“Mr. Charles Peace, of George-street, Philadelphia, has no connection whatever with the Charles Peace of the many aliases, burglar and murderer; neither is it right that his son, who also bears the (in these days) somewhat burdensome name of Charles Peace, should be associated with the person who has proved himself so eligible a candidate for the last attentions of the law.
“It is certainly a trifle too bad, even when people are thirsting for every particle of information about that extraordinary character, that the respectable member of a respectable firm of file manufacturers in Pea-croft, or his son who earns his livelihood in an honourable way in the file trade at Rotherham, should have themselves brought up in public as connected in even the remotest degree with the ruffian who had the misfortune to call himself by their name.
“So that, once for all, readers will understand the Philadelphia Peace and the Bannercross Peace are wide as the poles asunder.
“This incident reminds one of the trouble and suspicion to which many people were put shortly after the murder.
“Peace, it will be remembered, was described as a ‘little, insignificant-looking man, with grey hair.’
“There was at once an eager look-out kept for people who answered that somewhat general description. It was a bad time for ‘little insignificant-looking men,’ and as our local world has a good many people who come fairly within that description, several estimable and other citizens were frequently the object of glances which were not at all flattering in their meaning.
“Two elderly gentlemen were pointed out as greatly resembling the notorious Peace, and enjoyed a reputation on that account only a shade less comfortable than other gentlemen in this district, of most substantial proportions, who up to a short time ago were repeatedly referred to as remarkably like the Claimant.
“Even when a more specific description of Peace appeared mistakes were freely made, though not with the provoking results of a double apprehension, as in the case of that poor tramp at Barrow-in-Furness, who was subsequently apprehended at Hexham, and who complained bitterly—and not unnaturally—to our reporter who interviewed him in prison, that he should have been arrested a second time ‘when the police had already let him go once.’
“This poor fellow, to put matters right once for all, made a pilgrimage to Sheffield and called upon the Chief Constable, who, of course, had no more to do with his arrest at Barrow-in-Furness and Hexham than the poor tramp had to do with the arrest of the real Peace by Police-constable Robinson in that garden at Blackheath.”