The general feeling in the town was now very strong against Nicholas D——. He was committed to the town prison, and his relatives placed under closest surveillance. All, nevertheless, persisted in their story. In order to ascertain the truth, justice was prepared to go to the extreme length of applying torture to force a confession from the obstinate accused. But happily, just as the “question” was about to be employed, the following letter was received:—

The receipt of this letter started a new set of conjectures, followed up by inquiries. Captain le Lery’s company was quartered in the town, and Corporal Ruhler had, as a matter of fact, belonged to it, but he had mysteriously and suddenly disappeared about the time of the robbery. No trace of him had been found. His letter seemed to throw light upon his disappearance, yet when it was shown to his captain and some of his comrades it was unanimously declared to be a forgery. What could have been the writer’s object in fabricating it? Various theories were advanced, the most popular being that some guilty party, knowing the corporal had gone, thought to implicate him and save the accused from the torture, which might have driven them to full confession, in which the names of all accomplices would have been divulged. It was a clumsy explanation, but the only feasible one forthcoming. Every effort was made to discover the author of the letter, but without avail.

Now a fresh witness volunteered information—a merchant who lived in Madame Andrecht’s neighbourhood, and who had left home about the time that the robbery had been perpetrated. He had just returned, to find that the mysterious affair was the talk of the town—indeed, he had had a full account of it from his fellow-passengers in the coach which brought him home. He now came to the authorities and told them what he knew. A day or two before the robbery a carpenter, Isaac van C——, had come to him seeking to borrow his boat, which the merchant kept in the fosse just behind his warehouse. Isaac made some pretence for wanting the boat which was not altogether satisfactory to the merchant, who refused to lend it, but yielded when the carpenter declared he wished to use it for the purposes of fishing. The next morning the boat was returned, but was not in exactly its right place; the inside of the boat, moreover, was too clean and dry for it to have been recently used for fishing. The merchant, although he had not yet heard of the robbery, strongly suspected that the carpenter had used the boat for some improper purpose, and he was strengthened in this view by finding two silver spoons under one of the thwarts. This discovery angered him, for he felt he had been deceived, and putting the spoons in his pocket, he went at once to the carpenter for an explanation. The carpenter, with whom were his housekeeper and apprentice, seemed greatly embarrassed when the spoons were produced, and after having been pressed by the merchant, they confessed that they had been up to no good, but would not say where or how they had obtained these spoons. The merchant was now called away from home, and the affair was driven from his mind by more serious transactions. Now that he heard of the robbery, he remembered the suspicious conduct of the carpenter and his servants.

Evidence of this sort, coming from a witness of the highest character, carried so much weight that the judge ordered the carpenter and his companions to be arrested. At the same time, search was made in the house, which resulted in the discovery of the whole of the stolen effects. The culprits, finding it useless to deny their guilt, now made full confession. The three of them were implicated, but it was not settled who had originated the idea. The apprentice, having worked in Madame Andrecht’s house for another master, knew his way about it, and had guided the thieves after they had effected their entrance. The boat had been borrowed, in the way described, to simplify the removal of the plunder. All three of the culprits were with the crowd assembled outside the house when the robbery had been discovered. They heard of the suspicions against the Blue Dragoon, and the apprentice at once visited the alehouse, and succeeded in secreting the memorandum-book in the drawer of the press, where it was discovered.

The foregoing evidence was sufficient to convict the carpenter and his two accomplices, but justice was not yet satisfied of Nicholas D——’s innocence. Two damaging facts still told against him: the half-charred excise bill and the handkerchief bearing his initials. It was possible that he had been an accomplice, although the carpenter and the others would not accuse him. That other people were also concerned seemed evident from the fact of the forged letter, whose authorship was still undiscovered.

Further facts of a strange and interesting kind were presently forthcoming about this letter. The schoolmaster of a neighbouring village came with a scrap of paper on which was inscribed the name Joseph Christian Ruhler, the name with which the forged letter had been signed. At the schoolmaster’s request the writing of this paper was compared with that of the letter, and they were found to be identical. Then the schoolmaster went on to say that both had been written by a pupil of his, a deaf and dumb boy whom he had taught to write, and who made a scanty living as an amanuensis. Some time before this, an unknown man had called on the boy, had taken him to an inn in the village, and there given him a letter to copy. The boy, on reading the letter—which, as we have seen, was of a very compromising nature—demurred. But he was pacified by the present of a gulden, and made the copy. Still, the secrecy and peculiarity of the whole affair weighed on his mind, and he at length confided the story to his teacher. The alleged letter from the corporal had already got into circulation in the neighbourhood, and was clearly the one the boy had copied. The schoolmaster went to the inn, made inquiries about the strange man, and eventually found him to be a baker, H——, the very man who had been so determined to enter Madame Andrecht’s house when the robbery was first announced. So far he had been utterly unconnected in any way with the crime, though his excessive zeal had attracted attention at the time. However, he was arrested; and from the disclosures he made a warrant was also issued for the apprehension of the wool-spinner, Leendert van N——, and his wife, who had been the first to air their suspicions of the innkeeper’s complicity.

As the investigation proceeded, a curious tale was unfolded. The last persons arrested had no share in the housebreaking, but were concerned in another crime, which probably would never have been discovered but for the robbery. The substance of their confessions was as follows:—

Leendert van N——, H—— the baker, and Corporal Ruhler were old acquaintances, and had dealings together of not too reputable a kind in connection with the victualling and clothing of the garrison. They cordially hated and despised each other, and only kept together from community of interests and pursuits.

The associates were playing cards one evening (June 29th) in Leendert’s house, situated in the vicinity of Madame Andrecht’s, when they quarrelled with the corporal, and the corporal retorted in offensive terms. From words they came to blows, in which Madame van N—— assisted. In a few minutes the corporal lay pinioned on the ground, uttering loud curses and threatening them with public exposure. The baker whispered that they had better do the job thoroughly, and after a few blows the corpse, drenched in blood, lay at their feet.

The terrors of conscience and the apprehensions of their crime paralysed their thoughts during the night. The next morning they heard the commotion caused by the news of the discovery of the robbery at Madame Andrecht’s. At once they realised their danger, and the probability of a house-to-house search being instituted, when their horrible crime would be discovered. Their great object, then, was to give the authorities something to occupy their time till the body could be disposed of. It was Madame van N—— who perfected the idea. Why should not suspicion be laid at the door of the Blue Dragoon? His nocturnal courtship was remembered, and corroborative evidence could be supplied by a handkerchief that he had dropped in the house some little time before. The baker then remembered the old excise receipt that Nicholas D—— had once handed him to make a note on. Part of it was charred away, and the remaining portion was carelessly dropped in the house when the baker accompanied the police in their search. It may be remembered that the van N——’s were most busy in the hints they gave of the innkeeper’s supposed guilt, and their machinations were unconsciously assisted by those of the carpenter and his confederates. So the false evidence brought by these two independent plots formed very circumstantial proof against the innocent victim. However, the baker and the wool-spinner only wanted to excite suspicion against Nicholas till they could accomplish their object of hiding the body. That effected, they began to feel remorse that an innocent person should be ruined. The thought of the torture which awaited him struck them with horror, and they evolved the idea of a letter from

Ruhler, incriminating himself. Thus they hoped to obtain delay for Nicholas and safety for themselves. However, their plans were too well thought out; their fear of detection led them to employ the strange deaf and dumb boy to write their letter, which afterwards betrayed them.

Sentence of death was pronounced against the persons who had been concerned in the housebreaking as well as against those who had committed the murder, and it was carried into effect on all of them with the exception of Madame van N——, who died in prison. The wool-spinner alone exhibited any sign of penitence.

CHAPTER II.

CASES OF DISPUTED OR MISTAKEN IDENTITY.

Lesurques died protesting his innocence to the last. “Truth has not been heard,” he wrote a friend; “I shall die the victim of a mistake.” He also published a letter in the papers addressed to Duboscq: “Man in whose place I am to die,” he wrote, “be satisfied with the sacrifice of my life. If you are ever brought to justice, think of my three children, covered with shame, and of their mother’s despair, and do not prolong the misfortunes of so fatal a resemblance.” On the scaffold he said, “I pardon my judges and the witnesses whose mistake has murdered me. I die protesting my innocence.”

Four years elapsed before Duboscq was captured. In the interval others of the gang had passed through the hands of the police, but the prime mover was only now taken. Even then he twice escaped from prison. When finally he was put on his trial, and the judge ordered a fair wig, such as Lesurques had worn, to be placed on his head, the strange likeness was immediately apparent. He denied his guilt, but was convicted and guillotined. Thus two men suffered for one offence.

French justice was very tardy in atoning for this grave error. The rehabilitation of Lesurques’ family was not decreed till after repeated applications under several régimes—the Directory, the Consulate, the Empire, and the Restoration. In the reign of Louis XVIII. the sequestrated property was restored, but there was no revision of the sentence, although the case was again and again revived.

THE CHAMPIGNELLES MYSTERY.

One day in October, 1791, a lady dressed in mourning appeared at the gates of the Château of Champignelles, and was refused admission. “I am the Marquise de Douhault, née de Champignelles, the daughter of your old master. Surely you know me?” she said, lifting her veil. “The Marquise de Douhault has been dead these three years,” replied the concierge; “you cannot enter here. I have strict orders from the Sieur de Champignelles.”

This same lady was seen next day at the village church, praying at the tomb of the late M. de Champignelles, and many remarked her extraordinary resemblance to the deceased Marquise. But the marquise was dead; her funeral service had been performed in this very church. Some of the bystanders asked the lady’s maid-servant who she was, and were told that they ought to know. Others went up to the lady herself, who said, “I am truly the Marquise de Douhault, but my brother will not acknowledge me or admit me to the château.”

Then followed formal recognition. People were summoned by sound of drum to speak to her identity, and did so “to the number of ninety-six, many of them officials, soldiers, and members of the municipality.” The lady gave many satisfactory proofs, too, speaking of things that “only a daughter of the house could know.” Thus encouraged, she proceeded to serve the legal notice on her brother and claim her rights—her share of the property of Champignelles as co-heir, and a sum in cash for back rents during her absence when supposed to be dead.

Where had she been all this time? Who had died, if not she? Her story, although clear, precise, and supported by evidence, was most extraordinary. To understand it we must go back and trace her history and that of the Champignelles family as given in the memoir prepared by the claimant for the courts.

Adelaide Marie had been married at twenty-three to the Marquis de Douhault, who coveted her dowry, and did not prove a good husband. He was subject to epileptic fits, eventually went out of his mind, and, after wounding his wife with a sword, was shut up in Charenton. The wife led an exemplary life till his death, which was soon followed by that of her father. Her brother now became the head of the family, and is said to have been a frank blackguard, the real cause of his father’s death. He proceeded to swindle his mother, who was entitled by settlement to a life interest in the Champignelles estates, subject to pensions to her children, and he persuaded her to reverse that arrangement—she to surrender her property, he to pay her an annual allowance. He had gained his sister’s concurrence by obtaining her signature to a blank document, which he filled up as he wished.

The son, of course, did not pay the allowances, and very often the mother was in sad straits, reduced at times to pawn her jewels for food. She appealed now to her daughter, who naturally sided with her, and wrote in indignant terms to her brother. There was an angry quarrel, with the threat of a lawsuit if he did not mend his ways. For the purpose of conferring with her mother, whom she meant to join in the suit, the Marquise de Douhault proposed to start for Paris.

Having a strange presentiment that this journey would be unlucky, she postponed it as long as possible, but went at length on the day after Christmas Day, 1787. Arrived at Orleans, she accepted the hospitality of a M. de la Roncière and rested there some days. On the 15th of January, 1788, she was to continue her journey, but in the morning she took a carriage drive with her friends. All she remembered afterwards was that Madame de la Roncière offered her a pinch of snuff, which she took, and that she was seized with violent pains in the head, followed by great drowsiness and stupor; the rest was a blank.

When she came to herself, she was a prisoner in the Salpêtrière. Her brain was now clear, her mind active. She protested strongly, and, saying who she was, demanded to be set at large. They laughed at her, telling her her name was Buirette, and that she was talking nonsense.

Her detention lasted for seventeen months, and she was denied all communication with outside. At last she managed to inform a friend, the Duchess of Polignac, of her imprisonment, and on the 13th of July, 1789, she was released, to find herself alone in Paris in the midst of the horrors of the Revolution.

She was friendless. Her brother, to whom she at once applied, repudiated her as an impostor; an uncle was equally cruel; she asked for her mother, and was told she had none. Then she ran to Versailles, where many friends resided, found refuge with the Duchess of Polignac, and was speedily recognised by numbers of people, princes, dukes, and the rest, all members of that French aristocracy which was so soon to be dispersed in exile or to suffer by the guillotine. They urged her not to create a scandal by suing her brother, but to trust to the king for redress. Soon the king himself was a prisoner, and presently died on the scaffold.

Her case was taken up, however, by certain lawyers, who advanced her funds at usurious rates, and planned an attack on her brother, under which, however, they contemplated certain frauds of their own. When she hesitated to entrust them with full powers one of these lawyers denounced her to the Committee of Public Safety, and she narrowly escaped execution. Bailly, the mayor of Paris, was a friend of hers, but could not save her from imprisonment in La Force, where she remained a month, then escaping into the country. Here she learnt that her mother was not dead, and returned to Paris to see her at her last gasp. After that she wandered to and fro in hiding and in poverty till, in 1791, she reappeared at Champignelles.

Such was the case the claimant presented to the courts.

A story is good till the other side is heard, and her brother, M. de Champignelles, clever, unscrupulous, and a friend of the Republican Government, had a very strong defence. His first answer was to accuse his sister, or the person claiming to be his sister, of having tried to seize his château by force of arms, declaring that she had come backed by three hundred men to claim her so-called rights, and that he had appealed to the municipality for protection.

This plea failed, and his second was to accuse the claimant of being someone else. He asserted that she was a certain Anne Buirette, who had been an inmate of the Salpêtrière from the 3rd of January, 1786. This date was a crucial point in the case. The claimant had adopted it as the date of her entry into the Salpêtrière, yet it was clearly shown that at that time the Marquise de Douhault was alive, and that she resided on her property of Chazelet through 1786 and 1787. On other points the claimant showed remarkable knowledge, remembered names, faces of people, circumstances in the past; and all this tended to prove that she was the Marquise. But

this error in dates was serious, and it was strengthened by a mistake in the Christian names of the deceased Marquis de Douhault.

The case came on for trial before the Civil Tribunal of St. Fargeau, where the commissary of the Republic stated it fully, and with a strong bias against the claimant. As he put it: “One side asked for the restitution of a name, a fortune, of which she had been despoiled with a cruelty that greatly added to the alleged crime; the other charged the claimant with being an impostor seeking a position to which she had no right whatever.” Between these two alternatives the court must decide, and either way a crime must be laid bare.

Was it all a fraud? The defence set up was certainly strong.

It rested first on the death of the Marquise. This was supported by the certificates of the doctors who attended her in her last illness, documents attested by the municipality of Orleans, which bore witness to both illness and death. Another document testified that extreme unction had been administered, and that the burial had been carried out in the presence of many relatives. The family went into mourning, and the memory of the Marquise was revered among the honoured dead.

There was next the suspicious commencement of the claim: a letter addressed by the claimant to the curé of Champignelles, two years and a half after the death above recorded, asking for a baptismal certificate and another of marriage. This letter was full of faults of spelling and grammar, and was signed Anne Louis Adelaide, formerly Marquise de Grainville, names that were not exact. It was asserted that the real Marquise was a lady of great intelligence, cultured, highly educated as became her situation, knowing several languages, and a good musician, and especially that she was well able to write prettily and correctly.

Then for the identity of the claimant with Anne Buirette there was seemingly conclusive evidence, the strongest part of it being her own statement of the date on which she was received at the Salpêtrière. All the story of her release through the appeal to the Duchess of Polignac was declared to be untrue. The past life of this Anne Buirette was raked up, and it was demonstrated that she was a swindler who had been sent to gaol for an ingenious fraud which may be narrated here. When in 1785, on the occasion of the birth of a royal prince, the queen wished charitably to redeem a number of the pledges in the Mont de Piété, the woman Buirette, being unauthorised, drove round in a carriage, calling herself a royal attendant, to collect pawn tickets from poor people. She recovered the sums necessary to redeem the pledges and applied the money to her own use. For this she was sent to the Salpêtrière, from which she was released in October, 1789, and not, as she stated, on the day of the barricades.

From this moment, according to the defence, the fraud began, whether at her own instance or not could not be shown. Her movements were traced from place to place as she went about seeking recognition and assistance, now accepted, more often rejected, by those to whom she appealed. Finally the commissary closed the case by pointing to the physical dissimilarity between the two women, the Marquise and the claimant. The first was known as a lady of quality, distinguished in her manners, clever, well-bred; the second was obviously stupid and low-born, stained with vices, given to drink. The Marquise was of frail, delicate constitution, the claimant seemed strong and robust; the first had blue eyes, the second black; the first walked lame, the second showed no signs of lameness.

Yet the claimant persisted, and her counsel upset much that had been urged. It was shown that the death certificate was not produced; that the ill-written letters so condemnatory were copies, not originals; that the official documents purporting to set forth the past life of Anne Buirette were irregular in form and probably not authentic. The claimant showed that she was lame, that her eyes were blue; more, that she carried the scar of the sword wound made by her mad husband years before. It was all to no purpose. The tribunal refused to enter into the question of the alleged falsity of the documentary evidence, and taking its stand upon the date of entry into the Salpêtrière, declared that the claimant could not be the Marquise de Douhault.

Then followed a long course of tedious litigation. The claim was revived, carried from court to court, heard and re-heard; one decree condemned the claimant, and recommended that the case should be dropped; after five years the Supreme Court of Appeal sent it for a new trial to the Criminal Court of Bourges. The points referred were: first, to verify the death of the Marquise de Douhault; second, to establish whether or not the claimant was Anne Buirette, and if not, third, to say whether she was the Marquise.

There were now great discrepancies as to the date and the circumstances of death. Some said it occurred on the 17th of January, 1788, some on the 18th, some again on the 19th. Other facts also were disputed. As to the second query, 18 witnesses swore that the claimant was Anne Buirette; 14 saw no resemblance between Anne Buirette and her, and among these was Anne Buirette’s own husband. As to the third point, 153 out of 224 witnesses declared positively that this was the Marquise herself; but 53 said either that she was not or that they had never seen the claimant, whilst among the number were several who had been satisfied as to her identity in the first instance.

These inquiries were followed by others as to handwriting, and many new and surprising facts came out. It was asserted by experts that the letters written before her alleged death by the Marquise and after it by the claimant were in one and the same hand; that the documents the claimant was said to have written or signed were forgeries, and must have been concocted with fraudulent intention.

Now, too, the claimant explained away the famous date of entry into prison, and laid it to her poor memory, enfeebled by so many misfortunes.

There seemed enough in all this to reverse the decision of St. Fargeau, but the Court of Bourges upheld it. The Procureur-Général pronounced his opinion, formed at the imperious demands of his conscience, that the claimant was not the Marquise de Douhault; more, that “between her and that respectable lady there was as much difference as between crime and virtue.”

The law was pitilessly hostile to the very end. On the revival of the case the claimant was successful in proving that she was certainly not Anne Buirette, but although she published many memoirs prepared by some of the most eminent lawyers of the day, and was continually before the courts during the Consulate and First Empire, she was always unable to establish her identity. The law denied that she was the Marquise de Douhault, but yet would not say who she was. To the last she was nameless, and had no official existence. When she died the authorities would not permit any name to be inscribed on her tomb.

JUDGE GARROWS STORY.

Our own criminal records abound with cases of disputed or mistaken identity. Among the most remarkable of them is the one which Judge Garrow was fond of recounting on the Oxford circuit. He described how a man was being tried before him for highway robbery, and the prosecutor identified him positively. The guilt of the accused seemed clear, and the jury was about to retire to consider their verdict, when a man rode full-speed into the courthouse yard, and forced his way into the court, with loud cries to stop the case; he had ridden fifty miles to save the life of a fellow-creature, the prisoner now at the bar.

This strange interruption would have been resented by the judge, but the new arrival called upon all present, especially the prosecutor, to look at him. It was at once apparent that he was the living image of the prisoner; he was dressed in precisely similar attire, a green coat with brass buttons, drab breeches, and top boots. The likeness in height, demeanour, and especially in countenance, was so remarkable that the prosecutor was dumbfoundered; he could no longer speak positively as to the identity of the man who had robbed him. All along, the prisoner had been protesting his innocence, and now, of course, the gravest doubts arose as to his guilt. The prosecutor could not call upon the second man to criminate himself, and yet the jury had no alternative but to acquit the first prisoner. In this they were encouraged by the judge, who declared that, although a robbery had certainly been committed by one of two persons present, the prosecutor could not distinguish between them, and there was no alternative but acquittal.

So the first man got off; but now a fresh jury was empanelled, and the second was put upon his trial; his defence was simple enough. Only the day previous the prosecutor had sworn to one man as his robber. Could he now be permitted, even if he wished, to swear away the life of another man for the same offence? All he could say was that it was his belief that it was the last comer that robbed him; but surely if the jury had acquitted one person to whom he had sworn positively, could they now convict a second whom he only believed to be guilty? The jury could not but accept the force of this reasoning, and as the second man would make no distinct confession of guilt, he was suffered to go free. But the truth came out afterwards. The two men were brothers; the first had really committed the crime, and the whole scene had been got up between them for the purpose of imposing on the Court.

A CASE AT YORK.

A very similar case occurred at York. A gentleman arrived there during the assize, and having alighted at a good hotel, where he dined and slept, asked the landlord next morning if he could find anything of interest in the town. Hearing that the assizes were in progress, he entered the court, just as a man was being tried for highway robbery. The case seemed strong against the prisoner, who was much cast down, for he had been vehemently protesting his innocence. Suddenly, on the appearance of the stranger, he rose in the dock and cried, “Here, thank God, is someone who can prove my innocence.” The stranger looked bewildered, but the prisoner went on to declare that he had met this very gentleman, at a distant place, Dover, on the day of the alleged robbery, and he now reminded him that he had conveyed his luggage on a wheelbarrow from the Ship Inn to the packet for Calais. The stranger was now interrogated, but could not admit that he had been in Dover on that day, nor had he any distinct recollection of the prisoner. The judge then inquired whether he was in the habit of keeping a diary, or of recording the dates of his movements. The gentleman replied that he was a merchant and made notes regularly in his pocket-book of his proceedings. This pocket-book was at that moment locked up in his trunk at the inn, but he would gladly surrender his keys and allow the book to be fetched, to be produced in Court.

So a messenger was despatched for the book, and in the meantime the prisoner at the bar questioned the stranger, recalling facts and circumstances to his mind, with the result that their meeting in Dover was pretty clearly proved. The stranger had given his name as a member of a very respectable firm of London bankers, and altogether his credibility appeared beyond question. Then came the book, which fixed the date of his visit to Dover. All this remarkable testimony, arrived at so strangely, was accepted by the jury, and the prisoner was forthwith discharged. Within a fortnight, the gentleman and the ex-prisoner were committed together to York Castle, charged with a most daring act of house-breaking in the neighbourhood!

HOAG OR PARKER?

A very remarkable case of the difficulty of identification is to be found in American records, under date 1804. A man was indicted

for bigamy, the allegation being that he was a certain James Hoag. The man himself said that he was Thomas Parker. At the trial, Mrs. Hoag, the wife, and many relations, with other respectable witnesses, swore positively that he was James Hoag; on the other hand, Thomas Parker’s wife, and an equal number of credible witnesses, swore to the other contention. Whereupon the Court recalled the first set of witnesses, who maintained their opinion, being satisfied that he was James Hoag, his stature, shape, gestures, complexion, looks, voice, and speech leaving no doubt on the subject; they even described a particular scar on his forehead, underneath his hair, and when this was turned back there, sure enough, was the scar. Yet the Parker witnesses declared that Thomas Parker had lived among them, worked with them, and was with them on the very day he was supposed to have contracted his alleged marriage with Mrs. Hoag. Now Mrs. Hoag played Her last card, and said that her husband had a peculiar mark on the sole of his foot; Mrs. Parker admitted that her husband had no such mark. So the court ordered the prisoner to take off his shoes and stockings and show the soles of his feet; there was no mark on either of them. Mrs. Parker now claimed him with great insistency, but Mrs. Hoag would not give up her husband, and there was a very violent discussion in court. At last a justice of the peace from Parker’s village entered the court and gave evidence to the effect that he had known him from a child as Thomas Parker, and had often given him employment. So Mrs. Parker carried off her husband in triumph.

A MILWAUKEE MYSTERY.

An extraordinary case of mistaken identity occurred some fifty years ago in Milwaukee, in the States, for the details of which I am indebted to a gentleman of that city, Mr. John W. Hinton. No fewer than ten reputable, straightforward witnesses swore positively to a dead body as that of a man with whom they were intimately acquainted and in more or less daily intercourse. They based their identification upon certain physical facts of the most unmistakable kind. They were not only satisfied as to the general features—the height, shape, size, the colour of the hair and eyes—but there were other peculiar and distinctive marks, such as scars, loss of teeth, a missing eye, that carried absolute conviction to the witnesses. Yet they were all absolutely and entirely wrong; completely deceived by the remarkable resemblance, the strange, almost incredible similarity of personal traits in two different people.

The case arose out of a mysterious crime. About 9 a.m. on the morning of the 14th of April, 1855, a party of rag-gatherers were seeking their harvest from the river just below one of the Milwaukee bridges. A mass of floating débris—chips, scraps of timber, and general rubbish—was collected in an eddy at the water’s edge, and amidst it a boy espied what he at first thought to be a bag, and afterwards a bundle of rags. He dragged it on shore with his boat-hook and began to examine it. All at once he dropped the parcel with a loud yell and took to his heels. Some of his more courageous fellows then tore it open and exposed its ghastly contents. Inside was the trunk of a human body, with the head all but severed, and held only by a few ligaments. The brains had been dashed out by a blow on the back of the skull, which made a deep indentation several inches long. A great gash had been made in the throat; the left eye protruded; both legs had been chopped off and were gone. The bottom of the bag, as the cover proved to be, had been frayed out or forced open by the action of the water, and the missing portions of the trunk had fallen through or been washed out of the aperture.

The Milwaukee police, headed by the Deputy-Sheriff, who had been at one time Chief of Police, were soon upon the scene. The cause of death was plain. The weapon used was indicated by the wounds; it was evidently an axe which had cut into the skull, and the protruding eye had been sliced out by the same instrument. Close scrutiny of the bag revealed one or two clues of importance. The bag was a wheat sack, with the name of “Vogt” stamped upon it; it had been securely tied by peculiar knots, which an expert eye recognised as French, knots tied by no one but Frenchmen, and French sailors to boot. Weights had evidently been inserted in the “slack” of the bag, which had been thus knotted, and portions of the rope remained attached to the bag. The weights were gone, and had no doubt been detached at the bottom of the river, with the result that the corpse had risen to the surface.

The first step towards the detection of the murderer was to identify the body, and trace back the victim’s habits, acquaintances, and surroundings. Here followed the marvellous mistake made by persons who on the face of it could not be believed to be in error. A mass of testimony was immediately forthcoming, all stating in the most explicit, positive terms that the deceased was a certain John Dwire, well known in Milwaukee. All who spoke did so definitely, declaring their reasons, which appeared conclusive. They knew Dwire well, they recognised his face and its features, his body, the colour of his hair and eyes. This last was a weak point, however. Dwire was said to have only one eye; the corpse had two. Although one had been nearly cut away by the axe stroke, it was still hanging to the head. The witnesses were not to be silenced by this discrepancy; they pointed triumphantly to other physical proofs: a scar or burn mark on the left cheek, the size of a sixpence, “a five-pointed starry scar” which all deposed that Dwire bore; again, he had lost two front teeth—one in the upper, the other in the lower jaw, just as was seen in the corpse; the whiskers, of the leg of mutton pattern, were Dwire’s; the bald head also, for hair was growing round the base of the skull only, curly, and of a sandy hue, as in the case of Dwire. There was a cut, made in shaving the chin, Dwire’s; scars on one finger of the left hand and on the thumb of the right hand, again Dwire’s; and a nose slightly inclined to one side, also Dwire’s. Such was the evidence of the witnesses, corroborating each other in every particular, the testimony of people who had known him for years, the woman of the house where he lodged, the keeper of the boarding-house where he fed, whom he had not paid in full, the associates who worked with him and frequented the same haunts.

Yet while the inquest before which these statements were made was proceeding, unequivocal evidence was adduced which entirely falsified the story as told. The John Dwire supposed to have been murdered was alive and well at no great distance from Milwaukee. A whisper to this effect had been put about, and some of the officials, another deputy-sheriff, and the city marshal travelled to a point higher up the river, some sixteen miles distant, where Dwire had been seen at work since the discovery of his supposed corpse in the stream. He was living near Kemper’s Pier, and had been there uninterruptedly for months—since the previous Christmas, indeed. Had the Court hesitated to accept this startling news, all possible doubt must have disappeared by the next incident. John Dwire himself walked into the court, saying with some humour, “Lest anyone here should still think I’m dead I have come in person to assure him that I am not the corpse found in the river last Saturday morning.”

His reappearance, of course, dumbfoundered all present, more particularly those who had sworn so positively to his mortal remains. It had another and more beneficial result: it saved an innocent man from arrest and probable conviction. The first act of the police on the mistaken identification of the body had been to commence a search in certain low haunts where Dwire had at times been seen, and they had come upon an axe recently used lying on a wood-pile in the possession of a French sailor, commonly called “Matelot Jack,” who was the bar tender of a drinking-shop. The Frenchman had disappeared, but suspicion fell upon another foreigner, a German, who was an associate of Dwire’s, and had accompanied him when the latter left Milwaukee. This German had come into the lodging-house asking for Dwire’s clothes; he came twice, the second time armed with a letter from Dwire authorising him to receive the clothes, but they were impounded for moneys owing. Steps were being taken to arrest this German, and had not Dwire shown up it might have gone hard with the suspected person. It had been in Dwire’s mind at one time to leave the neighbourhood, and had he done so the case against the German would have been pretty complete.