FALSE CLUES.
HAS the New York Herald got a new Gaborian on its London staff P If not, and if the whole of the gx columns of its Monday's issue devoted to the Whitechapel murder was not in reality a clever fiction concocted in the Strand, then that paper, owing to a number of most extra- ordinary coincidences, has very nearly been instrumental in enmeshing an innocent man in a net of circumstantial evidence such as, in the present condition of public opinion, might very easily have led to a terrible miscarriage of justice. Public opinion, whether rightly or wrongly, has steadily hardened into the belief that the Whitechapel murderer is,—(1), a sea- faring man; (2), a person possessed by a mania of revenge against the class of women who have invariably been attacked; (3), a man of intelligence and education considerably beyond that of the lowest class of slum ruffians, but evidently marked by a vein of bloodthirsty and mysterious insanity. An amateur detective and reporter employed by the Herald obtained a clue to a man answering exactly to these conditions,—a sailor, likely to be possessed by a craze for revenge, and inspiring those who came across him with a sense of terror and disgust. As the reporter pursued his investigations hour by hour and day by day, he seemed clearly to be forging the links in a chain of proof which at last must firmly fix the crime upon the individual thus primii-faxie liable to sus- picion. At the last moment, however, and just as he, the reporter, considered that the time had arrived when he would be justified in giving the person in question in charge, the chain snapped, and it became evident that he had all the while been proceeding on a false scent. In one sense, no doubt, the matter is unimportant enough, and little attention need be paid to the blunder of an amateur in his attempts to discover the criminal in a very difficult and com- plicated case. In another sense, however, it is of con- siderable moment as bringing out in clear relief how great is the risk of injustice being done, owing to the fact that cer- tain definite conclusions as to the type of man to which the criminal belongs are in the air, and are, consciously or uncon- sciously, affecting the course of all inquiries. The suspicion prevalent in the public mind may, of course, be true ; and in that case no harm is done by its existence. If, however, it is false—as, again, it well may be—then the investigations are poisoned at their source, for the minds of the detectives
can hardly help sharing an infection so potent and so general. It is as if people were searching in a plot of grass for a certain object, and since they had previously determined that the object was red, were only looking for red, though, as a matter of fact, the object all the time was blue. Under such circum- stances, the more eager their search for red, the less likely' would they be to see blue, even though it were just in front of their eyes. But beyond the fact that the present state of the moral atmosphere in regard to the murder prevents the detec- tives, and the general public through whom the former work, from having eyes and ears for anything but one class of man' and so destroys that detachment of mind which is as essential in criminal as in literary investigations, there is, as we have said before, the even more important consideration that some innocent man may become involved in a network of circum- stances which, if it seemed to corroborate in any specially striking way the popular suspicion, might very possibly place his life in great peril. The investigations of the
New York Herald should remind us, then, how necessary it is to make up our minds to look for the criminal simply, not for some ideal person whom we have constructed to fit the crime. If we do the latter, we are as likely as not to find a man who corresponds exactly to the creature of the popular imagination, but who is yet entirely guiltless of the particular act. Possibly, to many of our readers, the danger which we have suggested will seem an absolutely unreal one, and they will declare that there is no substantial ground for the warning we have given. To prove, however, that there is such ground, we have only to recapitulate the facts upon which the Herald's reporter worked,—facts which, up to a certain point, apparently mark down a particular man as indisputably the author of the crime. Before giving the outline of the Herald's story, we must state that the names
of most of the persons and places described are entirely fictitious, and in reality mean no more than if they had been described by letters of the alphabet taken at random.
Not long before the committal of the last murder, Mr. Albert Baeckert, the president of one of the Vigilance Com- mittees formed some little time ago in Whitechapel, received a dater, signed "Jack the Ripper," which stated that the murderer would begin work again in July. At the top of the letter had been written the words "Eastern Hotel, Pop—," but this address had been heavily scratched out. Taking this as his starting-point, the reporter attempted to find the place mentioned, and though he failed in Poplar, he discovered an Eastern Hotel not far off, in Limehouse,—a respectable house frequented by wall-to-do seafaring men. Finding that the servants could give no useful information, he made soma inquiries in the bar, and there fell in with a person who, hearing that the reporter was making inquiries connected with the letter, mentioned that ever since he had read the descriptions of that document appearing in the newspapers, he had connected it with a man he had once known, who had lodged in his house, and who had been in the habit of visitink the Eastern Hotel. This man, by name Cornwall, always made him feel "uneasy," declared the reporter's informant, and when he went away, every one in the house felt "a sense of relief." Cornwall, be stated, was a seafaring man, and also, he mentioned, likely to have a feeling of revenge towards the class of women singled out by the Whitechapel murderer. Cornwall could be very companionable if he chose, could sing, and was extremely well educated, but seemed at the same time cruel. He only had two visitors, one a man, whom he said was his uncle, the other a boy who had sailed a short voyage with him to a foreign port. "He came," said the reporter's informant, "after Cornwall had left us, and he told my sister that a boy would be better off if he was a dog than sailing under Cornwall." When asked why he associated Cornwall with the murders, he replied :—" I perhaps do him a great injustice, but I still have this impression. There was something very uncanny about him. It was mysterious and indescribable. He had a peculiar habit of grinning. He had large, prominent white teeth, and he was always parting his lips over them. It was not a smile exactly, but it was like a dog showing his teeth." To further emphasise the effect of the mystery produced by this man, the reporter's informant went on to describe some of Corn- wall's queer ways of "moving about like a cat," and of coming upon you unawares from behind. Finally, he said he would never have thought of Cornwall in connection with the murders but for something that occurred last
year about the time of the Whitechapel crimes. He was walking then in a road near his house, when he passed a man, turned round to look after him, and then found the man had also stopped and turned. "I went back, and to my astonish- ment recognised Cornwall. When he stopped with me he had a moustache and full beard, black, and was always very neatly dressed. On this morning he was clean shaven, except his moustache, which was clipped. He had a light shabby suit of clothes on, and a light shabby hat. I said,—' What on earth are you doing P' He said,—' I am going on the police.' We had a little more conversation, and I left him." This appearance, in disguise as it seemed, and the connection with the particular hotel, were the reasons given by the reporter's informant for mentioning Cornwall. He ended by stating that when Cornwall had left his house, he had gone on one of the steamers of the Exploration Company sailing from London Bridge. Of course, there was nothing in all this to connect Cornwall in any sort of way with the crime ; but the reporter resolved to follow the matter up, and to find out who this Cornwall really was. As a preliminary, however, he tried to obtain from Baeckert a specimen of the handwriting in which the letter signed "Jack the Ripper" was written. Though he failed in this, owing to the letter having been destroyed, Baeckert, who was an engraver by trade, and so was accustomed to imitate what he had seen, reproduced, for what it might be worth, a specimen of the writing as he remembered it. Possessed of this slight piece of information, the reporter, who tells us that Cornwall was the first human being he had ever heard of who, in his opinion, "fitted the case "— being a seafaring man, having a motive for killing fallen women, and appearing at intervals in London—attempted to get the help of the police in working up his clue. Here, however, he met with a refusal, and thereupon resolved to pretend that he was a solicitor's clerk anxious to find out the whereabouts of Cornwall, and to go minutely into the matter himself. After getting preliminary information from one of the Exploration Company's servants, he found a captain under whom Cornwall had sailed. This gentleman, who remembered Cornwall perfectly, and rather liked him, stated that after leaving him he had served on a vessel called the Solent.' On board her, plenty of news in regard to Cornwall was forthcoming. The officers of the ship had liked him, and were specially interested about him, for he had totally disappeared since the 22nd of last August. Next, the reporter learned that at the time when the April and the first of the August murders were committed, the 'Solent' was in the docks. Cornwall himself was described as determined and strong, but mysterious.; so much so, in- deed, that the impression prevailed that he was a detective, or something of • the kind. After this, the officers of the 'Solent' produced a specimen of Cornwall's handwriting, which seemed to have a startling resemblance to that imitated by the engraver, and gave the reporter the name and address of the captain who possessed a photograph of the man in ques- tion. Finally, they mentioned the fact that after Cornwall left the ship, he had written to ask the influence of the captain to help him "to get on the police." Later an aunt had written for news, saying that her nephew had not been heard of for six months. It was, of course, of paramount importance to find out if Cornwall had been in London during all the murders, for it was held as a fundamental assumption by the reporter that they were the work of one hand. Accordingly, to this investigation he next addressed himself, searching various shipping registers, though at first in vain. At one of these offices he was somewhat staggered by the question of the official in charge of the register: "Do you think you are the only party after Cornwall P"—an oracular remark which, however, he would not amplify when asked point-blank if there had been in reality any other inquiries. Dismissing this portion of the case for a time, the reporter returned to the Solent,' in order, if possible, to find out if Cornwall was left-handed. For reasons which he says he cannot give, the reporter takes it as absolutely certain that the Whitechapel murderer is left- handed. The matter, therefore, was to him one of great im- portance. The question, when once put, was, however, soon answered, the mate of the 'Solent' declaring positively that Cornwall was left-handed. Cornwall carved, be said, "but always held, the knife in his left hand." To the reporter, full of his preconceived notions, this, of course, seemed like nothing less than a strong confirmation of his theory. The
next steps taken were to see the captain who had been friendly to Cornwall, and possessed his photograph, to get the address of the photographer, to obtain copies of the picture, and then to go to the lodging-house which the captain had indicated as Cornwall's last known place of abode. Here the servants gave a description of Cornwall which appeared to tally in a most extraordinary way with the published police description of the Whitechapel murderer. These facts known, the reporter obtained an interview with one of the two people who are certainly known to have seen the White- chapel murderer—the man who saw him leave the lodging. house where an unsuccessful attack was made upon a woman last year—and got from him a description which tallied exactly with that of Cornwall. From this man was also obtained the curious piece of information that the murderer wore on his face "a contemptuous grin,"—a fact which at once re- called the manner in which Cornwall's peculiar grin had been insisted on. This done, the reporter made inquiries from the crew of another steamer, the Ben Lomond,' in which Corn- wall had sailed, and got the address of a house which, on inquiry, it appeared he had only left on the preceding day. The inquiries thus far had shown that Cornwall had been in London on the days of all the murders except one. As to the murder of November 9th, the matter was still uncertain, and this essential point was now to be determined by reference to the Board of Trade Register. Inquiry, however, showed that Cornwall last year was one of the crew of the Ben Lomond,' and that the vessel sailed for China, with Cornwall on board, on October 14th.
This fact in a moment blew the reporter's case into atoms, and the whole edifice of suspicion which seemed to be fitted together so firmly, and to rest on such sure foundations, went to the ground. The lesson of the case is an important one. It by a coincidence by no means more remarkable than many others discovered in the course of the reporter's investigations, the Ben Lomond' had not sailed till November 10th, a net of circumstantial evidence, as we said before, would have been woven round an innocent man, from which he might have found the greatest possible difficulty in escaping. This fact the reporter recognises fully; but he does not realise, we think, the true state of the case when he speaks as if the difficulties connected with circumstantial evidence were alone to bear the blame, and that his failure only showed the immense care required for their handling. The danger of a hideous injustice being done arose, not from relying upon circum- stantial evidence—for, after all, all evidence is circumstantial—. but from the fact that the amateur detective started with a strong preconceived notion, and with a preconceived notion which was, consciously or unconsciously, shared by many of his informants. The result was that he searched London all over with extraordinary cleverness and rapidity, not so much for the instrument of a crime, but for a man who would coincide with a particular theory,—for some one who would fit an ideal conception. The mistake was, perhaps, natural enough, but it is one highly dangerous in a detective. The particular reporter, after such an experience, is probably likely to be careful enough in the future. It is to be hoped, however, that others engaged in the same work will take the matter to heart, and that they will act on less simple and easy as- sumptions than that of hunting for a man who will fit their theories. Who knows but that when the actual man is found, he may prove to be the last person in the world that any sane human being would have suspected P
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