STUDIES IN ADVERSITY AND CRIME.* Tun late Mr. H. B.
Irving earned a reputation as a student of crime who had a flair for finding his way through voluminous evidence and a pretty gift of exposition. The last four studies he wrote are in the volume before us. We have headed this notice " Studies in adversity and crime " because the book displays men struggling against a calamitous weight of false evidence. One of the men was quite innocent, and if the others were not quite innocent they were probably guiltless of much that was charged against them. The first study deals with Adolf Beck ; the second with Lesurques, who was convicted of taking part in the affair of the Lyons mail in 1796 and was executed ; the third with La Ronciere, who was convicted of writing wild, degenerate and threatening letters to a young girl and of assaulting the same girl ; and the fourth with Peter Vaux, the French republican schoolmaster, who became involved in the revolution of 1848 but was probably innocent of the arson on account of which he was deported to New Caledonia. Vaux was vindicated after his death, and in this respect his ease was happier than that of Lesurques. La Ronciere, after his release from prison, led a useful and well-balanced life, hardly compatible with the ungovernable tendencies displayed by the author of the letters.
We shall go into only one of these cases, that of Adolf Beck. We choose this because, though it is familiar, it is never likely to be outmatched in English law as a strange record of mis- fortune and coincidence. It is, moreover, a landmark in the history of our criminal trials, because shortly after it, and no doubt as a result of it, the Court of Criminal Appeal was estab- lished. The House of Atreus hardly endured a heavier yoke of penalties unwittingly incurred than had to be borne by the
• Last Studies in Criminology. By H. B.-Irving. London : Collins, 16s. net.]
unhappy Norwegian. Let us hope that whatever his feelings may have been in the end, when he was vindicated and when amends had been made to him, he did not throughout his years of mental torture think that the system of English justice was quite so bad as his experiences made it appear. In any case, it is a sobering thought that such tragic mistakes can be made in this country, where an accused ,person is surrounded by safeguards.
One evening in December, 1895, Adolf Beck was standing at the street door of a house in Victoria Street, where he had a flat, looking for a newspaper boy. A woman who was passing suddenly came up to him and angrily asked what he had done with her watch. Beck was indignant, but as she persisted in the charge of theft he, no doubt, did the right thing in saying that he would go with her to a police station to clear up the matter. The police were sufficiently impressed by the charge to detain Beck, and as they were on the look-out for a plausible impostor who had been making friends with women and then relieving them of their watches and other property, they no doubt had it in mind that Beck might be the man. From being the accuser Beck had become the accused. In the course of the police inquiries he was confronted by several women who had been robbed by the plausible impostor, and nearly all of them declared that he was the man. Whether Beck really bore any resemblance or not to the swindler this was the first stroke of misfortune in the long series which was to fall upon him.
In order to understand the next misfortune the reader must know that' eighteen years before a swindler, whose real name was John Smith, but who passed most often under the style of " Lord Willoughby," had been making friends with women in London and stealing their property. Smith had been con- victed and sentenced, but after he had served his term of im- prisonment and was released the distinguishing marks on his body had not been duly recorded for official use. These marks were, of course, known to those who had had charge of Smith, but as they had not been circulated for future identification there was, to say the least of it, a danger that a mistake might be made if it were sought to identify any other man with him. As it turned out, this very mistake was made. In the days of Smith's operations, we may remark here, the finger-print system was not in use. Even the measurement system, which was fairly common, had not been applied to him. When Beck had been charged in the police court somebody reminded the police who were conducting the case of the operations of John Smith. The similarity of method between Smith's swindles and those of the man who had recently been defrauding women was so extraordinarily strong that the police at once considered it highly probable that in Beck they had rediscovered John Smith or " Lord Willoughby." Beck's foreign accent was against such an identification, but the body marks, if that matter had been properly gone into, would,have wholly disposed of it. Unfortunately, the coincidence between the two sets of swindles was reinforced by the opinion of a handwriting expert, who said that Beck's writing was that of John Smith carefully disguised. Beck was identified in the police court by several more women as the man who had lately swindled them, and he was committed for trial at the Central Criminal Court. By another curious and most unfortunate coincidence the frauds on women in London had ceased from the time of his arrest. " It's evident," said the onlookers, " that the police have got the right man." At the Central Criminal Court a further misfortune befell Beck. He was tried without reference to the belief of the prosecution that he was really John Smith. If the question of this identi- fication had been raised he could probably have proved that he was in South America when Smith was operating eighteen years before. In March, 1896, when Beck was tried, it was still impossible for a prisoner to go into the box to give evidence. He might have done much by his answers to bring up the matter of John Smith. As it was, the whole question of his identification with that man was ruled out by the judge, and the witness who had known him in South America could not even be called. Beck was sentenced to seven years' penal servitude, and when he entered the prison he was given the marks which had belonged to John Smith. For all practical purposes, indeed, he was now John Smith.
The petitions which he continually sent to the Home Office during his imprisonment, if a little grotesque in their broken English, were truly tragic. After a time, as a result of these petitions, inquiries were made into the body marks of Beck. It then appeared, indeed, that he was not John Smith at all. But what difference did that make ? Had he not been con- victed on the evidence of a large number of women of having robbed them in a peculiarly heartless fashion ? The identi- fication with Smith was a mere incident. So the Home Office refused petition after petition and Beck, losing all faith in justice, began to suspect that he was really the victim of what he oddly called a " monster complot." He even suspected the solicitor who had worked unflaggingly in his cause. One wonders that the officials of the Home Office were not given pause by the fact that several police officers had identified Beck with Smith and that the identification had now quite broken down, for if the police were mistaken why not also, and much more, the women ? Further than that, the opinion of the handwriting expert had quite broken down too, since Beck was not Smith. Beck himself, in one of his pitiful petitions, had the sagacity to fasten on that last point himself.
The Beck case brought into considerable contempt the whole science of graphology. We commend the judge who said afterwards that the only handwriting experts should be the jury. No doubt that general rule is capable of a little quali- fication. For instance, where the writing of one person has been imitated by another, an examination by microscope will show faltering movements instead of the confidence of a man writing in his own hand, and all such things can be presented plainly by photographic enlargement. But even then the jury should be the only " experts " to give a final opinion.
Beck served five years of his sentence before he was released on licence. But even then—more misfortune ! Just as the swindles on women had ceased after his arrest so they began again now that he was released ! Stranger still, it was " Lord Willoughby " who was at work. Even the shattered identi- fication seemed to piece itself together again. Beck was rearrested. Several women, as before, identified him. When he appeared in the police court he was actually charged as John Smith. For the Treasury, at all events, this identification had never been shattered! He was again committed for trial.
At the trial Mr. Justice Grantham was much oppressed by the extraordinary number of contradictions and doubts which had gathered round the personality of Beck. He postponed deliver- ing sentence, and between the end of the trial and the day appointed for delivering Sentence the real " Lord Willoughby," alias John Smith, was arrested full in a fresh career of swindling. After that events moved rapidly. Of five women who had identified Beck at the second trial, three now identified Smith as the man who had defrauded them ; the two other women had gone abroad. Of the women who had identified Beck in 1896, only one could be traced. She was shown a large number of photographs and she immediately picked out Smith as the man who had swindled her. The handwriting expert withdrew his opinion. Smith confessed to having committed the thefts with which Beck had been charged. Beck was given a free pardon and received £5,000 as compensation. He died of pleurisy in the Middlesex Hospital in December, 1909.
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