Mr Briggs' Hat: The True Story of a Victorian Railway Murder (14 page)

The transatlantic chase of Inspector Tanner and his men
heightened the tension already generated by the murder, creating a circus-like atmosphere in which every piece of new information elicited dismay, amazement or horror. Anyone with an interest in the case – anyone who might later be called to give further evidence or to sit in judgement on a prisoner – was able to read the testimonies and even the addresses of every witness.

Reports about Müller’s identity, character and background were typically immoderate. There was relish at the prospect of his capture and the retribution it would unleash. A fortnight had passed since the murder when the weekend papers pored over the evidence heard at Bow Street that Friday. Just one, the liberal-minded
Daily News,
refused to brand Müller as a monster
.
His conduct and manners while in England, it wrote, were ascertained to have been
good and even gentlemanly
… he was never known to be in liquor; he generally returned home straight from his work and it is said that he never frequented public houses
. Though these facts appeared broadly to fall on deaf ears, they signalled a preoccupation in middle-class society about what it meant to be British. As the empire grew, so did a conviction that a standard must be set for the world. ‘Foreigners’ might have their different ways but sobriety, reliability and frugality were the markers of a truly civilised Englishman and set above all these was
the importance of self-control
. If the
Daily News
was to be believed, the immigrant Müller’s conduct was disconcertingly British.

Jonathan Matthews, on the other hand, was an enigma: discovering that he had recently been declared bankrupt and that his hackney cab was as yet uncertified, the papers began to wonder whether he was
a noble wretch or an underhanded fraud
. Despite his salacious reasons for being at Bow on the night of 9 July, Thomas Lee had adhered to his original story and he generally passed muster as a
gentleman
; since he knew Thomas Briggs’ habits well enough to have been surprised to see him out so late, his story was convincing. Elizabeth Repsch was characterised by
most as something of an oddity,
prone to paying
particular notice
of the hats men wear
, while gentler Ellen Blyth, who
had never taken any particular notice of his hat
, seemed to the newspaper men to be straightforward, honest and innocent.

The press expressed delight in the progress of the case and looked forward to what else might be revealed when the coroner reopened his inquest in Hackney on the following Monday. As for the police, some wrote that wonderful things were now said of them but the breakthrough in this investigation had sprung from accident. All the zeal and industry of the Metropolitan force and all their trained skill appeared to be hopelessly at fault until a little girl happened to show a pasteboard box to her father. Only then did suspicion centre on the German tailor.
We hear it complained
, wrote the
Liverpool Mercury
,
that our famous detectives are little better than bunglers, after all
. The detective force had been weighed in the balance of popular public opinion and found wanting.
Neither Sir Richard Mayne nor his men
will be entitled to any praise for their behaviour in the matter
, wrote
Reynolds’s Weekly Newspaper
. Did they not resemble a pack of bewildered foxhounds beaten by an ordinary, untrained dog? For a force reputed to cost the country half a million pounds a year, their
glaring incapacity
, their
clodhopping blundering
was indefensible.

The murder had occasioned a public clamour for detective success, for evil to be contained and order reimposed. What the country wanted was superhuman sagacity and ingenuity on the part of their police force, for heroism that would confirm that they were protected. It now appeared that they had something more rational and ordinary: sometime-skilful men who were not endowed with preternatural gifts but who relied on happy accident. Detectives might deal effectively with the delinquents and frauds, the thieves, sharps and pickpockets who operated in the underbelly of the city, but this murder was different. Violent crime was not supposed to happen in first-class carriages by unrecognisable men gliding away on noiseless feet. Had it not been for chance, the papers now suggested, this shadowy murder might have baffled them. It was a fact that did little to reassure the public that they were adequately protected.

If the railway murder recalled the plots of gripping contemporary novels then the papers added their own irresistibly lively coverage designed to boost their circulations by feeding on those widespread
anxieties about the dangers of modernity
. Despite the evidence of progress wherever one turned, they voiced fears that the beast lurked still at the heart of modern civilisation. While the nation waited to see if Müller would be caught, the perceived dangers of railway travel remained undiminished and passengers continued to wonder indignantly why those in charge were doing nothing about the risks associated with the
solitary-cell system of railway travelling
. Why, they asked, was the government
not turning the excitement of the present moment
to practical account?
Suggestions for remedies came from every quarter
. Murderous assault might be prevented by the introduction of sliding glass windows between the carriages – panes that could be curtained for privacy or drawn back to summon help from the passengers in neighbouring compartments. Alternatively, trellises might replace the panels between compartments, allowing a clear view along the length of the carriage. Evil-intentioned persons would be deterred and timid minds eased by the introduction of bells, whistles, signal-boards or speaking tubes, by external ‘sidewalks’ with handrails, or by the fitting of trapdoors into the roofs of the train. There might be travelling police and separate ladies’ carriages; insurance policies against this new kind of liability might be sold at the ticket offices; it might be expedient to outlaw the barring of windows and the locking of compartment doors between stations.

In America, Confederate troops were being driven back from Washington after marching so close that
Mr Lincoln might hear the Southern cannon from the windows of the White House
, as the
New York Times
reported. On American battlefields
an estimated ten thousand men
were killed weekly, but against those anonymous deaths, the murder of one elderly gentleman on a suburban railway line dominated the British press.

*

Heading towards New York, Detective Inspector Tanner, Sergeant George Clarke and Detective Inspector Walter Kerressey were ignorant of the mounting criticisms of the London police and English government. They were equally unaware that small ripples of doubt about Müller’s guilt were beginning to spread, fuelled by the announcement of Williamson’s trip to Stafford, the searching of the
Cornelius Grinnell
and other rumours that included the sighting of an anxious, bloodied man at the railway station in Dundee. Even the
letter sent to the Blyths from Worthing
was now suspected in some quarters of being a ruse designed to throw detectives off the scent.

At
the reopening of the inquest in Hackney
on Monday morning, 25 July, it transpired that – almost a week after first searching Müller’s lodgings – the police had found another potential murder weapon. Because of the small amount of blood found on Thomas Briggs’ discarded cane, it was unclear whether it had been used as a bludgeon. Now another walking cane made of whalebone and India rubber and topped with a heavy, leaden finial had been discovered hanging by the bed of a fellow lodger at Müller’s former home in Park Terrace. Conjecturing that Müller had borrowed and then replaced it surreptitiously, the cane had been sent to Professor Taylor to be tested for marks of human blood. It turned out that the Professor’s
findings were inconclusive
.

The coroner also pressed Eliza Matthews over whether it was possible for her husband to have remained ignorant of the murder for a whole week. Had he really never discussed it? Could he have missed the police bills displayed conspicuously across the capital? Was he not, like most drivers, prone to read the papers left behind in his carriage? Eliza admitted that her
husband could read and that they took
Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper
each weekend. On Saturday 16 July, though, she said that the paper was left unread since they had been visited by her sister’s family. Nevertheless, it dawned on even casual spectators that, given his job, it was somewhat bizarre that it took Jonathan Matthews so long to bring his suspicions to the police.

The coroner was unwilling to hear the testimony of any more witnesses. The inquest jury, though, were interested in the evidence given to the magistrates on Friday by Thomas Lee and pressed for him to be sworn. Repeating his description of the two men he saw in the carriage with Thomas Briggs, Lee explained again that
it was the lamp
outside which gave me the most distinct view. The compartment in which Mr Briggs was sitting had drawn up near a gas lamp on the platform
.

Was it possible, asked the coroner, that these two men might have left the compartment before the train moved off from Bow?

Yes. There was time for either of them to have got out after I had got into my carriage.

Did you see any attempt to do so on the part of either of them, by their opening the door at all?

No, I did not.

They made no manifestation of their intention to get out?

I did not see any
.

If Lee was right, at least one – possibly two – crucial suspects remained unidentified. But his admission that either man might have left the train at Bow somewhat undermined the force of his statement.

*

Letters expressing misgivings continued to be addressed to the Police Commissioner. Correspondents found Matthews’ story suspicious and thought it possible that he was motivated by the three-hundred-pound reward. One pointed out that
in our opinion it is very difficult to get fitted with a hat even by a
professional hatter.
How likely, he wondered, was it that a hat would be purchased for another
on the off-chance that it might fit?

Questions were also asked about the wisdom of showing John Death a single photograph of the suspect rather than several from which he might have taken his pick. One letter expressed disbelief at the silversmith’s ability to identify so unhesitatingly one casual customer out of the hundreds he must serve, particularly as he had sworn under oath that the man who came to his shop on 11 July had been careful to keep to the shadowy parts of the room. Why, wrote others, had Matthews been shown the crumpled hat at Scotland Yard rather than asked to identify it from among a variety of different hats? Had he been asked to try on the hat to demonstrate that it was too large for him? Had anyone ever heard of a man asking a friend to buy him a hat and expecting it to fit? Was there a man who could identify the hat of his most intimate friend without being shown it first? What had become of Matthews’ hat? Had the police behaved properly in expecting perfect honesty from this bluff cab driver?

Several of the Police Commissioner’s correspondents wondered whether Thomas Lee’s evidence was being taken seriously enough. Letters began to appear in the press, including one printed in the
Daily Telegraph.
Signed from
‘Do Justice’
and dated 25 July, it backed up Lee’s story by claiming that an acquaintance
shook hands with Mr Briggs while he was sitting in a first-class carriage at Bow Station, and that there were then in the same carriage ‘two ill-looking men’
.

Concern grew. What if all the circumstantial evidence was only that? What if the suspicions were a mere
collection of crochets?
Similar uncertainties kept the readers of those excitingly mysterious sensation novels on the edges of their seats and their authors often pointed out that
the species of argument
which builds up any hypothesis out of a series of probabilities may, after all, lead very often to false conclusions
. If this murder turned out
to be a ghastly enigma, if it threatened to remain unsolved, then life was imitating art.

Though
there are many circumstances of grave suspicion against Müller
, wrote
‘A Barrister’ from Lincoln’s Inn
to the editor of the
Telegraph
,
there are also facts strongly tending to induce a supposition of his innocence
. Matthews’ evidence, for a start, was of so extraordinary a nature as to demand the strictest scrutiny. Was it possible that he had delayed making his statement in order to gain the money without sacrificing an innocent friend? So many aspects of this story, posited the ‘Barrister’, constituted prima facie evidence of Müller’s innocence. He asked
who but a madman, knowing himself to have but just been guilty of an atrocious murder and not being in immediate want of money (as is proved by his exchanging not selling the chain) would have deliberately gone out of his way to connect himself with the crime?

In an editorial
on Monday 25 July, the
Daily Telegraph
agreed.
We know of certain events affecting Müller which occurred at the time of the murder of Mr Briggs, but we do not know directly that the one man was ever in the presence of the other; therefore, in order to convict Müller we have to invent a story which shall not only accord with all the known facts but which shall accord with them much more probably than any other story that could possibly be suggested
. The paper urged the country to regain perspective. Fact, rumour and surmise, it believed, had been mingled so confusedly in the various accounts presented to the public that it was difficult to know what constituted tangible evidence against the German.