The last of these danger-signals is the face of Henry Benson, the remarkable swindler and forger who was mixed up with the "Great Turf Frauds" of some years ago (see No. [23]). This man, who, after conviction, gave evidence against the detectives Druscovitch, Meiklejohn, and Palmer, was subsequently released on ticket-of-leave, and later, being arrested for fresh frauds, committed suicide.
20. JAMES MULLINS, WHO KILLED AN OLD WIDOW AT STEPNEY.
Looking at this face, one can scarcely conceive how the man succeeded as he did in deluding people—some of them of good social position. For example, in 1870 Benson personated the Mayor of Châteaudun in France, and nearly swindled the Lord Mayor of London out of charitable contributions for the benefit of sufferers from the Franco-German war. Benson was well educated, very clever, and inveterately wicked—he looks it. Notice the great bulge at the "hinge" of the lower jaw, and the cynically bad mouth; surely, this face plainly shows the absolute unscrupulousness of the man, backed up by plenty of resolute energy to make that unscrupulousness effectively dangerous.
21. TROPPMANN, WHO DECOYED AND MURDERED A FAMILY OF SIX.
There are many men now going about whose entire want of scruple is as plainly shown in their faces as it is in the face of Benson, but a passable exterior, a plausible manner, seems in many cases to put people quite off their guard. We are, I suppose, so accustomed to regard as sufficient a due attention to social conventions, that we have lost the more primitive sense of self-protection that, in more primitive conditions of society than our own, would be actively used by us for our own protection. Moreover, we have become accustomed to look to the law for protection, and this is, perhaps, another reason why our instinctive recognition of Nature's danger-signals has become dulled, and is now so much less effective than the instinct for danger which some of the lower animals possess in a high degree.