The Mysteries of Modern London

by George R. Sims

"From information I received I went to such and such an address," is the conventional opening of the police officer's evidence.

Very rarely does the real source of information transpire. For the police to give away a professional informer would be to lose an important ally in their war against crime. The deputy of a low lodging-house, the landlord of a public-house frequented by bad characters, would have to pay a heavy penalty if it were known that he was the person who told the police where to put their hand on the "wanted" man. Still worse would it fare with the women who, often when the proceeds of the job have been spent upon them, give Scotland Yard the "office" that So-and-so has been flush of money ever since the night of a certain burglary or shop robbery.

Some of the most expert criminals in London always work single-handed. They might trust a "pal," but they mistrust a pal's pal, and they are especially prejudiced against his female acquaintances. In nine cases out of ten it is a woman who has given the first information to Scotland Yard when a professional criminal who has covered his tracks with the greatest success is suddenly pounced upon by an active and intelligent officer.

Sometimes the betrayal is due to a quarrel in which the woman has been badly knocked about; sometimes it is due to jealousy, but as often as not the information comes from a woman who lives in the neighbourhood, who consorts with thieves, who is herself the wife or the sweetheart of a criminal, but is at the same time a spy acting for the police and in receipt of police pay.

The subject is one upon which it is necessary to write with discretion. In the interests of justice a certain reticence is imperative in such a matter as this. If it were not so I might show how in some sensational cases which have recently been tried the guilty persons would never have been brought to justice but for an act of betrayal which was treacherous in the extreme.

When one knows who committed a murder, to conceal that knowledge is to be an accessory after the fact. The law demands that the knowledge shall instantly be placed at the service of the police. I am not considering information given with regard to murder as treacherous. The cases I have in my mind are those in which the crime was incited by certain individuals who for purposes of their own intended to betray the criminal.

The "agent provocateur" the person who incites a fellow-citizen to commit a crime in order that the police may make a clever capture or secure a dangerous criminal who has hitherto evaded their well-spread net, is not, fortunately, a conventional character in the British judicial drama.

But there are men and women who put up burglaries and robberies and criminal schemes in order that they may give information and get their victims caught in the act.

Not long ago a young policeman captured a man with a quantity of silver plate in his possession. The man was coming from a house in the suburbs at an early hour in the morning.

When the man was brought before the magistrate he told in self-defence a most extraordinary story. He was an ex-convict, but he was leading an honest life and working under the police. He called a police officer as a witness on his behalf, and the officer acknowledged that the man's story was correct.