Big incomes that do not exist—Visit to a gambling club—A deep-laid plot—Heavy blackmail—A masterly stroke—Two biters bitten
EVERY now and then the world is startled by the story of a woman who has succeeded in obtaining thousands of pounds from men of the world and men of business who have believed in her completely, and have fallen victims to the oldest form of the confidence dodge—a clever woman's own representation that she is entitled to a large fortune, or in possession of property which for the moment she is unable to realize.
You have only to talk "big" enough to find plenty of people prepared to take you at your own valuation. The adventurer who wants to live luxuriously on his wits does not proceed on quite the same lines as the adventuress. In some respects his is a harder task, in others it is an easier one.
London swarms with men and women of all grades, whose sole means of livelihood is the credulity of the people with whom they come in contact.
The footman who persuades the lady of rank that he is a prince, and the loafer who engages himself to half a dozen servant girls a month in order to get money and their bits of jewellery, pursue practically the same methods. They go through a process which in the sporting circles is known as "telling the tale." Given a certain amount of tact and a veneer of culture, and men or women who set out deliberately to do so can assume any rank or position they consider best for the particular fraud they have in hand.
There are plenty of people in London to-day whose legitimate income is under £100 a year, and who yet live in well-appointed houses in good neighbourhoods, keep servants, and entertain on a lavish scale. In the great London hotels there are always a number of guests who are nothing but adventurers and adventuresses.
The well-dressed, well-mannered "dangerous class" has increased rapidly of late years. The conditions of modern life are wholly favourable to its development. The breaking down of social barriers which has marked the new century has opened up new and profitable fields of enterprise. In a day when millionaires spring up like mushrooms, and anybody with an American accent or a Jewish name is accepted as fabulously rich "without further inquiry," it is the easiest thing in the world for the skilful adventurer to work himself into any society—even to obtain the entrée to houses where, once having been seen, his reputation is hall-marked.
No one, as a rule—except a tradesman swindled out of his goods—seeks to pry into the mystery of these people's means. The source of the incomes of so many who live luxuriously today is a mystery, that suspicion has been lulled, and anyone with a few pounds and a portmanteau or a Saratoga trunk has only to put up a well-frequented London hotel to start making a useful circle of acquaintances at once.
Some of these people are known to the police. Their record is at Scotland Yard. It is this fact that occasionally leads to the occupant of an elegant apartment being presented with his or her bill by the management, and at the same time a polite intimation that their room is required for another guest who has secured it for that date. Sometimes the person so treated argues the matter out with a show of indignation. But, as a rule, discretion is considered the best part of valour, and the agreeable Mr. So-and-So or the charming Mrs. So-and-So is missed from the lounge or the smoking-room or the drawingroom, and the departure regretted. For these people are always "nice." If they were not, they would make no friends, and it is by the making of friends they live.
But more frequently the hotel adventurer and adventuress have not come under the official notice of the detective police. The men of position who are swindled by women, the women of good social standing who are duped by men, do not care to advertise their simplicity to the world. It is on this distaste for publicity on the part of their victims that high-class adventurers and adventuresses rely.
At a fashionable London hotel some time ago a young American arrived. He bore a well-known name, and was a partner in his father's business. The wealth and position of his family were discussed in the smoking-room, one or two Americans present volunteering information to an Englishman who had started the topic of conversation.
This Englishman, satisfied as to the bona fides of the newcomer, lost no time in making his acquaintance, and very obligingly "showed him London"—the side of it which is not in the guide-books. One night the young American was taken by his friend to a club in a side street in Soho, which he was told was a gambling club. He need not play, but the company were worth seeing. The young fellow did not want to play, but was quite willing to look on. All of a sudden a dispute arose among the players—there were about a dozen, among them some foreigners—there was a scuffle, one of the foreigners whipped out a dagger and plunged it into the breast of a man with whom he was quarrelling, his victim fell to the ground, the lights were turned down, and as the company made a rush to the door the police entered.
"This way," said the Englishman to his friend, and dragged him through a little door in the back of the room into a kitchen, out into a passage, and up a court into the main street, where they hailed a hansom and drove back to the hotel.
"We've had a narrow escape," said the Englishman. "It would have been pretty hard if we had been walked off to the station and charged. Of course, that club's illegal, and this stabbing business will be bad for everybody who was there." The young American was very thankful to have escaped the unpleasantness.
In an evening paper the next day appeared a mysterious paragraph. A man had been found stabbed in a gambling houses The police had arrested several persons present, but it was stated by the victim, who was in a precarious condition, that he believed his assailant was a young American, who managed to escape after the police had entered. The proprietor of the establishment, who was in custody, had given information which, it was hoped, would lead to the identification of the assassin. The American was horrified.
"But you know this is absurd," he said to his English friend, who gave him the paper to read. "You saw the foreigner do it." The Englishman shook his head. "It's a nasty business," he said, "and unpleasant for both of us. It's evident that the proprietor and the other people are in league to save the real culprit."
"But the man who was stabbed—he must know who did it?"
"He thinks he'll get well, I suppose, and he's afraid of accusing the real man. Some of these people belong to the most dangerous gang in London. They'll put the thing on you because they think you're not likely to come forward and deny it."
"Say," said the American, "I don't like this—it looks bad. I shall leave here and go to Paris. I wouldn't get mixed up in this business for a thousand. It would be in all the American papers."
The Englishman said he thought the plan a wise one. He himself should go to some friends in the North of England, and keep out of the way for a bit. But the plan was not quite so easily carried out. The friends had been talking together in the courtyard. As they turned to enter the hotel a man came up and touched the American on the shoulder.
"You'll excuse me," he said, "but I saw you two gentlemen at that club where the man was stabbed last night." The two friends looked at each other. Neither knew what to say.
"I was a waiter there," said the man. "I got away just after you by the back door, and followed you up the court. I saw you get into a cab, and I heard you tell the man to drive to this hotel. I thought I'd come and see if I could find you."
The Englishman had recovered himself.
"Look here," he said, "you'd better come up to my friend's room and talk the matter over."
The result of the discussion was that the young American gave the man £300 to keep quiet. He explained that he was a stranger seeing London. He was absolutely innocent of any share in the quarrel, but he didn't want to be detained in London to answer a charge which, absurd as it was, would be a very unpleasant public ordeal.
The Englishman also drew a cheque for £300, and gave it to the man not to drag him into the affair.
The American left London, thinking he had heard the last of the affair. But when he got back to his home in the States he found a letter waiting for him. That waiter had found out who he was, and wanted more hush-money. He wanted $5000. The victim of the attack at the gaming house had died, the writer said, and unless he received the amount named he should communicate with the police. Even if the young-man evaded arrest, the story would be in all the English papers, and copied into the American ones.
The young American read the letter carefully two or three times, and then went to a solicitor, telling him the whole story. The solicitor advised him not to reply, but to let him communicate with an agent in London, who would inquire into the whole affair. The investigation made by the London agent revealed the fact that the police of London were totally ignorant of any such affair, that no one had been found stabbed in a gambling house, and that no police raid on a gambling house in Soho had taken place at that date.
The American visitor to London had been marked down by one of the gang of bad characters who infest hotels for the purpose of swindling strangers. The agreeable Englishman was the concocter of the whole scheme.
The only thing that was a mystery now was the stabbing. The American had seen the dagger plunged into the man's breast.
The stabbing was a comedy, though it had looked like a tragedy at the time. The dagger was a stage dagger, which appears to penetrate the body of the victim, but really goes up the handle. The two policemen who came in were probably made up on the premises for the occasion, and the "gamblers" were members of the gang of blackmailers to which the Englishman staying at the hotel belonged.
It is not likely that this sensational little scene was arranged for the occasion only. It had doubtless been effectually played many times before on unsuspecting visitors to the metropolis. Without the stabbing' it is common enough. One of the commonest tricks of a well-known gang is to lure a visitor anxious to see life to some questionable haunt, and make him the victim of a bogus police raid. The staid and sober citizens of good repute will generally pay handsomely to avoid publicity.
In the case of the young American, a deliberate scheme of lifelong blackmail was planned. The report in the evening newspaper was a master stroke. But there are means of getting a sensational statement that has not a word of truth in it past the most vigilant of sub-editors.
Some of the most dangerous female swindlers in the world are to be found in fashionable hotels. They frequently have foreign titles. Princesses, marchionesses, countesses, and baronesses there are who are well known to the international police, and who yet continue to live luxuriously year in, year out, on a methodical system of fraud.
Few of them are young—many of them are middle-aged, and some are elderly. But they rarely fail to pay their expenses, though they may fail to pay the tradespeople they honour with their patronage. Even in this matter, however, they are careful, and avoid, if they possibly can, any transaction with a shopkeeper which might lead to the publicity of the police court A charge of swindling would be inconvenient. It would necessitate the adoption of a new title, and that would be awkward, because the majority of these adventuresses are too well known to certain people in fashionable resorts to be able to change a title without exciting suspicion.
One of the most brilliant adventuresses of recent years posed as a philanthropist, and visited town after town in furtherance of her philanthropic scheme. She was received with open arms by clergymen, and on two occasions was entertained by local mayors. She might have gone on posing as a philanthropist looking about for a deserving charity on which to bestow a vast sum of money, if she had not allowed herself the indiscretion of falling in love with and marrying a young man who was supposed to be the son of an English nobleman. It was when the police got on the track of the Hon. Mr. Dash, eldest son of Lord Fourstars, and made a descent upon his rooms at a fashionable hotel, that one of the detectives was struck by the resemblance the Hon. Mrs. Dash bore to a woman who had been through his hands some years previously.
The astonishment of the newly married couple, who were on their honeymoon, was not so much at the arrest as at the discovery that they had both deceived each other. In the lady's case the force of the blow was somewhat mitigated by the fact that she had not really lost a title. She had a previous husband somewhere in the colonies.
Both these swindlers met each other first at a fashionable hotel in London. There was some excuse for the man being taken in. When he met the lady she was in the company of a colonial bishop and his wife, with whom she had established quite a friendly intimacy.
With one dangerous type of hotel adventuress—the lady with a husband who arrives unexpectedly and late at night from America—I need not deal. But good round sums have been parted with again and again by quite innocent victims to avoid a scandal. It is at the hotel that the wonderful tale is frequently told which never seems to fail to find victims. It is the story of the fortune that is coming. The idea of great expectations appeals at once to the cupidity of certain natures.
I know at the present moment a simple-minded couple who have as their guest in their pretty country home a young lady who came to stay a week, and has already stayed three months. The parties met at a London hotel. The young lady made the acquaintance of the country couple, and gradually took them into her confidence. She was the niece of a wealthy Australian, an elderly widower, who had died in London without a will.
Her mother was the Australian's only sister, and he had no other relatives. Something like a million of money was involved. On the news of his death reaching Melbourne, the young lady—her mother being in ill-health—had come to London to claim the fortune.
The reader will guess the end of the story. It is as old as the hills. Every now and then it is told in the police court, but as a rule it continues to impose upon its dupes until the impostor has got all that is to be had, and conveniently disappears.
The plot is simple. There are trouble and expense. The available funds have run low, and unless a remittance arrives from somewhere a very long way off, the legal process of claiming the fortune will be delayed. The delay is dangerous. Another claimant who has no earthly right has turned up, and, having money, is forging ahead. A million may be lost for a hundred pounds or so of ready money. The dupes, encouraged by the promise of a bounteous gift when the fortune has been secured, find that hundred or so.
Then a further difficulty occurs. Lawyers' letters, sometimes deeds, are shown, and the victims are bled afresh. To save the loss of the hundred pounds parted with, hundreds more are advanced. Sometimes the bubble bursts in a few weeks. Sometimes it remains floating gracefully for a couple of years.
The people I know have advanced five hundred pounds, and the young lady is still their honoured guest. They refuse to have their faith shaken in her, or to request her to find hospitality elsewhere. They cling to their belief in the plausible adventuress. To acknowledge to themselves that they had been duped would mean to recognize that they had lost five hundred pounds. Human nature is always human nature, and hope springs eternal in the human breast. It is the hope of ultimate success that causes millions of good money to be flung after bad, and keeps the Bankruptcy Court busy.
A mystery that still remains unravelled had its first scene in a London hotel. A young man of fortune, an inebriate, was staying in one. There he met two young men of apparently good social position who were just starting for a European trip.
These men fired the imagination of their new acquaintance. He had better come with them.
The young man consented, informed his friends and his solicitor of his intention, and started, taking with him letters of credit for a large amount.
Two or three communications were received from him from various parts of the Continent. The last letter was from a small Spanish town. After that he only telegraphed when he wanted more money sent out.
He telegraphed from a Spanish sea-coast town for such a large sum of money to be sent, that the solicitor who had charge of his affairs felt it his duty to consult a relative with whom the young man was not friendly, but who was his next-of-kin.
A suspicion seems to have crossed the minds of both that something was wrong, and the British Consul in the town was communicated with. He went to the hotel to which the money was to be sent, and having been supplied with a photograph of Mr. ——— by the solicitor, asked to see him.
The proprietor of the hotel recognized the portrait, said
Mr. ——— was staying there, but was out with two friends.
That evening when the consul called again he saw the two friends. They appeared to be very distressed. They stated that Mr. ——— had been drinking heavily. While out together walking by the shore he had suddenly left them and disappeared. They had made every effort to find him, but had failed, and they feared he must have made his way to a lonely part of the coast and drowned himself.
That was the last that was ever heard of the missing young man who went travelling with two strangers he met at a London hotel.
Whether they would have taken possession of the money had it been sent it was impossible to say. And there was no proof forthcoming that they had anything to do with the disappearance of Mr. ———, though there is very little doubt they had the bulk of the large sum of money he took with him.
There is one feature of the fashionable hotel which is not strictly confined to those who live in it. That is the use made by swindlers of the stamped hotel paper. Thomas, the man who committed the crimes for which the unfortunate Mr. Beck suffered so cruelly, wrote nearly all his letters on the note-paper of fashionable hotels. He simply walked in, sat down at a writing-table, and had at once a good address with which to inspire his victims with confidence.
On the strength of that hotel note-paper he was accepted by experienced women of the world as an English nobleman of vast fortune. The fashionable hotel is the happy hunting ground of the most dangerous criminals known and unknown to the police.
A superior place—Class distinctions—The men who have fallen—The family outcast—The shabby minister—A strange disappearance—The common kitchen
IT is eleven o'clock on Sunday morning, and the church bells have just ceased ringing. Along the broad thoroughfare which is one of the main arteries of London a few belated worshippers are wending their way, prayer-book in hand. But from the side streets come the roar and clamour of a busy market at its height. The hoarse shrieks of the hawkers and the cheap Jacks rise above the murmur of the mob, which elbows its way, a black stream of humanity, between two banks of barrows and open shops.
At the corner of one of the side streets—the corner at which the clamour of the market ends and the quiet of the English Sabbath begins—there is a huge, well-ordered, common lodging-house.
The whole neighbourhood is Jewish, the area is given up now almost entirely to the alien immigrant; but in this vast lodging-house the guests are not Jews but Gentiles.
In the entrance hall there is a case in which the letters awaiting the arrival of guests are exposed. There are letters from abroad, letters with American and colonial stamps on them; envelopes directed in a clerkly hand, envelopes directed in handwriting which tells of culture and refinement, and there are envelopes with a scrawled, ill-spelt address upon them.
For this Hotel of the Poor, where the prices range from five-pence to sixpence a night, has a reputation for comfort, good order, and good management, and attracts a superior order of men to that found in the fourpenny lodging-houses in the locality which are largely patronized by the criminal and the vagabond class.
On Sunday morning the clients of the doss-house lie later. It is a privilege accorded by custom. On ordinary days the guests are expected to be out of bed and downstairs by ten at the latest, but on Sunday, if you go over the dormitories and cubicles, even as late as twelve o'clock, you will find plenty of beds still occupied by slumbering—sometimes by snoring—citizens.
But by noon the majority of the patrons of the Poor Man's Hotel have "descended." Some are lounging against the wall in the street, taking the air. Many are in the vast underground apartment which serves the purpose of a common kitchen, and breakfast is in the course of preparation or consumption. Hard by this apartment is another, which is fitted up with every arrangement for as much ablution as the client of the house may care to indulge in. He can have a bath, or he can wash his face and hands. He can, if he is so minded, brush his hat, and there is a bit of looking-glass, in front of which he can arrange his collar—if he has one—and his necktie.
Fivepence carries you considerably further on the road to comfort here than fourpence does in most of the smaller establishments.
I know the doss-houses of most parts of London. I have spent mornings and evenings round the coke fire of the common kitchen with all sorts and conditions of male and female dossers, and I have always been struck by the note of classification which distinguishes them. Even the poorest of the poor have their sympathies, and, if I may use the word, their "aloofnesses."
The thieves do not care to mix with the honest folks; the tramps and vagabonds look down upon the workers, and the men of the working-class look askance at the wreckage of the black coat brigade. So each class has its own particular doss-houses. Even the begging-letter writers have their favourite haunts; in one house the clients are nearly all begging-letter writers, and sometimes pool the receipts.
The "screever," who is practically a public writer at the service of anyone willing to pay for a well-concocted story and a touching appeal, is not so particular. He puts up at any house where he is likely to find clients.
The lodging-house we are visiting this Sunday morning is so huge, and its accommodation is so vast, that it is patronized by the poor of every class. The poor working man is there, and the poor clerk; the wreckage of the superior class is there also, but there are no professional tramps. The professional tramp would find the society slow, and there would be no one with whom he could compare notes and yarn about the bad times that had come to the road. He prefers the more genial and instructive society of the street beggar, the itinerant musicians, and the "dodgers."
You will rarely see any work being done in a tramps' lodging-house.
The nearest approach to it is when one or two of the company patch their rags or take a needle and thread and collect their rents—those in their garments.
But in the lodging-house we are visiting you will find a number of the occupants hard at work, even on Sunday morning.
Beyond the common kitchen is a room with a long, wide table. Every seat at this table is occupied by men who are writing as diligently as if they were in an office.
Most of the men are of the broken-down clerk class. Many are young; only one or two are middle-aged. But all are lean and dilapidated and hungry-looking.
These poor fellows are addressing envelopes at so much a thousand, or filling in circulars, or doing copying work. On the table is a Post Office Directory for the use of the envelope-directors, and there is a good supply of inkstands.
Some of the men have been at work since nine, and, with a short interval, will work away till late in the afternoon, perhaps till the evening. They are earning the price of the next night's bed.
These men belong to the shabby-genteel brigade of the common lodging-house. Many of them have still the traces of refinement on their features, though their clothes are threadbare and their bowler hats weather-beaten and greasy-brimmed.
Who are they? What stroke of evil fortune brought them to this last ditch in the fight with Fate?
Many of them are mysteries. They do not, like the tramps and the vagabonds, wear their heart upon their sleeve. There is no confidence between them and the other occupants of the "writing-room" in the poor man's hotel.
Some of them have held good positions in mercantile offices and lost them. One or two are lawyers' clerks with whom the world has gone wrong. A fair percentage have come to envelope-directing in a common lodging-house through drink, others through an act that has caused them to forfeit the character essential for a re-engagement. Some of them owe their downfall to the turf. One or two have a conviction standing against them, and that is the sort of thing that stands against you till the last. All have wandered or stumbled into the slough from which few ever emerge to gain a foothold again upon firm ground.
In this room, in which a score of well-educated men are writing hard all Sunday long to get a few coppers, the stragglers of a doomed legion are really making the last stand. They may fight desperately, and hold their ground for a time, but they will yield eventually, and the hospital or the workhouse will claim them.
Yet some of them have homes they have forfeited, wives and children from whom by their own act they have separated themselves for ever.
Among the men I have met in a common lodging-house is one who, every now and then, is interviewed in the common kitchen by his family solicitor. He is a trustee to a marriage settlement, and his signature is occasionally necessary to deeds and transfers. A little while back he had to put his signature to a cheque for £72,000. Why, under these circumstances, is there no home for him—no position open to him in which at least he could earn the rent of a private lodging?
That is a mystery the solution of which is known only to himself, his relatives, and the family solicitor. He has a wife and sons and daughters, and they live in a pretty villa and keep servants, entertain, and visit their neighbours.
But many a night since the thing happened that made it impossible for him ever again to be seen with his own people he has been too poor even to afford the few pence for a doss-house bed, and has had to seek shelter in one of the night refuges for the utterly destitute or sleep under a railway arch.
If we were to stand at the entrance of a lodging-house such as this for a night and watch the guests as they come in—some of them so late that on the outside lamp is the reassuring notice, "A Night Porter kept"—we should see a strange procession of human documents.
If we knew the story of each we should have the details of life romances far more dramatic and haunting than those which are the stock-in-trade of fictionists who sit at home at ease and imagine things.
Look at this man, for instance, who is limping in and cringing to the deputy. If you are in the kitchen to-morrow morning you will see him do the same to a sturdy fellow who enters jauntily. You will see him take a teapot from the hob, where he has been keeping it hot, and put it on the table before the new arrival. The one man is the valet of the other. For a copper or two a week he cleans the other man's boots and gets his breakfast ready.
The man who employs a valet is a professional beggar. He can pitch a good tale, and his features suggest better days, and so he does exceedingly well in certain neighbourhoods. The valet is a mystery. No one knows how he earns his living. Occasionally he leaves the lodging-house for some weeks, saying that he has come into a little money. But he drifts back again, and is generally—if possible—more dilapidated than when he left.
If we were to go to one of the fashionable churches of London to listen to a preacher whose name is a household word, we should be struck with the likeness of that distinguished divine to the lodging-house valet. The likeness is accounted for by the fact that they are brothers. Both were at Harrow, both were at Oxford. But one this Sunday morning is preaching to a wealthy West End congregation, and is on the straight road to a bishopric, while the other is "valeting" a beggar in a common lodging-house.
Clergymen themselves come here sometimes. There is one who comes constantly—generally late at night. He has a cubicle, for which he pays sixpence. However late he may come in, he generally leaves early, before most of the lodgers are about.
He never enters the common kitchen. Sometimes he is shabby and down at heel. Sometimes he appears to have had a little luck, and his appearance is neater. Why a clergyman reduced to using a common lodging-house should retain the distinguished marks of clerical attire it is difficult to say. The deputy is the only person who has had an opportunity of studying him closely. The deputy, who is an excellent judge of character, thinks that the clerical get-up is a dodge; that the man is an impostor. But the proprietor, who, on two occasions, has spoken with his guest, is certain that there is no imposture—that the man is a Clerk in Holy Orders who has come upon evil times. He has been using the lodging-house off and on for the past five years.
Once in the rack at the door there was a letter for him. The envelope had a black border, and was addressed simply "Mr. William Venn."
Letters at the lodging-house are not given to the first person who claims them. Unless a guest is thoroughly well known he is expected to give some proof that he is the person named on the envelope.
In this instance Mr. Venn produced a couple of letters from his pocket. Both were addressed to the Rev. William Venn—I am not giving the correct name—at the General Post Office, "to be called for."
When he came to the lodging-house again there was a black band round the dilapidated high hat he always wore.
He only came back once after he was in mourning. No one at the lodging-house saw him again for some time. Shortly afterwards a solicitor's clerk came to make inquiries. His firm were particularly anxious to find the Rev. William Venn, who was entitled to a considerable sum of money by the death of a relative. The last known address of the reverend gentleman was this lodging-house, to which a relative had sent him the news of his wife's death in a lunatic asylum.
The proprietor took the address of the solicitors, and promised to communicate with them should the clergyman come again.
A year afterwards the clergyman did come—more wretched-looking, more woe-begone than ever.
When he applied for a bed, the deputy at once communicated the good news to him. "There's been somebody here asking for you," he said; "some solicitors. We were to communicate with them if we saw you again. They want you for——"
Before the deputy could finish the sentence the clergyman had fled.
The proprietor of the lodging-house, interested in the case, made several inquiries of the solicitors; but from that night the Rev. William Venn was never seen again.
There is a street in the East End which, owing to the character of its fourpenny lodging-houses, has become notorious. You may see standing at the doors of these houses men and women whose appearance, even in the broad daylight, would make a stranger doubtful as to the advisability of passing near them.
Night after night these houses are crowded with vagabonds, male and female, of the most dangerous type. In one of these, three murders took place in one year.
Nearly every woman who comes out of them has a black eye or some facial disfigurement due to male violence. The younger men have "ruffian" writ large upon their features, while the older men are of the ragged, weather-beaten tramp order.
To spend an evening in the common kitchens is to get an idea of humanity which revolts rather than saddens. Horrifying as the ordinary language of the company is, their callous viciousness and criminality are more horrifying still. There are men here who have taken human life—taken it brutally on dark nights in country lanes and by the waterside, sometimes to rob their victim, sometimes to get rid of a man or woman who knows too much or who wants too much.
Some of the men and women sitting together and indulging in drunken chaff or maudlin reminiscences are old acquaintances. They have met in more than one lodging-house in London, and have tramped together to fairs and race-meetings. And the mildest form of "ragging" among them is to remind each other of the robbery or the outrage, it may be the murder, with which the gossip of the doss-houses credits them.
The one offence which among these people is considered discreditable, and which makes them unfit for the society of their fellows, is to give information to the police, or to give evidence which assists the police in obtaining a conviction.
The man who is suspected of having murdered his wife or his companion is rather looked up to. But the man who has assisted in bringing a murderer to justice is despised, and if he were to return to one of these doss-houses at a time that anyone was present who knew of his conduct, he would have a poor chance of getting out again with a whole skin.
But these people, ragged, dirty, wretched as their appearance generally is, are not always without means. I have been in one of the lowest of these houses on a Sunday morning, when the place was packed, and seen the tramps and beggars enjoying a breakfast that seldom falls to the lot of a poor working family.
Look in at one of the kitchens to-day. Tea with bread and butter, bacon, haddocks, bloaters, and cold fried fish are among the breakfast "relishes" on the table, and in a frying-pan on the fire one stalwart tramp is cooking himself a pork chop.
The man's wallet stowed away on a shelf in the kitchen contains nothing but a few old rags and bits of rubbish picked up by the wayside. But he makes enough somehow to pay for his night's lodging and a good meat breakfast, and you will see him, as soon as the public-house at the corner opens, investing more money in the purchase of a stimulant to assist the digestion of the pork chop. There is always a public-house near a doss-house, and it is liberally patronized by the lodgers.
With all their apparent poverty they find money to visit the gin-palace two or three times in the course of as many hours.
I have seen the same group of women from a notorious doss-house go into a public-house four times in an hour. Two of them were miserably clad, and limped painfully in boots that scarcely held together.
If it is astonishing that men and women who have so much money to spend in drink can put up with the shelter of the lowest of the common lodging-houses in London, it is still more astonishing that men, and sometimes women, of wealth should habitually resort to them.
Yet in a doss-house in Bangor Street, Notting Dale, a woman lodged regularly, who, at the time of her death, had standing to her credit at a local bank several hundred pounds, In a fourpenny lodging-house in Great Peter Street, Westminster, a man who was taken ill and removed to a hospital was found to have upon him a money-belt which contained bank-notes to the value of sixty pounds. In a lodging-house in the Mint—one of a better kind, run in connection with a temperance mission, the lodging-house, in fact, in the kitchen of which the first free meals provided by the "Referee" Children's Dinner Fund were prepared—a man died who was supposed to be almost destitute; so poor and miserable was he, that his bed was paid for every week by a kindly clergyman interested in the mission.
This old fellow used to go to Covent Garden in the morning, pick up vegetable refuse, and bring it back with him and make soup of it. He picked up something one day that made him seriously ill. He was taken to the hospital, and died there, and in the battered old box which he left behind him at the lodging-house were discovered securities for a very large sum of money, and a banker's pass-book with all the entries on the credit side, and not a single one on the debit side.
The mysteries of the common lodging-houses of London are not always the mysteries of Poverty and Crime.
How big house robberies are planned—The up-to-date burglar—The fine art of crime—The brutal assaults that are paid for—How a man is marked—An assault that became murder.
THE crimes of London are the crimes of humanity plus those of a great city. There are amateur criminals and professional criminals. The amateur criminal is the man or woman who yields to a sudden impulse or the stress of circumstance. The professional criminal is the man or woman who makes a business of crime, and practises it for the purpose of profit.
Education and modern invention have brought our methods of crime to a fine art, and there are criminal organizations which, having brains and capital behind them, are able to realize immense sums annually for division among the partners.
The mystery of many a jewel-robbery which startles the public and baffles the police would be solved if what has long been suspected could only be proved—namely, the existence in London of a system of planting confederates—male and female—in the houses of the wealthy as domestic servants.
The servant so planted is always well-behaved, and inspires the greatest confidence. He or she comes with a personal character that is irreproachable. Let us take an example of the methods resorted to to "place" a confederate.
"A lady going abroad wishes to find a situation for her footman, whom she can thoroughly recommend. Address in the first instance by letter," etc.
The desire to secure a footman who can be thoroughly recommended induces a number of ladies to write.
From the applications sent in, the best addresses are selected, rapid inquiries are made of tradespeople and others, and the lady whose house it is believed will best suit the purpose of the thieves is communicated with.
The footman, who is in league with a band of expert jewel-thieves, is a trained servant. It is necessary that he should be so to retain the place long enough for the plans of the gang to be matured.
He soon finds out the ways of his employers and the whereabouts of the "stuff" that is desired. The rest is easy. He communicates all the necessary information to his colleagues, gives them notice of the arrival of a favourable opportunity, leaves everything arranged to facilitate a noiseless entry into the premises, and has nothing further to do with the "job." These jewel robberies generally take place in the evening, while the family are at dinner at home, or dining out, or at the theatre. No one has any suspicion of the footman. He always arranges to be with the other servants as much as possible at the time the robbery is being skilfully effected.
The lady's maid is a favourite "plant" servant, and is sometimes more useful to the gang than the footman. The lady's maid has frequently possession of her mistress's keys, and she is able to take a "squeeze" of any key that may be required by the burglars, who want to go to work noiselessly and expeditiously.
The "squeeze" is taken by pressing the key in a piece of specially prepared wax. With this impression in his possession, the intending thief can have a similar key made at once. He sometimes comes at the favourable hour armed, not only with a key of the safe or cabinet in which the jewel-case is kept, but with the key of the front door as well. He lets himself in quietly while the family are out, and the servants are downstairs, goes straight to the room in which the jewellery is, unlocks the safe or cabinet, and is out of the house with the plunder in a few minutes.
By obtaining a "squeeze" of a key in an office in which a number of clerks were actually sitting at the time, a safe was once opened while in transit on the South-Eastern Railway, which contained bullion to the value of many thousands of pounds, and the whole of it was successfully carried away.
Some of the biggest jewel-robberies that take place in London are planned, not as they used to be, in low dens and thieves' kitchens or taverns of evil reputation, but in luxuriously furnished houses and elegant flats. When you have made a five or ten thousand pound haul, it is much safer to drive home to a good address with the plunder in your smartly appointed brougham than go off with it in a four-wheel cab to a shabby neighbourhood across the water. The tools necessary for the job can also be carried with more safety in a brougham, and if you have an elegantly attired lady beside you dressed in ball costume, and blazing with jewellery, no policeman is likely to stop your carriage at 4 a.m. to inquire if you have been breaking into a jeweller's shop or a diamond merchant's office.
The expert bank-robber of to-day opens an account at the bank he intends to victimize. Sometimes he has been a customer of the establishment for months before he risks the trick by which the clerk of another bank doing business at the counter is robbed of thousands of pounds' worth of notes. The expert does not do the stealing himself; he merely engages the clerk behind the counter in conversation, and covers the operations of a confederate. This confederate is occasionally attired in the correct costume of a bank-messenger.
The profession of crime to-day has in its ranks men whose manners are those of the diplomatist, whose get-up is faultless, and whose fertility of resource would enable them to make a good living by honest means. But they have become captains of crime, and they prey upon society with a keen enjoyment of the sport.
Some of them carry on their operations upon the strictest business principles. They have their agents in the big cities of the Continent, they speak several languages, and travel about the world. They belong to an international society of malefactors which has frequently in hand at the same time a big job in London, another in Paris, a third in New York, and a fourth in Vienna. They travel first class, put up at the best hotels, and are delightful companions if you get acquainted with them in the railway train or on board ship. Occasionally they combine skill at cards with their other accomplishments, and during the American touring season they travel to and fro on the big liners and make a very fine thing of it.
One of the most dangerous of the fraternity—a man with a world-wide reputation for villainy—was at one time a near neighbour of mine in Regent's Park. He made such a sensation eventually in London that it was thought that a period of retirement would be beneficial to his health and to the welfare of the community. He is now resting, but if he would in his leisure write a truthful account of his adventures in America, London, Australia, Monte Carlo, and Paris, it would be the most thrilling romance of crime that has ever been given to the world.
In a recent celebrated case the Judge described a woman as a Princess of Evil, and said that she had hypnotized wealthy men, and so inspired them with confidence in her.
There are women who have hypnotized men of wealth and position so successfully that they have married half a dozen at short intervals, and acquired possession by that means, not only of family jewels and large sums of money, but of family papers and family secrets, and have found a means of compelling the tricked "husband" to hold his peace, even after the character of the "wife" was discovered.
One woman, not particularly good-looking or in any way captivating, married four wealthy men within two years, quitting each bridegroom "at the church door"—as the melodramas have it; and she drew large sums of money from all of them. This "Princess of Evil" married two of the husbands in London, one in France, and one in America. When one of the London husbands, having discovered that he was a free man, married again, she threatened him with a charge of bigamy unless he paid her a large sum of money.
She might have had the audacity to keep her threats had not her victim had the good sense to write and inform her that if she made any further attempt to annoy him, he would instantly place the matter in the hands of the police, and put up with the unpleasant publicity.
The body of a finely built man was found floating a year or two ago in the Thames with a rope round the neck. A lady, some time after the description of the man had been given in the papers, and the body had been buried as unidentified, came forward and revealed the fact that the man was her husband. She urged that he had been murdered by the friends of another woman whom he had recently married. The two women had met and condoled with each other. The second wife brought an action for nullity, but the first stated by her counsel in open court that she would give no evidence, as her husband had always been good to her. It was after the trial that the man disappeared, and was never seen again until he was taken lifeless from the river, where it was conjectured he had been lying for some weeks.
How the man got into the Thames with a rope round his neck was never discovered. It remains a mystery to this day.
It is not likely that the relatives of the second wife had anything to do with the crime, for they were people in a good social position, and came into open court with the story of the wrong done their kinswoman.
But if a rich person did want vengeance wreaked upon an enemy, there are ways and means of bringing it about without any active part being taken by the aggrieved parties.
There are men ready and willing to do anything for a consideration, and more than one brutal assault, which has ended in the death of the victim, and been put down to "hooligans," has been a crime planned and paid for by people of means.
The commissioned crime is a feature of modern London, and it is rarely that the mystery surrounding it is solved.
Let us look in for a moment at a well-known West End bar, much frequented by young men about town, racing men, and certain members of the prize-ring who are well in with the people who make a business of sport. Some of the habitués are gossiping and drinking at the bar or sitting at the little tables. Among them are men of good position in the sporting world, but there are also card-sharpers and tricksters. One or two are pugilists who go to race-meetings to look after or "mind" bookmakers who carry large sums of ready money about with them. Some of these men are respectable and doing well, and would not mix themselves up with a criminal "job." But there are others who are not too particular, provided there is a good chance of doing a "crooked" thing profitably and safely.
One of these men, who is so well in with a certain class of thieves that he can always get back for a consideration a valuable article of jewellery that has been stolen, is standing at the bar drinking, and apparently taking no notice of anyone. But as a matter of fact he is keeping his eye on a young "swell" who is sitting at a little table, talking loudly and boastingly to a man in evening dress who belongs to the cleverest gang of card-sharpers in London.
The young "swell" has come into possession of a fortune, and is seeing life. He is plunging on the turf, and playing cards for large stakes. The sharp is going to ask him to his flat—quite a first-class flat in the West End—and he is going to be "rooked" of a large sum of money.
The man leaning against the bar is studying this young fellow. He has only been put on the job that night, and has been told to come to this bar and make himself thoroughly acquainted with the features of the quarry.
The man who has got a "flat" wants to keep his "find."
He doesn't want him to fall into the hands of a rival gang. So he has put a spy on to watch, and inform him if any overtures are made to the "pigeon" by any other members of the "flash mob."
The spy has studied his man carefully, and will know him again anywhere. So he finishes his drink and leaves the bar. He is instantly followed by a well-dressed man of about forty.
Out in the street the well-dressed man comes abreast of the spy, and says, "Jack, I've got a job for you." Details follow, and the spy is commissioned to find two or three men who will brutally assault a person named at the first convenient opportunity. A plan is agreed upon, and terms arranged. So much for the go-between, so much down to the men engaged, and a large sum to divide among them when the assault has been brought off. Particulars of the person who is to be assaulted, details of his habits, and the place and time at which he is most likely to be caught alone, are given, and the conspirators separate.
Let us now look in at a dirty, ill-lighted beer-house in a gloomy street in one of the most criminal areas of London.
Half a dozen roughs are drinking and smoking in the tap-room. To them enters the man I have called the spy. He asks two of them to come outside with him, and he offers them the job. He satisfies them that the money is right, and guarantees it, for in these cases the principal is never seen. The men engaged know they can accept the guarantee, because if they were bested, the life of the guarantor wouldn't be worth an hour's purchase.
A week later a gentleman returning from town by the last train alights at a Thames-side station. He sets out to walk to his residence. His way lies along a quiet, deserted road.
Someone passing along that road in the small hours finds a man lying insensible on the footpath. He has evidently been brutally knocked about, robbed, and left for dead.
Help is secured, and a doctor endeavours to restore consciousness, but the victim dies without uttering a word.
The deed is put down to footpads, who probably met the gentleman and assaulted him in order to rob him. Every effort is made to trace the guilty men, but without success. The few people who have noticed a trap being driven along the road to London would not connect it with the hired ruffians who committed this midnight crime.
But this assault, which resulted in murder, was commissioned and paid for by a man of means who had a grudge against the victim. This man reads the account of the murder, and is perhaps a little alarmed. He didn't wish it to go as far as that. But he is quite safe. None of the men who assisted in the crime, either passively or actively, are likely to come forward and make any revelations. They have their own necks to think of.
The crime of "bashing"—that is the professional name for it—is far commoner than the peaceful citizens of London imagine. To commit a brutal assault for hire is a means of livelihood practised by certain gangs of ruffians who have their regular haunts and houses of call, where they "attend" to get the "office" of any job that may be going.
A large number of the crimes attributed to hooligans are deliberate plots of this kind. Money is not always the consideration. Sometimes it is good comradeship. A respectable elderly shopkeeper was waylaid and stabbed to death in the Borough a year or two ago. The police could find no motive for the crime, but the mystery was solved eventually by the confession of a young man undergoing five years penal servitude.
The victim had made complaints to the police of a woman, a neighbour, which caused her to be summoned and fined.
The son of the woman was the leader of a gang of young roughs who infested the Borough. He called his band together, and sentence of death was passed upon the "informer." It was many weeks before the old man was out late enough to give the band a chance of executing their captain's orders. But directly the chance came they committed the murder entrusted to them.
In a busy little street leading to a broad West End thoroughfare there is a shop in which a legitimate business is carried on. There is a back shop, divided by a partition from the front, to which special customers go to select from the stock that is kept there; and beyond is an inner office.
The proprietor of the establishment is the head of one of the biggest criminal organizations in London. In that little back shop and that inner office some of the most skilful forgeries of modern times have been arranged. Each member of the gang is a specialist. One, a good-looking young fellow, gets to know servant-maids, and learns from them particulars of their masters' habits. Another frequents billiard-rooms, and gets in with City clerks. Another opens an account at the bank on which the forged cheque is to be drawn, and receives a cheque-book. Then the skilled hands are set to work. One man will fill in the cheque for a large amount, another will forge the signature to it, and the third will drive up in a hurry just as the bank is closing and present it.
The money secured, the man who cashed the cheque passes the proceeds to a confederate who is waiting for him, and takes a train out of London at once. He will receive his share of the plunder by post, and remain at a discreet distance until the hue and cry is over. The gentleman who opened the account and got a cheque-book and drew his balance down to nothing the day before the coup was brought off, will probably go away too. But the man who plans and finances burglaries, forgeries, confidence tricks, and swindles on wholesale lines, will remain in town and carry on the business of his highly respectable shop without feeling a moment's anxiety.
The police may have their own ideas about him, but he is much too clever to let them get a scrap of evidence that would connect him with the exploits of the gang of which he is the life and soul.
The wholesale distribution of forged bank-notes which ended in the sensational suicide at the Old Bailey of the principal in the business, was arranged and worked from a room above a little shop in one of the busiest streets of a crowded area. The men who were distributing thousands of forged bank-notes about the country came here for their "parcels" in broad daylight, and passed out with them under the very eyes of the police. On one occasion there were so many people blocking the pavement to look at things exhibited in the shop window that a police-constable had to clear a path for a man with a pocket full of forged bank-notes to pass away with them.
The gang might have continued to circulate the notes with impunity, but for the treachery of a comrade, who betrayed them.
The chief of the gang, though in custody, determined to be revenged upon the informer. He managed to communicate with a woman. She made a beefsteak pie, and in this pie concealed a loaded revolver. The revolver was wrapped up in greaseproof paper.
The pie was delivered to the prisoner when he was being tried at the Old Bailey. He took the revolver into court with him, intending to shoot the informer. But the chance he hoped for was denied him, so when he was sentenced to a long term of penal servitude, the convict put the revolver to his own head and shot himself dead.
How a prisoner kept in close custody could obtain a loaded revolver and carry it with him into the dock was for a long time an unsolved mystery.
I learnt the truth standing in the room where the pie was made. It is this fertility of resource which enables the modern criminal to outwit the modern detective, and makes mysterious the ways of crime.