The Chieftain: Victorian True Crime Through The Eyes of a Scotland Yard Detective

by Payne, Chris

Parry then stated that the prosecution evidence had not been sufficient to confirm beyond reasonable doubt that the hat found in the train compartment was Müller’s, or that the hat found in Müller’s trunk was originally Mr Briggs’ hat. He stressed that Müller ‘was always chopping and changing, buying and selling’.66 Clearly, Parry hoped to leave the thought in the jury’s mind that Müller could have purchased the incriminating items from another person, rather than committing the murder himself. He then turned to the issue of Müller’s slight physique and whether he would have had the strength to beat and rob Briggs, and throw him out of the compartment:

  there is, I say, one part of this inquiry which I almost defy you to reconcile with the guilt of the prisoner. Mr Briggs seems to have been a man of about 12 stone weight and 5 feet 9 inches in height … in robust and vigorous health. Compared with Mr Briggs the young man at the bar is a mere stripling … Could, I ask you, the struggle which ended in the death of a powerful sober man of considerable weight and with all his faculties about him, have been perpetrated by a young man such as he whom you now have before you?67

  Suggesting that the murder must have been committed by more than one person, Parry indicated that he would be calling a witness who would confirm that he had seen two men in the railway compartment with Thomas Briggs on the evening of 9 July. Finally, he stated that he would be calling alibi witnesses who would confirm that Müller could not have been on the 9.45 p.m. train from Fenchurch Street as he had been elsewhere at that time.

  On Saturday 29 October the first defence witness called was Thomas Lee, who had been previously discarded as a witness for the prosecution. Lee said he had seen two other men in the compartment with Mr Briggs at Bow station, but his evidence lacked credibility on cross-examination.68 The alibi witnesses also failed the credibility test. It emerged that Müller had been a regular caller at a house in Camberwell where a young lady called Mary Ann Eldred was lodging, and it was claimed that he had called to see her in her lodgings on the evening of 9 July, only to find that she had gone out. The landlady, Elizabeth Jones, gave evidence to this effect and stated that Müller had not left until at least 9.30 p.m. according to her clock (which, if correct, would have meant that he would have been unable to catch the train on which Briggs had travelled). Once it became clear that Elizabeth Jones’ house was a brothel, and that Mary Ann Eldred was a prostitute (although, by all accounts, fond of ‘her little Frenchman’, as she called Müller), these witnesses did not help Müller’s case; neither did a bus conductor, Charles Forman, who remembered seeing a man on his bus who was wearing a slipper, but could not remember whether he had seen him in July or August.

  In his reply to the defence case, the solicitor general responded to the attempt to compromise Mrs Repsch’s testimony by commenting that ‘a fairer or more straightforward witness never appeared before a jury’. With serious intent, but with legal tongue-in-cheek, he expressed his pleasure that ‘my learned friend most honestly, candidly, and eloquently disavowed any intention – the remotest idea – of imputing to Matthews that he was concerned in the murder’. On the subject of Müller’s alibi, he questioned the timekeeping and accuracy of the brothel clock by asking the jury if they thought that Elizabeth Jones’ ‘respectable and well conducted establishment were so ordered that the goings out and the incomings of its inmates were regulated by clockwork?’69

  At 1.30 p.m. the senior judge Lord Chief Baron Pollock commenced his summing-up to the jury; ‘Though scrupulously fair and dignified in tone, it was decidedly unfavourable to the prisoner’.70 The jury members retired to consider their verdict at 2.45 p.m. and, after only fifteen minutes’ deliberation, they returned a verdict of ‘guilty’. It was a considerable surprise when, ‘directly the fatal word was pronounced, the lord chief baron burst into a flood of tears. He placed his hands over his face, and raised his elbows on his desk, and a profound silence reigned throughout the court.’71 The black cap was placed on the head of Baron Martin who sentenced Müller to death by hanging. Müller, who had continued to display surprising firmness and self-possession, said:

  ‘I should like to say something. I am, at all events, satisfied with the sentence which your Lordship has passed. I know very well it is that which the law of the country prescribes. What I have to say is that I have not been convicted on a true statement of the facts, but on a false statement.’ The prisoner had not completed the last sentence when his iron resolution and the stern self-command which … he had maintained throughout the trial with an imperturbability which showed him capable of the most desperate deeds, entirely gave way, and the miserable man left the dock dissolved in tears.72

  There is no surviving record of how George Clarke, the police of K Division and the other detectives at Scotland Yard reacted to the verdict and sentence. Whether they got together at a nearby hostelry for a glass of porter, or some other appropriate libation, to celebrate a successful conclusion to their work is therefore left to the reader’s imagination. Whether Clarke, Tanner or Kerressey felt any pity for Franz Müller, with whom they had spent much time during the voyage back from America, is also unknown.

  For Müller or any other convicted prisoner at that time, there was no formal process of appeal. However, it was possible to submit representations for mercy to the Home Secretary, and these were duly received from the German Legal Protection Society. In addition, there were reports of submissions from Germany to Queen Victoria (who of course had German ancestors), which were treated with indignation in sections of the British Press.

  Müller’s landlady, Ellen Blyth, submitted a letter claiming that on 10 July (the morning after the murder), Müller had breakfasted with her and her husband and wore the same clothes that he had worn on 9 July and ‘such clothes were clean and spotless from mud, dirt, stain or anything calculated to excite attention’.73 A new witness, Baron de Camin, swore under oath at Worship Street Police Court that, on the night of 9 July, he had seen a ‘man blooded from head to foot’ on the railway embankment between Bow and Hackney Wick stations, and stated that he had told these facts to Sergeant Clarke.74 This prompted a swift rebuttal from Scotland Yard; in an internal memorandum to Mayne, Inspector Williamson reported that ‘I have seen Sergeant Clarke respecting the remark in Baron de Camin’s affidavit but the Sergeant states that he has no recollection of any person making such a statement to him at anytime’.75

  In the event, none of these representations swayed the Home Secretary towards granting a respite or commuting the sentence. The Times reported that the death sentence would stand, adding that ‘the excitement caused by the near approach of the execution is almost unprecedented’.76 On the same page of the newspaper there was a report of investigations into another gruesome murder case under the headline ‘The Murder in Plaistow Marshes’.77 This report made reference to ‘Sergeant Clarke, of the detective force’. George Clarke was indeed already working on his next murder case and it seems likely that he was not in attendance at Müller’s execution, being otherwise engaged in the new inquiry. If so he was probably relieved not to be at Newgate, judging by the reports of the events that took place on 14 November.

  Müller’s public execution was an unedifying affair, particularly so to modern sensibilities. As early as Friday 11 November, when crowd-control barriers were already being placed in the streets around Newgate, ‘a dismal crowd of dirty vagrants kept hovering around’.78 At dawn on the morning of 14 November, an estimated 50,000-strong crowd had gathered:

  Among the throng were very few women; and even these were generally of the lowest and the poorest class, and almost as abandoned in behaviour as their few better dressed exceptions. The rest of the crowd was, as a rule, made up of young men … of what may be almost called as low a grade as any of the worst there met, the rakings of cheap singing-halls and billiard-rooms, the fast young ‘gents’ of London … Only as the sun rose clearer did the mysterious dull sound so often explain itself … It was literally and absolutely nothing more than the sound caused by kn
ocking the hats over the eyes of those well-dressed persons who had ventured amongst the crowd and, while so ‘bonneted’, stripping them and robbing them of everything.79

  The public hangman at the time, and since 1829, was William Calcraft who, while working as a pie vendor at an earlier public execution in 1828, had expressed his willingness to take to the hangman’s line of business.80 Perhaps not surprisingly, he was not well regarded:

  Calcraft inspired neither respect nor confidence. A small man of sallow complexion, dead-fish eyes and shuffling gait, he had the decrepitude of age, but none of its sweet benevolent characteristics. His faith in a short rope saw many of his victims survive the drop, obliging him to complete their strangulation by hanging on their backs or yanking on their legs. It was also his unseemly and mercenary custom to sell small pieces of the ropes used to hang notorious criminals.81

  Müller is reported to have accepted his fate at Calcraft’s hand with considerable bravery. As he approached the gallows, accompanied only by a German Lutheran minister, the Reverend Dr Cappel, ‘his face was very pale indeed, but still it wore an easy and, if it could be said at such a time, even a cheerful expression, as much removed from mere bravado as it seemed to be from fear’.82 Although Müller had previously and repeatedly expressed his innocence of Briggs’ murder, Dr Cappel claimed that Müller’s final words on the gallows were ‘Ich habe es gethan’, which translates as ‘Yes, I did it’.83 For once, Calcraft’s arrangements did not prolong the agony of the victim, although he managed to bungle the cutting down of Müller’s body to the hisses of the crowd.84 After the body had been removed, as was the practice at the time, a cast of Müller’s head was made, which to this day remains on a shelf of the crime museum at New Scotland Yard.

  The Briggs murder and Müller’s execution had several important social consequences in Victorian Britain. Ticket sales for the steamship journey to New York increased as the transatlantic steamship companies basked in the free advertising from Tanner and Clarke’s speedy journey across the North Atlantic. The substantial criminal activities of sections of the crowd that assembled on Müller’s execution day strengthened the political will that placed capital punishment behind closed doors from mid–1868 and eliminated executions as spectator sport; a small step towards the much later abolition of capital punishment in 1969.85 The request of the Briggs inquest jury to improve passenger safety on the railways did eventually lead to improvements. The South Western Railway was the first to act, by installing small portholes in the wooden walls that divided railway compartments from each other. Christened ‘Muller lights’, they were not as well received as the railway company expected, as they provided opportunities for Peeping Toms. From 1868 or so, versions of ‘communication cords’ were beginning to be introduced in railway carriages.86 Enterprising hatters decided to start producing the cut-down versions of the bell-topped hat discovered by Clarke in Müller’s trunk, and found that they had a ready market for their ‘Muller hats’, a style that was later to lead on to bowler hats. Müller’s name has also lived on in the East End vernacular, with ‘muller’ being used as a slang term for ‘murder’, and has now evolved further in the slang of younger generations to represent drunkenness – as in ‘he was mullered’.87

  The Metropolitan Police and the investigating police team, particularly Inspector Tanner, emerged with considerable credit and public recognition for their work. On 8 February 1865 the team was recognised by the payment of rewards for their ‘zeal, expertise, extraordinary diligence and exertion’ in the detection of Franz Müller.88 A total of nine awards were made, with Tanner receiving £20 and Clarke £10. By the time Clarke had received his useful bonus he had also been rewarded for the work that he had undertaken on his next case, the Plaistow Marshes murder.89

  The Plaistow Marshes Murder

  On 8 November 1864 while London was still awaiting Franz Müller’s execution, Richard Harvey, a young shipwright’s apprentice from Poplar, was out on Plaistow Marshes with a work colleague, Josiah Gaster, a ship’s joiner, and several other men. They were there to shoot birds for the pot. The day had started foggy but, with the help of a westerly wind that had picked up during the morning, visibility had improved. Harvey was not carrying a gun but was helping the group by keeping his eye out for wildfowl, with the intention of driving any he spotted on to the guns. At about 1.20 p.m. he was about 50yds from the bank of the Thames where the reeds were at a height of between 7 and 10ft. Walking down a narrow path through the reed bed, he spotted a large object among the reeds a few yards from the path. When he got closer he realised that it was a man’s body: ‘it was lying on its back, with the left hand on the breast – there was only a pair of trousers and a pair of Wellington boots on it, and his shirt was half off his body; it was only part of a shirt.’90 The body also had no head. Harvey called out in horror to his colleagues; Gaster then fetched the police.

  Sergeant William Bridgeland, K Division, was the first policeman to reach the location. He later described the scene:

  [the body] was dressed in a pair of black trouser, Wellington boots, and a small piece of shirt with the letters ‘O.B.C.’ in ink … I searched the pockets and found a farthing and a small piece of paper. The body was lying on its back, with the legs quite straight. The right arm was lying over the chest, and the left was lying down by the side, with the hand extended. I observed the condition of the neck where the head had been severed from the body. There was a dent in the earth, apparently where the back of the head had been. Small pieces of bone were lying by the neck, and a small portion of brain. The flesh had been eaten all round the bone, apparently by rats. The body appeared quite fresh, but there was no blood, or scarcely any. I had the body removed to the Graving Dock Tavern.91

  Police regulations at the time stated that dead bodies should be transported to the nearest ‘Dead House’ or to the nearest public house, which was in this case in Silvertown. A stretcher had been obtained from the Victoria Docks nearby to transport the corpse to the tavern, where it was placed in the stables.92

  The body had been found within the area of London for which K Division was responsible. The divisional superintendent, Daniel Howie, must have wondered what he had done to deserve another gruesome murder on his patch, particularly when he quickly realised that the case involved more German immigrants. Having promptly instituted inquiries, Howie already had two suspects locked in the cells by night-time. He reported progress to Sir Richard Mayne early on Wednesday 9 November:

  From enquiry instituted in the neighbourhood where the body was found, I ascertained that a young German named John Führhop had been missing since Thursday last from the house of another German named Karl Köhl, at Roscoe Town, and further inquiries satisfied me that the headless body was that of Führhop who had been murdered and that there were circumstances of a suspicious nature which would justify me in arresting Köhl on the charge of having committed the murder. I accordingly took him into custody, as also his wife, who is charged on suspicion of being concerned with him in the murder. The prisoners will be brought before the Essex Magistrates this morning at Stratford. I have placed their house in charge of the police and have applied for and obtained the assistance of Police Sergeant Clarke of the Detective Department to aid me in the enquiry.93

  With suspects already in the cells, Howie probably felt that he didn’t need a detective inspector on the case, such as Tanner, but he did need an experienced and reliable detective sergeant who would do the leg work and collect evidence. Clarke arrived at Plaistow Police Station at 11.45 p.m. on the same day that the body had been found. The first thing that Clarke did was to arrange for Köhl’s clothes to be removed and searched. He found a peculiar key in Köhl’s trouser pockets, a small amount of cash, a sixpence, a penny and a farthing, and a purse containing four duplicates (receipts) from William Darlow’s pawnbrokers of Victoria Dock Road, for items pledged between 11 and 19 October. Moving on to Köhl’s house, at 4 Hoy Street Plaistow, Clarke found five more pawnshop re
ceipts for items pledged between 12 and 28 October. Amongst other items in the house that were to prove significant in the inquiry were two wooden boxes, a portmanteau and two hat boxes, which were the possessions of ‘John Führhop’, the suspected victim who, it emerged, had been lodging in Köhl’s house.94

  It was clear from the receipts that Köhl had been busy pawning items during the last month. Though this was not unusual in the Victorian era, where pawnbrokers were often the bank of first resort for the working class, it was a starting point for further investigation to see if there were any transactions that were associated with the victim. It was beginning to look as if this was to be another case, like the Briggs murder, where Clarke and other police would have to trudge round a number of East End pawnbrokers. At least this time they knew from the receipts which pawnbrokers to visit. However, the highest priority was to find the victim’s head, to help confirm his identity.

  The head was discovered at about 7.30 a.m. on 9 November. Inspector George Goode of the Thames Police, whose knowledge of the river stretched back more than thirty-five years, had been sent to search the reed bed and was alerted by a lighterman who had been working in the area to a hole in the mud where blood could be seen. Careful digging and removal of the mud revealed a man’s head.95 As with the body, rats had found parts of the head to their taste. It was taken to be reunited with the body and both were examined by a local surgeon, Edward Morris, who drew several conclusions from what he saw. Firstly, two instruments had apparently been used to remove the head: a sharp blade such as a knife and a hatchet or chopper. Secondly, from the non-contracted state of the neck muscles, the head had only been removed some time after the man had died. Thirdly, the man had several extensive wounds on the head, which were probably the initial cause of death. Fourthly, the body had probably been dead for four or five days before its discovery.96 The body without the head had been provisionally identified the previous evening from its boots by a local shoemaker, Heinrich Zülch. With the head now available others, including a former landlord of ‘John Führhop’, James Warren, added their confirmation to the identification.97 They weren’t the only people to view the body: