THE WYCKOFF MURDER.
IT is not often that one reads of a murder committed for pecuniary gain which excites in any strong degree the sense of surprise. Murders of that kind are usually the
dullest of all crimes, committed from the most obvious and vulgar of motives, by persons too stupid to think of any road to their ends except the most brutal and " primal " forms of violence. But that swindlers are as common as black berries, they would be more interesting subjects of study than average murderers. There is, however, something of intel- lectual interest in the following ease, which has been thought worthy of being telegraphed across the Atlantic, and is reproduced in all newspapers, always in precisely the same words :— " At a quarter to one o'clock yesterday afternoon [Monday) a man walked into the Bank of New Amsterdam, Now York, and, after having sent in his name to Mr. George H. Wy ckoff, presi- dent of the bank, was ushered into the latter's private office. No sooner was be face to face with Mr. Wyckoff than he presented to him a note. The president cast his eye over it, and then took a hasty look at his visitor, who was a perfect stranger to him. The
note read as follows We want $6,000, five in $1,000 notes, and ten in $100 notes. I will shoot you if you make a false move. Be careful. My partner has you covered, and if you give the alarm within three minutes after I leave, he will throw a stick of dynamite through the front entrance. Put the money in an envelope, and don't talk.' Mr. Wyckoff declined to give the man the money, upon which the latter drew a revolver and shot the president in the abdomen. Then. quick as thought., the assassin turned his pistol against himself, sending a bullet through his neck. Mr. Wyckoff staggered into the bank parlour, where the clerks and others rushed to his assistance. It is thought that neither Mr. Wyckoff nor his assailant can recover."
Although this particular form of burglary is almost unknown in Western Europe—we cannot recall a single case in the last thirty-six years—it is frequent enough in America, and but for the conduct of the assassin would call for no particular remark. That conduct, however, was unprecedented, and suggests the possibility of a new motive for crime, and there- fore a new danger to society. The criminal tried to commit suicide, it is believed successfully, and that is the last thing the ordinary murderer or blackmailer or other criminal for the sake of gain ever thinks of doing. Murderers, instigated by revenge or jealousy or hatred—which is not so dead an impulse as Lord Lytton fancied—constantly shoot them- selves in order to avoid the consequences of their acts, or perhaps because, having gratified the " burning of the heart," as Asiatics call it, they find that the gratification has in no degree relieved the pain of their mental thirst; but murderers for gain always try either a rush to escape or a fight with the police. They are too @elfish to kill themselves, and have considered too steadily their chances of escape. That the assailant of Mr. Wyckoff expected him to yield and give him time to fly, and in the madness of acute disappoint- ment shot him down, is likely enough, for similar incidents have repeatedly occurred before, but his next step would have been to rush out of the building, not to kill himself, a con- fession of total defeat which he could have made after he had been captured. He had, it must be remembered, a fair chance of escape, at least for the moment, for a man with a revolver could break through a crowd of clerks, and at least have a stand-up fight with the police which, one would think, would be to a habitual criminal more attractive than suicide. A man of that kind, if an ordinary criminal, could not be sud- denly taken with surprise at the enormity of his own act, for he had deliberately planned it, and must have belonged to a class who, of all men, are the least visited by sudden and strong repentances. The man must have had some unusual motive, and it is interesting to consider what that motive could have been. It is just conceivable, of course, that the assassin was a cultivated man, rendered desperate by want of a particular sum, who had decided on this method of robbery as a last resource, resolving, if he failed, to terminate the struggle ; but in that case why did he not kill himself without committing the murder ? He could have had no personal spite against Mr. Wyckoff, he was not, if the story is true, in- sulted by him, and to kill him when he had resolved to kill himself seems a superfluity of naughtiness. No doubt it is a superfluity often displayed by victims of passion, more especially the passion of jealousy, but there is no sign of passion in a crime of this kind, which was deliberately planned, and had even been written down some time before- hand. The incidents rather suggest, as does the reference to dynamite in the note handed to Mr. Wyckoff, that the assassin was acting in obedience to some external order which he could not escape, and which he so greatly dreaded that after his failure to succeed he thought life valueless and executed himself. In other words, Mr. Wyckoff's assailant was a member of some Anarchist Club or other secret society which, urgently requiring a definite sum of money, either for the execution of some design or the defence of some member of the brotherhood, resorted to this means of obtaining it. Such a society would be sure to kill the recalcitrant banker, because, if it did not, no similar attempt could ever be made with success ; and it might have ordered the suicide in case of failure as the only method of preventing any revelation of its existence. It is said, we know not how truly, that attempts of the kind are not infrequent on the Continent, and that in Russia especially local treasurers and important postmasters have in this way been robbed of heavy sums. The Anarchist Committee or Nihilist Committee, regarding the whole business as an act of war either upon the capitalists or the Government, " requisitions " a sum of money, and supports its requisition, just as a General does in an enemy's country, by a threat of execution if its demands are not complied with, a threat often carried into effect, because if it were not supported by some terrible sanction it would never be obeyed. The attack on the New Amsterdam Bank seems to us, supposing the facts to be reported with reasonable accuracy, to be much more like a transaction of that kind than like any usual attempt at blackmailing by physical violence. New York is full of Anarchists of all nationalities, and the sum fixed points to a calculation made by a committee. An individual robber would hi ye demanded a thousand pounds, not twelve hundred.
We have often wondered whether the belief of the Conti- nental police that secret societies of criminals who use murder as an instrument exist, and sometimes manifest themselves in what is called an "epidemic of crime," has any foundation in fact. Theoretically it should have. The prin- ciple of association now extends itself to every other depart- ment of human effort, and should therefore extend itself to the business of plunder, at all times in all great communities so extensively carried on. Societies employing murder for political ends and Trade-Union ends and agrarian ends have undoubtedly existed, and the deduction that they might exist for purposes of plunder is not a priori wholly unrea- sonable. Something very like them must have existed among the wreckers of many coasts ; piracy was once a formidable danger to commerce, and brigandage is not yet extinct in Southern Europe any more than in Asia. No doubt society is now in most European countries immensely strong, and can crush organised banditti with a celerity and certainty of which no previous century gives us any example; but then the very result of that would be that criminal associations would be secret. Something of the kind has been suspected or ascertained once or twice in Austro-Hungary within the last forty years, and in Belgium there was a case on a small scale within the last twelve months, which revealed the existence of a large copartnership with murder for its business, and, as we have said, one would antecedently imagine that such associations would be pretty common. They are not, however. Bankers, who would be the first objects of attack, are in Europe quite as safe as other people, and the millionaires are much more worried by begging letters than by attempts either to murder or kidnap them. Mr. Vanderbilt, if newspaper stories are correct, has been threatened with this latter form of outrage once or twice, but no millionaire has been known to disappear or has complained of this form of extortion. Even the kidnapping of children, which one would suppose to be comparatively easy, has been since the Charley Ross case an unknown offence, though rumours of attempts of the kind against Royal houses have once or twice been circulated only to be peremptorily, and very wisely, denied by those who really were, or were supposed to be, alarmed. This is due no doubt in part to the organisation of modern society, which is now enabled to dispense with any patent collections of treasure of the kind which criminals could benefit by—it is of no earthly use to steal a collection of " treasures " like pictures or fine furniture, for if they are defaced they are valueless, and if they are not defaced they can be followed as surely as a white man in a black crowd—but there is still another reason. The fidelity of the criminal class to each other tends to decrease. Whether it arises from the increased ability of the police, or the immensely increased weight of the opinion of the respect- able, which has wholly crushed wrecking and nearly crushed smuggling, or, as we would fain hope, from an improvement in the general conscience, it seems certain that, except when crimes are traditional, as brigandage is in some places, and the Mafia is in Southern Italy, or are really, like Nihilism, perversions of the desire for liberty, criminal organisations do not last or gain any formidable strength. The mere desire of plunder does not supply sufficient motive to criminals to keep down their instinctive distrust of each other, or to conquer the selfishness which induces individuals to make their peace with society by betrayals. The result is not all due to improved morals. If society became from any cause anarchical we should, we fear, even in this country, see a rapid revival of land piracy, gang robbery, dacoity, or what- ever else organised plunder may be styled, but until then there is, we believe, little to fear from associated criminality. Even Anarchism is not that, to its own consciousness at all events, and Anarchism has as an associated force accom- plished very little. Individuals have struck startling blows in its name, but no "society" has as yet succeeded in cap- turing a single city, or even in overawing the juries of a single country. The cement of goodness has, except for moments and in strangely isolated instances, proved more cohesive than the cement of badness, especially—and a very curious fact this last is—when the badness was of a mean kind. It would be easier to found a successful society for killing aristocrats than a society for stealing jewels by murder, though the latter might be supposed to be based upon a much stronger and more general instinct. It is not wholly because of steam that piracy has died away. The kind of men who would make successful pirates, besides seeing the risks much more fully than before, are no longer capable of continuously enjoying their ferocious trade. If they could kill only black men they might, but the wealthy among black men do not go to sea.
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