second. There was a list of names associated with "Our Society" [the exclusive "Murder Club" in London that meets at least once a year - in November by the way] The list gave these names as members (in the article you placed above):
1) Collins
2) Arthur Lambton (a minor criminal historian whom I once cited in a small "Ripper article) who was illegitimate, and crusaded to improve the legal rights of illegitimate offspring. He was a friend of Arthur Conan Doyle.
3) Dr. Herbert Crosse (it was my having a tiny pamphlet on "Our Society that I learned his first name).
4) Ingleby Oddie
5) H. B. Irving (Henry B. Irving, the son of Sir Henry Irving the actor) - he was an actor himself, and a criminal historian as well.
6) J. B. Atlay - a criminal historian known for a book on famous criminal trials.
7) Conan Doyle
8) E. W. Hornung (Doyle's brother-in-law, and creator of the character "Raffles")
9) Laurence Irving (I believe this is Henry B. Irving's younger brother, a better regarded actor, who - tragically enough - drowned with his wife in May 1914 in the sinking of the Empress of Ireland in the St. Laurence River).
10) William Le Queux - popular sensational novelist of the first three decades of the 20th Century. You may recall his spreading the rumor that the Ripper was an agent sent to London to disgrace Scotland Yard by the Tsarist Okhrana in 1888.
11) A.E.W. Mason - popular adventure writer in period 1890 - 1925 or so.
12) George R. Sims - newspaper reporter, dramatist, and person who somehow helped spread the Melville Macnaughten theory about Druitt in a way calculated by Macnaughten (in one recent theory) to confuse people trying to find out who the unnamed suspect (in 1905) was.
13) Arthur Diosy - the member who believed "Black Magic" was involved in the basis for the murders.
I read the two items through about twice - but I see problems regarding some of Collins overly enthusiastic rationales. In his article about police incompetence in Britain as opposed to French police competence (which overlooks how many times the French police messed up investigations too), he lists fifteen or so cases going back to the Whitechapel Murders that he felt were horribly botched. He obviously counts to much on grand jury or coroner court findings that are emphatically solid. I once wrote a full essay on the West Ham murders, and looked into that of Amelia Jeffs in 1890. Nobody was formerly charged in the case - score one half point for Collins. What he ignored was the police narrowed the chain of suspects to a trio of men (grandfather, father, son) who were connected to the newly built house that the body of Ms Jeffs was found in. The father figure was a well-to-do local building contractor, and his father (the grandfather) was his "night watchman" and his son was known to have been acquainted with Ms Jeffs. All three basically clammed up or said they could not remember details of the crime's night, so that the inquest ended with an "open verdict". But everyone who read or watched it realized that the police had found the guilty party in one of those three "gentlemen" even if they could not prove it. I suspect afterwards they were is a social hell in West Ham for the rest of their lives. That, by the way, is not a legal punishment, but it is a punishment.
He also mentions the Elizabeth Camps' train murder of 1897, and while also unsolved it did show the police really trying to find the killer, but not being able to get conclusive proof against one of four possible suspects.
Collins was an enthusiast (just read that article on the Mersham Tunnel killing - he seems to shout in it after awhile). This was a known problem he had in his career as a pedagogue regarding English literature - especially Elizabethan literature. When a book was published by the writer Edmund Gosse about the subject, Collins did not critique it but ripped into it with such hostility that many people questioned Collins' sanity.
This temper problem or unbalance may explain why, despite his considerable gifts, Collins never got the ultimate recognition by the leaders of the intellectual community (like those of Oxford and Cambridge University) he always hungered for. They did not care about his actual findings and scholarship due to his obnoxious personality.
Having said all that I have to tell you that his article on Mary Sophia Money's murder was informative regarding certain details about it. I knew she had one brother - the one who in 1911 would go bonkers completely and kill his children by one "wife" and that "wife" and shoot his other wife, wounding her, then set fire to their home - how he got both wives into one home I can't imagine - before killing himself. Now I learn there were two brothers. This is news to me. Also the names of the two men Mary had some relations with were given to me.
But Collins may have touched to closely to sensitive matters in this article. He certainly made a strong case for homicide. But he was unaware (in 1905) of what was going on here.
For one thing there is a resemblance (besides in place and victim) between the murders of Camp and Money. Both were women killed (by different means) on trains, and in both cases there was a chance the killer had a mustache (a removable one, that is). Eight years separate the two crimes - did anyone ever think of linking them?
Secondly Collins' demise in September 1908 was an odd one. He was attracted to the recent "Luard" Tragedy in Kent, and was visiting Ightham to look at the bungalow where Caroline Luard was killed on August 24, 1908). He was on a medication that supposedly could cause him to get drowsy, and apparently fell into a large puddle and drowned. Now accidents do happen, but boy this one is certainly odd. Still the inquest at his death held it was a misadventure with medication that did this.
I bring that up because of an odd secondary chain of events here. Recent scholarship on the murder of Caroline Luard has looked at a future convicted killer as her murderer: one John Alexander Dickman. Dickman, who had a murky career as a bookie, but may have been involved in a variety of crimes, was suspected of killing a moneylender named Herman Cohen in 1909 (another unsolved case) and then finally being caught in killing one John Nisbet, a clerk and currier of wages, on a train in the north of England near Morpeth. That was on March 18, 1910. Tried in a case that still bothers many commentators (guilt is provable beyond a shadow of a doubt, but so close that it merits comparison to the later case of wife murder against William Herbert Wallace in 1931). This time there was no reprieve, and it has been suggested that the Judge, prosecutor, and Home Secretary (Winston Churchill) knew the evidence against Dickman was weak, but ignored it because they knew he killed Mrs. Luard - who was a friend of theirs' as was her husband, Major General Charles Luard, who committed suicide a month after the murder because of the pressure of losing his wife and of being blamed in a poison pen campaign against him.
If Dickman did kill Mrs. Luard, and was thus partially to blame for her husband's suicide, and the money lender Cohen, and Nisbet - if we accept these could he have been guilty of earlier killings? Like one or two on a train, but involving women, especially that of Miss Money. If so, and if he was aware of Collins' deep interest in that crime, and now saw him investigatin (in the fall of 1908) Mrs. Luard's death, isn't it just possible a killer like Dickman would have decided he had to silence Collins too. That accident just looks too convenient to be true.
So instead of being responsible for one, two, or three murders, Dickman may have at least two others on his side of the balance sheet: Mary Money and John Churton Collins. I won't stretch it back to Elizabeth Camp, though it is tempting to do so.
To be balanced I should add this. In the teens to the 1940s there was a leading economist in Britain who was frequently used by the government and associated with the Fabian socialists: Sir Leo Chiozzy Money. Originally from Italy he changed his name in Britain, and made a success for himself. But twice he had legal problems regarding ladies on trains, and the second time (around 1933) led to serious legal repercussions. I have sometimes wondered if there was any possible connection between him and Mary Money and her family as well.
JeffLeave a comment:
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Interesting, Jeff. J. Churton Collins, who went on that tour of the JtR sites with Conan Doyle, wrote a piece on the Mary Money case in which he seems to imply that a particular person was the murderer.
Life and Memoirs of John Churton Collins (London: John Lane,1912), Pages 198-203, link
written and compiled by his son L. C. Collins
[from Churton Collins' memoirs]
Yesterday, Wednesday, April [1905], I went
round all the scenes and sites of the Whitechapel
Murders (the nine, as well as where the trunk was
found) with Conan Doyle, Laurie, Ingleby Oddie,
& Dr Crosse of Norwich. Dr Gordon Browne was
our escort and two detectives also escorted us. In
addition to these sites we visited Petticoat Lane,
the Jews' fowl-slaughtering houses, a Dosshouse,
and the like places. Dr Gordon Browne, who was
concerned in all of them, seeing most of the corpses
just after they were murdered, conducting post-
mortems, etc., told me these particulars: . . .
He was inclined to think that he (the murderer)
was or had been a medical student, as he un-
doubtedly had a knowledge of human anatomy,
but that he was also a butcher, as the mutilations
slashing the nose, etc., were butchers' cuts.
There was absolutely no foundation, in his
opinion, for the theory that he was a homicidal
maniac doctor, whose body was found in the
Thames, tho' that is the theory at Scotland Yard,
because (1) the last murder, possibly the last two
murders, were committed after the body was
found, he was strongly of opinion that the last
two were Ripper murders; (2) the murderer was
never seen near enough for any trustworthy
identification, and Dr G. Browne was absolutely of
opinion that they still remain an unsolved mystery.
He thought the murderer suffered from a sort of
homicidal satyriasis that it was sexual perversion.
The trunk found in Finbury St. in September 1889
which he inspected, had the same incision as was
characteristic of the Ripper murders, but it may
have been an imitation, and it may have been one
of the dynasty of murders he could not say.
Conan Doyle seemed very much interested, particu-
larly in the Petticoat Lane part of the expedition,
and laughed when I said " Caliban would have
turned up his nose at this." We also saw the
house where the Myers were murdered by the man
who was executed when Fowler & Milsom were.
The inscription about the Jews, " The Jewes are
the men that will not be blamed for nothing," was
probably genuine, as a portion of the Apron
covered with blood, etc., on which the fiend had
wiped his hands after the Mitre Square murder was
found on the ground just beneath it.
[back to L.C. Collins:]
Perhaps his most active investigations were
concerned with that affair which horrified the
country in September 1905, and which is known
as the Merstham Tunnel Mystery. It will be
remembered that Miss Mary Money was found
dead in Merstham Tunnel, with every indication
of having been murdered, by being thrown out
of a railway carriage, after having been gagged
with a muffler, which had been forced into her
mouth. A careful and close scrutiny of the
evidence and other particulars elicited from him
an article with an analysis of the crime, and with
a criticism on the methods employed in dealing
with it, particularly dwelling on the scant en-
couragement shown to witnesses to come forward,
and the trying and unnecessary ordeals they are
obliged to undergo. The article was published
in the National Review, Dec. 1905.
It is interesting in connection with this case
to note, that his final independent investigations
morally convinced him of the perpetrator's identity,
a conviction which was shared by Scotland Yard.
Though the mystery is still unsolved, and though
an arrest has never been made, it is perhaps like
many other mysteries, not so much a case in which
Scotland Yard is completely baffled as to the
miscreant's identity, as baffled in their attempts
to obtain legally admissible evidence sufficient to
bring the crime home to the guilty person.
In 1903 he helped to found a certain club,
which was called "Our Society" but known as
"The Murder Club." Here we are treading on
delicate ground, for the Club is still in existence,
is most exclusive, and its secrets as well as its
aims and scope, are jealously guarded by its
members. I am therefore bound down not to
disclose any information which I may possess.
I am indebted to the courtesy of the Hon.
Secretary of the Club, Mr Arthur Lambton, for
the following exclusive and only information
to be obtained concerning it:
One of the chief interests of the Professor
in his later years was a certain dining club which
he had helped to found. This club consisted of
men who were keenly interested in the study
of criminology (a word by the way he detested).
From starting with five other members, Dr
Herbert Crosse, and Messrs S. Ingleby Oddie, J. B.
Atlay, H. B. Irving, and A. Lambton, it became
so successful that within two or three years the
waiting list had assumed alarming proportions.
The aim of this society was ludicrously mis-
represented by a journalist who had never been
present at any of its gatherings, and his paragraphs
were widely copied in the Press. As for obvious
reasons strictest secrecy was the cardinal principle
of the club no details can be supplied, but it
is violating no confidence to say that Professor
Churton Collins was the mainstay as he was
the life and soul of the meetings. Here his
marvellous memory, his power of dramatic
narration, and his desperate earnestness found
full scope, and his rare social gifts made him always
the centre of entranced listeners when the con-
versation wandered as wander it would into
paths divergent from the main object of the club.
Some of the firmest friendships contracted during
his latter years were formed at the dinner table
of " Our Society." And any member was always
a most welcome and fortunate guest in his house.
He was ever the most hospitable of men.
Other members of this Club include Sir A. Conan
Doyle, Mr E. W. Hornung, Mr Laurence Irving, Mr
William Le Queux, Mr A. E. W. Mason, Mr Max
Pemberton, and Mr George R. Sims.
----end
The National Review, Volume 46, December, 1905, Pages 656-671
THE MERSTHAM TUNNEL MYSTERY AND ITS LESSONS
by J. Churton Collins
In the ghastly and appalling crime which has sent a thrill of horror through the whole country, we have another illustration of the perfect impunity with which these atrocities can be perpetrated almost before our eyes, in the very teeth of probable detection and without any particular precautions on the part of the criminal. All, indeed, that such miscreants need are audacity, cunning, and nerve ; for the rest they can trust to their rights as citizens, to the law, and to the temper of their fellow-countrymen. Unless the evidence almost establishes their guilt and justifies their arrest they cannot even be properly cross-questioned, they have absolute immunity from being submitted to anything which would elicit, directly or indirectly, what might compromise them. With respect to the law, its whole machinery seems to have been expressly designed to afford the suspected every loophole for escape and for throwing every obstacle in the way of those who would bring him to account. The utmost laxity is allowed to statements which tend to the exculpation of the suspected person, perjury itself being winked at, but nothing can be more stringent than the conditions imposed on the expression of anything which may throw light on his possible guilt. Every one knows how often in these cases the scale is turned by some apparently trifling incident, or piece of evidence which cross-examination or voluntary deposition may elicit or afford. But such cross-examination is unallowable: from such voluntary deposition the suspected person is warned to refrain, and it will be at his, or her peril, that any deponent proffers information derogatory to the character of any one not under arrest. Even when conviction is possible it cannot be obtained by the slightest deviation from the ordinary methods. It is notorious that the perpetrator of one of the most brutal murders which occurred some years ago is now at large, Simply because it was forbidden to present him, in the slight disguise assumed by him at the time of his crime, to witnesses, who only needed to see him again in that disguise, positively to identify him. I am not calling in question the wisdom and equity of a refusal to assist justice artificially, I am only citing this as an instance of the nice scrupulousness of our criminal legislation. But it is not his rights and the law only which shield the perpetrator of serious crimes, and particularly the murderer. In the temper of his countrymen he has every protection.
The history of these cases is always the same. Anything which causes a sensation is welcome, the more atrocious the outrage the keener is general curiosity. For a few days the newspapers and the public are in a fever, the crisis arriving at the first inquest, to be exacerbated at each adjournment. A hubbub of distorted truth, pure fictions, and conflicting opinions and theories excite and entertain the public, and perplex all who have reason to be seriously interested. Sensational newspapers, driving a roaring trade, push their investigations into every nook and cranny of inquiry, and, publishing everything, practically take the case out of the hands of its responsible investigators and involve it in inextricable labyrinths of fact and fiction. Meanwhile all or most of the efforts of the police being practically stultified and the criminal fully informed of every step which is being taken, the whole thing gradually resolves itself into jangle and muddle. The only things which cannot get a hearing, or at least make any impression, are the facts which are of real significance. The only people who will not volunteer information are those who, by a few words of explanation, could materially assist inquiry by preventing it following false scents. The one thing which in this country is regarded by every citizen with superstitious reverence, and guarded with jealous vigilance, is the machinery of the law; the one thing of which every one seems to be frightened, and which no one will assist, is the furtherance of justice. Nor are these the only circumstances favourable to the serious criminal. The sensation excited by his act scarcely survives the verdict; in a few days it has been superseded by some other; in a few weeks it is all but forgotten; in a month or two it has passed quietly, like so many of its predecessors, into oblivion. Scotland Yard may indeed have a longer memory, but even there the present has much stronger claims than the past.
But in addition to these impediments in the way of the efficient discharge of what is surely the chief duty of our police,—-the protection of life by the detection and punishment of the highest crime known to the law,—-there are serious defects, inherent in the very constitution of our present system of criminal investigation, to which it is the object of this paper to direct, with all the emphasis possible, serious attention. For, indeed, it is high time to do so, and an opportune occasion. Nothing, in truth, could illustrate more strikingly these defects than the history of the recent deplorable event at Merstham,a crime which, as I purpose to show, has been most imperfectly and incompetently investigated, and which, unless public attention is again directed to it, will, in all probability, be allowed fruitlessly to go the way of so many others.
If, owing simply to indifference or mismanagement, it is allowed to swell the list of crimes on which no light can be thrown, every English citizen will have just reason for surprise, and indignant surprise; and, unless much more has been done than, to all appearance, has been done, equal reason to doubt the competence, if not of English detectives, of their methods and system. Let it be remembered that this case brings to a climax a long series of failures, in which success may certainly have been sheer impossibility, and where, consequently, no blame can fairly be attached to any one; but the record is an astounding one. To go no further than the last fifteen years. Passing by the Whitechapel murders, which, including the “Ripper” murders and those not classed by experts under that category, number nine, most of which were perpetrated within a few yards of public thoroughfares and within a stone's throw of local police stations, we find, with two or three exceptions, in the metropolitan area alone no fewer than seventeen of these ghastly trophies of criminal impunity. They may be briefly specified.
On February 14,1890, one Amelia ]effs,was found murdeed in an empty house in the Portway,opposite West Ham Park. On May 14 of the same year, a woman named Waknell, at a house in Water Lane, Brixton. In June, 1902, an unidentified dismembered body was found in Salamanca Place, Lambeth, near the Albert Embankment. In May, 1903, Sarah Dinah Noel was shot in her kitchen; and in December of the same year, Kate Dungay was murdered at Lambridge House Farm, Henley-on-Thames. In April, 1894, John Robert Wells was murdered on Barnes Common; in December, Martin, the night watchman at the Café Royal in Regent Street. In I897 there were no less than six of these murders: Miss Camp, in a South-Western train between Putney and Wandsworth, in February; Mrs. Saunders, at Caterham Street, Peckham, and an unidentified man found naked and bound with ropes in the Thames, near Wapping, in September, William james Barret, a boy, at Upton Park; Emma Johnson at Windsor, and Mrs. T. Smith also at Windsor. In 1898 there were three: in January, Thomas Webb, a dairyman, murdered at East Finchley; in August, Mrs. Tyler, at Kidbrook Park Road, Blackheath ; in December, Mary ]ane Voller, a poor child, at Barking. In all we have no fewer than twenty-six of these atrocities, swelling, if we go back another dozen years, a still more formidable list, in all of which the police have had to confess themselves entirely baffled.
Is the present atrocity to go the same way? Is the activity of the police to flag, as suddenly as the subsidence of the hysterical excitement of the press and the public, the moment the verdict put the closure on the daily budgets of sensational details. Unhappily this is too often the case, and the consequence is that investigation either ceases, or is pursued languidly, just when it ought to become most energetic. Let us devoutly hope that so ill a precedent will not be followed now, for it is no trifle which is at stake. The police have an opportunity of retrieving what is worth retrieving, the scandal of most derogatory failure.
No one who has carefully reviewed the evidence in the present case could doubt that if it is properly sifted and weighed it would be found to furnish clues any one of which might lead to important results. At present, if I am rightly informed, investigation has taken an entirely false direction, in consequence of the acceptance, in authorative quarters, of the theory that suicide and not murder is the solution of the mystery. This, to begin with, is demonstrably untenable, the evidence is absolutely conclusive against such an hypothesis. Let us review the facts.
Mary Sophia Money, an unmarried young woman, twenty-one years of age, belonging to a respectable family, was employed as book-keeper at the dairy, and in the service of, Messrs. Bridger, 245, Lavender Hill, Battersea. By the testimony of her intimate daily companion and colleague, who had known her for sixteen months, and who had for a few days shared the same bedroom with her, of her two brothers, and of others who were familiarly acquainted with her, she was a bright, contented and happy girl, prosperous, for she had money in the bank, and “without a care." She had two suitors, and though she had not made up her mind, was looking forward to marriage. In character she was prudent, reserved, and composed, and a remarkably good business woman. On Sunday, September 24th last, she was with her companion and colleague, Miss Hone, from 1 o’clock pm. till “close on seven." During the afternoon she was, for a long time, consulting a railway timetable, and though “she sate [sic] by herself and was unusually quiet," was “as bright as ever." About 7 o'clock she left the house saying she “was going for a little walk and would not be long." When she left she was very lightly clad, in black voile with silk lining, wearing no jacket, round her neck a white scarf of fine silk gauze, 3 feet broad and 8 1/2 feet long; in her hand she carried a small black knitted purse which, by its bulged appearance, “seemed to be full," and it was wrapped up in a small white handkerchief. lt appeared afterwards that she had left her latchkey behind, a thing she had never done before, as, when she went out, she always took it with her. "About 7 o’clock" she called at a sweet-shop, 2, Station Approach, Clapham Junction, kept by a Miss Frances Golding, a young woman well-known to her, as she used often to call there on Sundays and Wednesdays. She bought six pennyworth of chocolates in a small white cardboard box; she was in very good spirits, joking about the chocolates, and she stayed gossiping from 5 to 7 minutes, saying that “she was going to Victoria." At 7.21, or rather just after, a ticket-collector at Clapham Junction Station, Edward Packer, saw a young woman whom he knew well by sight, as he had often seen her before, standing near the book-stall on No. 6 platform. Thinking she may have been going to Kingston, and should, therefore, have been on No. 3, he asked her where she was going, and she said to Victoria. On being shown her photograph afterwards, be instantly recognised her. One need have no hesitation in including Packer's evidence among the facts of the case, for his memory for faces is proverbial among his colleagues at Clapham. No one could doubt his evidence, and he is absolutely positive about the identity of the portrait and the young woman seen by him. His surprise at seeing the face he knew so well when Miss Money confronted him, for, when he spoke to her she was standing with her back to him, prevented him taking notice of her dress.
From this moment, so far as is at present certainly known, she was never seen alive. At a quarter to eleven on the same night, William Peacock, a sub-inspector in the service of the S.E.C. and D. Railway entered the Merstham tunnel on that railway, and when he had proceeded 400 yards from the Merstham end he found the dead, and terribly mutilated, body of a woman lying between the outside rail,—the head being close to the rail but not on it,—-and the wall on the down side, with the head towards Merstham. On the wall of the tunnel he noticed “a mark 8 feet high, like a graze, and it looked to me as if something had hit the wall and bounded along. . . . I noticed no blood on the wall. The top of the mark was about the height of the window of the carriage." About 11.10, Police-constable Carr proceeded, with two other constables, into the tunnel, where :—
1 saw the body of a woman lying. I noticed the marks on the wall as if a person had come out ofa carriage and hit the wall. The mark on the wall was a foot wide. I found a Silk scarf, a portion was jammed in the top of the head and the mouth. I pulled out ten or twelve inches from the mouth. It was jammed lightly in the mouth . . . The difficulty in getting the scarf out of the mouth was perhaps due to it being hung up behind the teeth, and not due to it being jammed in the mouth. I am quite sure I pulled out ten or twelve inches. The scarf was right in the mouth beyond the teeth.*
[Note:] *By the courtesy of the Coroner l have had access to the Depositions, from which I have drawn for all my facts except those elicited by cross-examination.
This evidence was supplemented by Police-constable Burt, who saw “eight to ten inches of a scarf taken from the mouth of the deceased."
Before going on to the other evidence given at the inquest, it may be well to settle by what trains, and by what trains only, the deceased must have been conveyed into the tunnel. On that night four trains passed through: two South-Eastern trains, the 8.48 and the 9.33 from Charing Cross and London Bridge, calling at East Croydon; two London, Brighton and South Coast trains, one leaving Victoria at 8 o'clock, and arriving at Redhill at 8.58, another leaving Victoria at 9.10, and arriving at Redhill at 9.59. By one of those trains the deceased must have travelled.
It would be impossible, and, it is not necessary, to review all the evidence given at the inquest and its adjournments. I will, therefore, deal only with that which throws light on the possibility of (a) the death being the result of accident; (b) suicide; (c) murder; (d) in support of the theory presently to be suggested.
And first, how did she leave the carriage? Through the open carriage door or through the window? The first was a physical impossibility. The evidence of Police-Superintendent Amos Warren, who was employed to take exact measurements, proves this:
The height of carriage door from floor to window-sill is 31 inches, the total width of the door is 27 inches. The space between the tunnel wall and carriage door is 20 inches at top and 25 at bottom. This only permitted the door being opened about 11 inches. There is only a space of 8 inches at the spot where the body was found for the door to open. I think it is impossible that a body could be got through.
Assuming either that Miss Money or her assailant opened the door, the draught of the wind in the tunnel would have blown it violently back, and had it even grazed the wall, as a hair's-breadth eight inches would have necessitated, the door would either have been smashed to pieces or injured in such a way that it could have been easily identified afterwards. But all the evidence combines to show that she was either thrown, or threw herself, headfirst or backwards, through the window. First come the marks on the tunnel wall—-for which see the evidence of Peacock and Carr, supplemented by that of Dr. Willcox, who observes of the gloves on the hands of the deceased: “There is not a thick coating of soot which would have been the case had the tunnel wall been wiped by the hands. . . . I am of opinion that the first mark on the tunnel was caused by the trunk of the body." Where that mark was, as well as its characteristics, we have already seen. What, therefore, we are not only justified in deducing from this but compelled to deduce, is, that the unfortunate woman either flung herself head-first or backwards Out of the window, or—-and the balance of probability inclines to this—-that some one flung her backwards out of it, as she would scarcely have been likely to throw herself backwards. That she went out backwards was the decided opinion of Dr. Willcox, who, on being asked whether it was his opinion that deceased left the train backwards, replied “Yes.”
And now for the light which the evidence throws on other points. The medical evidence points conclusively to murder. Let us take first Dr. Halkeyt Crickett's:
There was a bruise on the upper part of the left arm and inside the forearm. Also a bruise on front part of upper part of right arm, and also another bruise on the inner side of forearm. Several bruises on right hand and wrists as if done by her being gripped. . . . There was a reddish mark on the right side of the lower lip close to the mouth. These injuries are consistent with something having been pushed into the mouth.
Equally emphatic is the evidence of Dr. Willcox, the expert from the Home Office. After describing the frightful mutilation caused partly by the collision and rebound from the walls of the tunnel and partly by the train and its wheels, he proceeds:
There were three very distinct bruises around the mouth. The bruises were small, about half-an-inch in diameter, slightly raised on the surface and pale red in colour. One was on the upper lip a little to the right of the middle line (in front of right canine tooth). One was close to the angle of the mouth on the right side. One was on the under lip to the right of the middle line, this was distinct but less pronounced than the corresponding bruise on the upper lip.
After describing other bruises which may have been caused by the fall from the train, he continues:
I attach great importance to the slight but distinct bruises of a pale red or bluish colour present on the right arm and hand, also to the broken nail on the right forefinger; to the bruise under the right clavicle; to the scratches on the right shoulder and the bruise below, and also to the bruises round the month. These have not the appearance of being produced by a fall from the train. They are such as might have been caused by firm pressure, e.g. the grip of the fingers in a struggle with some person, or received as injuries in self-defence in a struggle. They were probably produced a very short time before death. It is significant that the above injuries should be present on the right hand and arm and around the mouth, while the bruises of this character are absent from the left hand and arm. it is usual to find more bruising on the right side in cases of a struggle, where the right hand is used in self~defence.
To one fact revealed by Dr. Willcox's autopsy, particular attention may be at once directed; its significance will be apparent presently. In the stomach were detected pieces of boiled potatoes, also muscle fibres which would be derived from flesh in the food, leading to the probability that a meal had been taken within three hours of death. To the evidence also given by a signalman at the Purley Oaks signal-box much importance, for the same reason, attaches. As the 9.13 train from London Bridge, travelling at about thirty miles an hour, passed his box, he noticed that a man and woman appeared to be struggling in a first~class compartment,
the man standing up and trying to force the woman on the seat. The woman was at the side of the compartment near the signal, not near the communication cord. The woman was about five feet four or five, stoutly built. I think she had on a black dress, I think the hat was black. She appeared to be wearing something white, which was hanging down from the back of her hat. The man had on a bowler hat and was broad.
There is one part of the conduct of this case to which no exception can be taken,and that is the inquiry into the deceased woman's relations with male friends known to be on terms of intimacy with her. Two came forward and proffered evidence: Mr. Henry Bellchambers, an old lover, who had given her an engagement ring, and Mr. Arthur Bridger, a married man, who was the manager of the dairy in which she was employed. On the day of her death Mr. Bellchambers was at Berkhampstead with a friend, but Mr. Arthur Bridger was with her at the dairy till half-past two. Naturally, therefore, he was somewhat closely questioned. Asked to give an account of his movements on that day, he said that about 2.30 he went home, dined, finished his dinner about 3.45, smoked and chatted with his wife, then lay on the bed till 6.45 or 7, and after tea. went for a stroll with his wife on the road by the side of Clapham Common. Returning home abOut half-past nine, he did not leave the house again that night, and went to bed about 10.30. As he had been absolutely alone with his wife since his return home at noon, they having no children, and there being no servant or visitor in the house, and as in the course of their evening stroll they had met no one whom they knew, it was not possible, even had it been needed, for this witness to call any other testimony to his presence at home, at the time Miss Money met her death, than the testimony of Mrs. Bridger. Her deposition was simple and conclusive: “I am the wife of Mr. Arthur Bridger. My husband was with me from a quarter to three on the 24th of September for the whole day." Mr. Bridger’s replies to questions as to his relations with the deceased woman were equally satisfactory, though for obvious reasons they could not be corroborated. On this point he was cross-examined, presumably on account of certain statements made by Miss Money's brother, Mr. George Money. It may be interesting and, indeed, fair to Mr. Bridger, with whose position any fair-minded person must sympathise, to cite this part of the cross-examination at length. Mr. George Money having stated that his sister had told him, on one of her visits to his house at Watford, that on one occasion Mr. Bridger had come to Waterloo with her, and subsequently to Euston, and that on another occasion she had gone with him and one of her brothers to a theatre, Mr. Bridger replied that there was not a word of truth in any of these assertions.
" Have you on any occasion taken the deceased to the theatre?"—-"No, never.” “You did not accompany her with a brother at any time?”-—“No.” “Have you ever taken her out at all?”-—“No, never.” “Have you ever had any conversation with her about taking a new business and making her backkeeper?"—“ No.” “Do you know anything about her movements in the evenings?”-—“No.” “Have you ever seen her going out with any one?"-— “No. I saw her the day she was at Windsor. I passed her on my bicycle but did not speak to her." . . . “It has been stated that on September 17 deceased was going to Windsor, and that you went with her to Clapham Junction, took a second-class ticket for her, and were going to meet her on her return."—-“No, that is not true. I saw her in the office but I did not leave till an hour after her." . . . “ On the 24th, the day the deceased was found in the tunnel, were you wearing a moustache?"-—“ No, I never wore a moustache in my life." “Do you deny taking Miss Money to Euston in a cab? "—-“ Yes, absolutely.”
With equal precision and emphasis Mr. Bridger denied that he had ever made Miss Money presents.
“Have you made the deceased any present.”—“ No, never in my life.” “If it is stated that you gave her a scarf or the hat-pins she was wearing, would that be incorrect?”—-“ Quite incorrect."
On this point, as well as on the theatre incident, Mrs. Arthur Bridger was equally emphatic.
"Do you know that your husband has made anypresents to the deceased?"—- “I am sure he has not made presents to any one. If he made any presents I should get them. I am sure he has not been to the theatre with Miss Money. Whenever he went he took me."
Indeed nothing can be clearer than that by the best of testimony Mr. Arthur Bridger must be a model husband. And another statement of Mrs. Bridger's deserves very particular record and emphasis; let all husbands who fall short of being models hear it, and, in Mr. Sapsea's phrase, “retire with a blush." “ Has your husband ever been up in London and come back late?"—-“NEVER.”
It may be added that Mr. Bridger’s explanation of the deceased woman's remarkably minute but inexact knowledge of his money affairs must have been obtained by her prying privately into the account books in the oflice.
Where certainty is impossible probability can be our only guide, and it is not diflicult to construct the probable history of this crime. By the general consent of most competent deponents Miss Money was a bright and lively, but remarkably reserved, young woman, resenting all inquiries as to what she had been doing or where she had been when she went out in her leisure hours, and not taking even her daily and nightly companion into her confidence. On the afternoon of the day of her death she is “sitting apart, unusually quiet," busily consulting a railway time-table as the evening approached, for, before, she had been reading a novel. As she had been living for some fifteen months close to Clapham junction, and must therefore have been perfectly acquainted with the frequent train service to Victoria, she could hardly have been consulting it for information about those trains. At or near seven o'clock, when it was getting dark, she says that she is “going for a little walk and would not be long." She is very lightly clad, but most attractively dressed, and she does what she has never done before, she leaves her latch-key behind. For this one of three reasons may plausibly be assigned: either it was her intention to return very shortly; or, not intending to return till late, she wished to refer to it as proof that but for some accident she would have returned shortly: or, lastly, it was through inadvertency, very natural if her mind was preoccupied with the consciousness that she was going to have some interview on which much depended or which might involve serious results; and the fact that during the afternoon she was unusually quiet perhaps inclines the scale in favour of this last explanation. As no telegram or letter is in evidence probability points to the fact that, if she was going to meet any one, the meeting had been arranged by word of mouth. Calling at the sweet-shop, where some communication which did not come out in evidence may, possibly, have been awaiting her—-for at such places arrangements are commonly made for the reception of such communications—-she tells her friend there that she is going to Victoria. At or just after 7.21 she is seen at Clapham junction. The problem now is to trace the trains which would convey her to Merstham Tunnel, and among these the train to which probability points most. The first train leaving Clapham Junction for Victoria after 7.21, the time she was seen there, is the 7.32, the next after that the 7.48. She would have no reason for loitering about Clapham ]unction till 7.48, and she most probably therefore travelled by the 7.32. This would bring her to Victoria in about ten minutes. The first train leaving Victoria for Redhill and passing through Merstham Tunnel is the 8 o'clock, arriving at Redhill at 8.58. She plainly did not travel by this train, for two pieces of evidence are conclusive against this, the fact that the body was still warm when it was found, and the evidence of the food in the stomach. The next train leaving Victoria for Merstham is the 9.10, catching the 9.13 from London Bridge at East Croydon, and this is the train to which all the evidence points. And here we must pause to deal with one of the most important points in the case. The evidence afforded by the contents of the stomach shows that the deceased must have had a meal of which potatoes and meat formed a part, about three hours before death took place. Now, assuming that she travelled by the train to which all the evidence points, namely, the 9.10 from Victoria, which is the same as the 9.13 from London Bridge, she died at 9.50. As she dined at home shortly after 2.30 on chicken, potatoes and vegetable marrow, this places it beyond doubt that she must have had a substantial meal after leaving Clapham ]unction. And thus is afforded one of the most important clues in the case. It is, of course, possible that she may have left Victoria in a street-conveyance, by the Underground Railway, or by the train leaving Victoria for London Bridge at 8.15 and bringing her there at 8.49. In any case, whether she left by the 9.13 from London Bridge, or by the 9.10 from Victoria, she would have had ample time for such a meal. It follows, then, that important evidence may be obtained from the restaurants in the neighbourhood of either of these localities. She, as well as her assailant, whom it is an outrage on all probability to suppose was a stranger to her, probably knew that by meeting at Victoria or London Bridge at or about 8 o'clock at the one place, or 8.49 at the other, they would have ample time for a comfortable meal. By taking the 9-10 frm the one place, or the 9.13 from the other, they would have nineteen minutes uninterrupted run from South Croydon.
And now let us see how important evidence pieces in with this. If the man travelling with Miss Money meditated any serious assault he would naturally proceed to it immediately after the train, beginning its nineteen minutes’ run to Redhill, left South Croydon. And this is what the signalman at Purley Oaks box no doubt saw. The greatest importance attaches to this witness's evidence, which the Deputy-Coroner received with something very like a sneer, observing that he seems to have seen a great deal in a very short time, and on which other expert authorities also have cast discredit. That the man could plainly see from his box what he asserts he did see in a lighted carriage passing it at thirty miles an hour is certain, as any one standing in that box and seeing a train pass can prove for himself. This witness was indeed probably too cautious in assertion, it would be possible to discern minuter details than he has specified, and no one with competent knowledge could for one moment doubt the truth of what he said. Next we have the evidence of the guard, Barton, which may or may not throw light on the identity of Miss Money and her companion. His deposition, neither in its details nor in the way in which it was tendered, inspires much confidence in his accuracy, and he may quite well have confounded these particular travellers with others. It was to the effect that at East Croydon he was talking to a man on the platform outside a first-class carriage, number 508, attached to the 9.13 train from London Bridge.
At East Croydon I opened the door of a leading compartment of a first-class carriage. I noticed aman and a woman get into the next compartment to the one I opened. I noticed the woman was in dark clothes wiih a long muslin-looking thing hanging down the body. I thought she was plump, but not a stout woman. I noticed the man had a long face and thin chin. I should say he was about 5 feet 8 inches. I noticed them again at South Croydon, the girl was close to the man; ihe arm-rest had been pulled up. He looked to be a fairly powerful man. It occurred to me that they were not first-class passengers, and that they had taktn tickets for a certain purpose. At Redhill I did not notice whether the compartment was empty or not, but at Hayward’s Heath it was empty. There were a few people who left the train at Redhill from the back. I am under the impression that the man I saw at Redhill came from the first-class coach [by this the Witness meant, as he afterwards explained, the man whom he had seen at East and South Croydon.] The man whom I saw with the woman had a moustache.
Unfortunately this witness did not notice whether the woman whom he had seen at East and South Croydon was still in the train. What surely ought to be cleared up here is whether the carriage in which Barton saw the suspicious couple at East and South Croydon was the same carriage, or holding some such position in the composition of the train, as the carriage in which the signalman saw the struggle, and surely it ought not to be difficult to ascertain the identity of the couple if they were not Miss Money and her companion. It is surely their duty privately at least to come forward.
The motives for what took place in Merstham Tunnel can only be matter for speculation. What led to the terrible death of the poor girl may have been the insanity of baffled passion, or alarm and rage at threatened exposure, or apprehension that some violence which had caused insensibility had caused death, and the consequent swift determination to obviate the necessity for having to answer for what would at least have entailed social ruin by flinging the body out of the window and so to destroy all traces of any personal association with what had occurred. It is not unlikely that the murderer had from the first disguised his identity—-and that with the poor girl's privity—-to prevent the scandal which would have resulted from recognition on the part of acquaintances. Some slight facial alteration would have effectively accomplished this.
To sum up. The evidence places it beyond all doubt that this is not a case of suicide, but a case of murder, or it may be of manslaughter. Probability in a high degree warrants us in assuming that when Miss Money left her home she left it to keep an appointment already arranged, not by any communication in writing but by word of mouth; that she took some meal after leaving Clapham junction either at or near Victoria or at or near London Bridge; that a journey to Redhill by train was or had been arranged, that she and the man with whom she had an assignation might be alone together; that this particular journey was chosen because the man knew that there was a clear run of nineteen minutes between South Croydon and Redhill, and that there was a convenient return train that night from Redhill to Clapham junction, namely the 10.42; that for prudential reasons the man had from the first adopted some elementary disguise; that immediately after leaving South Croydon, before Purley Oaks signal-box was reached, he proceeded to take liberties with her; that she indignantly resisted him and struggled with him; that not long after entering Merstham Tunnel he threw or dropped her already insensible or half-insensible out of the window of the train; for what reason can only be conjectured, but can be plausibly conjectured; it might have been under circumstances which would reduce his crime to manslaughter, or which at least did not involve the crime of deliberate murder.
Whether the miscreant responsible for this affair will, like so many of his predecessors, add to the illustrations of the impunity with which such things can be done in England remains to be seen. But one thing is certain, the whole history of this case points not only to some serious deficiency in our methods of criminal investigation, both as it concerns the conduct of inquests and as it concerns the detective police, but to culpable indifference and laxity on the part of those who could, either as ordinary citizens, or as having official authority, assist justice. Had a crime analogous to this been committed on the Continent, its perpetrator could scarcely have escaped detection. It is inconceivable that Miss Money's murderer could have been any other than some man who was, and probably had long been, on intimate terms with her. It is inconceivable that the occasion on which she met her death was the only occasion on which she had been accompanied by him, and that there are not many persons who have seen them together.
in Germany or in France the names of these people, as'well as all the information gathered from them, would, within a month, have been in the note-books of the detectives. Again, it is all but certain that Miss Money, presumably with the man who travelled by train with her, must have taken the food, the remains of which was discovered in her body, at some restaurant. How would any attempt to obtain evidence so important fare? A detective would probably present himself with a couple of photographs which might or might not be such as would make identification easy. Assuming for a moment that they did, that the manager and one or two of his waiters, after glancing at them, knew perfectly well that those whom they represented were among their customers that night—-what inducement have they to come forward and assist justice? In a few hours the information would be in capitals on every newspaper placard in London and throughout England. A notoriety, anything but conducive in the long run to successful business, would attach itself to the place. The sort of customers who form an important factor in the clientele of such an establishment would probably quit it for some other retreat where they would be less open to observation. The manager, probably a foreigner, would know perfectly well that he would be exposed to all the inconveniences and, in the case of busy business people, ruinous loss of time to which those who come forward to assist justice are in this country exposed. If we consider what a service like this involves, we can scarcely wonder that a man, to whom time means what it often does mean, hesitates before committing himself. He has first to attend the inquest, with its possibly repeated adjournments, irrespective of distance; he has next to attend the magistrate’s court, with the risk again of adjournments; he has next to appear before the Grand ]ury; and, lastly, before the Petty jury at the Assizes. To suppose that an average restaurant proprietor, manager, or waiter would, after taking all these things into consideration, voluntarily come forward to support a criminal charge against one of his customers, is to suppose what is scarcely in human nature. The only chance of any such assistance from them would be its communication, in the strictest privacy, as evidence purely collateral and auxiliary, as the “indirection which finds directions out.” But the establishment of such relations between those who could assist and those who require assistance, the custom of this country makes impossible. And what applies to these possible witnesses applies to others, as some who have investigated this case know well. It would be interesting to learn why Miss Lane, whose acquaintance with the deceased had been most intimate, was not called, and why certain other witnesses who were called were not more closely questioned.
To the conduct of the inquest no serious exception could, on the whole, be taken, and one wishes to speak with all respect of the coroner; but what preceded that inquiry, as well as certain incidents in the progress of it, were not calculated to assist investigation. Nothing could be more reprehensible than the action of the constable, Carr, in dragging the scarf out of the mouth of the deceased, thus destroying a most important piece of evidence, and nothing more surprising than that he should not have been severely reprimanded for it. But amazing to relate, no comment whatever was made on it. Of a part with this was the fact that no medical man was called to inspect the body until three o'clock in the afternoon of the day following its discovery. But more to be regretted than anything is that the investigation of so serious a case should, in its earliest and most critical stage, have been entrusted wholly to provincial hands, and that eight days should have been suffered to elapse before assistance from London should have been enlisted. Surely it would be a most salutary regulation if it were provided that the moment a discovery indicating the probability of murder is made, Scotland Yard should at once be communicated with, and expert assistance immediately secured. It was surely an error of judgment on the part of the coroner to cast discredit on the evidence of a most competent and important witness, the signalman Yarnley, to sum up with so decided a bias in favour of the theory of suicide, thus practically ignoring the evidence of the two doctors, and, acquiescing too readily in Superintendent Brice's confession of impotence, prematurely to close the inquiry, when further adjournment was at least justified.
In conclusion, the chief defects of our system of criminal investigation, defects mainly responsible for the appalling list of unconvicted murderers, are the publicity of all its proceedings, the hard conditions imposed on those who could assist inquiry, the inadequacy, and frequently the incompetence, of the officials to whom at the earlier and most critical stages the conduct of these cases is entrusted, and above all the immunity of reasonably suspected persons from liability to such tests and scrutiny as they are submitted to on the Continent.
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Hi TradeName,Originally posted by TradeName View Post
Conan Doyle is one of those figures who always amazes me. He had a brain, like Mycroft's in the story, that stored tons of different information and linked them.
"The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans" is just such an example.
He may very well have been thinking of Poinsot and the other French railway victims, but there was a more recent case involved. "Bruce-Partington" was written and published in 1908. If you are familiar with the story, Cadogan West is supposed to have been killed from a train accident, though of an odd nature, and then Mycroft that he may have been involved with the stealing of missing plans for a vital part of a new, revolutionary submarine designed by one Bruce-Partington (or by two men with the names of Bruce and Partington, as it is never really explained). Holmes in his investigation finds that West was killed because he saw who was the guilty party, and he's murdered by the agent of a foreign power to silence him before the scheme can be completed. Holmes, of course, catches the foreign agent and the actual traitor.
I said "traitor" so memories of the Dreyfus Affair could have been in Doyle's mind - although there it was information (a pamphlet) about a new cannon.
In 1905 a young woman named Mary Money was killed in a railway accident similar to the Cadogan West situation, and it is this incident that is the current model for what Doyle was thinking of. You see, as the death of Miss Money was investigate it became more clear that it was not an accident but murder - that she had been attacked in her railway carriage and fell off the train (either pushed, or fell trying to flee by hanging onto the outside of the train). The murder was never solved, but in 1912 Mary Money's brother killed his wife and two children and seriously injured a second "wife" before committing suicide. It was wondered afterwards if he actually knew more about the murder of his sister than the police learned at the time of her death in 1905. However, in 1908, Conan Doyle would not have known about that later set of tragedies.
At the same time, British society had a crime scandal of it's own in 1908 - the theft of the Irish Crown Jewel/Regalia from Dublin Castle. This crime too was never solved, probably due to the fact that it became apparent to Scotland Yard that the people involved (including a member of the Royal Family) may have been involved together in a homosexual circle involving the jewelry's care. One of those involved was Frank Shackleton, a man of dubious business and social ethics, but one who had a unique society card: he was the younger brother of Sir Ernest Shackleton, the great Antarctic explorer, who only a year earlier (1907) returned having discovered the Beardsmore Glacier, and the route to the South Pole (the one that Scott and his doomed party followed in 1911-12). Shackleton was a wiser man than Robert Scott, and while he and his party got to 97 miles of the Pole he decided to turn back and live with his companions than die of starvation racing back from the Pole.
In the story, the submarine plans are used in replacement for the stolen jewels, and it turns out that the man in charge of the department where the plans were kept, Sir James Walters, has died of shame for their theft. Later it turns out Sir James' death is for a different type of shame - his brother, Colonel Valentine Walters is the actual traitor. Holmes finds this out and forces Walters to assist in capturing the foreign operative.
Now for a little additional twisting, "a la Conan Doyle". Whenever he uses actual cases in his stories' backgrounds there are wheels within wheels from his vast knowledge. Remember that the story's setting on a train (or urban railway) is due to the death of Miss Money in 1905. But there have been other crimes on trains. One, in 1875, rocked the Royal Family too. Prince Albert Victor ("Bertie", the future King Edward VII) had friends too, one of whom was Colonel Valentine Baker, brother of the notable African explorer (and discoverer of Lake Albert in Africa), Sir Samuel Baker. Colonel Baker had a distinguished military career, and it was expected he'd go further - but it did not turn out to be that way. He was in a railway train with a young woman, and apparently (we still aren't quite sure) physically assaulted her (for rape?) but was caught. It destroyed his career in England, and his relationship with the Prince of Wales. Baker did do what his wiser older brother did - he went to Africa and became the head of the Egyptian Army for the Khedive. Unfortunately, in 1883 (on his watch) the massacre of Hicks Pasha's large army by the Mahdi's forces in the Sudan began the events leading to Gordon's death at Khartoum and the long road to the Battle of Omdurman in 1898. By that time Valentine Baker was dead (in 1887).
Conan Doyle has twisted together the death of Mary Money, the Irish Crown Jewels Mystery and the involvement of a younger brother of a famous Polar Explorer, the 1875 scandal involving an attack on a young woman in a train by the younger brother of a famous African explorer, and created the story about the submarine plans. It is a remarkable feet, and I can only say I have seen other similar actions by Conan Doyle in other stories about Holmes. In a way they rang familiar bells to the Victorian/Edwardian public's memories, and help make the stories all the more real.
JeffLeave a comment:
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Here's a variant version of the paragraph about Guenee with a bit more detail.
Otago Daily Times, Issue 11507, 21 August 1899, Page 5
THE DREYFUS CASE.
[...]
Guenee, the private inquiry agent who helped tD seal the fate of Dreyfus, died the other day. After tho evidencel he gave before the Court of Cassation, was published he lost his occupation as a secret service agent of low degree. "I had occasion," says the Paris correspondent of the Daily News," to see Guenee in 1880. What amazed me was the proofs he gave me of the good terms he then stood on with the heads of the Russian Government and with some Russian diplomatists here. I have often thought of this when I heard that it was a Russian diplomatist who first set the Dreyfus affair going. He went to Russia to confer with members of tho third department on international steps to bo taken against the Nihilists. Gueuee corresponded direct with the Grand Duke Constantine. M. Lepere, a Minister of the Interior, told me that he caused their letters to bo examined in tho Cabinet Noir to see what game Guenee was playing. It is incredible that such an uneducated, vulgar fellow could have taken in any one who had experience of life. Colonel Picquart at once took his measure, and ceased to employ him, but Henry, Gonse, and De Boisdeffre continued their confidence. It was true that one Dreyfus used to gamble in clubs that Guenee frequented as a secret'police agent, but he was not Captain Dreyfus. Guenee pretended to believe that they were identical. The unhappy man dreaded the idea of appearing before the Rennes court-martial. His state of mind on this subject brought on cerebral congestion, from which, weakened as ho was by other complaints, there was no recovery.
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I wonder if there is any possibility that Conan Doyle had any of these cases in mind when he wrote the story of Cadogan West, "found dead" on the Underground.
The Strand Magazine, Volume 36, December, 1908, Pages 689-705
Reminiscences of Mr. Sherlock Holmes.
(From the 'Diaries of his friend—John H. Watson, MD.)
By ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE.
The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington PlansLeave a comment:
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I found a bit of corroboration for 3 of the names on the Dreyfus list.
New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 10854, 10 September 1898, Page 2
A FRENCH MYSTERY.
death of M. Chaulin-Serviniere
mention of Major D'Attel
West Coast Times , Issue 11372, 18 August 1899, Page 2
THE PRISONER IN FRANCE.
A DETECTIVE'S DEATH
GueneeLeave a comment:
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