Read Online The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder And The Undoing Of A Great Victorian Detective by Kate Summerscale - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Kate Summerscale
Tags: Fiction, General, Mystery & Detective, Espionage, History, Biography & Autobiography, Literary Criticism, England, True Crime, London, Biography, Europe, Murder, Great Britain, Detectives, Murder - General, Murder - England - Wiltshire - History - 19th century, Mystery & Detective Fiction, Case studies, History: World, Wiltshire, Law Enforcement, Whicher; Jonathan, 19th century, Europe - Great Britain - General, Detectives - England - London, Expeditions & Discoveries
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Whicher ate supper in the station house - roast mutton, perhaps, with cabbage, potatoes and dumplings. When assigned the night shift, he took his place in the yard before nine, carrying a lantern, or 'bull's-eye', as well as a truncheon and a rattle. On this unbroken eight-hour stint he tested the locks on windows and doors, watched for fires, took the destitute into shelters, checked that public houses were closed on time. The circuit was much shorter at night - two miles - and Whicher was expected to pass each point on his beat every hour. If he needed help, he swung his rattle; a constable from a neighbouring beat should always be within earshot. Though this shift could be miserable in winter, it had its perks: tips for waking up market traders or labourers before dawn, and sometimes a 'toothful' of beer or brandy from each publican on the route.
Whicher patrolled Holborn in the years that the district was dominated by the great, eight-acre slum of St Giles. This dark complication of streets and alleys was laced with hidden passages through courtyards, attics, cellars. Hustlers and thieves spilled out to coax, hoax or steal cash from prosperous passers-by - around St Giles lay the law courts, the university, the British Museum, the fine squares of Bloomsbury and the posh shops of High Holborn. If spotted by the police, the criminals slipped back into their labyrinth.
Holborn teemed with tricksters, and the police of E division had to be expert in identifying them. A new vocabulary evolved to catalogue the various deceits. The police watched out for 'magsmen' (conmen, such as card sharps) who 'gammoned' (fooled) 'flats' (dupes) with the help of 'buttoners' or 'bonnets' (accomplices who drew people in by seeming to win money from the magsmen). A 'screever' (drafter of documents) might sell a 'fakement' to a vagrant 'on the blob' (telling hard-luck stories) - in 1837, fifty Londoners were arrested for producing such documents and eighty-six for bearing them. To 'work the kinchin lay' was to trick children out of their cash or clothing. To 'work the shallow' was to excite compassion by begging half-naked. To 'shake lurk' was to beg in the guise of a shipwrecked sailor. In November 1837 a magistrate noted that some thieves in the Holborn area were acting as decoys, feigning drunkenness in order to distract police constables while their friends burgled houses.
On occasion the officers of E division left their district. The entire police force was deployed to line the route from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Abbey when Victoria was crowned in June 1838. Already the police were familiar with lunatics who were fixated by the new queen. An inmate of a workhouse in St Giles, for instance, was taken before the magistrates because he had become convinced that Victoria was in love with him. He said they had 'exchanged looks' in Kensington Gardens. The magistrates recommended that he be committed to an asylum.
Jack Whicher's first reported arrest was in December 1840. In a brothel on the Gray's Inn Road, near King's Cross, he noticed a seventeen-year-old girl giddy with drink and flaunting a set of improbably fine clothes. A feather boa hung from her neck. Whicher remembered that a boa was among the items stolen from a house in Bloomsbury a fortnight earlier, and that a maid had absconded on the night of the burglary. He approached the girl with the boa and charged her with theft. Louisa Weller was convicted later that month of robbing Sarah Taylor of Gloucester Street. The story of her capture outlined in miniature Whicher's detective qualities: an excellent memory, an eye for the incongruous, psychological acuity, and confidence.
Straight afterwards, his name vanished from the newspapers for two years. This was probably because he had been recruited by the Metropolitan Police Commissioners - Colonel Charles Rowan, an army man, and Sir Richard Mayne, a lawyer - to a small band of plainclothes 'active officers', proto-detectives
Whicher patrolled Holborn in the years that the district was dominated by the great, eight-acre slum of St Giles. This dark complication of streets and alleys was laced with hidden passages through courtyards, attics, cellars. Hustlers and thieves spilled out to coax, hoax or steal cash from prosperous passers-by - around St Giles lay the law courts, the university, the British Museum, the fine squares of Bloomsbury and the posh shops of High Holborn. If spotted by the police, the criminals slipped back into their labyrinth.
Holborn teemed with tricksters, and the police of E division had to be expert in identifying them. A new vocabulary evolved to catalogue the various deceits. The police watched out for 'magsmen' (conmen, such as card sharps) who 'gammoned' (fooled) 'flats' (dupes) with the help of 'buttoners' or 'bonnets' (accomplices who drew people in by seeming to win money from the magsmen). A 'screever' (drafter of documents) might sell a 'fakement' to a vagrant 'on the blob' (telling hard-luck stories) - in 1837, fifty Londoners were arrested for producing such documents and eighty-six for bearing them. To 'work the kinchin lay' was to trick children out of their cash or clothing. To 'work the shallow' was to excite compassion by begging half-naked. To 'shake lurk' was to beg in the guise of a shipwrecked sailor. In November 1837 a magistrate noted that some thieves in the Holborn area were acting as decoys, feigning drunkenness in order to distract police constables while their friends burgled houses.
On occasion the officers of E division left their district. The entire police force was deployed to line the route from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Abbey when Victoria was crowned in June 1838. Already the police were familiar with lunatics who were fixated by the new queen. An inmate of a workhouse in St Giles, for instance, was taken before the magistrates because he had become convinced that Victoria was in love with him. He said they had 'exchanged looks' in Kensington Gardens. The magistrates recommended that he be committed to an asylum.
Jack Whicher's first reported arrest was in December 1840. In a brothel on the Gray's Inn Road, near King's Cross, he noticed a seventeen-year-old girl giddy with drink and flaunting a set of improbably fine clothes. A feather boa hung from her neck. Whicher remembered that a boa was among the items stolen from a house in Bloomsbury a fortnight earlier, and that a maid had absconded on the night of the burglary. He approached the girl with the boa and charged her with theft. Louisa Weller was convicted later that month of robbing Sarah Taylor of Gloucester Street. The story of her capture outlined in miniature Whicher's detective qualities: an excellent memory, an eye for the incongruous, psychological acuity, and confidence.
Straight afterwards, his name vanished from the newspapers for two years. This was probably because he had been recruited by the Metropolitan Police Commissioners - Colonel Charles Rowan, an army man, and Sir Richard Mayne, a lawyer - to a small band of plainclothes 'active officers', proto-detectives
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