MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCES.

Hawke's Bay Weekly Times, Volume 1, Issue 47, 25 November 1867, Page 290

MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCES.

(From the London Review.) This week’s records of the Irish i courts of justice disclose a “mysterious incident in real life,” the interest of which extends far beyond the circle of the family whom it has. plunged into, affliction, , It chiefly concerns, indeed, the inhabitants of . this great metropolis ■— as Eondou was * probably the scene of a transaction as unaccountable as any of which we remember to have read. On Monday last the family of an Indian officer applied to the Irish' Court of Probate to permit them, to take out. administration to their relative without adducing any positive proof of his death. The proceeding.. at first sight appears to be that which we are accustomed in this country to designate as. an Irish one, since, as the application was granted, it is at least possible that the Court may have constituted an administrator “ of the goods of a deceased man who is still alive” It is obvious, however, that there are cases in which testamentary courts must run the risk of the judical bull: The English courts have hot hesitated in granting similar administrations to the ill-fated Tyrone Power and his companions on board the President. It is, of course, just within the range of possibility that the President may have drifted away to some unknown region, and that, even after the lapse of twentj-seven years, some one of the deceased persons may appear in the Court of Chancery to bring the administrator or executors to a strict account of the disposal of his bassets. The case which has just been disposed of in the Irish Court of Probate is somewhat different in its circumstances, and suggests'some strange and not altogether unimportant, reflections.

Captain Robert Macready was. an Indian officer. He held a position in.the Bombay staff corps, and in the year 1864 obtained leave of absence for the purpose of visiting his relatives in Ireland. He performed the journey safely as fan as London—but in London it seems he mysteriously disappeared—and after an interval of more that three years his friends have come to the conclusion that he is dead; and in granting administration to his executor the Irish Court of Probate has given judical sanction to this belief. In February, 1864, he wrote from London to hia friends in Ireland that he was on the point oj||eaving London to visit them, and accordingly on some evening in the last month lie left his lodgings with Mb luggage, apparently to start by the evening mail train from Euston-square, He has never since been heard of. “Every inquiry was made through the police offices, army . agents, and other channels with reference to him, but no information oould be obtained as to whal had become of him. From that time to the present no cheque has ever been pre sented to his army .agents, and he had never returned to his regiment in India.” Such was the statement by which his friends satisfied the Irish tribunal that he is dead. This inference is certainly not an unreasonable one. But it is rather a Btartling thing to be told that within the last four years it was possible for such a transaction to occur; that a captain in the army should leave his lodgings in the metropolis of civilised England, should start in a cab for the Euston-square Station, and. between his lodgings and the station mysteriously disappear. It is startling to find thait no trace of him ha 9 ever been found, and, above all, that no public effort ever has been made to discover what became of him. The inference that he has been murdered seems almost irresistible. Imagination fails in even suggesting the circumstances under which his life was taken away. That which is really “ sensational” to sober-minded Englishmen, is the proved possibility that men, holding a good position in. society, hearing the commission of her Majesty, can be made away with in the streets of London and no questions be asked. The question unavoidably suggests itself —ls this a solitary instance, or do these tMngs usually or frequently occur ? Eor three years and a half the public have known nothing of the disappearance of Captain Robert Macready, They never would have known it if he had not left a little money which could hot. be obtained without making public in a court of justice the strange story of his mysterious fate. Are, there any more such stories, known only to surviving relations ? Are any other, captains lost each year in their transit in cabs from their lodgings in London to the railway that would carry them to the'Dublin mail-packet ? We have hoard it said that in some of our great seaport: towns sailors have been tracked into dens of infamy, and never heard o f afterwards. In the days of Burke and Mare, beyond all question numbers of persons vanished from the scene, without ever being traced., Grim stories are told of houses over the Thames into which persons are said even of late ; years to have been eaticed for the, purpose of robbery arid plunder, and their bodies summarily disposed of by a plunge into the stream. One mysterious disappearance like that of Captain (Macready revives' all these horrible and sets us' seriously thinking whether ft be not at least possible that many hideous . crimes may be every year committed without- leaving the smallest trace ; of indication . of the . perpeitratioh. Id every raqk;of life except the' highest there are 'persons who might disappear from, the. world ;without causing a single inquiry as to’their" fate. • Myeryone . -pirio!bably reckons in' the number pf his ®PIh e persons "who would be mißeed ?i 'arid- about whom, if hft -friends peased to see Him ; jribiinquiry

would not be perfectly satisfied by the answer that be had gone to the country and had not yet come back. There are, we are sure, numbers -of persons wbo might go to the country.from whose bourne no traveller returns, and he months and perhaps years in it before anyone would discover that they were not still alive. We have no wish to make any our readers uncomfortable by suggesting that the tall thin gentleman who has* not been seen at the club for the last three months has been drugged and murdered for the sake of a diamond ring ; yet certainly it is possible that it may be so, and that, if it had been so, the murder may have been committed without anyone ever having been put upon inquiry. There seems to be a defect in our system of police or judical regulations when matters of this character take place without iuquiry. Our ancient institution of a coroner’s court applies only to oases in which some portion of the remains of a victim are found. Why should there not' be a coroner’s inquest to inquire into all the circumstances under which Captain Macready disappeared ? Old writers on law attached no doubt, a- superstitious importance to the proof of what they termed “ corpus delicitiand there was, we believe, a time when it was actually held that if no person could be convicted of murder if he had contrsved effectually to secrete the body of his victim. But, after all, it does appear reasonable that there should be some public authority to investigate cases of mysterious disappearance, at least whenever thereare reasonable grounds for supposing that such inquiries would lead to the discovery of crime. No doubt the exercise of such an authority might occasionally lead to awkward results. An eccentric gentleman, who had-withdrawn into temporary retirement might be startled at reading in the papers the report of a coroner’s inquest upon himself. The debtor who was only avoiding his creditors in some rustic retreat might perhaps in an extreme case be even compelled to submit in silence to a verdict of felo-de-se. But even these inconveniences would be preferable to a condition of things in which Captain Macready could be spirited away in the most public thoroughfares in London, and no humanbeing on behalf of the public ever take the slightest trouble to discover how it was done. We fear, after all, that the instances of such disappearance are much more common than we suppose, if the secret history of the obscure haunts of London were written, our civilization would be shocked and startled at the length and the atrocity of the annals of undetected crime.