The friends of Mr. Briggs were communicated with, and it was ascertained that when he left home the morning of the murderous attack, he wore gold-rimmed eye-glasses and a gold watch and chain. The stick and bag were his, but not the hat. A desperate and deadly struggle must have taken place in the carriage, and the stain of a bloody hand marked the door. The facts of the murder and its object, robbery, were thus conclusively proved.
It was also easily established that the hat found in the carriage had been bought at Walker's, a hatter's in Crawford Street, Marylebone; while within a few days Mr. Briggs' gold chain was traced to a jeweller's in Cheapside, Mr. Death, who had given another in exchange for it to a man supposed to be a foreigner. More precise clues to the murderer were not long wanting; indeed the readiness with which they were produced and followed up showed how greatly the publicity and wide dissemination of the news regarding murder facilitate the detection of crime. In little more than a week a cabman came forward and voluntarily made a statement which at once drew suspicion to a German, Franz Müller, who had been a lodger of his. Müller had given the cabman's little daughter a jeweller's cardboard box bearing the name of Mr. Death. A photograph of Müller shown the jeweller was identified as the likeness of the man who had exchanged Mr. Briggs' chain. Last of all, the cabman swore that he had bought the very hat found in the carriage for Müller at the hatter's, Walker's of Crawford Street.
This fixed the crime pretty certainly upon Müller, who had already left the country, thus increasing the suspicion under which he lay. There was no mystery about his departure; he had gone to Canada by the Victoria sailing ship, starting from the London docks, and bound to New York. Directly the foregoing facts were established, a couple
of detective officers, armed with a warrant to arrest Müller, and accompanied by Mr. Death the jeweller and the cabman, went down to Liverpool and took the first steamer across the Atlantic. This was the City of Manchester, which was expected to arrive some days before the Victoria, and did so. The officers went on board the Victoria at once, Müller was identified by Mr. Death, and the arrest was made. In searching the prisoner's box, Mr. Briggs' watch was found wrapped up in a piece of leather, and Müller at the time of his capture was actually wearing Mr. Briggs' hat, cut down and somewhat altered. The prisoner was forthwith extradited and sent back to England, which he reached with his escort on the 17th September the same year. His trial followed at the next sessions of the Central Criminal Court, and ended in his conviction. The case was one of circumstantial evidence, but, as Sir Robert Collyer, the Solicitor-General, pointed out, it was the strongest circumstantial evidence which had ever been brought forward in a murder case. It was really evidence of facts which could not be controverted or explained away. There was the prisoner's poverty, his inability to account for himself on the night of the murder, and his possession of the property of the murdered man. An alibi was set up for the defence, but not well substantiated, and the jury without hesitation returned a verdict of guilty.
Müller protested after sentence of death had been
passed upon him that he had been convicted on a false statement of facts. He adhered to this almost to the very last. His case had been warmly espoused by the Society for the Protection of Germans in this country, and powerful influence was exerted both here and abroad to obtain a reprieve. Müller knew that any confession would ruin his chances of escape. His arguments were specious and evasive when pressed to confess. "Why should man confess to man?" he replied; "man cannot forgive man, only God can do so. Man is therefore only accountable to God." But on the gallows, when the cap was over his eyes and the rope had been adjusted round his neck, and within a second of the moment when he would be launched into eternity, he whispered in the ear of the German pastor who attended him on the scaffold, "I did it." While in the condemned cell he conversed freely with the warders in broken English or through an interpreter. He is described as not a bad-looking man, with a square German type of face, blue eyes which were generally half closed, and very fair hair. He was short in stature, his legs were light for the upper part of his body, which was powerful, almost herculean. It is generally supposed that he committed the murder under a sudden access of covetousness and greed. He saw Mr. Briggs' watch-chain, and followed him instantly into the carriage, determined to have it at all costs.
An interesting case is that of old Dr. Watson, the
headmaster of Stockwell Grammar School, who escaped the final retribution of death because, as he pleaded for himself: "In a fit of fury I have killed my wife. Often and often have I endeavoured to restrain myself but my rage overcame me and I struck her down. Her body will be found in the little room off the library. I hope she will be buried as becomes a lady of birth and position. She is an Irish lady and her name is Anne." Here were unmistakably signs of feeble intellect, and yet when the deed was done he was sufficiently sensible and self-possessed to make a cunning attempt to conceal his crime. His great desire, as so often happens with murderers, was to dispose of the chief evidence of his guilt and he was quite cool and collected when he gave his orders to a packing-case maker to prepare him a large chest. "And I want it done sharp; it must be air and water tight, for it is to go by rail." Then he seems to have broken down and bought poison which failed of effect and led to the discovery of the crime.
Henry Wainwright's murder of Harriet Lane was a crime on a parity with many others of earlier date. It was a curious instance of how "murder will out," and how the devices employed to hide the crime help really to expose it. Too much chloride of lime had been employed to consume the buried corpse with the result that the body was preserved instead of destroyed. Again, a mere chance led to the discovery; the carelessness of the murderer
when he had exhumed the body for removal to some safer place, in entrusting the parcel to a stranger's hands who was curious as to its contents. The plea set up by the accused that the girl had committed suicide led to the shrewd remark of the judge, Chief Justice Goulbourne, that it was very unusual for suicides to bury themselves after death. Henry Wainwright's was one of the last executions at Newgate.