The Mysteries of Modern London

by George R. Sims

In a busy little street leading to a broad West End thoroughfare there is a shop in which a legitimate business is carried on. There is a back shop, divided by a partition from the front, to which special customers go to select from the stock that is kept there; and beyond is an inner office.

The proprietor of the establishment is the head of one of the biggest criminal organizations in London. In that little back shop and that inner office some of the most skilful forgeries of modern times have been arranged. Each member of the gang is a specialist. One, a good-looking young fellow, gets to know servant-maids, and learns from them particulars of their masters' habits. Another frequents billiard-rooms, and gets in with City clerks. Another opens an account at the bank on which the forged cheque is to be drawn, and receives a cheque-book. Then the skilled hands are set to work. One man will fill in the cheque for a large amount, another will forge the signature to it, and the third will drive up in a hurry just as the bank is closing and present it.

The money secured, the man who cashed the cheque passes the proceeds to a confederate who is waiting for him, and takes a train out of London at once. He will receive his share of the plunder by post, and remain at a discreet distance until the hue and cry is over. The gentleman who opened the account and got a cheque-book and drew his balance down to nothing the day before the coup was brought off, will probably go away too. But the man who plans and finances burglaries, forgeries, confidence tricks, and swindles on wholesale lines, will remain in town and carry on the business of his highly respectable shop without feeling a moment's anxiety.

The police may have their own ideas about him, but he is much too clever to let them get a scrap of evidence that would connect him with the exploits of the gang of which he is the life and soul.

The wholesale distribution of forged bank-notes which ended in the sensational suicide at the Old Bailey of the principal in the business, was arranged and worked from a room above a little shop in one of the busiest streets of a crowded area. The men who were distributing thousands of forged bank-notes about the country came here for their "parcels" in broad daylight, and passed out with them under the very eyes of the police. On one occasion there were so many people blocking the pavement to look at things exhibited in the shop window that a police-constable had to clear a path for a man with a pocket full of forged bank-notes to pass away with them.

The gang might have continued to circulate the notes with impunity, but for the treachery of a comrade, who betrayed them.

The chief of the gang, though in custody, determined to be revenged upon the informer. He managed to communicate with a woman. She made a beefsteak pie, and in this pie concealed a loaded revolver. The revolver was wrapped up in greaseproof paper.

The pie was delivered to the prisoner when he was being tried at the Old Bailey. He took the revolver into court with him, intending to shoot the informer. But the chance he hoped for was denied him, so when he was sentenced to a long term of penal servitude, the convict put the revolver to his own head and shot himself dead.

How a prisoner kept in close custody could obtain a loaded revolver and carry it with him into the dock was for a long time an unsolved mystery.

I learnt the truth standing in the room where the pie was made. It is this fertility of resource which enables the modern criminal to outwit the modern detective, and makes mysterious the ways of crime.