Not only is traffic on the Underground disorganised—business and pleasure alike are interrupted in their regular courses. Never, during the last twenty years, has London worked itself up into such a state of excitement as it has done over these mysterious crimes on the Underground. Suburban residents find words even of the most cerulean hue quite inadequate to express the annoyance and inconvenience they are being put to.
Scotland Yard has had a detective patrolling the footboard of every train. This, however, is to be stopped. The sensation of suddenly finding a strange face peering in at your ear as you sit harmlessly reading your evening paper in your favourite corner seat, is enough to startle any man. It has given rise to some most ludicrous scenes. Going home in a Richmond train last night, the writer sat opposite to a quiet, nervous-looking old gentleman. He happened to raise his eyes from his paper just as the patrol on the footboard passed the window. The old gentleman made up his mind at once that he had been selected as the murderer’s next victim, and that the deadly bullet was just about to be launched. He instinctively sheltered his head behind his newspaper, and sank suddenly off his seat, and remained flat on the floor, nor could he be induced to rise till the next station was reached. Many ladies have been driven into hysterics in the same way, and the patrols are to be abolished.
In connection with the murder of Carl Groeb, it is now proved beyond doubt that the murderer has added to his other crime the meaner one of robbery. Groeb’s pockets were empty when he was discovered—money, watch, chain, all were gone, though the evidence is conclusive that, when he left his office in Houndsditch, he carried a good round sum, and wore a good gold watch and chain. There is more hope of catching the murderer if he is driven by the exigencies of want, or the desire for gain, to unite the functions of footpad with those of self-constituted executioner. At all events, he descends from the sphere of the supernatural, into which popular credulity has been inclined to elevate him, and becomes a mere murderous thief.
(From the Daily Telephone, 25 November 1894)
We have received the following letter:
To the Editor of the Daily Telephone.
Sir,—You are wrong. I never touched the money or effects of Carl Groeb, or any other of my victims. I kill; I do not rob.—Yours truly,
The Underground Murderer.
The letter is post-marked ‘London, SE, 24 November, 1894’. Is it a grim jest, or is it a genuine document? We give it for what it is worth.
(From the Daily Telephone, 26 November, 1894)
To the Editor of the Daily Telephone.
Sir,—The Underground Murderer has enough on his conscience. He did not rob Carl Groeb of his watch, chain and money. I did. I entered the carriage at Sloane Square. The attitude of the figure in the corner startled me. When we had passed South Kensington I spoke to him. He did not answer. I touched him. He did not move. I saw he was dead. I was stone-broke myself. I had bilked the ticket-man at Sloane Square, and intended doing the same at Earl’s Court. The opportunity was too good to be missed. The man in the corner had no further use for his money. I had. I relieved him of it, and also of his watch and chain. The latter I pawned in Liverpool, and I enclose you the ticket. I am a bad lot, but, thank Heaven, I am
(Signed) Not the Underground Murderer.
The above letter was received by us two days ago, post-marked ‘Liverpool’. We sent the pawn-ticket on to Liverpool. The watch and chain, recovered from the pawnbroker, have been sent to London, and have been identified beyond all doubt as Carl Groeb’s!
Both letters are in possession of the police.
(From the Daily Telephone, 27 November 1894)
What, in Heaven’s name, is this monstrous thing that is waging cruel, remorseless and indiscriminate warfare with that section of London that travels by the Underground? Is it against the Underground railway itself, as a system or as a corporation, that this foul fiend is fighting? Or is it some lunatic registering in this gruesome fashion his protest against the influx of foreigners into English business life?—for it is a noticeable fact that three out of the four victims have been foreigners.
Last night was ‘Murder Night’, as Tuesday night has come to be grimly dubbed on the Underground, and two more victims fell to the assassin’s bullet—one in the usual neat and finished style to which we are becoming accustomed, but with a change of locality, necessitated, no doubt, by the close and incessant watch kept on every corner of the murderer’s old haunts; the other was a gratuitous slap in the face—or, to be precise, bullet in the leg—of one of the guardians of the public safety in charge of the tunnel between Victoria and Sloane Square.
As the train which left Mansion House at 9.16, and left Victoria at 9.31, was running through the tunnel between Victoria and Sloane Square, it passed an up-line train proceeding to Mansion House.
The flare-light men are mostly concentrated between Victoria and Mansion House, in the tunnels of which section all the murders have hitherto been committed. As a precautionary measure, however, half a dozen men have been told off for duty each night in the tunnel between Victoria and Sloane Square. As the two trains passed, one of the flare-men standing in the six-foot fell to the ground, shot through the leg. No report was heard. Nothing but the rattle of the passing trains, which drowned the man’s groans as he sank to the ground. His mate down the line saw a blaze of light as his flare fell over, and the oil caught fire and spread along the ground. Running up, he dragged the wounded man away from the flames, and yelled to the other men further down the tunnel.
Among them they carried this latest victim up to Victoria station, where their arrival caused a stampede of all except the officials.
The men’s accounts of the matter are confused.
The bullet, of course, came from one of the passing trains, but which they cannot say. Even the wounded man is not certain how he was standing when the bullet struck him, but in any case only the very promptest action could have thrown any light on the matter. Had the men promptly wired to the next stations, both up and down the line, at which both trains would stop, strict search might have led to some discovery. But their wounded mate absorbed all their attention, and the chance, such as it was, was lost. We may, however, conclude, without doubt, that the shot came from the down train. That train reached Baker Street at 9.58, and four minutes later the murderer’s fifth victim was discovered in a first-class carriage at Gower Street, in the person of John Stern, merchant, of Jewin Street, who was discovered shot through the heart, in exactly the same way as all the previous victims of the Underground fiend.
How much longer this state of matters is to continue depends, apparently, entirely on the will of the mysterious and bloodthirsty perpetrator of these atrocious crimes. The arm of the law seems powerless. It only remains now for the Underground fiend to shoot down an engine driver and his mate to bring about a catastrophe too horrible to contemplate. The bare possibility of an Underground train deprived of its natural controllers, and crashing madly along at its own sweet will, is enough to make one forswear for ever the delights of travel on that much-maligned line.
(From the Link, 4 December 1894)
another outrage on the underground
the link man the sixth victim
To all intents and purposes, I am a dead man.
To all intents and purposes, I am victim No. Six of the Underground Demon.
That I am here alive to tell the tale is no fault of his, but is due to a little precautionary measure of my own.
I have passed through a very strange experience.
I have done what no other man has done. I have looked Death in the face—the Death of the Underground. I have looked down the barrel of the weapon with which the Underground Death-dealer slaughters his victims.
I myself was the victim.
I am free to confess that I am shaken in nerves and sorely bruised in body.
After the detailed a
ccount given below of my experiences last ‘Murder Night’ I have done with the matter. I have had enough of it. My constitution cannot stand the exigencies of up-to-date travel on the Underground. The facts I am about to relate are so passing strange, that I may state at once that they are vouched for by the one man who has had more to do with the Underground Murders (except, of course, the chief actor of all) than anyone else—Detective-Sergeant Doane, of Scotland Yard. Sergeant Doane, into whose hands, from the first, has been entrusted the discovery of the mysterious murderer, has been greatly exercised by the failure of all the ingenious plans laid for his capture, and the apparent impossibility of coming to grips with the invisible one.
It is obviously impossible to have a detective on the step of every carriage of every train on the Underground railway. It is impossible to line the whole length of the system with flare-light men, even on ‘Murder Night.’ As a matter of fact, since the shooting of John Cran, the flare-man, in Sloane Square tunnel, it is not easy to induce the men to undertake the duty at all, for every one of them feels that he takes his life in his hand when he picks up his lamp. Every man of them knows that, as like as not, he may be the next victim.
I came into contact with Sergeant Doane over the second murder, the one at St James’s Park, as readers of the Link will remember. I have met him many times since, and we have discussed the matter from many points of view.
On Saturday last I laid before him a scheme which seemed to me to offer at least the chance of a solution of the mystery.
My proposition was this: I offered to take my place, alone, in a first-class compartment in the train leaving Mansion House at 9.12 on ‘Murder Night,’ and to afford the Underground Fiend every facility for selecting me as his next victim. As a precaution, I was to wear inside my waistcoat a breastplate of solid steel; I was to have the company of an armed detective beneath the opposite seat within reach of a kick, and on top of the carriage, lying flat on the roof, directly over each window of my compartment, were to be two other detectives.
Sergeant Doane turned this idea over in his mind before cautiously venturing the remark that it might do—might do for me, in any case, he grimly added.
The idea was carried out precisely as given above, and 9.13 last Tuesday night found me comfortably ensconced, steel breastplate and all, in the rear first-class compartment of the London and North-Western train from Mansion House to Willesden, gliding through brilliant tunnel after tunnel into the comparative obscurity of the stations, and patiently waiting to be shot at. Beneath the opposite seat, within easy reach of my toe, was one of Doane’s trusty followers, armed with a revolver. Flat on the roof, feet to engine, and head over my window, with the cold night wind ploughing up his back hair, was Sergeant Doane himself and over the opposite window another of his men, both armed with revolvers. A slight iron framework had been fixed to the top of the carriage to prevent their rolling off.
Now, a scheme of this kind—I speak from experience—is all very well in the heat of inception and preliminary discussion, but, in the carrying out of it, one’s temperature is apt to fall.
I must confess to feeling distinctly nervous as I took my seat in the carriage, and, as the train rumbled along through the weird, irregular illumination of the flare-light men, an odd idea grew upon me that the compartment I was sitting in was somehow unpleasantly familiar to me.
The sensation grew, and the feelings of discomfort increased in proportion. It was likely enough I had ridden in that same carriage dozens of times, for I use the Underground freely, and occasionally go ‘first’ when, in my opinion, the ‘thirds’ are full. I was arguing myself into the idea that it was just the natural nervousness incidental to the job I had in hand, when my eye, roving around, caught the number of the carriage—No. 32—on the small enamelled plate above the door, and I experienced all the sensation of a cold douche down the spine.
‘Nonsense!’ said I to myself. ‘Don’t be an idiot!’
But I sat and stared at that small enamelled plate till it began to hypnotise me.
To prove myself a fool, and disperse the blue devils, I hauled out my notebook, and turned over the pages till I came to what was in my mind. And then—I had a strong inclination to get out of the carriage, and have done with the business.
I was sitting in the exact spot of the very compartment of the very carriage in which George Villars was shot exactly five weeks ago to the day, and almost to the minute. As readers of the Link will remember, I was the first to discover his body at St James’s Park station. It was distinctly unpleasant, but it could not be helped.
For companionship’s sake, I landed a kick on a tender portion of the recumbent detective under the seat opposite, and he grunted wakefully. Then, feeling deucedly uncomfortable, I sank my head down into the pose of a tired man, drew my hat down over my brow, and turned my eyes almost upside down in the endeavour to keep a bright look-out from under the brim of it.
Blackfriars, Temple, Charing Cross, Westminster, St James’s, Victoria, Sloane Square: I heaved a sigh of relief. We were through the original murder zone, and looked like drawing blank this time. Still, as the murderer had broken fresh ground at Baker Street last week, there was no knowing where he might strike this time. And so the train rumbled on.
Earl’s Court, and tickets; Addison Road, Uxbridge Road, Shepherd’s Bush, and we were rushing across the wilds of Wormwood Scrubs, when my eyes, wearied almost to blindness with the unnatural strain, closed for a moment’s rest.
When I opened them, to my amazement, the window on my left, which I had carefully closed, was down, and wind and rain were pouring in. It sank to the bottom. Every drop of blood in me was tingling with excitement. My heart was going like a sledge-hammer. I wanted to kick the man under the seat, but could not move a toe.
As I glanced at the window, along the polished framework of the part that slides down, there came gently and silently into view a shining steel barrel, pointing straight for my heart. I caught just one vague glimpse of a face beyond it, then—without any report, or any warning, an awful shock—and—blank.
They tell me that I was lifted out at Willesden, and that I was unconscious for upwards of four hours.
I take their word for it; at present I will take anybody’s word for anything. As far as I am personally concerned, I have done with the Underground Murders. I hold a season ticket on that abnormal line from Blackfriars to Sloane Square. Anyone who wants it, and will take it with all risks, including its non-transferability, is welcome to it. I would suggest that whoever takes it, should also take out a £10,000 Life Policy for the benefit of his widow and children.
For myself, as I said at the beginning. Underground travel is not adapted to my peculiar constitution. I now go home by ’bus.
As this story is passing strange, and may, in some quarters, be received with incredulity, Sergeant Doane has very kindly offered to add a few words concerning his experiences on Tuesday night.
If any of my fellow-journalists desire ocular demonstration of the truth of my story, and will call at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, they can see for themselves the documents in the case, viz.: one steel shield, and one journalist, with a bruise, of the dimensions of a soup-plate, round about the spot where his heart is supposed to be.
Sergeant Doane’s account is as follows:—
‘I have read the foregoing statement, and endorse it in every particular which came under my own knowledge. Journeying on one’s stomach, stern foremost, on top of the Underground train, is not a mode of locomotion that I can recommend. The motion of the train, much more violent up there than in the body of the carriage, the peculiar position, and the horrible atmosphere, produced a feeling of nausea to such an extent that my colleague, on the other side of the roof, when he descended at Willesden, was white as a sheet, and was practically in the throes of sea-sickness.
‘Nothing happened on our journey till we reached Wormwood Scrub
s. It was blowing half a gale. The heavy rain stung like pellets, and, combined with the rattle of the train, drowned every other sound.
‘Half-way between Wormwood Scrubs station and Willesden Junction, the gale seemed to seize the train and shake it, and it was all we could do to hang on by main force. It was at that moment that I heard a shout in the carriage below; then my colleague, Detective Trevor, who had been hidden under the seat, put his head through the window, shouting, ‘Doane, Doane, he is shot.’ Half a minute more, and we ran into Willesden station. Mr Lester was insensible from the impact of the bullet, which was flattened on the shield like a shilling. I heard no report, and feel sure there was none. Trevor confirms this fact. Beyond the ‘ping’ of the bullet on the shield, he heard nothing. On hearing that, however, he crawled out, found Mr Lester with all the breath knocked out of him, and yelled for me.’
(From the Daily Telephone, 10 December 1894)
We feel like accessories before the fact—like partners in the horrible work of the Underground Murderer.
Ten days ago we hinted in these columns at the appalling catastrophe which might result from the massacre of an Underground engine driver and his mate by the Underground Murderer.
Last night, William Johnson, driver of the 9.1 Outer Circle train, was shot at and wounded, fortunately not fatally, as the train ran through the tunnel beyond South Kensington station.
When the train steamed into Gloucester Road station, it was seen at once that something was wrong. Charles Jones, the fireman, was hanging on to the brake lever, white as a sheet, shouting for help. As the train came to a stand, and the inspectors and guard ran up, Driver Johnson was found lying in a heap on the floor of the cab.
Jones explained hurriedly that, as they ran through the tunnel Johnson suddenly clapped his hand to his side, and cried, ‘My God! I’m shot!’ and fell all of a heap.
Capital Crimes: London Mysteries Page 4
