CHURCHMAN AND ROGUE

Evening Star, Issue 19020, 15 August 1925, Page 15

CHURCHMAN AND ROGUE

A SINISTER FIGURE

REAL MASTER CRIMINAL

[By Edrah Walla, ck, in the ' Sunday

Chronicle.’]

The sinister solicitor is a favorite character in fiction. His appearance in any’ book of a typo brings a quiet Emile to tho classic lips of tho reviewer, because, as_ everybody knows, the sinister solicitor belongs to tho tvpe of fiction which flourished in mid-Victorian days, and Is out of place in these enlightened times.

No novelist, however daring, would have ventured to put into a book tho life story of Charles Crank Shaman, a reputable solicitor at Stratford. There was nothing villainous in his_ appearance j he was a picture of piety and benevolence. A churchwarden, and respected ns such (the wicked churchwarden Ls also a cliche of sensational novelists), and » man whose philan thropio deeds brought him to the favorable notice of the Belgian Government and earned for him the Albert Medal, he was the most unlikely candidate for tho rogues’ gallery. A DOUBLE LIFE.

When Shaman, seventy-five _years of ago, disappeared from a dock in winch he had figured nearly twenty years ago at tho Old Bailey, and went down tho stairs to tho fate which had always hung like a shadow over his life, there vanished from the outside human ken the cleverest, and perhaps the wickedest, man whose name has ever figured on the roll of solicitors. Down at Snaresbrook, in Essex,_ ho was a familiar figure. He organised church bazaars j he spoke on public platforms on bebalf of church enterprises. For the little children he had always a kind word and a packet of sweets j for the grown-ups he bad a smile and a mild jest. Fifty years ago the county of Essex had been stirred by an act or his which earned for him the execration of his fallows; but there was no need for the proverbial shortness of public, memory to expunge this unsavory record from his life. Fifty years is a long time, and people die. FRIEND OF CRIMINALS. At Snaresbrook, those with a recollection of a later scandal regarded him as an injured and persecuted man, For he had been accused, in 1896, of misappropriating trust funds, apd had stood Lis trial at tho Old Bailey. _ The jury took a merciful view of his offence, but the ruffled Law Society was not so easily appeased, and suspended him from practice for two years. That was his known history. He was, in a sense, a friend of criminals, Tho nature of his work made it inevitable that ho should be brought into contact with the underworld. He defended them iu court, briefed counsel for them, advised them, as it seems, in a perfectly proper way as to the character of their evidence.

That was the Shaman known to the world. There was another Sharman, more familiar to the big men of tho underworld, and a. third Shaman who was known only to himself. This old lawyer was a crook—it is no unflattering thing to say that there was_ not a straight place in him. His position as a solicitor gave him opportunities which coxno to no other. The police could not shadow him as a suspected person because of tho company he kept. It was his job to interview disreputable people and to ho in close association with known thieves. What happened inside his private office was, by reason of his profession always as sacred ns tho confessional. He could servo the big gangs as no other man in London could servo them. To steal property is one thing j to dispose of it at a profit is another; and when the stolen articles consisted of bonds and other non-negntiablo effects, ho was invaluable.

“FENCE” FOR ROBBER GANG, Some time after the war ho become acquainted with a clover gang of international thieves. They wore well-edu-cated men who spoke several languages. Thoir included mourners of foreign post office staffs, and probably British postal _ officials as_ well, and they specialised in the stealing of mail bags containing registered lotion aud packages. In November. 1921, began a series of maii-bag robneries winch baffled tlio police and brought consternation to tho postal officials. .In that month there was stolon between Liverpool and London a bag containing cheques, cash, and jewellery, with a number of war bonds to the value of £IOO,OOO. Bight of these bonds were subsequently sold in Brussels, Paris, Now York, and Ant werp. The “Air Johnson” who _ sold one of these £bo bonds boro a striking resemblance to Shannon himself. A month later another £IOO,OOO was stolen between London and Birmingham} but the greatest coup of all was that which was made when a registered bag, consigned from Antwerp to London, and containing a million pounds’ worth of securities, was abstracted. This was in 1923, and the extent of the robbery was such that even Sharman became nervous. HIS UNDOING-. In his nervousness he did what- so many criminals do, and which, in one case at least within my experience, has brought a man to the gallows (the student of these things will remember tho Aldershot murder of nearly twenty years ago) ; lie got into touch with the victims of the robbery, in this case tho General Rost Office, and professed to ho able to give information which ho had acquired in tho course of his practice. This was his undoing. TV hen Scotland Yard was called in to investigate, t!i© extraordinary knowledge which Shannon had of these various robberies was sufficiently suspicious to induce Wensley and his colleagues to concentrate their investigations upon this lawyer and his associates. Once tho limelight was on him, Shannon was a doomed man. At tho ago of seventy-five ho goos into penal servitude, and the balance of probability is that he will not survive the two years and three months which separate him from liberty. In tiie brief space of this ariicle is it not possible to examine his mentality and his peculiar kink at any great length. But I think, when a study is made of this remarkable criminal, it will bo agreed that in Charles Crank Shannon we shall discover the master criminal of the past fifty years.