FLEET STREET BEFORE DAWN.
The Sheffield Daily Telegraph did a very big thing in 1867. I extract an account of the accomplishment from a recent publication:
"At that time, although few outsiders suspected it, there existed in Sheffield a British Vehmgericht—of which a man named Broadhead, secretary of the Sawgrinders' Union, was president—for the secret trial and punishment of non-unionist workmen. The Telegraph, acting on private and dearly-bought information, attacked this organisation, Sir William Leng, of course, finding the money, and often personally conducting the necessary investigations. It was a delicate as well as a dangerous task, as he soon found to his cost.
"One of his reporters was bludgeoned and left for dead in one of the principal streets of the town, and in broad daylight. The house in which another lodged was blown up with gunpowder. His own life was threatened day by day, and often many times a day. His leaders were written with a revolver on his desk and another strapped to his hip, and for nearly a year he never went abroad unarmed. At length the famous Royal Commission of 1867 was appointed, with the result that the secret horrors Sir William had so fearlessly denounced were dragged into the light of day. All England stood aghast, and the arch-villain Broadhead, together with Crookes, Hallam, and others of his tools, made full confession in order to save their own miserable necks. The power of the terrible tribunal was broken for ever; but the exposure cost the Telegraph, from first to last, some eighteen thousand pounds."
Sir William Leng's daring calls to mind that of Mr. Ross, of Black and White, who as a young man went through an experience that, while it proved a stepping-stone to his fortune (for he made nearly £1,000 by his exclusive telegrams to the press), thrilled the world for a very long time. The following is an account of the matter given me by a friend of his:—
In the memorable winter of 1880, when the snow lay so deep along the lines of the North that trains passed through tunnels of ice, and towns were isolated for days, a gruesome incident happened.
The Earl of Balcarres died at Florence, and the body, having been embalmed, was conveyed by tedious stages to Aberdeen, thence to be consigned to the mausoleum which formed part of the magnificent mansion at Dunecht, upon which the deceased Earl had spent twenty years of thought and "tons of money."
A hearse, of the lugubrious type one is accustomed to see in country towns, had been sent to await the belated train at Aberdeen, and the body was duly transferred, not without difficulty, for the bulk of the suite of coffins was a little greater than village hearses are made to meet. The weary ten mile journey was undertaken in the dark, amid a downfall of snow, over the bleak road that leads from the granite city to the village of Skene. Progress was slow, the night grew darker and stormier; the snow drifted in wreaths across the road; the horses became exhausted; the men in charge did their utmost for a time, but it seemed as if, in the words of the national poet, "the De'il had business on his hand." Hearse and horses became embedded in a bank of snow, and further effort was futile; the body had to be abandoned for the night.
On the following day the storm abated, assistance arrived, the vehicle was extricated, and the body was conveyed to Dunecht. There the funeral service was conducted in the chapel which is built over the family vault, and with little ceremony and few attendants the body was deposited on one of the shelves of the underground structure which was intended to be the tomb of the family to which its first tenant, the noble Earl, belonged.