SCIENCE AND THE CRIMINAL

UNIFORM WITH THIS BOOK

HYPNOTISM AND SUGGESTION

By
Bernard Hollander, M.D.

“It is the work of a man of established reputation, who has devoted himself for years to the subject, and whose aim it is to tell what Hypnotism really is, what it can do, and to what conclusions it seems to point.”—Globe.

[Larger Image]

TRIAL OF CAROLINE RUDD

Frontispiece

SCIENCE AND
THE CRIMINAL

BY
C. AINSWORTH MITCHELL

BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1911

To
Mark Hanbury Beaufoy, Esq., J.P.
as
A Mark of Regard and Esteem

PREFACE

In the following pages I have endeavoured to give some account of the ways in which scientific discovery has been utilised in the struggle between society and the criminal.

I have tried to describe the principles upon which different kinds of scientific evidence are based, and at the same time to bring human interest into what would otherwise tend to be dry detail by giving an outline of trials in which such evidence has been given. It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to mention that in many of these illustrative trials the accused persons were proved innocent of the charges brought against them, and that although their cases were tried in the criminal courts the title of the book in no way applies to them.

For the accounts of the older trials I have drawn freely upon Cobbett’s State Trials, Paris and Fonblanque’s Medical Jurisprudence, and the first edition of Taylor’s Medical Jurisprudence, while I must also acknowledge my indebtedness to the Circumstantial Evidence of Mr. Justice Wills and the recent excellent lectures on Forensic Chemistry, by Mr. Jago.

In the later cases I have mainly relied upon contemporary accounts and upon my own impressions of some of the trials at which I have been present.

My best thanks are due to all those who have given me valuable and ungrudging assistance. In particular I would mention Major Richardson, who has kindly given me a photograph of one of his trained bloodhounds and has allowed me to quote the description of an actual man hunt with bloodhounds, from his book, War, Police, and Watch Dogs; and Mademoiselle Arlette Clary (and the Daily Mirror) who have supplied me with a photograph of a Paris police dog.

I am further indebted to the late Sir Francis Galton and his publishers, Messrs. Macmillan & Co., who gave me permission to reproduce illustrations from his book on Finger Prints; and to Mr. Thorne Baker and the Daily Mirror for photographs illustrating the use of telegraphy in transmitting portraits.

The excellent drawings of the hairs of different animals were made by my friend Mr. R. M. Prideaux, and are reproduced here by the kind permission of Messrs. Scott Greenwood & Co.

Finally, I would thank the proprietors of Knowledge and the Editor, Mr. Wilfred Mark Webb, for the loan of various blocks and for permitting me to make use of material from several articles of mine on handwriting, which have appeared in that journal.

C. A. M.

White Cottage,
Amersham Common,
Buckinghamshire.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Science and the Criminal

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

Conflict between the Law-maker and the Law-breaker—Illustrations of Deductive Reasoning in Criminal Cases—Scientific Evidence—Scientific Assistance for the Accused—Instances of Advantages of Conflict of Scientific Evidence—Scientific Partisanship.

In the constant state of warfare between the law-maker and the law-breaker, which began when mankind first organised itself into communities and has existed ever since, every new invention or practical application of scientific discovery has supplied each side with new weapons frequently of much greater precision.

The advantage thus conferred tends to be on the side of the law-maker but not invariably so; for in spite of all the facilities of investigation now available it is surprising how many crimes remain undetected, or how frequently in suspicious cases it is impossible to discover the truth. The law-breaker’s primitive weapon of natural cunning has thus often proved more than a match for all the weapons at the disposal, of his opponent.

There is much to be said, therefore, for the suggestion which has recently been put forward on many sides that a department specially trained for the work of criminal investigation should be created.

Under the present conditions the rank and file of the detective force, recruited as it is from the best of the uniformed policemen, contains many men of acute intellect and reasoning capacity, but it cannot be doubted but that in many cases their efficiency would have been enormously increased by a scientific training.

The present system somewhat recalls that under which doctors acquired their knowledge of medicine in the early part of last century. Their mistakes taught them what not to do, but in the meantime the patient sometimes died.

Methods of scientific reasoning so as to draw deductions from observed facts cannot be acquired by solitary night watches upon a “beat,” nor does the facility for breaking up a tangle in traffic which the constable acquires as the outcome of his daily duties, necessarily render him more capable of extricating from a mass of confused details the essential facts upon which stress should be laid.

In some of the unsolved mysteries that have occurred during the last few years the presence of a highly trained intellect at the first hour of the investigation might conceivably have led to the detection of the criminal. As a rule, it is only after the first examination is over and the case appears likely to be a difficult one, that the best brains of the department are brought to bear upon the facts, and it may then be too late for effective action.

It should be made possible for a man who possesses a facility for this type of work to join the criminal investigation department without having to go through the routine work of a police constable, which will probably add nothing to his powers of following up a clue; but, on the other hand, this period of probation should be occupied by practical training in scientific methods of working.

The present conditions both of payment and of status are not of the kind that will attract the highest type of brain to the work of criminal investigation, and yet there is no reason why it should not be made to offer the advantages of other branches of professional work.

An apt illustration of the use of acute observation and deduction in solving a mystery is afforded by the strange story of a shooting accident, that, according to a writer in one of the leading morning papers, took place many years ago.

A country gentleman was found lying dead upon a sofa, with the whole of the charge of a sporting gun in his body. The discharged gun was hanging in its usual place upon the wall, and there were no indications of any struggle having taken place. All the circumstances apparently pointed to the man having been murdered in his sleep, for it was impossible for him to have shot himself and have then replaced the gun upon the wall, and strong suspicion fell upon one of the servants in the house.

This man was arrested, and would probably have been convicted had it not been for the detective noticing that the dead man’s watch, which had been smashed by some of the shot, had been stopped early in the afternoon, and that at exactly the same moment the sun was focussed through a bottle of water that was standing upon the table in such a way that the ray fell upon the nipple of the gun upon the wall.

Accordingly he loaded the gun again, hung it in the same spot, and placed a dummy figure upon the sofa, and as soon as the sun’s rays passed through this unintended burning-glass and were focussed upon the gun, an explosion occurred and the contents were discharged into the figure.

The writer has been unable to trace the date of this occurrence, but even if it is not founded upon fact it is not impossible, for there are undoubtedly cases where papers have been set on fire by the rays of the sun being concentrated upon them, through a bottle of water.

An instance of the way in which one small fact may give conclusive proof that a crime has been committed is afforded by the trial of Swan and Jefferies in the early part of last century.

The prisoners, who were indoor servants, had committed a murder and then raised an alarm with the object of throwing the suspicion upon burglars, who they alleged had broken into the house. But an examination of the grass outside the house showed that although dew had fallen heavily through the night there were no indications of its having been disturbed by footsteps. This piece of circumstantial evidence led to their arrest, and they were subsequently convicted and executed.

Equally convincing were the clues that led to the arrest of Courvoisier in 1840, for the murder of Lord William Russell, who was then seventy-five years of age.

The prisoner had only been in the service of the murdered man for a short time. He stated that on the night before the murder he had left his master reading in bed, as was his frequent custom, and a fact in support of this was that the candle had burned down to the socket.

Early in the morning the housemaid found the silver plate scattered about the room, and various articles of value tied up in bundles, as though burglars had broken into the house and had been interrupted in their work.

She called Courvoisier, and he appeared almost immediately, fully dressed, and going into the room of Lord William Russell found him with his throat cut.

On a door were marks which indicated that it had been broken in by the supposed burglars, but closer examination showed that the damage had been done from the inside. In addition to this, any burglars entering the house through this door must have passed over a wall, and this was found to be thickly coated with dust which had not been disturbed.

For a long time no trace of the missing valuables were discovered, but finally after a thorough search of the premises, some of the money was found hidden behind the skirting in the pantry of the accused, while later on the stolen plate was discovered in the keeping of a man with whom Courvoisier had formerly lived.

Mainly on the circumstantial evidence of these facts the prisoner was convicted; afterwards he made a full confession of the crime.

Clever deductive reasoning was also shown in the following case, in which the author of a shooting outrage that occurred in 1831 at Ayr was discovered in a singular manner. Someone had maliciously fired a gun into a church, and had hoped to escape detection. It was noticed, however, that some of the bullets, after having passed through the windows, had left a mark upon the wall opposite. By drawing a straight line between these marks and the holes in the windows, and extending the line outside the church, the other end was found in a window on the other side of the street. Subsequently other proof was obtained that the gun had been fired from this window.

Numerous cases might also be quoted where the trained observation of a doctor has called attention to some slight point which would otherwise have been overlooked, but which has furnished the clue to the detection of a crime.

In the year 1806 a man named Blight was shot with a pistol at Deptford by someone unknown, and died from the wound. Sir Astley Cooper, who was called in to attend to the victim, carefully noted the relationship of the body to other objects in the room, and from the position of the wound concluded that the shot had been fired by a left-handed person. This inference drew suspicion upon a gentleman named Patch who was the only left-handed person who had been seen with Mr. Blight. He was a close personal friend of the latter, and no one had dreamed of suspecting him of the crime. The results of further inquiries proved that this man had fired the shot, and after his conviction he confessed that he had been guilty of the murder.

The fact that a weapon is tightly held in the hand of a person who has been shot is strong presumptive evidence that it is a case of suicide, since it is improbable that the hand of a dead man could subsequently be made to grasp a pistol.

There is a remarkable case on record, however, in which the fact that a pistol was found clenched in the hand of a dead man was at first regarded as evidence of a murder. A son of the deceased, who had slept in the same room was accused of having killed him and of then placing the discharged pistol in his hand to give the suggestion of suicide. Experiments were made in which the hand holding the pistol was lifted into the position in which it must have been held if it had been a case of suicide, and in each instance the hand, when allowed to fall, did not retain the pistol. For the defence medical evidence was given that the spasmodic contraction of the muscles after death would account for the pistol being still clenched in the hand, while the inability of the hand to grasp it afterwards did not prove anything. Evidence as to the presence of a motive was given, but the scientific evidence was regarded as decisive and the prisoner was discharged.

The question whether a person who has apparently committed suicide could possibly have made use of the degree of force to which circumstances pointed has frequently arisen.

The most notable instance of the kind was in reference to the Earl of Essex who was found dead in the Tower in July, 1683, his throat having been cut. A razor was lying by his side with its blade notched, and public opinion was strongly divided as to whether he had committed suicide or had been murdered. The medical men who supported the former view explained the notches upon the razor blade as the result of its having been drawn backwards and forwards across the neck bone, although for a suicide to have done this would have been an impossibility.

Occasions have arisen where a chemical expert has been asked to state whether a gun or pistol found lying near a body has or has not been recently discharged.

Even in the case of firearms that had been loaded with black powder no very definite answer can usually be given to this question. Taylor suggested that the presence of potassium sulphide (formed from the powder) adhering to the barrel would indicate that the gun had recently been fired, whereas after a short time this sulphide would become oxidised, and no longer give the reactions of a sulphide. After a longer time traces of iron oxide formed from the iron of the barrel might be expected.

It would not be safe to lay stress upon conclusions based upon such data as these, and at best they could only afford corroborative evidence.

An amusing instance within the present writer’s experience affords another example of the way in which a trifling point being overlooked may be strong presumptive evidence of attempted fraud. A family of the name of, say, Abendessig, effected an insurance against burglary with a company which may be described as the Safeguard Assurance Co.

It was not long before they were the unhappy victims of a burglary in which Miss Abendessig lost several valuable pieces of jewellery including a watch, a diamond ring, and several brooches.

In proof of her claim she produced receipts from the jeweller from whom she stated she had bought these articles, the total value of which was given at £150.

There were three receipts in all, dated at intervals of two or three months, the first being made out to Miss Abendessig and the last to Mrs. Lab, she having been married in the interval, and the second to her father, Simeon Abendessig.

The Safeguard Assurance Co. had a suspicion that the jeweller, who had an address but no shop, was in league with the Abendessigs, and that the first and third receipts had been written at the same time.

The present writer was therefore asked to examine these documents to see whether any evidence of the date of writing could be obtained.

They were both written in blue ink upon common billheads, but the fact that the ink and paper were of the same kind was no proof that they were not genuine receipts.

When, however, the receipt stamps were examined under the microscope it was obvious that the right-hand side of one stamp corresponded with the left-hand side of the other stamp. That is to say, the little projections of paper left when two stamps are torn apart across the perforation exactly coincided in every instance, a long projection on one being matched by a short projection on the other, and so on.

The exact coincidence of seventeen points could not have been the result of chance, and the stamps on the two receipts must therefore originally have been attached to one another in the sheet.

The further inference was that the jeweller must either have torn them apart and put one on the earlier receipt and the other on the later one at the same time, or he must have had the second stamp put aside for three months and then affixed it to the later receipt.

A much more obvious slip than this was made some years ago in a bogus claim upon a fire insurance company, the story of which is related in Lord Brampton’s “Reminiscences.” The fire broke out on the premises of a firm of tailors, and it was claimed by them that the whole of their stock, including many hundred pairs of trousers, had been destroyed.

The insurance company, after examining the burnt-out building, instructed a number of their agents to sift carefully the whole of the ashes.

At the hearing of the case the counsel for the company remarked that it was strange that in a fire in which so many pairs of trousers had been burned the metal buttons upon them should not have been found.

On the next day the tailors appeared with a whole bucketful of buttons, but their production was too late to be convincing, for the ashes had been thoroughly sifted before the claimants attempted to make good their oversight, and only a very few trouser buttons had been discovered.

On the other hand, the danger of jumping to a sudden conclusion from circumstances has been frequently demonstrated. Thus, a very extraordinary case in which some facts that clearly pointed to the guilt of a prisoner were found to have misled many witnesses, was tried in 1813 at the assizes at Bury St. Edmunds. A farmer who owned upwards of 1,200 acres was accused of burglary, and as evidence against him it was positively stated that certain articles in his possession had been stolen from the house. The witnesses swore that they had identified some sheets by stains upon them and a cask by the fact of its being marked with the letters P.C. 84 in a circle. For the defence, witnesses stated that the prisoner was in possession of sheets stained in exactly the same way, and that the cask was one of those in which he had received cranberries from Norwich, all of which casks were marked in the same manner. The prisoner was acquitted.

Scientific testimony is another form of the so-called “circumstantial evidence,” and as such is sometimes looked upon with suspicion. Yet in how few cases is it possible to produce the man who can say, “I saw the deed done,” and even in such cases, what errors of identification may occur! In far the greater number of crimes the proof must depend to a large extent upon the evidence of circumstances. But these must be so convincing that it is impossible in reason to draw any other conclusion from them. In this country it is the duty of the prosecution to prove the guilt, and unless that is done in such a way as to leave no shadow of doubt in the minds of the jury, a prisoner is entitled to be acquitted.

There must be no speculation upon a man’s guilt. A man is regarded as innocent so long as it is impossible to connect to him the last link in a long chain of circumstantial evidence.

In the brief accounts of various celebrated trials in the following pages an attempt has been made to give an outline of the scientific circumstantial evidence that has led to the conviction or acquittal of the prisoners. In some of these trials proof of guilt has been overwhelming, although the testimony of an eye-witness has been lacking, but in others the Scotch verdict of “Not proven” (a curious equivalent of which, however, was once given in the trial of Mrs. Rudd) would be a more fitting deduction from the evidence, than the alternative of “Guilty” or “Not guilty,” which is all that is allowed by the English law.

A good illustration of the value of scientific proof was seen, in 1884, at the trial of a woman named Gibbons on the charge of having shot her husband.

For the defence it was urged that the man had committed suicide. There were four bullet wounds from a revolver in the body, and the medical evidence went to prove that although any one of the wounds might have been inflicted by the man himself, it was extremely improbable that all of them had been. Moreover, some of them were in such a position that they could only have been self-inflicted if the revolver had been held in the left hand, whereas witnesses testified that the deceased was not left-handed. The prisoner was found guilty.

Attempts have frequently been made by defending counsel to obtain permission for a scientific man to be present on behalf of a prisoner at any examination made before a trial, but all such requests are invariably refused.

It is quite a common occurrence, however, for the evidence given by scientific witnesses for the prosecution to be controverted by scientific witnesses for the defence, and the most recent instance of the kind at the trial of Crippen will be fresh in the memory of everyone. Where there is any possibility of doubt it should be possible for every prisoner to obtain scientific assistance.

An accused person who lacks the means to procure legal assistance in his defence has assigned to him by the Court a barrister who will represent his interests and see that they do not suffer from ignorance of legal technicalities.

This principle might well be extended so as to cover the ground of scientific evidence. Under the present conditions the prosecution has unlimited facilities for applying every description of test, but it has not always been easy for the representatives of the accused person to obtain scientific help in criticising the nature of this evidence.

Scientific evidence should be, and usually is, quite impartial, but the everyday conflict of honest opinion in civil actions illustrates the possibility of mistakes occurring or of certain points that would tell in favour of the accused being overlooked.

For instance, suppose a stain on the clothes of a person accused of murder were examined by a chemist for the prosecution and found to consist of blood. The fact would tell against the accused, even though the witness (as in a recent case) could express no opinion whether it was human blood, or the blood of an animal. Assuming in this hypothetical trial that the blood stain was really due to rabbit’s blood, another chemist representing the prisoner might be acquainted with the comparatively recent physiological methods of distinguishing between the blood of different animals, and thus be able to prove the real nature of the blood stain and break one of the links in the chain of evidence.

In most of the important criminal trials the scientific evidence is given by more than one witness, and the possibility of mistake is thus greatly reduced, but this is not invariably the rule.

Scientific criticism derived from a first-hand examination of the material would be of much more value than the criticism of the statement of the results, and might have considerable weight upon the conclusions of the jury.

A defending counsel cross-examining a scientific witness is usually dealing with an unfamiliar subject, and lacks the specialised knowledge that would enable him to point out the weak points in the evidence.

When a wealthy person is on trial, however, the counsel has the advantage of getting the best expert advice upon the scientific matters put forward in evidence, and is thus able to lay stress on all that will help his client, but a poor prisoner lacks this advantage, and therefore runs a greater chance of being convicted.

An early trial in which the prisoner owed his acquittal to a conflict of scientific evidence was that of Spencer Cowper, the grandfather of Cowper, the poet, who was tried at the Hertford Assizes in 1699 for the murder of a young gentlewoman named Sarah Stout.

With Cowper were also tried several of his friends, whose remarks having been overheard had suggested that they were aware of what had happened to the girl.

Cowper, who was a barrister, defended himself and incidentally his companions. The story told by the prosecution was that at the previous Assizes the prisoner had stayed for a night at the house of Mrs. Stout, the mother of Sarah Stout. The servant-maid stated that she had been told to prepare Mr. Cowper’s bed, and that when she came downstairs again, it then being about eleven o’clock in the evening, he had gone out, presumably with Sarah Stout, who was never again seen alive. The next day her dead body was found floating upon the river.

The condition of the body was, it was asserted, conclusive proof that she had been strangled and then thrown into the water; for, to quote the words of the counsel for the prosecution, “when her body came to be viewed it was very much wondered at; for in the first place it is contrary to nature that any persons that drown themselves should float upon the water. We have sufficient evidence that it is a thing that never was; if persons come alive into the water, then they sink; if dead, then they swim. At first it was thought that such an accident might happen though they could not imagine any cause for this woman to do so, who had so great prosperity, had so good an estate, and had no occasion to do an action upon herself so wicked and so barbarous. Upon view of the body, it did appear there had been violence used to the woman; there was a crease round her neck, she was bruised about her ear; so that it did seem as if she had been strangled either by hands or a rope.”

The evidence brought forward to support the theory that Sarah Stout had been killed, before being thrown into the water, included that of several local doctors who had examined the body, and also that of several London doctors who were called in as expert witnesses.

These all gave as their opinion that the body of a person who had been drowned must contain water in the thorax, and that since no water was present in the body, death must have been caused in some other way. Two seamen of the Royal Navy were also put into the box, and both were emphatic in their opinion that the body of a person who had been drowned would sink, while a dead body thrown into the water would float.

Spencer Cowper, who, as has been stated, conducted his own defence, cross-examined the medical witnesses and made them admit that they had no knowledge of the way in which the body of a person who had drowned himself would behave.

He entered a strong protest against the body having been examined after the coroner’s inquest (at which a verdict of suicide while of unsound mind had been found) by medical men acting in the interests of the relations of the dead woman, with the intention of becoming prosecutors. “If,” said he, “they intended to have prosecuted me or any other gentleman upon this evidence, they ought to have given us notice, that we might have had some surgeons among them to superintend their proceeding. My Lord, with submission, this ought not to be given in evidence.” The judge overruled this objection, saying that supposing an ill thing had been done in taking up the body without some order, that was no reason why the evidence should not be heard.

In further cross-examination Mr. Cowper succeeded in throwing doubt upon the statements of witnesses, who alleged that they had seen marks of strangling, and produced witnesses to prove that any marks upon the body had been the result of contact with stakes in the bed of the river. Then he brought forward his own expert medical evidence, which was given by ten of the leading doctors of the day, including Sir Hans Sloane and the celebrated surgeon William Cowper. These held a different view from that of the doctors called for the prosecution, and gave their reasons for concluding that the appearance of the body was quite consistent with death by drowning.

Some described experiments they had made upon animals, which proved that when killed and thrown into the water the body sank at first and then rose to the surface, and also that drowning could take place without much water being swallowed.

As proof of the dead woman having been of a melancholy disposition and not of sound mind, letters of hers were read to the jury, but these her mother and brother would not admit were in her handwriting, since, they asserted, it did not suit her character. (See [p. 85].)

The judge, Sir Henry Hatsell, in summing up confessed that he was very much puzzled, and that he perceived that “doctors do differ in their notions about these things.”

The conclusion of his remarks is worthy of quotation: “I am sensible I have omitted many things; but I am a little faint, and cannot remember any more of the evidence.”

It is not surprising that, soon after Queen Anne came to the throne, he was removed from the bench.

The jury believed the medical witnesses for the defence, and after a short discussion found Spencer Cowper and the other prisoners “Not guilty.”

To come to more modern times, the advantage of a conflict of scientific opinion to the accused was seen in the celebrated Maybrick poisoning case. At the trial evidence was given by Professor Tidy to the effect that the symptoms and appearances were not those of arsenical poisoning and that the amounts of arsenic found in the body were not greater than those present in cases where arsenical medicines had been taken months before death, and where there was no suspicion of poisoning. Although the prisoner was convicted and sentenced to death, there can be little doubt but that this evidence had an important influence in determining the subsequent alteration of the sentence to penal servitude.

There is no necessity for such scientific assistance given to the defence to degenerate into partisanship, such as was shown at the trial of Palmer for poisoning in 1856. That case was characterised by many remarkable features, the suspected person, for instance, being allowed access to the bottle in which had been placed the material taken from the body for analysis, and also being given the opportunity of attempting to destroy it.

Prior to the trial, Taylor, the chemist who was to give evidence as to the presence of poison in the body, communicated with the papers, while Herapath, one of the witnesses called for the defence, publicly accused Taylor of incompetence.

So acrid were the statements of the scientific witnesses for the defence at the trial that the judge commented in vigorous terms upon their evidence as having been given with the object of obtaining an acquittal at all costs. “It is indispensable,” he said, “to the administration of justice that a witness should not be turned into an advocate, nor an advocate into a witness.”

In another poisoning trial which took place three years later, the chemical evidence brought forward by the defence resulted in the prisoner being set free, after having been sentenced to death. In this case a doctor named Smethurst was accused of poisoning a young woman named Isabella Banks.

Dr. Taylor, who was the chief chemical witness called for the prosecution, had found arsenic in material from the body, although he could not detect any remaining in the tissues. On the other hand, Dr. B. W. Richardson, who was called as a witness for the defence, stated that arsenic was a cumulative poison, and that if it had been given for a long period, as alleged, traces must inevitably have been present. Hence in his opinion the absence of arsenic in the tissues was conclusive proof that death was not the result of slow arsenical poisoning.

The medical evidence called by the defence, also left room for some doubt as to whether death might not have been the result of dysentery, the symptoms and appearance, it was alleged, being as consistent with that cause as with arsenical poisoning.

The scientific witnesses for the defence did not succeed in convincing the jury, but after sentence of death had been passed the judge forwarded the papers to the Home Secretary, and advised that the opinion of an independent scientific authority should be taken. Accordingly the whole of the chemical and medical evidence was studied by Sir B. Brodie, whose report was that there were six reasons which led to the conclusion that Smethurst was guilty, and eight reasons which pointed in the opposite direction; and that, therefore, the impression left upon his mind, was that the proof of Smethurst’s guilt was not absolutely convincing.

The Home Secretary, on receiving this statement of opinion from his scientific referee, immediately granted a free pardon. In this case, but for the conflict of scientific opinion upon the medical and chemical evidence the prisoner would have been hanged.

Instances such as these might be largely multiplied, but the above are sufficient to show that a scientific defence may succeed in breaking down the scientific evidence brought by the prosecution in criminal cases; or, failing that, may (as in the Maybrick case) help to bring about a commutation of the sentence.

There is thus abundant justification for the plea that the poor prisoner should have the same advantages as regards scientific assistance as he now possesses in legal matters, and thus be placed on an equality with a wealthy prisoner.

It ought not to be a difficult matter to draw up a list of men of recognised standing in chemistry and medicine, who would be willing to serve in this capacity when selected by the judge in a trial.

CHAPTER II

DETECTION AND CAPTURE OF THE CRIMINAL

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WAR PLAN SENT BY WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PHOTO SENT BY TELEGRAPH FROM PARIS

By kind permission of “The Daily Mirror”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PORTRAIT SENT BY WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MAJOR RICHARDSON’S MAN-TRACKER “PATHAN”

By kind permission of Major Richardson

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FRENCH POLICE DOG

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER III

PERSONAL IDENTIFICATION

McKeever’s Experiment on Fallibility of Eye-witnesses—Gorse Hall Murder—Cases of Mistaken Identity—Gun-flash Recognition—Self-deception—Tichborne Case.

The untrustworthiness of the eye-witness as to detail was recently demonstrated by Professor McKeever at the Kansas State College in the following manner.[2] He asked twenty-five students at the college to witness a short drama, and immediately afterwards to write a detailed description of the characters and incidents.

This little drama, which was supposed to take place in one of the class-rooms, ran as follows:—

Jones, a tall man, wearing a hat and a black mask over his eyes, nose and mouth, and dressed in a grey rain-coat rushed in carrying a salt bag half full of nails in his left hand and a small wrench in his right hand. Across his left cheek was a streak of red paint.

When just inside the door he turned and pointing the wrench at some pursuers, shouted “Stand back, or I’ll shoot.” He then ran across the room, fell on his knees, and dropped the bag, saying, “There it is, take it”; after which he got up and rushed from the room.

Smith dashed into the room after Jones, crying “Give it up, you scoundrel,” and picked up the bag which Jones had dropped. White, short and stout, dressed in a blue serge coat and cap, and carrying a revolver with its cylinder removed, came in last. He called out to Smith, “Take it from Eddie, he won’t hurt you!” He then went out after Jones but before Smith.

The professor pretending to be alarmed jumped up from his chair and exclaimed, “Men, what are you up to here?”

These were the actual facts, and the manner in which the accounts of the twenty-five witnesses disagreed may be shown by a few examples of the different particulars described:—

Jones’ appearance: (1) Black coat, light mask. (2) Red mask, cheeks painted red. (3) Black coat, mouth painted red. (4) Carried pistol. (5) Cheeks more than natural redness; club in his hand; dark suit. (6) Dark suit. (7) Black clothes. (8) Red mask on; black clothes. (9) Hatless.

Smith’s appearance: (1) Wore a grey suit. (2) Six-footer. (3) Dark grey suit. (4) Bareheaded. (5) Blue suit.

White’s appearance: (1) Dark suit and raincoat. (2) Bareheaded. (3) Hardly noticed him (nearly everyone said this).

Smith’s conduct: (1) Carried pistol and snapped it several times. (2) Came in last; went out second; said “Get out of here.” (3) Carried pistol, snapped it several times, and cried “Stop or I’ll shoot,” aiming at Jones. (4) Dropped umbrella on floor. (5) Came in last, stayed behind; yelled “Catch that man!”

Professor’s conduct: (1) Said: “What’s all this?” (2) Said: “What does all this mean?” (3) Said: “Here.” (4) Said: “Hullo, what’s going on here”? (5) Said: “Who are these men?”

These discrepancies illustrate how difficult it is for the eye and ear to record accurately the impressions received in a rapid succession of events, one of which may focus the attention to such an extent that events simultaneously occurring are only imperfectly or partially observed.

The fallibility of identification by eye-witnesses was strikingly demonstrated at the trial of Benjamin Bates and John Green at the Old Bailey in 1776, on the charge of burglary.

The house of James Penleage had been broken into, and plate to the value of four or five hundred pounds had been stolen.

Mrs. Penleage swore that four men had entered her bedroom, one of whom carried a dark lantern; that two of these men came, one on each side of the bed, and held pistols to her head, and that of these men of whom she had a perfect view, she recognised one as Green and the other as Bates.

Her husband testified as to the house having been entered, and as to his loss, but stated that as he was near-sighted he would not swear to the men, though he believed Bates had presented a pistol to his head.

Evidence was also given by a servant and by another woman, and notwithstanding the good character given to the prisoners by a number of witnesses, the jury brought in a verdict of “Guilty.”

The newspapers of the day called attention to the inconclusive evidence of identification, and as a result the prisoners were respited from month to month.

At last another man, who was executed in the country, confessed that he had also been the author of this burglary at the house of Penleage, and that the two men who had been convicted had had nothing to do with it. In consequence of this Bates and Green received a free pardon, but not until they had been in prison for many months.

A contemporary comment upon this trial richly warrants quotation:—“On this occasion Britons have cause to triumph in the Liberty of the Press. If newspapers had not been printed in this country, the lives of two honest men would have been sacrificed to the rigour of the laws, yet no party concerned have been the least to blame. The ways of Providence are mysterious; casual circumstances frequently produce great effects; and a life may be saved or lost by an accident apparently beneath the notice of a common observer.”

Another very curious instance of mistaken identity was that brought out in a trial for robbery in 1784. A barrister had been attacked and robbed in broad daylight, and he positively swore that he had recognised two men named Wood and Brown as his assailants. Fortunately for them the prisoners were able to prove an alibi, which showed beyond all doubt that they were far from the spot at the time, and they were accordingly acquitted. Subsequently the real robbers were discovered and found in possession of the missing property. In this case there was a man of trained observation, being absolutely certain of the identity of two men, who had never been near the place.

The case of the Perreaus, related in a subsequent page, was another example of the kind. The two brothers, who were twins, were so exactly alike that a money scrivener who had drawn up bonds by order of one or the other of them hesitated to fix upon either. At last, when pressed to make a positive declaration, he fixed upon Daniel as the brother who had come to him in connection with the forged bond.

In 1797 a mistake as to identity resulted in the death of two men. Martin Church, a bookseller, and James Mackley, a printer, were tried that year at the Old Bailey on the charge of murdering Sydney Fryer, at the back of Islington workhouse. Miss Anne Fryer, who was with her cousin at the time he was attacked, swore positively that the two prisoners were the assailants.

Some years later Burton Wood, who was executed at Kennington Common, and Timmins, who was hanged at Reading, confessed separately that they had done the deed for which the other men had suffered.

In modern times the case of Adolph Beck, who was twice wrongfully convicted through his unfortunate resemblance to another man is notorious, and has been the subject of a special report.

The most recent and strangest instances of wrong identification arose out of the mysterious crime which became known as the “Gorse Hall” murder.

In November, 1909, Mr. Storrs, a wealthy mill-owner, who lived at Gorse Hall, in a lonely district in Cheshire, was attacked by a man who had forced his way into the house. A desperate struggle followed, in the course of which Mr. Storrs was repeatedly stabbed with a knife and fatally wounded. His assailant also attempted to shoot him with a revolver, but this was snatched from him by Mrs. Storrs.

A relation of Mr. Storrs, named Howard, who was an ex-soldier, was arrested and charged with the murder. At the trial that took place at the Chester Assizes in March, 1910, he was positively identified by the widow of the murdered man, who swore that she recognised him by “the look in his eyes.” He was also identified by some of the servants at the Hall as the assailant of Mr. Storrs.

Fortunately Howard was able to prove conclusively that he was somewhere else at the time of the murder.

Some time later, another ex-soldier named Mark Wilde was arrested upon the same charge, and once more evidence of identification was given by the same witnesses as in the previous trial, though they were now less positive in their assertions.

The two men, Howard and Wilde, bore a singular resemblance to each other, and evidence was given that at the time of the murder Wilde was dressed in dark clothes, dark cap and muffler, which was the description of the clothes of Mr. Storrs’ assailant given by witnesses at the first trial.

Stains upon the prisoner’s clothing were identified as human blood by the serum test. The revolver which Mrs. Storrs had snatched from the murderer was also identified as having belonged to Wilde, for it was recognised by two ex-soldiers who had, they alleged, frequently seen it in his hands, by its broken spring and marks upon its barrel.

For the defence, however, witnesses were called to prove that the revolver taken from the murderer was not identical with that of Wilde, and that the blood upon his clothes was the result of a fight he had had upon the night of the crime.

No motive could be alleged, and the jury distrusting the evidence of identification, found the prisoner “Not guilty.”

The murder was thus unique in the fact that two innocent men were in succession identified as the assailant and acquitted.

With regard to the amount of light needed for the recognition of a person, curious scientific evidence has been given in trials, and several cases are on record where witnesses have claimed to identify a person by a momentary flash. A notable instance of this kind was seen at the trial of Joseph Brook for burglary at the York Assizes in 1813.

The prisoner, it was alleged, had broken into the house of a farmer named Strickland at Kirk Heaton.

Anne Armitage, a niece of the farmer, deposed that he had struck upon the stone floor with something she took for a sword to intimidate her, that it produced a flash, and gave a light by which she could see his face. She swore that she had seen enough by the momentary flash to recognise him again. She had also heard his voice, and knew it again when she heard it later, and thought she could undertake to say that it was the voice of the accused man.

The prisoner set up an alibi, and the jury, although as they stated subsequently, not believing in this alibi, returned a verdict of “Not guilty.”

The question of the possibility of a person firing a gun or pistol being identified by the light of the flash was submitted to a committee of scientific men in Paris, in 1809, and their conclusion was that such identification was not possible.

On the other hand, the evidence in a case that was tried shortly afterwards in France indicated that under favourable conditions the face of the person who had fired a gun might be recognised. A man had fired at another at night, and a woman who was near at the time, swore at the trial that the flash had plainly shown her the face of the assailant. Similar evidence was also given by the man who had been wounded.

Experiments to determine this point were made by Desgranges, at Lyons, and from the results of these he concluded that there was a possibility of such identification at a short distance from the flash of the gun, provided that the night was very dark and that there was no other source of light to interfere with the gun-flash; but that if the flash was very pronounced, or much smoke was produced it was not possible to recognise the person firing the gun.

Juries have always been reluctant to convict a prisoner upon evidence of this kind. For instance, at the trial of a man named White at Croydon in 1839, the prisoner was accused of firing at a gentleman while he was driving home in an open trap, and his intended victim, who was shot in the elbow, swore positively that the flash of the gun showed so clearly the features of his assailant that he was absolutely certain that he was the prisoner. The defendant denied the charge and, notwithstanding the positive statement of the principal witness, was acquitted.

There are other instances, however, where convictions have resulted from such momentary glimpses. Thus, at the trial of some highwaymen in 1799, which is quoted by Paris and Fonblanque (1823), it was stated by a Bow Street officer that he, together with some of his companions, had been fired at by the prisoners upon a dark night, upon Hounslow Heath. He swore that the flash of the pistol enabled him to see that one of the assailants, a man named Haines, who had come up to the side of the coach, was riding upon a dark brown horse which had certain peculiarities about its head and shoulders, and that the rider was wearing a rough brown coat. Afterwards, said the witness, he had seen the same horse in a stable in Long Acre, in London, and had recognised it as the one upon which the man was riding by its curious square head and thick shoulders. The jury believed the evidence of this witness, and the prisoner was convicted.

A case within the experience of a former Recorder of Birmingham (Hill) is mentioned in Wills’ Circumstantial Evidence. A man was committed for trial at the Assizes at Derby, in 1840, on the charge of shooting at a young woman.

She was prepared to swear that she had recognised him by the momentary flash of the gun.

Experiments were made to determine to what extent reliance could be placed upon such identification, and the conclusion drawn from these was that “all stories of recognition from the flash of a gun or pistol must be founded on a fallacy.”

In addition to these, several instances, collected from different sources, are referred to in Taylor’s Medical Jurisprudence, where the general conclusion is drawn that occasionally it may be possible to identify an assailant in this way.

From the same source comes the amusing story of a man who swore that he recognised an assailant who attacked him in the dark, by the flash produced by a blow upon his eye! The absurdity of the claim is self-evident, for the “flashes” due to a blow do not emit light, and can therefore never cause any external object to be visible.

A curious factor influencing the value of evidence of personal identification is the readiness with which credulous humanity will accept any story however improbable. But for this the notorious Tichborne case, which dragged on for years, would have been settled in a few days. It is difficult now, recalling the facts, to understand how anyone could have believed in the identity of the butcher, Arthur Orton, with the missing heir to the estates, Roger Tichborne. The latter was of a slim build, while the claimant was a couple of inches taller and weighed twenty-five stones. The real Roger had had the education of a gentleman, while the claimant could neither write nor speak correctly.

Yet, notwithstanding the enormous dissimilarity in appearance and manners of the two men, the mother of Roger Tichborne recognised Orton as the son whom she and everyone else had believed to have been drowned when the ship was wrecked. When he came to England to see her he had thought it prudent to feign illness. Lady Tichborne, therefore, went to see him, and he got on the bed, and turned his face to the wall. His adopted mother, however, recognised him by his “ears so like his uncle’s.”

This must have been an instance of self-deception, for there was evidence that the lobes of the ears of the two men were absolutely different.

It was this recognition, however, that encouraged Orton to persevere with his claim to the estates, and assisted in aiding the recollection of other people, who swore that he was Roger.

CHAPTER IV

SYSTEMS OF IDENTIFICATION

Photography—Anthropometry—Finger-prints and their Uses.

The discovery of photography was welcomed by the police authorities of civilised countries as affording a certain means of registering criminals for subsequent identification. But the promise that the photographic method held out was not fulfilled; for with the accumulation of photographs there was a corresponding increase in the difficulties and uncertainties attending the identification of the originals.

Apart from difficulties due to the effects of the changes produced by time or by intentional disguise, it was no light task to search through many thousands of prints to see whether a particular individual had been photographed ten years previously, and physical weariness of the searchers must frequently have set an obstacle in the way of the identification.

On the other hand, it is a matter of common knowledge, that two photographs of the same person, taken under different conditions of lighting or with different lenses may readily be thought to be the portraits of two distinct individuals, or that a photograph of one person may unduly emphasise a momentary expression differing from the normal one, with the result that the portrait may be mistaken for a likeness of someone else. These considerations fully explain the numerous instances of mistaken identification, some of which are cited below, where the police based their recognition upon old photographs.

Prior to the introduction of the anthropometric and finger-print systems, the insufficiency of the photographic records kept by the police in this country for the identification of criminals was repeatedly proved. The advisability of introducing the French anthropometric system into England was raised in Parliament on several occasions in 1887 and 1888, but each time the Home Secretary defended the system of photographic registration as being sufficiently satisfactory, while he considered it doubtful whether the French system would be any better.

A sufficient answer to this official defence was afforded by the number of cases of mistaken recognition from photographs, that shortly afterwards were brought before both Houses of Parliament.

In 1888, the Lord Chief Justice (Coleridge) mentioned an instance that had come under his notice at the Gloucester Assizes. After a man had been convicted of some small offence police evidence was given that the prisoner was a man who had been convicted before. This was subsequently proved to be a mistake.

Again, in July, 1889, after the conviction of a prisoner, evidence was given by a warder that the man was one who had been sentenced to seven years’ penal servitude and seven years’ police supervision.

It was found afterwards, however, that this man had been previously convicted in 1882 and therefore could not possibly have been the person alleged. The remarkable feature about this mistake was that both men had been under the police control at the same time.

The failure to identify a criminal from the photographic records had a tragic result in 1888, when a man named Jackson was given a light sentence as a first offender. Although he had been previously convicted of numerous crimes, and was at the time “wanted” by the police for housebreaking and other offences he escaped recognition, and was able to take advantage of the lenient treatment he received by murdering a warder in the prison at Manchester.

In 1894 a Special Committee was appointed to examine and report upon the different systems of identifying criminals, and they recommended that the anthropometric system was the most satisfactory for preliminary classification, but that for further grouping the finger-print method gave the best results. Accordingly a system including both methods was adopted in this country and was in use until 1901, when, as is mentioned below, the present system of finger-print identification was introduced.