A Book of Remarkable Criminals

by H. B. Irving

With as little delay as possible he was to be called on to answer to the murder of Arthur Dyson. The buxom widow of the murdered man had been found in America, whither she had returned after her husband's death. She was quite ready to come to England to give evidence against her husband's murderer. On January 17, 1879, Peace was taken from Pentonville prison, where he was serving his sentence, and conveyed by an early morning train to Sheffield. There at the Town Hall he appeared before the stipendiary magistrate, and was charged with the murder of Arthur Dyson. When he saw Mrs. Dyson enter the witness box and tell her story of the crime, he must have realised that his case was desperate. Her cross-examination was adjourned to the next hearing, and Peace was taken back to London. On the 22nd, the day of the second hearing in Sheffield, an enormous crowd had assembled outside the Town Hall. Inside the court an anxious and expectant audiience{sic}, among them Mrs. Dyson, in the words of a contemporary reporter, "stylish and cheerful," awaited the appearance of the protagonist. Great was the disappointment and eager the excitement when the stipendiary came into the court about a quarter past ten and stated that Peace had attempted to escape that morning on the journey from London to Sheffield, and that in consequence of his injuries the case would be adjourned for eight days.

What had happened was this. Peace had left King's Cross by the 5.15 train that morning, due to arrive at Sheffield at 8.45. From the very commencement of the journey he had been wilful and troublesome. He kept making excuses for leaving the carriage whenever the train stopped. To obviate this nuisance the two warders, in whose charge he was, had provided themselves with little bags which Peace could use when he wished and then throw out of the window. Just after the train passed Worksop, Peace asked for one of the bags. When the window was lowered to allow the bag to be thrown away, Peace with lightning agility took a flying leap through it. One of the warders caught him by the left foot. Peace, hanging from the carriage, grasped the footboard with his hands and kept kicking the warder as hard as he could with his right foot. The other warder, unable to get to the window to help his colleague, was making vain efforts to stop the train by pulling the communication cord. For two miles the train ran on, Peace struggling desperately to escape. At last he succeeded in kicking off his left shoe, and dropped on to the line. The train ran on another mile until, with the assistance of some gentlemen in other carriages, the warders were able to get it pulled up. They immediately hurried back along the line, and there, near a place called Kineton Park, they found their prisoner lying in the footway, apparently unconscious and bleeding from a severe wound in the scalp. A slow train from Sheffield stopped to pick up the injured man. As he was lifted into the guard's van, he asked them to cover him up as he was cold. On arriving at Sheffield, Peace was taken to the Police Station and there made as comfortable as possible in one of the cells. Even then he had energy enough to be troublesome over taking the brandy ordered for him by the surgeon, until one of the officers told "Charley" they would have none of his hanky-panky, and he had got to take it. "All right," said Peace, "give me a minute," after which he swallowed contentedly a couple of gills of the genial spirit.

Peace's daring feat was not, according to his own account, a mere attempt to escape from the clutches of the law; it was noble and Roman in its purpose. This is what he told his stepson, Willie Ward: "I saw from the way I was guarded all the way down from London and all the way back, when I came for my first trial, that I could not get away from the warders, and I knew I could not jump from an express train without being killed. I took a look at Darnall as I went down and as I went back, and after I was put in my cell, I thought it all over. I felt that I could not get away, and then I made up my mind to kill myself. I got two bits of paper and pricked on them the words, 'Bury me at Darnall. God bless you all!' With a bit of black dirt that I found on the floor of my cell I wrote the same words on another piece of paper, and then I hid them in my clothes. My hope was that, when I jumped from the train I should be cut to pieces under the wheels. Then I should have been taken to the Duke of York (a public-house at Darnall) and there would have been an inquest over me. As soon as the inquest was over you would have claimed my body, found the pieces of paper, and then you would have buried me at Darnall."

This statement of Peace is no doubt in the main correct. But it is difficult to believe that there was not present to his mind the sporting chance that he might not be killed in leaping from the train, in which event he would no doubt have done his best to get away, trusting to his considerable powers of ingenious disguise to elude pursuit. But such a chance was remote. Peace had faced boldly the possibility of a dreadful death.

With that strain of domestic sentiment, which would appear to have been a marked characteristic of his family, Peace was the more ready to cheat the gallows in the hope of being by that means buried decently at Darnall. It was at Darnall that he had spent some months of comparative calm in his tempestuous career, and it was at Darnall that he had first met Mrs. Dyson. Another and more practical motive that may have urged Peace to attempt to injure seriously, if not kill himself, was the hope of thereby delaying his trial. If the magisterial investigation in Sheffield were completed before the end of January, Peace could be committed for trial to the ensuing Leeds Assizes which commenced in the first week in February. If he were injured too seriously, this would not be possible. Here again he was doomed to disappointment.

Peace recovered so well from the results of his adventure on the railway that the doctor pronounced him fit to appear for his second examination before the magistrate on January 30. To avoid excitement, both on the part of the prisoner and the public, the court sat in one of the corridors of the Town Hall. The scene is described as dismal, dark and cheerless. The proceedings took place by candlelight, and Peace, who was seated in an armchair, complained frequently of the cold. At other times he moaned and groaned and protested against the injustice with which he was being treated. But the absence of any audience rather dashed the effect of his laments.

The most interesting part of the proceedings was the cross-examination of Mrs. Dyson by Mr. Clegg, the prisoner's solicitor.

Its purpose was to show that Mrs. Dyson had been on more intimate terms with Peace than she was ready to admit, and that Dyson had been shot by Peace in the course of a struggle, in which the former had been the aggressor.

In the first part of his task Mr. Clegg met with some success. Mrs. Dyson, whose memory was certainly eccentric—she could not, she said, remember the year in which she had been married—was obliged to admit that she had been in the habit of going to Peace's house, that she had been alone with him to public-houses and places of entertainment, and that she and Peace had been photographed together during the summer fair at Sheffield. She could not "to her knowledge" recollect having told the landlord of a public-house to charge her drink to Peace.

A great deal of Mrs. Dyson's cross-examination turned on a bundle of letters that had been found near the scene of Dyson's murder on the morning following the crime. These letters consisted for the most part of notes, written in pencil on scraps of paper, purporting to have been sent from Mrs. Dyson to Peace. In many of them she asks for money to get drink, others refer to opportunities for their meetings in the absence of Dyson; there are kind messages to members of Peace's family, his wife and daughter, and urgent directions to Peace to hold his tongue and not give ground for suspicion as to their relations. This bundle of letters contained also the card which Dyson had thrown into Peace's garden requesting him not to interfere with his family. According to the theory of the defence, these letters had been written by Mrs. Dyson to Peace, and went to prove the intimacy of their relations. At the inquest after her husband's murder, Mrs. Dyson had been questioned by the coroner about these letters. She denied that she had ever written to Peace; in fact, she said, she "never did write." It was stated that Dyson himself had seen the letters, and declared them to be forgeries written by Peace or members of his family for the purpose of annoyance. Nevertheless, before the Sheffield magistrate Mr. Clegg thought it his duty to cross-examine Mrs. Dyson closely as to their authorship. He asked her to write out a passage from one of them: "You can give me something as a keepsake if you like, but I don't like to be covetous, and to take them from your wife and daughter. Love to all!" Mrs. Dyson refused to admit any likeness between what she had written and the handwriting of the letter in question. Another passage ran: "Will see you as soon as I possibly can. I think it would be easier after you move; he won't watch so. The r—g fits the little finger. Many thanks and love to—Jennie (Peace's daughter Jane). I will tell you what I thought of when I see you about arranging matters. Excuse this scribbling." In answer to Mr. Clegg, Mrs. Dyson admitted that Peace had given her a ring, which she had worn for a short time on her little finger.