MULLER THE MURDERER

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 101, 2 May 1925, Page 16

MULLER THE MURDERER

■SIR. JOHN LE SAGE'S RECOLLECTIONS.

In one of his chatty articles contributed to the "Sunday Times," the Right Hon. T. P. O'Connor, M.P., recently made reference to the notorious murder by Franz Muller, a young German, of Mr. Thomas Briggs, an elderly clerk in Messrs. Robarts, Curtis, and Co.'s Bank, whom he robbed in a first-class carriage on the North London Railway, and then threw his body on to the line. The crime, which took place on the night of 9th July, 1864, created an immense sensation at the time, as Jlr. O'Connor recalls, for it was the first murder perpetrated in a railway train, and the pubhc became afraid to travel. Mr. O'Connor has since been inundated with letters from correspondents, which are a proof, ho states, "that therp was scarcely any murder of the period which caused more intense and widespread interest; the echoes of it reached even the remote West of Ireland, where I was living at the tune."

On several points in the case Mr. U Lonnor s correspondents are not agreed and the question of Muller's guilt or innocence is raised by Mr. F. Stanley iarker, whoso father, one of the solicitors engaged for the defence, believed to the day of his death, in 1922, that Muller was not guilty of the crime. That he killed Mr. Briggs, however, appears to have been admitted by the prisoner himself at the moment of his execution, and this is borne out by the recollections of Sir John le Sage, who retired last year from the editorship of the Daily Telegraph," after a life-long association with the paper, aiid who followed the case all through in his journahstic capacity. In an interview, Sir John recalled that Muller was tried at the Old Bailey before two Judges, the Lord Chief Baron Pollock, and Mr Baron Martin. The former summed up and the latter sentenced Muller to death In doing so he said: "I do feel in my own mind as satisfied of jour guilt as I can be of any other matter which I did not see with my own eyes." Muller protested that he was innocent, however right up to the moment before Calcraft, the executioner, launched him into eternity. Ihe Lutheran clergyman who attended him again asked him to confess saying, God Almighty knows what you have done. Does He know that you did this deed?" Muller's lips were seen to move, and he was heard to mutter, Ich babe es gethan." ("I did it.") blr John was standing at the time inside the cordon of police, and within a few feet of the criminal; for those were the days of public executions outside the Old Bailey His belief, however, is that although Mullet- killed Mr. Bri^s he only mean.to stun him in order to rob him, as he was'anything but a ferociouslooking man of the crimnial, class He .wanted money as. li e . ,- a t .the-.time courting the- daughter of a: cabman livmg at^Paddmgton. Sir John traced Muller to his lodgings, in /the. East End where the people at tho house gave him a good character,, and Sir John learned that he was a clerk -is the city. Important clues leading to Muller's arrest were his hat—of a peculiar shape—which war found m the train, and tho victim's gold watch-guard, which Muller ' exchanged -for aii albert chain and fingering- at the shop ot a city jeweller named Death, who gave evidence at the trial