A woman had been brutally murdered not far from Slough, and a neighbour, who had heard her screams, rushed to the spot with a lighted candle in her hand just in time to see a man in Quaker garb hurrying away.
This man, John Tawell by name, a former member of the Society of Friends, succeeded in escaping unchallenged to the station and in catching a train to London, and had it been two years earlier would probably have managed to get out of England; for news still travelled slowly in those times, and the train service to London was very infrequent.
But the police bethought them of the telegraph, which had not long been established on the Great Western Railway, and a description of the wanted man was sent over the wires to London. Although Tawell had had a good start, the message arrived long before him, and detectives were awaiting the arrival of the train at Paddington. He was followed from the station to the Bank, and from there to an eating-house, where he had a meal, and finally to a lodging-house in Cannon Street, where he meant to pass the night. Here, much to his amazement, he was quietly arrested. His trial followed in due course, and he was convicted and executed.
WAR PLAN SENT BY WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY
By kind permission of Mr. Thorne-Baker and “The Daily Mirror”
There were several points of scientific interest in his trial, which are described on another page.
Last year, sixty-five years after the sensational capture of Tawell, the attention of the whole world was rivetted upon an Atlantic steamer on its way from Antwerp to Canada.
It had on board a man and a woman, who disguised as a Quebec merchant and his son, were expecting to reach Canada without detection. For a week previously search had been made for them in every corner of Europe, and once on board a ship sailing from a foreign port they might reasonably have anticipated that they were safe.
But their portraits had been so widely circulated by the newspapers that their faces were familiar wherever English papers were read, and the ship was only a few miles on its journey when their disguise was penetrated by the captain.