Overview
Victorian Murders contains all the most shocking cases of murder from Victorian true-crime classic Mysteries of Police & Crime. The author, Major Arthur Griffiths (1838–1908), was Inspector of Her Majesty's Prisons and deputy governor of Millbank and Wormwood Scrubs, and was most famous for his association with the Whitechapel case. He knew many of the greatest detectives of the day, and, as a result, was the first to describe in print the three men – Kosminski, Ostrog and Druitt – that the police suspected of being 'Jack the Ripper'.
This fascinating volume also includes every other case of note in the annals of Victorian crime. From Elizabeth Brownrigg, who whipped her domestic into an early grave, to the horrific tale of Henry Wainwright, who attempted to transport the dismembered body of his lover across London, it is not for the faint of heart. Richly illustrated, including early sketches by Arthur Rackham, and filled with countless tales of poisoners, sadists, serial killers and cases that have never been solved, this is a book that no true-crime fan should be without.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780750961714 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | The History Press |
| Publication date: | 03/23/2010 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 352 |
| Sales rank: | 776,673 |
| File size: | 14 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
Read an Excerpt
Victorian Murders
Mysteries of Police and Crime
By Arthur Griffiths
The History Press
Copyright © 2014 The History PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7509-6171-4
CHAPTER 1
Part I.
A GENERAL SURVEY OF CRIME AND ITS DETECTION.
Crime Distinguished from Law-breaking — The General Liability to Crime — Preventive Agencies — Plan of the Work — Different Types of Murders and Robberies — Crime Developed by Civilisation — The Police the Shield and Buckler of Society — Difficulty of Disappearing under Modern Conditions — The Press an Aid to the Police: the Cases of Courvoisier, Müller, and Lefroy — The Importance of Small Clues —"Man Measurement" and Finger-Prints — Strong Scents as Clues — Victims of Blind Chance: the Cases of Troppmann and Peace — Superstitions of Criminals — Dogs and other Animals as Adjuncts to the Police — Australian Blacks as Trackers: Instances of their Almost Superhuman Skill — How Criminals give themselves Away: the Murder of M. Delahache, the Stepney Murder, and other Instances — Cases in which there is Strong but not Sufficient Evidence: the Great Coram Street and Burdell Murders: the Probable Identity of "Jack the Ripper" — Undiscovered Murders: the Rupprecht, Mary Rogers, Nathan, and other Cases: Similar Cases in India: the Burton Crescent Murder: the Murder of Lieutenant Roper — The Balance in Favour of the Police.
I. — THE CAUSES OF CRIME.
Crime is the transgression by individuals of rules made by the community. Wrongdoing may he either intentional or accidental — a wilful revolt against law, or a lapse through ignorance of it. Both are punishable by all codes alike, but the latter is not necessarily a crime. To constitute a really criminal act the offence must be wilful, perverse, malicious; the offender then becomes the general enemy, to be combated by all good citizens, through their chosen defenders, the police. This warfare has existed from the earliest times; it is in constant progress around us to-day, and it will continue to be waged until the advent of that Millennium in which there is to be no more evil passion to agitate mankind.
It may be said that society itself creates the crimes that most beset it. If the good things of life were more evenly distributed, if everyone had his rights, if there were no injustice, no oppression, there would be no attempts to readjust an unequal balance by violent or flagitious means. There is some force in this, but it is very far from covering the whole ground, and it cannot excuse many forms of crime. Crime, indeed, is the birthmark of humanity, a fatal inheritance known to the theologians as original sin. Crime, then, must be constantly present in the community, and every son of Adam may, under certain conditions, be drawn into it. To paraphrase a great saying, some achieve crime, some have it thrust upon them; but most of us (we may make the statement without subscribing to all the doctrines of the criminal anthropologists) are born to crime. The assertion is as old as the hills; it was echoed in the fervent cry of pious John Bradford when he pointed to the man led out to execution, "There goes John Bradford but for the grace of God!"
Criminals are manufactured both by social cross-purposes and by the domestic neglect which fosters the first fatal predisposition. "Assuredly external factors and circumstances count for much in the causation of crime," says Maudsley. The preventive agencies are all the more necessary where heredity emphasises the universal natural tendency. The taint of crime is all the more potent in those whose parentage is evil. The germ is far more likely to flourish into baleful vitality if planted by congenital depravity. This is constantly seen with the offspring of criminals. But it is equally certain that the poison may be eradicated, the evil stamped out, if better influences supervene betimes. Even the most ardent supporters of the theory of the "born criminal" admit that this, as some think, imaginary monster, although possessing all the fatal characteristics, does not necessarily commit crime. The bias may be checked; it may lie latent through life unless called into activity by certain unexpected conditions of time and chance. An ingenious refinement of the old adage, "Opportunity makes the thief," has been invented by an Italian scientist, Baron Garofalo, who declares that "opportunity only reveals the thief"; it does not create the predisposition, the latent thievish spirit.
However it may originate, there is still little doubt of the universality, the perennial activity of crime. We may accept the unpleasant fact without theorising further as to the genesis of crime. I propose in these pages to take criminals as I find them; to accept crime as an actual fact, and in its multiform manifestations; to deal with its commission, the motives that have caused it, the methods by which it has been perpetrated, the steps taken — sometimes extraordinarily ingenious and astute, sometimes foolishly forgetful and ineffective — to conceal the deed and throw the pursuers off the scent; on the other hand, I shall set forth in some detail the agencies employed for detection and exposure. The subject is comprehensive, the amount of material available is colossal, almost overwhelming.
Every country, civilised and uncivilised, the whole world at large in all ages, has been cursed with crime. To deal with but a fractional part of the evil deeds that have disgraced humanity would fill endless volumes; where "envy, hatred, and malice, and all uncharitableness" have so often impelled those of weak moral sense to yield to their criminal instincts, a full catalogue would be impossible. It must be remembered that crime is ever active in seeking new outlets, always keen to adopt new methods of execution; the ingenuity of criminals is infinite, their patient inventiveness is only equalled by their reckless audacity. They will take life without a moment's hesitation, and often for a miserably small gain; will prepare great coups a year or more in advance and wait still longer for the propitious moment to strike home; will employ address and great brain power, show fine resource in organisation, the faculty of leadership, and readiness to obey; will utilise much technical skill; will assume strange disguises and play many different parts, all in the prosecution of their nefarious schemes or in escaping penalties after the deed is done.
With material so abundant, so varied and complicated, it will be necessary to use some discretion, to follow certain clearly defined lines of choice. I propose in these pages to adopt the principle embodied in the title and to deal more particularly with the "mysteries" of crime and its incomplete, partial, or complete detection; with offences not immediately brought home to their perpetrators; offences prepared in secret, committed by offenders who have long remained perhaps entirely unknown, but who have sometimes met with their true deserts; offences that have in consequence exercised the ingenuity of pursuers, showing the highest development of the game of hide-and-seek, where the hunt is man, where one side fights for life and liberty, immunity from well-merited reprisals, the other is armed with authority to capture the human beast of prey. The flights and vicissitudes of criminals with the police at their heels make up a chronicle of moving, hair-breadth adventure unsurpassed by books of travel and sport.
Typical cases only can be taken, in number according to their relative interest and importance, but all more or less illustrating and embracing the hydra-headed varieties of crime. We shall see murders most foul, committed under the strangest conditions: brutal and ferocious attacks, followed by the most cold-blooded callousness in disposing of the evidences of the crime. In some cases a man will kill, as Garofalo puts it, "for money and possessions, to succeed to property, to be rid of one wife through hatred of her or to marry another, to remove an inconvenient witness, to avenge a wrong, to show his skill or his hatred and revolt against authority." This class of criminal was well exemplified by the French murderer Lacenaire, who boasted that he would kill a man as coolly as he would drink a glass of wine. They are the deliberate murderers, who kill of malice aforethought and in cold blood. There will be slow, secret poisonings, often producing confusion and difference of opinion among the most distinguished scientists; successful associations of thieves and rogues, with ledgers and bank balances, and regularly audited accounts; secret societies, some formed for purely flagitious ends, with commerce and capitalists for their quarry; others for alleged political purposes, but working with fire and sword, using the forces of anarchy and disorder against all established government.
The desire to acquire wealth and possessions easily, or at least without regular, honest exertion, has ever been a fruitful source of crime. The depredators, whose name is legion, the birds of prey ever on the alert to batten upon the property of others, have flourished always, in all ages and climes, often unchecked or with long impunity. Their methods have varied almost indefinitely with their surroundings and opportunities. Now they have merely used violence and brute force, singly or in associated numbers, by open attack on highway and byway, on road, river, railway, or deep sea; now they have got at their quarry by consummate patience and ingenuity, plotting, planning, undermining or overcoming the strongest safeguards, the most vigilant precautions. Robbery has been practised in every conceivable form: by piracy, the bold adventure of the sea-rover flying his black flag in the face of the world; by brigandage in new or distracted communities, imperfectly protected by the law; by daring outrage upon the travelling public, as in the case of highwaymen, bushrangers, "holders-up" of trains; by the forcible entry of premises or the breaking down of defences designed against attack — by burglary in banks and houses, "winning" through the iron walls of safes and strong-rooms, so as to reach the treasure within, whether gold or securities or precious stones; by robberies from the person, daring garrotte robberies, dexterous neat-handed pilfering, pocket-picking, counter-snatching; by insinuating approaches to simple-minded folk, and the astute, endlessly multiplied application of the time-honoured Confidence Trick.
Crime has been greatly developed by civilisation, by the numerous processes invented to add to the comforts and conveniences in the business of daily life. The adoption of a circulating medium was soon followed by the production of spurious money, the hundred and one devices for forging notes, manufacturing coin, and clipping, sweating, and misusing that made of precious metals. The extension of banks, of credit, of financial transactions on paper, has encouraged the trade of the forger and fabricator, whose misdeeds, aimed against monetary values of all kinds, cover an extraordinarily wide range. The gigantic accumulation no less than the general diffusion of wealth, with the variety of operations that accompany its profitable manipulation, has offered temptations irresistibly strong to evil- or weak-minded people, who seem to see chances of aggrandisement, or of escape from pressing embarrassments, with the strong hope always of replacing abstractions, rectifying defalcations, or altogether evading detection. Less criminal, perhaps, but not less reprehensible, than the deliberately planned colossal frauds of a Robson, a Redpath, or a Sadleir are the victims of adverse circumstances, the Strahans, Dean-Pauls, Fauntleroys, who succeeded to bankrupt businesses and sought to cover up insolvency with a fight, a losing fight, against misfortune, resorting to nefarious practices, wholesale forgery, absolute misappropriation, and unpardonable breaches of trust.
Between the "high flyers," the artists in crime, and the lesser fry, the rogues, swindlers, and fraudulent impostors, it is only a question of degree. These last-named, too, have in many instances swept up great gains. The class of adventurer is nearly limitless; it embraces many types, often original in character and in their criminal methods, clever knaves possessed of useful qualities — indeed, of natural gifts that might have led them to assured fortune had they but chosen the straight path and followed it patiently. We shall see with what infinite labour a scheme of imposture has been built up and maintained, how nearly impossible it was to combat the fraud, how readily the swindler will avail himself of the latest inventions, the telegraph and the telephone, of chemical appliances, of photography in counterfeiting signatures or preparing banknote plates, ere long, perchance, of the Röntgen rays. We shall find the most elaborate and cleverly designed attacks on great banking corporations, whether by open force or insidious methods of forgery and falsification, attacks upon the vast stores of valuables that luxury keeps at hand in jewellers' safes and shop fronts, and on the dressing-tables of great dames. Crime can always command talent, industry also, albeit laziness is ingrained in the criminal class. The desire to win wealth easily, to grow suddenly rich by appropriating the possessions or the earnings of others, is no doubt a strong incitement to crime; yet the depredator who will not work steadily at any honest occupation will give infinite time and pains to compass his criminal ends.
II. — THE HUNTERS AND THE HUNTED.
Society, weak, gullible, and defenceless, handicapped by a thousand conventions, would soon be devoured alive by its greedy parasites; but happily it has devised the shield and buckler of the police; not an entirely effective protector, perhaps, but earnest, devoted, un-hesitating in the performance of its duties. The finer achievements of eminent police officers are as striking as the exploits of the enemies they continually pursue. In the endless warfare success inclines now to this side, now to that; but the forces of law and order have generally the preponderance in the end. Infinite pains, unwearied patience, abounding wit, sharp-edged intuition, promptitude in seizing the vaguest shadow of a clue, unerring sagacity in clinging to it and following it up to the end — these qualities make constantly in favour of the police. The fugitive is often equally alert, no less gifted, no less astute: his crime has often been cleverly planned so as to leave few, if any, traces easily or immediately apparent, but he is constantly overmatched, and the game will in consequence go against him. Now and again, no doubt he is inexplicably stupid and shortsighted, and will run his head straight into the noose. Yet the hunters are not always free from the same fault; they will show blindness, will overrun their quarry, sometimes indeed open a door for escape.
In measuring the means and the comparative advantages of the opponents, of hunted and hunters, it is generally believed that the police have much the best of it. The machinery, the organisation of modern life, favours the pursuers. The world's "shrinkage," the facilities for travel, the narrowing of neutral ground, of secure sanctuary for the fugitive, the universal, almost immediate, publicity that waits on startling crimes — all these are against the criminal. Electricity is his worst and bitterest foe, and next to it rank the post and the Press. Flight is checked by the wire, the first mail carries full particulars everywhere, both to the general public and to a ubiquitous international police, brimful of camaraderie and willing to help each other. It is not easy to disappear nowadays, although I have heard the contrary stoutly maintained. A well-known police officer once assured me that he could easily and effectually efface himself, given certain conditions, such as the possession of sufficient funds (not of a tainted origin that might draw down suspicion), or the knowledge of some honest wage-earning handicraft, or fluency in some foreign language, and, above all, a face and features not easily recognisable. Given any of these conditions, he declared he could hide himself completely in the East-End, or the Western Hebrides, or South America, or provincial France, or some Spanish mountain town. In proof of this he declared that he had lived for many months in an obscure French village, and, being well acquainted with French, passed quite unknown, while watching for someone; and he strengthened his argument by quoting the case of the perpetrator of a recent robbery of pearls, who baffled pursuit for months, and gave herself up voluntarily in the end.
On the other hand, it may be questioned whether this lady was altogether hidden, or whether she was so terribly "wanted" by the police. In any case, pursuit was not so keen as it would have been with more notorious criminals. Nor can the many well-established cases of men and women leading double lives be quoted in support of this view. Such people are not necessarily in request; there may be a secret reason for concealment, for dreading discovery, but it has generally been of a social, a domestic, not necessarily a criminal character. We have all heard of the crossing-sweeper who did so good a trade that he kept his brougham to bring him to business from a snug home at the other end of the town. A case was quoted in the American papers some years back where a merchant of large fortune traded under one name, and was widely known under it "down town," yet lived under another "up town," where he had a wife and large family. This remarkable dissembler kept up the fraud for more than half a century, and when he died his eldest son was fifty-one, the rest of his children were middle-aged, and none of them had the smallest idea of their father's wealth, or of his other existence. The case is not singular, moreover. Another on all fours, and even more romantic, was that of two youths with different names, walking side by side in the streets of New York, who saluted the same man as father; a gentleman with two distinct personalities.
(Continues...)
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Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,Part I. A GENERAL SURVEY OF CRIME AND ITS DETECTION.,
Part II. CAPTAINS OF CRIME.,
Part III. SOME MURDER MYSTERIES.,
Part IV. MORE MURDER MYSTERIES.,
Part V. THE POISONERS.,
Part VI. CRIMES OF CRUELTY.,
Copyright,