The Seaforth News, 1928-07-19, Page 2Scotia
Yard Methods
Prove Their Efficiency
Just When England; Was Beginning to Suspect That its
Famous Anti -Cringe Organization Hal Fallen Down in
Its Battle to Suppress Modern Crime, the "Sig.
Sig" of the Yard "Got Their Men" and
Vindicated Their System
TRIEDAND TRUE
C. Patrick Thompson in. the Naw
York Herald Tribune gives our
American cousins something to think
rwtbo'tit, when in"a recent number of.
that paper he told his readers of the
euceess of Ohl London's Police Fame,
The press has been full of criticism
of their "third degree" treatment of
suspects, ea 1t is refreshing tohear a
tale •by an American praising the ef-
ficiency of this famous force for good.
The tale runs in part as follows:,
Scotland Yard, London's famous
anti-crime organization, is feeling
pleased with itself again.
For months it had been under r
cloud. A police constable bad been
murdered while attempting to make
an arrest. His assailants had sent
bullets crashing through the pupils
of his oyes—and then had sped to
safety in a stolen automobile. All
England was stirred—and called for
the swift punshmont of the murderers,
-Scotland Yard set to work on the
case, but nothing happened, Month
after month went by Without an arrest
being made; without even a clue be-
ing found, so far as the English public
knew,
Many were the criticisms that were
leveled at the slow, laborious
methods of crime detection, though
for years these methods had held
England's annual crop of murders to
a very small minimum and had re-
duced the number of unsolved mur-
ders virtually to the vanishing point.
Many were the entreaties for the
Yard to abandon its time -worn method
of keeping everlastingly on a certain
track. "Introduce modern methods!"
"Get your man!"
And then, just when it looked like
Scotland Yard had been licked, that
it had been sticking stubbornly to a
wrong scent—two arrests were made
and two convictions were obtained.
Scotland Yard had vindicated Itself
and its methods.
It is a thrilling story—the story of
this vindication, but before we launch
psychologieal aspects•ot the easel and
then he examined the known bad char-
acters who might have dpne the thing,
IIe asked three main questions;
Vt'llo was the last person seen with
the victim? Who were the victim's
friends? - Where was the instrument
used in the crime purchased?
lie got his man, a Belgian butcher
named Voisin. Voisin was hanged.
The other ease is known in crime
history as "the trunk murder." The
dismembered corps of a woman .was
found in a trunk deposited in the cloak
•oom at a Loudon railway station. The
oily clue was a dishcloth narked "St"
But that clue led Wensley to the office
of a man named Robinson, and a
blood-stained match in that office com-
pleted the chain of evidence. Robin-
son was executed.
Hawkins, bald, stout, spectacled, is
the robbery and blackmail expert. He
is,_the'repository of innumerable se -
(Meth of the haunt monde. The late
Lord Rothschild, England's Pierpont
Morgan, once called him in to settle
a blackmailer.
Hawkins arranged a neat trap. Ten
thousand dollars was to be placed in a
hotel washroom. Hawkins fixed up an
electric contraption to ring a bell in
an adjoining room when the notes
were picked up. The bell rang,
Hawkins rushed in and seized a man
who was desperately trying to wash
black stains off his hands.
Hawkins had covered the notes with
powder scraped from indelible pencils,
so that the blackmailer should be
marked beyond all doubt.
13111 Brown, a black -haired giant, is
the burglar specialist. Then there is
Nicholls. With his little, waxed Mus-
tache and dapper air he looks like a
floorwalker. But there is nothing of
the floorwalker in his mental make-up.
He is an adept at disguise, a master
In the gentle art of shadowing, talks
French' an dGerman, is all expert on
the international "dope" traffic and
stopped the use of drugs among the
into that, let's glance at the men who troops during the war. He prepares
have brought it about—"the Big Six" cases for the Director of Public Prose -
of Scotland Yard. cutions.
Come with me behind the scenes of John Ashley; the fifth of the for -
the great red -turreted building on uiidable bunch, looks like a 1Ylethoclist
Thames -side, by the Houses of Par- parson and does the detail thinking
liament, and meet these six super -de- for Wensley. He talks to criminals
tectives, the men who are chiefly In such a fatherly way that 11e usu-
responsible for the fact that out of ally gets the truth out of them, He
a year's total of 114 murders (this in has trained his memory to such a de -
a population of 38,000,000) only two gree that when he sits in at the con -
remain unsolved. ferences of criminal and legal experts
Foremost among them stands the when major crimes are under discus -
vulture -headed Chief Constable Wens- sion the alternative to a search of
ley, chief of the criminal investigation the records is to "ask Ashley."
department. Normally he is respon- He is the man who docketed at the
sible for the detection and suppres- Yard over 1,000,000 records of British
sion of crime among the 7,500,000 per -.and international crooks. Possibly
sons in the metropolis. Actually, he' this accounts for this prematurely
is the chief detective of England, gray hair.
always liable to be called in by the Superintendent Savage, brown hair -
police chiefs outside his area for the ed, good looking, is the youngest of
solution of some major crime, the six. He is an 'ornithologist. He
He directs operations on every will tell you that there is only one
major crime and presides at the daily satisfactory way of getting rid of a
conference ofthe Big Six. His men body. The details are not, however,
make about 150,000 arrests a year, 10, -lief publication.
000 of these being for indictable of- I So much for the Big Six themselves.
Tenses ranging from arson, rape, coon- Their method, the famous Wensley
torfeiting and wounding to robbery method, of working, does not make
with violence and murder. such romantic reading as that of
• He is the master elucidator, probably Sherlock Volutes. In fact, it is notlt
the most efficient and experienced de- ling more than one of those laborious
tective functioning to -day, and one of methods of crime detection which the
the world's remarkable men. His face„ celebrated Mr. Holmes never ceased
with its great beak of a nose, trap to ridicule, a method, nevertheless,
mouth and basilisk eyes, is stony in its which has Proved its adequacy to the
calm, hilt. Nowhere is it better- demon
He used to be a "footslogger; an or - I serrated than in the Gutteridge case—
dinary patrolman, now he rides with I mw assured of a prominent place
his powerful shoulders and big vulture i among the classic crimes—the murder
head slouched against the cushions of of a police -officer in September, which
a huge limosine, culminated in the arrest of the tour -
In the forty years intervening he -defers six months later,
tween one state and the other he ]las I Early on the morning of September.
acquired a marvelous knowledge of the 27 ICensley heti a telephone call from
underworld and its ways and has goue i the Pollee of Essex, the adjoining
about collecting murderers, coun. j county to London. One of their men,
terfulters, forgers, robbers, gang chiefs Gutteridge, had been found dead in a
and outer Criminal fry as you or I lonely lane. He had received a fatal
might collect stamps—tenaciously, ex -
and shot, had staggered back and fallen,
pertly, interestedly yet detachedly, land es he lay ho had been shot again
He thinks crime is a disease. But j through eye,
Wheel
trckss showed
an hi
softnesswhen about
after
about ltim tan he ish tenacious !that spot. The dead man had pencil
as a bulldog, cunning as a ferret, sharp
and notebook out. •
as a hawk, relentless and merciless. Detectives were dispatched, 'While
IIe has his human side. He is with -! they were busy the discovery of an
out vindictiveness. He is on hand -
'abandoned, bloodstained car 81 a cul -
shaking terms with hundreds of orim• de -sac on the outskirts of the city
finals. He has helped the destitute enabled Wensley and his colleagues
family of many a crook, to reconstruct the crime in its grin -
His life has never been attempted, riple features,
There was a time when the chiefs of Gutteridge, on patrol at night, had
the East Side gangs he was engaged recognized the doctor's car approach -
in breaking up swore that his life was ing (the car had been stolen from a`
net worth a moment's pnr'chase. But doctor's garage), seen it occupied by
he went about the Grime quarter un -
he
and had Bailed it, No doubt
armed (as all Scotland Yardmen do) ho had blown his whistle and the
and unescorted—and lives, things had stopped. Gutteridge had
He made his name in the service started to ask awkward questions, and
by gang smashing, and his name with the bandits, ening long terms of penal
the public by solving two extraoldn,• servitude ahead for carrying loaded
ary murder mysteries. firearms and driving in a stolen car—
One was a case 3n which he had to British law comes down with a heavy.
find the murderer of a headless
hand on the armed criminal with a
woman left lying in a West )ilnd bad record—!tad shot hire
square, lois only clew was a laundry
mark on a sheet shrouding the copse,
' He hunted his man.along lines which
, have 'since become the standard
, method at the Yard in the approach
to all murder mysteries, •
First he asked himself what tort of
person would be likely. 1o''comnit sac;.
8 crane; he dstimated the mental and
,Why had they then pursued hire to
the roadside and sent bullets crashing
'through each oye? Doubilase because
•
•
kt.'npr: ,�dataA.'
FAMOUS RUSSIAN BEAUTY
Mme Sakaroff, dancer and entertainer, posing in the costume of the Netherlands,
i
a cartridge case left in the car.
They also had a description of the
doctor's instruments which had been
in the car, and which had disappeared,
They knew the type of gun from which
some,at least, of the fatal bullets had
bee mired,
And here Sir Wyndham Childs, the
chief of the secret political police and
counter -espionage, an ex -army officer,
butted in and made a significant dis-
covery. Childs is lean, polite, a nar-
row -eyed lynx of a mall: He was a
musketry expert in the army. He ex-
amined cartridge case, bullets and
photographs of the shot -riddled face
and found that (a) the case was that
of an obsolete Mark IV cartridge with-
drawn from the army soon after the
war started, (b) one of the bullets
fired through the eyes 'had been pro-
pelled by black powder, a detonation
for cartridges not used since 1894, and
(c) the other had been propelled by
cordite.
It was thus established that two
men, one of whom had a mixed assort-
ment of ammunition, were concerned
in the crime; and Childs could further
saythat when a revolver was found
the breach shield of which duplicated
the peculiarities in the fatal cartridge.
case—marks not 'known to be as infal-
lible as finger prints—that would be
the weapon with which the constable
was murdered.
In the process of testing these
theories the Yard chiefs examined over
1,000 revolvers, and spent days firing
bullets into wood and examining the
effect under the microscope. That
would have taken friend Holmes quite
a time, even with the assistance of
Meanwhile months went by. No
Dr. Watson.
arrest. What were Wensley and his
men up to? They were looking for
tematic comb -out of snspecte and
otiere,
Every revolyer that came into pollee
hands went to Scotland Yard. Tile
War Office co-operated. A weird and
wonderful collection of guns accumu-
lated. Uneasy folk in illicit posses-
sion of revolvers furtively dropped
them, They were fished out of rivers
and off waste laud, and sent to the
Yard. The owners were hunted out
and questioned.
Tho record office provided the names
of all criminals of viplent tendencies
who had been liberated from prison in
the last two or three years. They
were looked up. Thousands of men
were traced and interrogated. Detec-
tives shadowed suspects and kept
watch for wanted crooks who had
eluded the round -up. There were sud-
den raids and surprise searches.
The vulture -headed Wensley sat in
his office by the old river and, iu the
course of months, saw his search nar-
row down to six suspects, Oise was
an habitual criminal named Browne.
Even Dartmoor, where they tame
tigers, had not been able to tame him,
and he had served every day of his
last sentence of four years. Browne
had eluded all search.
Suddenly, enter Chance, the incalcu-
lable factor. In Sheffield, the steel
city of the Midlands, a recklessly
driven car collides with a local car
end goes ou. The aggrieved local man
manages to note its number as it
shoots away. It is a London registra-
tion number.
The Sheffield police ask the -London
police to look it up. The latter report
back that the name is not known at
the address. It looks like a fake num-
ber. ` Will Sheffield inquire further
and report?
Sheffield gets )busy and finds a local
man was in the mystery car as pas-
senger. This man is an ex -convict.
He is questioned and discloses that
the driver was Browne. Browns has
a garage at Brixton.
This "leak" in Sheffield reaches the
hawks at the Yard. Instantly they
pounce, But the Flying Squad men
find that Browne is away. IIe has
motored to his old prison at Dartmoor
to bring, a friend, a convict due for
release, back to London.
Here the tale touches fantasy.
Browne drives the released convict to
Scotland Yard, where he has to report
on entering the metropolis, and then
goes to Battersea. The waiting de-
tectives jump on him before he can
reach one of his several guns.
In the Yard they are or tenterhooks.
They have got one of the killers. But,
the evidence •
In Brown's garage an expert ex-
amines the collection of gnus. He
breaks one, Mark IV 'cartridges la
the cylinder and the .breach shield dti
Plicates the peculiarities in the fatal
cartridge. IIe breaks another gun,
It contains an assortment of ammu-
nition, two rounds of which hold black
powder propellant.
And there are the doctor's stolen
instruments!
1,
Strange vanity! The killer, strong,
itrte111 sut, cunning, ferocious, is so
sure of not being tracked that he has
held on to the very evidence "needed
to hang him—the guns, the amniuni-
tion, the instruments,
- The Yard's half -year's patient hunt
is at an end. All the detectives'
theories 'have proved correct. They
incidentally have confirmed their fav-
orite contention;•' that detective work
is only about a 55 per cent. factor in
unravelling a crime, the other 45 per
pent. being accounted for by the items
of information received—uniformity
11 style, carelessness and vanity. In
that order.
For months they had known as much
as Sherlock Holmes could have dis-
covered by his celebrated deductive
md'thod; but without that "Informa-
tion received" they would still be•.look-
ing for Browne, and, lacking this inter-
locking system, this deadly close -
woven net for gathering information
from every corner of the island and
getting action on it from a central
headquarters, not all the Holmesss
in the world could have found Browne,
let' alone effected an arrest and se-
cured the essential evidence.
Following Idea
of Jack
iner
Bering Sea Fleet to Tag
Whales For Scientists'
Study of Habits
Anaoortes, Wash,—How many wives
has a whale? What is Mrs. Whale's
average family and how long do its
members live? The answers to these
and many other questions are to be
sought by scientists who will accom-
pany the whaling fleet to Bering Sea
this season. To aid in investigations
small identification tags will be shot
into the backs of whales as a sign to
gunners to pass them up as subjects
for study.
After a hiatus of more than forty
years, whaling operations are being
resumed. on an extensive scale on the
Pacific Coast. Whaling fleets are be;
ing increased and more expert person-
nel added to crews: .
Whale oil, fertilizer and chicken
feed are the most -important of the by-
products from the great mammals, but
there is also profit in whale tails for
Japan, the whalebone of the baleens,
the ivory of the large teeth of hump-
backs, and the liver -oil for medicine,
The expression "a whale of a prize,"
although used generatlyto denote size,
is expressive in another way, for the
whale is more valuable to ata captors
than any other creature.
A. single north Pacific whale will
have in its mouth nearly a ton of
whalebone worth many hundreds of
dollars. From its blubber, twenty-five'
to forty tons of til may be obtained,
worth about $10.0 a ton. The by-pro-
ducts are valuable enough to pay the
operating expenses.
they had a superstitious dread of the # s ` s t, 4 iY?. s� :a a tj .'i x: t
impresslol of themselves appearingI ...-_,.- 1 t s ,i r iii+kte ?:' mresa i.
on the retina of the dead man's eyes.! FRENCH Al FOLKESTONE
The Yard had three inseminate
clues: (1) true bullets extracted from ' A party of 2,500 French citizens, headed by the mayor of Calais, crossed the channel and, laid a wreath 00
the body, (2) the stolen car, and (3) the was' memorial at Foikcstoue the town fttl:niliar, to thousands of Canadian soldiers. .
'J
Trees Are Like Men
Interesting Data
Tree life, like human life, is largely
governed by environment and antes-
teal traits. Nature rias' made no ex -
The Modern
Criminal
Crintinala nowadays don't leek the
part, there is 00 "criminal type."
The criminal is a weak brother, stupid
and unable to play the game by t'ecog-
nied Pules --so Ire cheats. Thee° are
the, views of Dr, Philip' A. Parsons,
Professor of Applied Sociology in the
University of, Oregon, whose recent
work, "Crime and the Criminal," au
English .reviewer In The 13ritieh Medi-
cal Journal (Landon) says ought to
be in every magistrate's hands.Says
this writer;
1 ho ctimirnai is a menace to life and
happiness, He imposes finait0ial bur
signs upon society, and is hinmel1' uu
economic liability, IIe is a great ob-
staO1 in the way of social progress,,
and is a striking example of social 01 -
efficiency, Society views him with a
lingering fear, a fear which in special
cases develops into terror and even
hysterical manifestations. There is
a ci'y for vengeance, or a clamor of
special pleading which may defeat
the ends of justice. The, lose due to
crime in the United States is -esti-
mated at five to six billion dollar's a
year, and this estimate takes no ac-
count of loss due to "graft" nor •of tate
costs of police, law courts, judges, or
of penitentiaries. The modern crim-
inal is not like his popular picture.
Once two celebrated actors took the
parts of Pagin and Biii Sikes in a
stage version of Oliver Twist, played
in New York, The chief of Pinker -
tons, and later of the New York de-
tective force, was asked to see it,, and
decide whether the actors were true
ceptions in the case of trees to the to life. He reported that the lIlay
principles that control living things. was fine, but if the actors had stopped
rtake food and have means onto Broadway, they would have been
oTreesf convoi$ipang of their food into growth arrested on sight. "They looked too
cutch like criminals. .And present-
day criminals don't." Lombroso was
responsible for fixing a physical type
in the public mind. His conclusions
were wrong, as has been conclusively
which they live an dtho association shown by the work of Goring and Karl
of their neighbors. Trees hand down Pearson, but ho did good by initiating
from generation to generation the investigations. Goring's conclusions
characteristics of their ancestors just batter meet the case—that criminals
as human beings do. This extends as a claw •aro inferior human beings,
even to the peculiarities of individual characterized chiefly by their stupidi-
trees of the same species.
It has been found that•like produces
like, even to shapes and sizes. Rapid -
growing trees produce fast growers.
Tall, straight, healthy mother trees
will produce similarly formed trees
from their seed if started in congenial
soil and climate. Short, shaggy trees
will produce the same type. The
seeds of trees that have grown in
warm climates will not do well plant-
ed in cold climates. Seeds of trees
that thrive in wet soils will not do
well when planted in dry soils. It
has been found that trees with
crooked trunks will have a tendency
to produce offspring with crooked
trunks.
Forest tree .growers should inquire
into the history of the mother trees
when they are buying seed. Many
failures have been recorded in grow-
ing trees by planting seed from an
inferior type. Antecedents are im-
portant with trees as with men and
women. Forest trees inherit the char
and reproduction. They drink and
breathe and. are subject to favorable
and unfavorable influences according'
to the kind of nourishment they ob•
tain, the localities. and climates in
ty and inability to play the game oc--
eor11ufi to the rule of modern society.
Dr. Parsons recognizes varieties of
criminals, tints: insane criminal, born
sional criminal, occasional criminal,
the criminal by passion or accident.
The tendency is to the belief that
while mental deficiency is not in itself
a priinary cause of anti -social conduct,
under certain conditions it becomes a
contributing factor in the product of
conduct disorders. Whether or not
crime has increased in incidence is a
moot point; our ideas of crime change.
But there' is evidence—so far, at least,
as the English-speaking peoples are
concerned that there is a modifica-
tion in the violence and seriousness of
criminal acts. The decrease, Judge
Hoyt of New York City says, is the
result of civic and social effort to
eliminate the factors responsible for
delinquency and neglect.
In cold countries cranes against pro-
perty are, it appears, more prevalent
acteristics of their ancestors to art an crimes against the person. Ob-
scene acts rise from a minimum in
marked degree, January to a maximum more than
double the minimum in warm July.
Crimes against property reach their
'Crimes
in early winter. 1n many Euro -
Like a Child,pean countries statistics indicate that
crimes against property—principally
theft—rise and fall with the Price of
the principal cereal food. There is
reason to believe that this correlation
exists with a fair degree of regularity
al over the world. Men who work for
themselves have a much lower rate of
watching them on a clear afternoon criminality than those workingfor a
near sunset, we suddenly startled one!
wage. At the present time there is no
of the old females who had been ( evidence that the system of education
prinking herself off to one side. With has either incrasod or decreased
a scream of fear she dashed off, fol- crime, It has been
pointed out with
what frequency crime is preceded by
truancy from school, itself a sign of
individual maladjustment."
After dealing with the criminal and
He glanced over his shoulder, alma,- modern Crimes, Professor Parsons
ing with terror, as he saw me overtak- considers the reaction of society to
ing him. Suddenly he decided it wasthe criminal, and discusses the police,
no use, he didn't have a chance to theories of penal institutions,, substi-
escape. He stopped, lay down of true tutes for imprisonment, the -treat-
rock and covered his oyes with his, meat of youthful offenders, and new
tiny hauls. Trembling all over he
conceptions and treatment of crime.
Lon -
lay there sobbing like a child and Ills review of trial by jury the Loi
waited for the end, The little fellow don reviewer considers of great in -
acted exactly as if he knew I were terest. Ha says:
In this country (Britain) there is no
difficulty in getting a jury impaneled
with order and speediness; it is other-
wise in the United States, where, on
occasions, weeks have been wasted
on this initial proceedtire, "In 1920
two months were required in; secur-
ing a jury, and 1,200 prospective
face so close was too much. Ile jurors were examined,"
pressed his hand quickly back and The author is <'isturlieci by a sinia-
cried out in desperation. When I ter aspsot of the present situation, in
found I couldn't soothe him I carefully which an individual of good standing
set ]tier down and backed off. Again its' the community discovers that 130
he peeked at me from behind one does not lose mete with his group by
hand. He gave a sort of gasp as i4 unsocial or antisocial behavior'.
ho didn't believe his eyes, He jerked "The law istt crude device for re
both hands down, Yes, both eyes told straining conduct. Only the stupid
him I was too far away to grab him, and impulsive, the poor, and the weak
I -Ie moved first one foot, then another, violate it. The clever and the richt
Both worked all right. With a yell can gratify their unsocial and anti -
he turned and ran, At this moment social . desires to a . great extent by
a fuzzy face pecked around one of extra -legal means, or, in many 10 -
the rocks about fifty feet ahead, When 'stances, by olieu defiance' of the .law.
the baby reached this point a body Antisocial mobilizatione of power,
fohleived the head, apparently the audit as crimhial • political organize-
mother, for the little one I had re- tions, may be strong enough to afford
leased honied aboard her back and members protection against the antis-
rode happily away to toil •itis play- ority of the State.,"
mates of his frightful a.clventtu'o with This is a book which every magis'
a giant."' trate might read with advantage, end
will be is help to those who have to
do with riti:J delinquents,
We have the sun, but not the par:or,
Monkey Sobbed
A monkey incident that might make
him suspect that perhaps Darwin was
right after all is told by Martin John-
son, the famous camera explorer.
"Once," he writes, "while we were
lowed by all the rest loudly complain-
ing at the disturbance. One little fel-
low, too young to run fast, was loft
behind in the . stampede. ' Hoping to
catch him for pet, I ran after him.
going to kill him, and couldn't bear to
see my haled uplifted to strike.
"I picked the poor little thing up.
His heart was going like a trip-ham-
mer. I suppose he was surprised to
find that he was not yet hurt, He
moved his hand a bit from one eye
and peered at me. The sight of my
Babe Ruth has 1111 31 home, runs
already this season-- and without
quoting Shake epee re