One of them was in the city, and the other in the county portion of our district. The former case was the deprivation of a wife's life by the hand of her husband. He was a house-painter, a journeyman bearing an excellent character for knowledge of his business, industry, honesty, and strict sobriety. She was the daughter of a tradesman in Rathfarnham, and her person was exceedingly comely. Very soon after marriage, she lapsed into habits of the grossest intemperance, so as to acquire the soubriquet amongst her neighbours of "the drunken beauty." She was a frequent, though involuntary, visitor to the police court for having been found "drunk and incapable" in the public streets. One evening her husband found her completely intoxicated, and he discovered that his best clothes had been pawned to furnish the means for her inordinate indulgence. She replied to his complaints and reproaches in abusive and opprobrious terms, until exasperated beyond the control of reason, the unfortunate man seized an old sword-stick which happened to be at hand, and with that weapon he pierced her eleven times through the body, three of the stabs perforating the heart. Curiosity led me to visit the scene of the sanguinary termination of a union which commenced in ardent love, and might have lasted long and happily, if every hope of domestic peace and enjoyment had not been subverted by intemperance. I was present at the inquest, which resulted in a verdict of "wilful murder" against the husband. He was subsequently convicted at the Commission Court, and received sentence of death. I exerted myself in procuring memorials to the Executive for a commutation of the capital punishment, and in an interview with the Chief Secretary and the law officers I argued that the multiplicity of the wounds inflicted on the wretched woman denoted a sudden burst of uncontrollable passion, and not a premeditated design of deliberate and malicious destruction of life. I expressed an opinion that one mortal stab would indicate more malice than could be inferred from the eleven furious blows. My representations were received with courteous attention, and the applications for mercy were acceded to; but the unfortunate man died in the Richmond Bridewell in less than six months after the transaction. His heart was broken. I may mention here, that whilst I was a crown prosecutor on the Leinster circuit, and during my tenure of magisterial office, I never knew of an application for mercy to be made to the Executive that did not receive the fullest and fairest consideration, and I believe that all the Governments of which I had any knowledge or experience were equally desirous to avail themselves of any opportunity for tempering justice with mercy.
The other murder which occurred in our division was perpetrated in December, 1841, by a young man named Delahunt. In the character of this culprit there was an amount of cool, dispassionate, and deliberate predilection for crime, surpassing any details in the pages of the "Newgate Calendar," or the "Archives of the Parisian Police." About one year previous to the last-mentioned date, a poor Italian organ-grinder was found lying close to the wall of Rathfarnham demesne, on the roadside near Rathfarnham bridge. His throat had been cut, and a belt which he usually wore round his waist, and in which it was supposed that his scanty savings were stowed, had been taken away. A man named Cooney, a tinker, had been seen in the immediate vicinity of the place, and he had been taken into custody on suspicion, by the constabulary. An inquest was being held, when Delahunt accosted Colonel Browne, the Commissioner of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, in the Castle yard, and told him that he (Delahunt) had seen the murder committed. The Colonel immediately directed one of his serjeants to take the man out to the coroner, as the offence had been committed in the county, and outside the police district. On being produced at the inquest, Delahunt swore that he had seen Cooney murder the Italian. A reward of twenty-five pounds had been advertised for the conviction of the perpetrator of the fearful assassination, and that accounted for Delahunt's promptitude in offering his testimony. On the trial of Cooney at the ensuing commission, the jury disbelieved Delahunt, and acquitted the tinker. I am satisfied that they arrived at a proper conclusion, and I strongly suspect that if Delahunt really knew anything about the crime, it was owing to himself being the perpetrator.
In about four months after the trial of Cooney, there was a contested election in the city of Dublin, at which it was deemed expedient to utilise the canvassing abilities of a considerable number of coal-porters. These energetic advocates of liberty took considerable liberties with such voters as they found recusant to their wishes, or even tardy in complying with their demands. They were provided with hackney cars, and provided themselves with cudgels. Individual resistance or even indifference to their behests occasioned very forcible applications to the heads and shoulders of any elector, and when they brought him to the hustings, his attention was invited to a reserved body specially stationed in the vicinity of the polling booths, from whom he was informed that he might expect very strong censures on his want of patriotism, if he voted on the wrong side. After the election, some prosecutions were instituted for threats and actual assaults on voters, and there was one case in which a retired military gentleman had been dragged from his bed in a state of illness, and violently assaulted with cudgels. A reward was offered for the discovery and conviction of his assailants, and Delahunt at once came forward. He pointed out on the quay, six coal-porters as the guilty parties, swore that he had heard them directed to go to the gentleman's residence and bring him to the poll, and that he followed them and witnessed the entire transaction. They were committed for trial at the Commission Court, and there Delahunt most positively identified the six. One of them had a large hare-lip, and the party who had been assaulted swore that the fellow with the split lip was not present at the outrage. Another of the accused established the fact, by the evidence of constables and turnkeys, that he had been convicted on the day previous to the attack on the voter, and that he was in gaol for drunkenness and disorderly conduct at the time when Delahunt swore to having seen him assaulting Captain C——. The six coal-porters were acquitted, and Delahunt's sanguine expectations of an ample reward were completely disappointed.
On the 20th of December, 1841, a little boy named Thomas Patrick Maguire, eight years of age, was playing with some other children in Blackhall Row. The children were of the humblest class, and Maguire was bare-footed. Delahunt, having previously ascertained his name, and that he lived with his mother in Plunket Street, told him that he had been sent to bring him to her. The poor boy went with him, but was not brought home. Delahunt took him to a distant part of the city, and called at his (Delahunt's) brother's lodgings in Little Britain Street, where he stated to his sister-in-law that Maguire was a stray child whom the police had given into his care to take home. He sharpened two knives at his brother's, and after his departure with the child, one of the knives was missed. In the meantime, he brought the little fellow across the city, bought some cakes for him, and took him into a lonely lane in the suburbs, close by Upper Baggot Street, and there between seven and eight o'clock in the evening, he cut the child's throat. In a very short time, the body was found, and taken to a police-station in order to have an inquest held. Delahunt reappeared, and stated that he had passed the end of the lane, and had seen a woman throw the little boy down, and that she passed close to him, and went hurriedly away. He said that he had no idea of the child having been killed at the time, but thought that the woman had chastised him for some offence or naughty trick. He named a woman, and declared that he could swear to her. Unluckily for him, the woman whom he designated had been very sick during the entire day, and confined to bed, to the positive knowledge of several friends and neighbours. Some persons recognised Delahunt as having been with the boy, and amongst them was the woman from whom he had bought the cakes. In a field adjoining the lane where the corpse was discovered, a knife was found, which was sworn to by his sister-in-law as having been sharpened by him, and subsequently missed. She also identified the body of the child as that of the boy whom Delahunt had with him at her residence. He was finally tried and convicted of the murder on the 14th of January, 1842, and was executed on the 5th February. He made a full confession of his guilt, and acknowledged that he had falsely accused Cooney the tinker of murdering the Italian, and that his evidence against the coal-porters was totally unfounded. He disclaimed all malice or ill will against the poor child, Maguire. He declared that he only wanted to be rewarded for convicting some person of murder, and that he could not originate such a charge without the preliminary procurement of a corpse. In a volume of Dickens's periodical, All the Year Round, and under the title of "Old Stories re-told," there is a full narration of murders committed by Burke, Bishop, and Hare, for the purpose of selling the bodies of their victims to anatomical schools. Each distinct case of crime perpetrated by those miscreants was of less aggravated turpitude than the offence for which Delahunt was hanged, for they contemplated the destruction of the sufferer as the consummation of a design, but Delahunt deprived one individual of life on the speculation that he would thereby be enabled to obtain a reward, perhaps a trifling one, by consigning another fellow-creature to the precincts of a gaol, and ultimately to the ignominious horrors of a public execution, for a crime committed by himself, and imputed, by his deliberate perjury, to an innocent being, whose hand was unstained and whose heart was untainted. For a considerable time after his execution, he was reputed, especially amongst the humbler classes, to have been a police spy, and to have been in receipt of frequent subsidies from the detective office. He was never produced in any court as a witness at the instance of the police. In the case of the coal-porters, he applied to me for funds to enable him to remain in Dublin until the trial was held, and I refused his application. He repeatedly offered superintendents and inspectors to swear to cases of illicit or irregular traffic in liquors, but they never believed his statements, nor would they, in any instance, avail themselves of his proffered testimony. No villainy could be more unprofitable than Delahunt's systematic attempts to support himself by false accusations of others. I feel perfectly satisfied that, instead of deriving the wages of an informer or spy from the metropolitan police or from the constabulary, he never cost the public one penny beyond what sufficed for his maintenance in gaol whilst under committal for his diabolical offence, and to provide the halter which he most thoroughly merited.
The contemplation of such a character may not be unproductive of some salutary results. Whilst we acknowledge and admire the blessed tendencies of the most elevated virtues, a wholesome and very instructive lesson may be derived from the contrast exhibited and the eventual disgrace and destruction almost invariably incident to a complete lapse into utter depravity.
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.