GHOULS OF THE SEA.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 13396, 26 January 1907, Page 2 (Supplement)

GHOULS OF THE SEA.

WAITING FOR DEAD MEN'S BOOTY. Battlefields and t lie scenes of great disasters, such as earthquakes, do not hold a prerogative as regards men who rifle the dead for booty. The sea coast, as in the days of the wreckers, when ships wore lured on to rocks by malice prepense, has its ghouls also. A ease was reported recently of a young Deal tradesman who [ell overboard while fishing, and was drowned. He was then wearing, with other things, an overcoat, an undercoat, and some personal jewellery. When the body was recovered both coats and jewellery were missing.

Inquiries at Southend, where the number of mysterious deaths from drowning is every year a large one, show that some very suspicious cases of rifled property occur. There was one not very long ago where a well-dressed woman was found in the basin of the disused water chute by the pier. She was known to have been wearing a. number of valuable rings just before her mysterious disappearance, but the rings were missing when the body came to be removed to the mortuary, and though inquiries were set on foot by the police no trace of them could he found. There was another case a year or two ago of a Gravesend man. who was found dead on the beach at Westcliff. Not many hours before lie left his boarding-house lie was wearing, among other things, a gold watch and chain. All bis pockets had been emptied of their valuables, however, when the " official" searching took place.

"Southend, with its open cliffs and with the many shelters that dot the promenades both to the east and the west of the pier," said a prominent resident of the Old Town, Southend, " offers at night time a refuge for loafers. Especially is this so in the summer. They may be seen at all hours of the night searching the foreshore, and there is little doubt that the discovery of a body is attended by the rifling of the pockets, and the body is then left, afterwards to be discovered by a coastguard or a waterman, who promptly informs the police."

The Thames, too, has its bankside robbers.

"A body a day," so riverside dwellers say, is the death-roll of the Thames. Of these, the police admit, a large proportion are found with empty pockets, while others are partially divested of clothing. Allowances, of course, must be maue for cases in which the lack of money is the cause of suicide, but a certain number of ruthless characters still haunt the river, and robbing the dead is a comparatively slight offence compared to some offences they are prepared to commit.

Yes," said a river policeman to a Daily Mail representative, " we often find bodies in their shirt-sleeves and with no money in their pockets. Still, a man in his struggles in the water may divest himself of his coat in an attempt to swim ashore. No doubt, however, that these robberies are committed sometimes. The reward for reporting a dead body is ss, but a gold watch and chain and a new overcoat may frequently lead to a robbery instead of a report.

" Still I have often seen bodies searched at the mortuary with valuable rings on them and with sovereigns in the pockets. Bodies are mostly found in the day, when a search would be noticed by people in other boats. Still it is extraordinary how many are found with empty pockets."