TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE MODEL DEPARTMENT.
“MURDER will out" more quickly than ever, and murderers es- cape less often. The Police, guided by the light of science, watch for crime at every spot where it can come to the surface. Our system of registration is new, but at no distant time, pro- bably, every dead body will be visited by a person competent to pronounce upon the cause of death ; exact observation has made great progress in noting and classifying the different symptoms attending death caused by artificial means ; although, as a con- temporary has remarked, the rapid mode of transit favours escape, it is manifest that it also limits the choice of the fugitive to com- paratively few routes, with stations at which every passenger is exposed to observation ; and the electric telegraph, outstripping every possibility of human transit, enables the police of the most distant out-stations to communicate with each other. But in re- gard to the detection of crime, the fact most remarkably illus- trated by the murder at Bermondsey is the progress which has been made by the Police in the arts of observation and combination.
The Mannings had entered into a contest with society for the possession of O'Connor's property, in spite of all the defences which protect it. They had the advantage of the initiative, which allowed them all the time they pleased for preparations at starting, and the time was employed very diligently. The grave was dug, and the displaced earth was secreted, long before any act was done to awaken suspicion ; O'Connor himself was em- ployed to collect together any outstanding scraps of his own pro- perty; he was gradually familiarized with the sensation of being dragged, and was thus incapacitated from raising an alarm—the watchman, which every one is over himself, was stupified ; the mortal blow was dealt in such a mode that it should spread abroad neither sound nor smell ; and the body was safely stowed away in a hole under the pavement of a back-kitchen, with a winding- sheet of quicklime sufficient to dissolve flesh into its earthy par- ticles, so as to arrest the odour of decay ; finally, the murderers escaped.
They had not been able to prevent the one negative fact of O'Connor's being missed—or rather, they.had forgotten to plan a sufficient excuse for his absence. A man is missed ; this is re- ported to the Police ; and, unbaffied by the pretences purposely multiplied to distract them, they dog the body to the hole in which it lies. Three weeks at least the murderers were preparing their plot; they did not contrive to prevent that " unworkman- like ' laying of the kitchen-stones which spoke to a sharp pair of eyes as intelligibly as a gardener's label over buried seeds. The murderers have fled—but they have slept in beds, they have used cabs : the cabman that drove the woman is found, the bed in which the man tried to rest is identified ; every point of egress is guarded ; a sailing-vessel which has left port nnsearched is pursued; the police of the whole kingdom is made one by the electric telegraph; the woman is seized in Edinburgh; the track of the man is known.
The history of this crime has attested the excellent arrange- ment of our police, both in organization and tactics. The poor foolish man O'Connor has gone; but the object for which the Mannings conspired against the law—the property—is snatched back, and they have lost themselves. It is seen to have been a struggle nearly hopeless from the first ; and it is ultimately visited with the most effective of all deterrents against crime—utter frus- tration. Another trait of the official conduct in the affair is the unsparing use of every means for accomplishing the object in view : the whole police of the metropolis and outposts is set astir ; it is reported that the fugitives may be in a certain ship, and two war-steamers are put in requisition to bring it back. The object was to confront and vanquish the conspiracy at every point, and no instrument was thought too troublesome or costly for doing so—the State, its army of police, its navy, its funds. The property recovered would not pay for all the exertion and cost of this immense movement ; but the object was success, and that was worth much more than the property at stake—success in establishing for the law which protects life and property the character of being inevitable and irresistible.
Such is the hearty devotion of every effort and resource to con- summate the efficiency of our police. The transaction itself, as a mere recovery of property, would not " pay" ; but the efficiency of our police is worth a price above calculation. Why is not the same zeal bestowed in developing the efficiency of other depart- ments of the public service ! For example, it is an object worth all needful expenditure of trouble and means to secure the best administration of our Colonies ; yet there is not a transaction which does not expose the utter inefficiency of our governing machinery by the most lamentable failure. We can trace a mur- dered man to his grave with unerring certainty ; but we, a sea- faring people, cannot hit upon the road to build a good ship, or to find an efficient crew for it. We can arrest the furtive mur- derer; yet we cannot combat the most notorious enemies of human life, even with means at our command—we cannot yet accomplish the covering of ditches in some of the most populous parts of the Metropolis, and do not know the best way of carrying off the substances of decay and disease. In the Police department we have learned the value of absolute efficiency ; but in the higher departments we are content with a qualified success, and are al- Ways "compromising the prosecution."
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