“These things were seized about eight weeks ago by Inspector Wildey, in company with Sergeants Rolfe and Wallis, at a house in Thomas-street, Commercial-road, the proprietor of which has been, for the last twelve years, suspected by the police to be a receiver of stolen property, but so cleverly has he managed his business that until the last week there had been no chance of bringing anything home to him.
“The way in which he was caught at last was as follows:—Two men were apprehended on a charge of burglary, and one of them referred the police to this individual for a character. Inspector Wildey thereupon went to the house, and saw him, and he gave the man in question a most excellent character. From what he saw at the place, however, Mr. Wildey was induced to ask the magistrate for a search warrant, the result of which was that the whole of the property referred to was discovered there.
“Already articles relating to no less than thirty-two cases of burglary or housebreaking have been identified among the things, and fresh identifications are occurring daily.
“It is stated that seventeen years ago this modern Fagin was a poor labouring man, but he now owns some thirty houses in and about the district where he has been residing.”
It is not often, as we before observed, that persons of this class are compelled to disgorge their ill-gotten gains, or come within the meshes of the net the law has woven for them.
As a rule, they were by far too cautious and cunning to be caught napping.
But occasionally, and only occasionally, is it that one of the fraternity gets into trouble, and even then he generally manages to slip out of the hands of justice.
During the period between the trial and the execution of that eminent homicide and burglar the late Mr. Charles Peace, the public manifested a not unnatural curiosity to ascertain how he had managed to dispose of the great number of various articles which from time to time had come into his possession in the practice of a profitable but venturesome calling.
This anxious pursuit of knowledge—not altogether for its own sake—on the part of the payers of police-rates ultimately reached the ears of Mr. Peace himself, who, apart from his homicidal and acquisitive tendencies, was, like most other musical amateurs, an amiable and obliging person.
Finding there was not even a remote chance of breaking prison and escaping the attentions of Mr. Marwood, Mr. Peace supplied the police with a full and accurate list of purchasers of stolen property with whom he had had business transactions up and down the country.