DETECTED BY BITS OF PAPER.

Otago Witness, Issue 2232, 10 December 1896, Page 50

DETECTED BY BITS OF PAPER.

" Secret Documents " at New Scotland Yard. " The officially named ' lecret documents ' we examine here comprise papers, writings, pocketbooks, and the like, which may in any way fall into the bands of tbe police, and as to which suspicion is excited, remarked a well-known officer of the Criminal Investigation department at New Scotland Yard. " Besides documents found on prisoners of all kinds," he continued, " writings found in the streets and left at police stations are brought here after being sifted ; and coroners' officers, hospital authorities, and a great many other persons send in pieces of manuscript that seem to point to mysteries or that require explanation. Papers that throw a flood of light on criminal cases have even been picked up by the sweepers in the London police courts. " We have every appliance here for examining documents of whatsoever kind, these, of course, inoluding microscopes and photographic appliances; also one of the best workmen at ' restoring ' in the kingdom. A restorer is one who, whether a letter has been immersed in water or partly reduced to ashes by fire, can decipher the reading matter, exactly in the expert way that the post office restorers do. Even if tbe perfect burnt ash of a letter only remains, we can generally read it here if the paper and ink be of certain not uncommon kinds. We even have a typewriting expert, who can tell infallibly what class of machine has turned out any given document, and we ocoasionaUx, in this oitr of. neuur toDflaee, have to

hand over Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, and all manner of documents to specialists.

11 First as to articles found on prisoners. Naturally the greater number of papers are obviously unimportant, but such unimportance has to be officially declared by a man acquainted with the devious ways of criminals, with their ildiculouily easy codes of secret writing and with their method of scribbling tell-tale hieroglyphics— often of a faoetious kind and innocent enough to the uninitiated— opposite dates. To illustrate how even trivial documents are best sifted by a practised hand, I could show you a pickpookel's notebook in whioh the examiner saw that at irregular intervals there appeared sometimes a round o with' an open centre, and sometimes one that was like a blot, these cases In many instances being followed by the vary loyal phraße— • Bless the Prince of Wales.' Suoh marks simply meant to the practised eye that the person who made them had sometimes relieved a victim of a silver watch and ' albert,' and at other times of a gold ' ditto.'

" I am treading on delicate ground, and my next example will be a trite one enough so far as we are concerned, though sounding romantic, I daresay, to come people. Not very long ago there was found on a lowlooking ruffian, who was locked up for a btutal assault, a bundle of the tenderest love letters, a crest or ooronet being on the different sheets, bearing date many year* ago. A word dropped by the woman who had been assaulted, and to the effect that the man's source of livelihood would be found in his pocket, brought the bundle to \ig. Patience revealed to us— the crest was the starting point— a most flagrant case of blackmailing, the feature of this one being that the man was the woman's cousin, and a being — degraded though he might now bs— of very high birtb, who bad in youth shown distinguished

ability, He had managed to get sums of money innumerable through these letters — written by his cousin when he was, in youth, engaged to her, and prior to her marriage to a statesman — and had been sent abroad four separate times. There was no prosecution except fox the assault; the letters were secretly handed to the lady by an eminent official; and the man was afterwards sent abroad again.

v At this point I want to say to you that crime of the 'hush money' sort — I won't call some of it exactly blackmailing, though it amounts to that — is amazingly prevalent in London nowadays, and this documentary examination section has been increased fiCtyfold through the increase in education. Subtle crime — such as depends on blackmailing and the alteration or forging of documents — grows apace. Only think of two quite vulgar letter-box thieveß, lads to boot, who recently showed that they were able to remove any crossing or other inkmarks on cheques and postal orders of all kinds.

" In tbe case I have told you of, the lady had the good sense to tell my chiefs that she was actually the writer of the letters ; but in many similar ones, where a few candid words would get rid of an incubus for ever, the victim has wholly denied letters and documents. All the same, we refuse to hand over such again to any suspicious character on whom they may be found. When we endeavour to restore letters we often get point-blank denials, and I have even known a pocketbook with hundreds of pounds in it to be repudiated by the supposed loser, so anxious was he or she not to be identified with the person on whom it was found.

" Not so very long ago, a drunken woman, almost in rags, was seen flourishing a Bank of England .note for £100, and she was It eked up. She refused to say a word as to how she had obtained the note, but from a letter, and especially the envelope to it, that we found on her, we took the whole of the doenments to a certain patent-bolder who is almost a millionaire. In a confused way the latter denied all knowledge of the afl&ir. Mid lefußod explanations as to tha

note and the envelope ; but we found, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that the woman was the man's real wife— he had married her when he was a working man, and they had soon separated even then— and periodically Bent for money, always choosing, for swaggering reasons, a note for a large amount. The husband has a town and country mansion and a large household, and we found that the woman we arrested had cashed many a £100-note at a certain inn in Lambeth.

"One of the men who pick up bits of paper in the parks and open spaces in London about two years ago found and brought to the police several blurred and incomplete foreign bank notes— they were, in fact, proofs from the engraved plate — and he had displayed such good sense that he had kept many other scraps of paper that were lying near the notes. Amongst these, when the pieoeß were stuck carefully together between sheetß of glass, was a receipt for cbomicals bought from a respectable firm. From that receipt was traced, after incredible trouble and patience, a bank note and a letter of oredit forger, who lived in a West Bad mansion, and who bad one of the finest engraving and forging plants ever discovered. I need not mention tbe man's name, becanse the case will probably be fresh in your recollection, and also that of the thieves' banker who was convicted with him.

.«' One of tho moat curious* documents ' we have received for a long time is. a piece of ordinary composite candle. Thfs was left at •the scene of a 'great j«wellery robbery, where the thieves carried off articles to. the value of thousands of pounds. The candle has evidently softened and bent at some time, after which it has been wrapped round with a piece of paper ; and the writing from this latter, in a peculiar ink, has transferred itself to the candle. We made out the thing perfectly, and we know who at least one of

the thieves is, but tbe mas has entirely disappeared for a time. This same fact applies also to a. man who. succeeded by a forged letter in getting one of. the biggest hauls of jewellery on record. We have other writing and paper connected with the. forged letter, including a part of the draft of the latter, and only the whereabouts of the known writer are cow required."