THE PORT OF MISSING MEN

Otago Witness, Issue 3040, 19 June 1912, Page 89

THE PORT OF MISSING MEN

By A. J. Hbighwat.

LONDON : WHERE THEY HIDE. A GREAT GAME.

Big black letters shrieked "Murder!" from yellow placards all over London streets., The newsboys voiced the same cry as they patrolled in endless numiibers. The ha'penny press had filled itself with detail, description, and speculation. It was all about the murder of "Lord George Songar. Here was a gruesome story with the added excitement of a man-bunt. And a man-hunt in London is a keen thing. So the grim word flaunted itself in your face, and thrust itself into your ears at every turn. A man-hunt was on in Lond<on! ±o those corners which had offered shelter in the past to many and many a poor-hunted victim of passion, some other individual was turning with the appeal for hiding; would he succeed in eluding the police and securing a shelter in these depths where at this very moment th&re are at least 4000 men and women " wanted " by the officers of the law ? That was the question. For two days London vaguely wondered. Then on the morning of the third day came th© news that the murderer, Cooper, had climbed the railway line and allowed the train to do that which the rope would have done. His venture had failed—he had, not been able to reach and sink himself in the great underworld of London. But What of others? What of the misdeeds that are done in secret and in quiet? Into what dark corners do the " regular hands " lis appear, and into what strange backwaters of this great port of humanity do those men labelled "missing" goTh© answer is that London offers them many many a quiet corner. With an instinctive specialisation each crime ,seems to create its own centre. One district offers special scope for talent in one particular direction. Then that district becomes the haunt of those particular evildoers, and, as a necessary corollary, there comes into being a quarter more or less extensive into which they can dive and be at peace. And then, above all, there offers the one great haunt of the underworld —the street and the shelter. Many a criminal shelters for time amongst the men " down and, out.'' Not 10 days after the incident of the murder of Sanger, I spent a night in an East End Salvation Army shelter, and discussed this" very point with the captain in charge. "We had detectives in here then," he said. " They come in disguised the others, and just watch. Sometimes they take men out of the shelters in the middje of the night— I have seen that." Also, of course, every shelter receives. police descriptions of " men wanted." But the shelter is the resort of the harried amateur—one might almost say the occasional criminal, or bungling craftsman. Some pettv thieves, of course, will live entirely in East End lodging-houses, and occasionally in an Army shelter, but iShfi men in regular warfare with the police have their own haunts and their own quarters. CENTRES OF CRIME

' The burglar has two ox three special haunts. An inquiry in some streets down East Leigihton or in the neighbourhood of King's Cross and Pentonville for the master of the house will generally yield the information (should, you be lucky enough to be allowed to make the inquiry with due farm and. ceremony) that " 5 e aint 'ome yet. 'E won't be 'ere for another three months." Down these parts t3ie police still retain the habit of walking in pairs—a habit any amateur explorer would do well to imitate. Round Euston road you will find the haunt of those men who steal luggage from the tops of fourwheelers. The proximity of four railway stations has produced this quarter. Down any of these side streets—dirty and jnarrow and paved with cobbles—of St. Pancras and Islington may be found' a quite embarrassing plenitude of secondhand clothes and baggage shops. The watch-snatcher allows himself, of course, a wide range of activity, but his headquarters are generally in Somera Town. His professional name, should you like it, is a "buzzer." A " smasher " is on© who engages in the manufacture of false coin—Hoxton is a favourite haunt —and the "snuffer" gangs are composed of those pleasant gentlemen who in ShadweU and other Thames-side public houses,drop snuff in tihe liquor of sailors and,, then lead tine hocussed victim to some deserted spot, where he is pinioned and robbed of all he possesses. Blackmailers, of course, exercise their activity in the West End. The boardinghouse sneak and thief frequents Bloomsbury or Hampstead. Then circumstances compel others to work on an extensive radius. The pillar-box thief, with his little stick and limed weight flies from tikis quarter to that. The area sneak follows suit. And the forger, the pickpocket, the shop-lifter, and the cardsharper —these are truly cosmopolitan in their attentions. And these, all these men, are hid by London. This great over-grown metropolis offers in her dark corners an abiding place and a shelter. The ]N*other of Mvsteries prepares for the miserable mis. oreant dark alleys and loathsome warrens ; for the flash cracksman equally ©he offers a gay land where safety is guaranteed by assurance j and for the distressed wanderer she spreads acres and acres of shimmy tenements in whose recesses he may never be disturbed. THE GREAT GAME.

A great game is going on here in London. Some 20,000 police apprehend in ©ach year over 110,000 persons, many of wibom, of course, may not be convicted. But as against that positive record there la tihe admission of tihe police themselves

that at -this very moment there ar© at liberty in London 4000 men and women ooimrmed ariminals, hiding because of misdemeanours committed, within the past two years alone. In the last police year, for instance, there were 547 burglaries, with only 37 apprehensions; 1673 cases of housebreaking, with but 201 apprehensions ; 991 cases of larceny with only 700 arrests; 19 murders, with 11 arrests; 279 attempts to commit murder, and 236 airrests; and eo the list runs on. Always and ever there ar© some who escape, some who bury themselves in London and defy the' 20,000 police. It is the gireat game of hunter and hunted, the child's hide-and-seek played out in a greater garden than ever child conceived, and with far heavier penalties attaching to the loss of freedom or of being "found. '

How is th© game played ? On the side of the police it is played with all the advantages that numbers, organisation, skill, knowledge, and power give. Besides the 20,000 police there are thousands of detectives who penetrate in disguise into every conceivable hole and corner. They sleep in shelters and in lodging-hoaees; they have even gone into the casual ward and, as a common-place, spend nights upon the Embankment and in \arious doorways of quiet streets. And they call to their aid all the wondrous power of science. From Scotland Yard the special telegraphic tape machines flash the description of a criminal all over London in less than five minutes. Then, should a man once be caught, his identity ever afterwards may be established beyond doubt by the "finger-print system. Yet with it all about 4000 persons at any given moment have stall to be found. It is not always, of course, the same 4000. Some are being caught and more are being wanted. But with it all there are those who retain their liberty for months and years before they are laid by the heels. In the Salvation Army shelter that night one of the men I spoke to was on ex-convict, with a record of 14 years at Portland. He was perfectly proud of his career, and spoke freely of it. He had been concerned in th© Hatton Garden diamond robbery, and was sentenced at the Old Bailey with Tiehborne. I asked him how he was caught. " I was away five months and nobody suspected me, and the police would never have got me except that a woman gave me away !" That incident illustrates in a slight fashion the difficulties of the police. But much better examples may be quoted from history. Probably the best of these illustrates the diabolical cunning which enabled Charley Peace, burglar and murderer, to elude the police for a very long time. In the Museum of Crime at Scotland Yard I was shown the means Which enabled him to do it. It was a short dummy arm—a block of wood, perhaps nine inches long, with a hook at the end of it. Peace was a well set-up man, with no deformities. For such a man the'police were looking. They could hardly be blamed therefore for not arresting on suspicion a little twisted old chap, who. shuffled along and offered matches for sale with his one sound arm. Poor fellow—an accident had robbed him of the other—a wooden stump hung in its place ! And yet that was Charley Peace. His left arm he bound' tightly across his chest beneath his dothang. That shoulder he then hunched away up and attached to his coat that pathetic wooden arm. By that mean*? he played his game of hide-and-seek. What means those hunted at the present time are edoTting it is impossible to eay. It is quite certain, however, that some masterly disguises are every day flaunted upon the streets of London town. LOST SHEEP.

The missing and wandering sheep of London are of two colours—black and White. Some go " missing " permanently and of deliberate intent: others disappear temporarily from the knowledge of their friends, and do not when restored thereto desire again to repeat the performance. Yet the number of people who are simply " lost" in London and axe found by the police and restored to their friends is, in a year, almost incredible. In 1910 the number so dealt with was 10,374 ! Over 30 people every day lose themselves in this whirling mass of 7,000,000 people spread over 690 square miles. Perhaps, after all, the surprise should be that the number is not greater!

There is one last oategory to be mentioned besides those of the hunted criminal and the lost wanderer —namely, that of the human wreck anxious only to 6ink for ever his identity and remain for ever undiscovered. This is a side that opens ud exhaustless possibilities. Every social worker in London knows the man who has " come down." What his fault or weakness may have., been in the first instance who can tell? Some slight slip, mayhap; more likely, some pampered weakness that led by an evereliarper slope downwards to this. And there they are ! In every lodiging-house you find them. In one shelter I was shown a comer scrubbed every day for three months by a baronet. In another I saw the wreck of a man once on 'Change, and every man I spoke to told, me of others, and oftentimes pointed them out to me. Yes ! This indeed is the port of missing men. Every human derelict drifts at last to this harbour. Here in London, in the depths among men, is where they hide. All corners of the world contribute their representatives to this great brotherhood. Men hide now amongst themselves. Not in. a mountain cave nor in the depths of a forest is one so safe from observation or detection as wandering down the wearv miles of London's streets. These great centres render increasingly difficult the task of the police. Amongst a few men the evil-doer is prominent; amongst millions —where Is he? The same arguments invite the voluntary and non-crimi-nal exile to, shelter here. Nowhere, in verv truth, is a man so much alone as amongst many. As straws on a flood, they ever drift and whirl here in this haven of multitude*.

THE PERPETUAL TRUSTEES, ESTATE AND AGENCY CO.

ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING. The twenty-eighth annual general meeting of the Perpetual Trustees, Estate, and Agency Company was held in the company's office, Rattray street, on the 11th. There was a very good attendance of shareholders, and Mr T. W. Kempthorne (chairman of directors) presided. In moving the adoption of the annual report and balance sheet, the Chairman said: —" First, our thanks are due to our able manager (Mr J. A. Park) and his staff for the oare and vigour exercised in the company's business throughout the year. You will be pleased to learn from the report and figures submitted that we had a satisfactory year's work. I next have, on behalf of the board, to thank those shareholders who have shown such keen interest In the company by placing their business in the company's hands, and in recommending others to follow their example, and I am sure you will be pleased to learn that in this direction our business is steadily growing. Several private persons who had been appointed trustees under the will of their friends, finding the position one of great responsibility and anxiety, have also transferred their trusteeships to this company, knowing that we, under a competent board of directors, have greater opportunities for securing safe and payable investments than any private trustee as a rule can have. The Chairman, went on to refer to the advisability of limiting the number of shares held by one shareholder to 500, and briefly touched upon, the retirement from the directorate on account of continued ill-health of Mr Walter Hislop. He then said: "Now, with respect to the figures in the balance 6heet, I think these will be quite clear to you. The capital is unchanged. The reserve fund of £IO,OOO we recommend should bo increased by £SOO, making it £10,500. The balances due by the company amount to £12,364, as against £15,053 in 1911, a difference in favour of the present year of £2669. Cash in hand and on deposit amounts to £2324, £4820 less than in 1911. Debentures remain the same—namely, £IO,IOO. Mortgages and accrued interest, leasehold, and buildings amount to £13,135, as again6t £12,174 at last balancing period. Balances due to the company amount to £10,346. In 1911 the amount was £9161. The profit and loss account totals £7598, as against £7399 last year, and calls for no comment. The net profit in 1912 was £2505, and in 1911 it was £2526. After paying 15 per cent, for the year on the paid-up capital, a bonus to the staff, and adding £SOO to reserve, we carry forward £2754, being £436 more than at the former balancing period." The letter from Mr Walter Hislop read': " As one of the two directors retiring this year by rotation, I wish to intimate that on account of continued illness I do not intend offering myself for re-election. I also intend to resign all my private trusteeships in favour of the company." In seconding the motion for the adoption of the report. Mr George Fenwick said that he did so with quite as much pleasure as he" had experienced in doing so last year, especially in view of the fine record of the oompany'6 business during the past year. Ai.d it had been a very fine record. It was very pleasing to know that the company .was progressing in the way in which it was. That was not matter for surprise when it was remembered that the reserve fund wns £IO,OOO, more than equivalent to the capital of the company. It was generally recognised that the affairs of the company had been administered with a great deai of ability by the directors and the manager. He felt sure that the chairman's remarks in regard to Mr Hislop would meet with a sympathetio rethe chairman's remarks in regard to Mr Hislop would meet with a sympathetic response from everyone present. Mr Hislop for many long years had managed the company with conspicuous ability. They were all extremely so try to know that he had fallen into ill-health," and he was certain that anything the directors recommended would be readily agreed to by those present. Personally, ho would have pleasure in supporting some substantial recognition of Mr Hi&lop's past services. The motion was carried.

Mr W. E. Reynolds was re-elected a director, and Mr G. 3?enwick was appointed a director in place of Mr Hislop. Messrs William Brown and Co. and W. G. Blyth were re-elected auditors. The Chairman stated thai it was recommended by the directors that the sum of £2OO be granted to Mr Hislop on his retirement.

Mr Bathgate said he thought that the amount was too email. It was mainly due to Mr Hislop's personal interest and energy that the business of the company had been built up. He moved:—" That it bo a recommendation to the directors to grant Mr Hislop £500." Tile motion was seconded and carried unanimously. Mr Sligo moved: •—" That it be a recommendation to the directors to consider the advisability or otherwise of amending the articles of association so as to give power to limit the number of shares that can bo held by any one shareholder in the company in future."

On being seconded by Mr Mill, who expressed the opinion that the number of shares held by any one shareholder should be limited to 500, the motion was carried. The meeting closed with a vote of thanks to the directors, the manager (Mr J. A. Park), and tbe staff.