Twenty Years' Recollections of an Irish Police Magistrate

by Frank Thorpe Porter

CHAPTER XVIII. MURDER OF MR. LITTLE—DETECTIVE INEFFICIENCY—INDIVIDUAL EFFICIENCY—A FALSE ACCUSATION EXPOSED—EXTRAORDINARY GRATITUDE—A SALUTARY REFORMATION—A CHARGE OF FELONY—POOR PUSS, WHO SHOT HER?—BAXTER AND BARNES.

I shall now advert to a most atrocious murder which was committed in the Metropolitan Police District in 1856. It occurred in the Northern division, and I was requested by the learned and worthy Chief Magistrate, Mr. J. W. O'Donnell, to assist in its investigation. Mr. George Little, the Cashier of the Midland Great Western Railway, had not returned to his residence on the evening of the 14th November, and on the following morning, his relatives enquired for him at the office in the station. The office door was broken open, and he was found lying on his face in a pool of blood, his throat having been cut from ear to ear. At first the impression was that he had committed suicide, for a considerable sum of money was on his desk. However, it was ascertained by an examination of the body, that many very severe injuries had been inflicted, and that the skull had been fractured by blows from a heavy, blunt instrument. A coroner's inquest returned a verdict of "Wilful murder by some person or persons unknown," and a large reward was advertised for the discovery and conviction of the perpetrator. No arrest was made on suspicion until the 21st of December, when a person was brought before the Northern Police Court, but was very speedily discharged. I refrain from mentioning the name, because there is no doubt that the charge was unfounded. It was rumoured that an experienced London detective had been specially engaged to afford his assistance in the furtherance of justice, but nothing of importance transpired until the 26th June, 1857, when a woman, named Spollen, informed a superintendent of police that her husband, James Spollen, was the murderer, and that he had concealed the bank-notes which he took from Mr. Little's office in a certain place immediately adjoining a small house which he occupied on the railway premises, he being in the Company's employment as a painter and cleanser. The superintendent immediately arrested Spollen, but kept him in his own custody from ten o'clock in the morning until nearly ten o'clock at night, when he brought him to a police station-house and gave him in charge for the murder, producing the wife of the accused as the charging party. The place indicated by the woman was immediately searched, and a considerable sum in bank-notes was discovered concealed in an ashpit, and packed in a small firkin, which had previously contained white paint. Some money in silver was also found in a canvas bag deposited in a cistern, and the utmost publicity was given to the searches, the results, and the source from whence the information concerning them was derived. His wife's evidence against Spollen was properly rejected by the magistrates; and although the case was sent for trial on other grounds, the result was an acquittal. During the magisterial investigation, I suggested that a portion of the Royal Canal close to the railway premises should be drained and searched, as I considered it very probable that some of the implements used in the murder had been thrown into the water. When the search commenced, the superintendent announced that whoever found the razor should receive a guinea. A razor was accordingly found in the mud almost immediately, but it was manifest that it had not been there until the search was directed, for it was perfectly free from rust or corrosion. However, another razor was found, and the name of "Spollen" was on the handle. A fitter's hammer was also taken out of the canal, and it was more than probable that the razor and hammer had been in fatal proximity to the throat and head of the unfortunate George Little. After the trial, some of the London papers commented in the strongest terms on the ignorance and stupidity evinced in the preliminary proceedings of the police officer to whom the case had been assigned. The bungling, blundering incompetency which characterised the transaction was described as truly Irish. They also complained that the English detectives who had been sent to Dublin were thwarted and impeded in all their efforts by the members of the Dublin force. I fully admit that the case was thoroughly mismanaged, but I must add that the person most prominently engaged, the superintendent, was an Englishman, and I deny that English detectives had to encounter Irish jealousy, as no person of the description was sent to Dublin in reference to that crime, or indeed in any instance within my recollection, without meeting a cordial, perhaps I might venture to say, a fraternal, reception from the Dublin Police. I may add that whenever our constables were sent to the English metropolitan district, they invariably returned with a grateful recollection of the kindness manifested towards them.

In the case to which I have last adverted, and in some others which came under my observation, I attribute the failure of justice to the ignorance and consequent incapacity of members of the police force or of the constabulary engaged. However, I consider it only just to remark on the paucity of instruction afforded to constables for detective purposes. Activity of body, corporeal strength, general mental intelligence, and moderate educational acquirements, are considered sufficient qualifications for the discharge of detective duties, and further teaching is left to be acquired by future experience. In several continental states, reports of important criminal trials are arranged for the use of the police by an archiviste, and instruction is thereby afforded as to the means by which guilt was established, or, perhaps, to the mistakes or rash precipitancy by which justice was defeated, or innocence accused. The essential difference between our police and that which I have observed in France, Belgium, and Rhenish Prussia, is exhibited in the speedy arrests of suspected persons here, compared with the tardiness of apprehension in the latter countries, unless the prisoner is actually caught in flagrante delicto. The moment that a suspicion is entertained in Ireland, the supposed delinquent is seized, and thereby all chance of obtaining evidence by his subsequent acts is completely lost. The foreign system is to watch him night and day. This frequently eventuates in detecting him concealing property, weapons, or bloodstained clothes, or suddenly quitting his abode without any previous intimation, and perhaps under an assumed name. If we are to have an efficient police, we will find it indispensably necessary to keep well-informed, shrewd, patient, watchful detectives. I have known many who contended that a constable should adopt no disguise, but that, in the uniform of the force to which he belongs, he should perambulate the streets, suppress disorders, apprehend offenders, and when directed to execute warrants, he should go in search of the culprit openly and avowedly. To such I would suggest, that if in the organization of a police there is anything unconstitutional, it is rather to be found in the adoption of a uniform than in the attire of "plain clothes." The old common-law constable had no uniform; he went, and came, and mixed amongst other men, without a number on his collar or a crown on his buttons, and still his office and its functions were not denounced as unconstitutional. A policeman in uniform may patrol our streets, suppress riots, restrain indecency, and apprehend the pickpocket or drunkard; but it is not by such that the progress of the swindler is to be traced and stopped, the haunts of the burglar ascertained, or that the minute circumstances, trifling to the casual observer, but amounting, in the aggregate, to perfect conviction, are to be discovered and concatenated to establish the fearful guilt of the murderer.

Having remarked the inefficiency manifested by the officer to whom the management of the murder case at the railway was assigned, I think it fair to state, that amongst some other members of our detective division, I have known instances in which great sagacity and promptitude were evinced. Shortly after my appointment to the magistracy, an old man died in a lodging-house in Bishop Street. The place in which he had lived for nine or ten years was a small room without the slightest indication of comfort or even of cleanliness. Nevertheless, he was reputed to have been possessed of a considerable sum of money, which was supposed to be hoarded in some part of his humble habitation. Two of his relatives made oath that they believed him to have accumulated some hundreds of pounds; that they suspected and believed that the cash had been purloined; and they demanded that the house should be strictly searched. I gave a search-warrant to a detective named James Brennan, who proceeded to the house, and stated his function to the landlady. She declared that the man had been miserably poor, that he died in complete destitution, and that they had to bury him in a parish coffin. Brennan searched the premises most rigidly, but the expected treasure was not forthcoming. Some of the landlady's female neighbours expressed great indignation at "any honest woman's place being ransacked after such a manner." One of the garrulous sympathizers declared that "so far was the landlady from having a lot of money, that she was hard set to live, and that the very night the old man died, the poor woman had to pledge her best feather bed, at Booth's the pawnbroker's, for a few shillings." Brennan took his leave, and immediately went to the pawn-office. He had the bed produced, and observed that the stitching on one seam was fresher in appearance than on the others. He ripped the seam, and in the middle of the feathers he found seven notes, each of a £100, and two of £20. The affair eventuated in the money being divided amongst the kindred of the deceased. The landlady denied all knowledge of the money, and insisted that the old man must have concealed it himself. She was not prosecuted, but Brennan's intelligence was rewarded with one of the £20 notes.

The residence of the late Dr. Graves in Merrion Square was robbed several years ago, by the thief's entrance at the windows of the front drawing-room, which had been left unfastened. The balcony did not appear accessible by ordinary means, but was easily attained from that of the adjoining house. Brennan was sent to examine the premises, and he at once perceived the traces left by a soiled foot in climbing by the pillars of the hall-door next to Dr. Graves's; he then walked over to the rails of the square, and found marks which satisfied him that some person had recently crossed; amongst the bushes there were a few heaps of twigs, the parings or prunings of the shrubs; and beneath one of them he discovered an excavation or cache, in which was a quantity of the stolen property. At night he lay down at a little distance from the place, and was not long there before a person approached and proceeded to take up the property. At the rails he was giving it to an associate, when, on a signal from Brennan, some other constables came forward, and the burglars were secured. They were subsequently convicted and transported.