The Mysteries of Modern London

by George R. Sims

EVERY year a certain number of men and women disappear suddenly from their homes, from their accustomed haunts, from the circle of their friends and acquaintances. Without cause, without any reason that can be surmised, they vanish; and the fate of many of them remains an unsolved mystery to the last.

Scarcely a week passes that the newspaper reader does not see the headline "Mysterious disappearance." Now and again it is a man of mature age, married, the father of a family, and in good circumstances. But more frequently it is a young woman.

A large number of these disappearances are soon accounted for, thanks to the vast circulation of our modern newspapers and their custom of reproducing a photograph of the missing person.

The young woman who disappears from London is discovered living quietly at the seaside or in some provincial town. The fact that Miss So-and-so has been found is duly chronicled, and the public trouble no more about the matter.

The mystery has probably been no mystery at all to the relatives of the wanderer. In some cases melancholia, in others a family disagreement, has preceded the foolish act. Disappointment in love, or unhappiness at home, occasionally financial embarrassment, has been the cause of the adventure. These are the ordinary, everyday disappearances, which mean only the waywardness or the wilfulness of the individual.

But the number of disappearances which justify the use in every sense of the word "mysterious" is still great. A man drops suddenly out of life. He was, and in a moment he is not. He has vanished as though by magic, and there is nothing to indicate that the act of disappearance has been a voluntary one.

The desire to disappear, to drop a life that has its embarrassments, its unpleasantnesses, its limitations, may come to many of us; but there are generally circumstances which make the accomplishment of the desire exceedingly difficult. We are chained by a set of circumstances from which it is impossible to free ourselves without incurring consequences which may be disastrous, not only to ourselves, but to those we leave in ignorance of our fate.

After calamities in which there has been great loss of life and difficulty in identifying some of the victims, there are always a certain number of people who avail themselves of the opportunity of having their fate conjectured, and never return to their homes.

So it comes about that husbands and wives are mourned as dead, their names, it may be, recorded upon the memorial stone above the family tomb, who are still in the land of the living. Under other names, far from the chance of recognition, they are living new lives with new family ties to replace the old ones they suddenly severed.

That is the mystery of the dead alive, a fascinating subject upon which many a romance has been written. To this day there are people who believe the astounding story told by men who affirmed that they had met Fauntleroy in America after his execution, and it was for a long time the custom to explain that this marvel had happened through the unfortunate banker being hanged with a silver tube in his throat.