Great Train Crimes: Murder and Robbery on the Railways (7 page)

This led the police to the jewellery shop of one John Death in Cheapside. On the Monday after the murder, Briggs’s watch chain had been exchanged for another at Death’s shop. Robert, Death’s brother, who was running the shop on the day in question, recalled:

On Monday morning, July 11, a young man of about 30, with a foreign accent and having neither beard, moustache nor whiskers, of a pale sallow complexion and rather fair I should think, entered the shop around 10 o’clock. He took a chain from his pocket, apparently not attached to his watch, and asked him if I would let him have a new Albert chain for it of about the same value. Although having a foreign accent, he spoke English so plainly that I perfectly understood him. He wanted to have a new chain, without having to pay any money, for the old one, which was of the best description of gold.

The transaction was then completed, and later, the new chain which was pawned was identified by Death as the one he had given the young man.

Evidently Muller had taken the duplicate to Annis’s shop and pawned it. Muller’s lodgings were searched and, hidden in the chimney, was a scrap of silk, such as might have come from a man’s sleeve, with blood on it. It was thought that Muller had used this to wipe bloodstains from his shoes after the murder. Sir Richard Mayne, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, was told of this and realized that Muller would need to be questioned about the murder. Therefore, on the same day (20 July), Inspector Tanner, Mr Death and Matthews, took a steamship,
The City of Manchester
, for New York. They took a warrant for Muller’s arrest with them. Because it was feared they might not arrive before Muller, a second warrant was sent on a faster ship and
this warrant was endorsed by the American minister in London, as required by the extradition treaty.

More facts emerged about the top suspect. Muller had been born in Cologne in about 1839. On leaving school he was apprenticed to a gunsmith and came to London in 1862. He was unable to find work as a gunsmith, and eventually began working for Mr Hodgkinson as mentioned above. He also lived at the same house as a Mr Matthews and became engaged to his daughter. The engagement was broken off by early 1864. It was said that he was jealous and potentially violent. In appearance, he was five feet six, slender, with a pale complexion and light brown hair. He lacked whiskers or a moustache.

Apparently on the evening of the murder, Muller had spent some time with Elizabeth Repsch, the wife of a German tailor of Jewry Street, Aldgate. She was with him until 7.30 pm, when she left him in Haffa’s company. He had not then spoken of any overseas journey. By 8.30, when she returned, Muller was gone. She next saw him on Monday morning, shortly after he had exchanged the old watch chain for a new one. He claimed to have bought both the watch and a ring, which he then showed her and Haffa, from a man at the docks, while enquiring about a passage to America (this man, assuming he ever existed, was never located). He was also wearing a new hat; Muller claimed he had damaged the old one and thrown it away. Elizabeth thought the hat found in the railway compartment was the same as the one Muller used to wear, but was not entirely certain. She never saw Muller again after 14 July.

Haffa could shed more light on Muller’s movements. When Muller left him, he said he ‘was going to see his girl, his sweetheart’, in Camberwell. This was about 7.45.

This murder excited a great deal of public interest, even more so than murder usually did at this time. Perhaps not until the Jack the Ripper murders of 1888 did the press give a killing so much attention.

Muller arrived at New York on 24 August. Inspectors Kerressey and Tanner, with Death, had arrived before him; just as Chief Inspector Dew was to arrive before Crippen in 1910. Muller was arrested and identified. When he was brought before the City Marshal, he told him that he was innocent and could prove it. He was remanded and the extradition process began. His captors searched his belongings and found the hat and watch which seemed to prove his guilt.

Muller was escorted back to England on the
Etna
, arriving on 17
September at Liverpool. The boat was met by a steam tug, and angry crowds waited for him by the docks. Muller was taken by cab to a police station. It was alleged ‘The excitement in the town from the time
Etna
came in sight was very great, and it increased as he was being conveyed to the police office.’ Muller himself ‘appeared very unconcerned’ and had not spoken of the murder on his return voyage. He was taken by train to London and on arrival at Euston met a large crowd. He was committed for trial at the Bow Street Magistrates’ court on the following day.

This murder case was described by Charles Dickens as one of the two great sensations of the time; the other being a commercial crisis. Those who know the novelist through his books as a liberal humanitarian might be interested in his comment on the case before the trial, when he wrote thus, in a letter to a friend:

I hope that the gentleman [Muller] will be hanged, and have hardly a doubt of it, though croakers contrariwise are not wanting. It is difficult to conceive any other line of defence than that the circumstances proved, taken separately, are slight. But a sound Judge will immediately charge the jury that the strength of the circumstances lies in their being put together and will thread them together on a fatal rope.

Muller’s trial at the Old Bailey took three days (27–29 October). The court room was packed to capacity, such was the public interest in the case. As expected, the main witnesses for the prosecution were Matthews and Death, who attested, respectively, to the hat found at the murder scene being Muller’s and the fact that he had sold Briggs’s watch chain to the jeweller. Yet there was the evidence of Lee to contend with; for he had seen two other men with Briggs in the railway compartment just before the train was about to depart and he thought that neither man there was Muller. But there was new evidence, too. On the night of the murder, Muller had told Haffa at 7.45 at Old Jewry that he was going to Camberwell. Apparently, according to Elizabeth Jones, Muller came to her house, which was a brothel, incidentally, at St George–s Road, Peckham. He had come to see one of her girls, a Mary Ann Eldred. Perhaps unfortunately for Muller, she had left the house at 9 pm. The clock gave the time as 9.30 pm, and Mrs Jones remembered it because that was when a telegram arrived for her. If this was true, then Muller could hardly have caught the same train as Briggs, because it would have taken him more than 20 minutes to reach Fenchurch Street station. The Camberwell omnibus which Muller could have caught did not travel through Peckham until 9.55 and did not arrive at King William Street until 10.20. Therefore, Muller must be innocent. Furthermore, Miss Eldred said that Muller had spoken to her before the murder of going to America. The prosecutors did not let these witnesses speak without challenging them. In particular, they cast doubts on the reliability of Mrs Jones and the accuracy of her clock. Perhaps Muller did go there, but if he set off at 7.45, he could have gone there, found his friend was not there, and returned in time to arrive at Fenchurch Street at 9.45. Lee–s testimony to seeing two men in the carriage was also questioned and it was believed that Lee was mistaken as to which night he saw Briggs there. The jury believed the prosecutors’ version of events and, after a mere 15 minutes, found Muller guilty of murder.

Muller himself was allowed to speak. He said, in his broken English, ‘I wish to say I am satisfied with my trial. I know I have been convict by your law, but not upon the statement – by false.’ A witness later wrote, ‘these last words of Muller’s struck me so very forcibly as containing no denial of guilt, or assertion of active innocence’.

There was doubt among some as to whether Muller was indeed guilty. There was a penny pamphlet,
Who murdered Mr Briggs?
published. The writer stated, ‘The object of my pamphlet is to show that he [Muller] did not, or at least that Muller alone, is not guilty’. He argued that the evidence against Muller was circumstantial. For instance, the hat that was meant to be his, could have fitted many other men. James Smith wrote a similar pamphlet, titled,
Has Muller been tried?

Muller returned to Newgate to await execution. His counsel, Thomas Beard, came to see him at once and had a conversation with his client, in the presence of the prison governor, Mr Jones. Muller was told that the fight to save his life would continue, and that the German Legal Protection Society, who had financed his defence, would continue to help him, in finding new evidence and presenting a memorial to the Home Secretary on his behalf.

After his first paroxysm of grief, Muller was quiet and composed, sleeping well. He spent much of his time reading and spoke but little to the warders. He had no visitors, except Mr Walbaum, a German
Lutheran chaplain in London, and Mr Davis, the prison chaplain.

Muller also came under suspicion of another recent murder – a not uncommon circumstance for convicted killers. In 1863, Emma Jackson had been killed in the St Giles district of London, having been stabbed by an unknown young man (the case is detailed in the author’s
Unsolved Murders in Victorian and Edwardian London
). Among the suspects were German sugar bakers in Peckham. It was thought that a handkerchief belonging to the victim had been found in Muller’s hat box. Yet the two witnesses who saw Emma with a man shortly before her death did not think Muller was the same man.

However, although cleared of that crime, his defenders had no luck with their memorial to Sir George Grey, the Home Secretary, which they had presented on 10 November. They argued that the evidence used to convict Muller was weak and, furthermore, they had new evidence to cast doubt on the conviction. First, on the night of the murder, a man with bloodstained clothes (not Muller) had been seen in Hackney, near to where Briggs had been found. Secondly, Ellen Blyth said she remembered that Muller had been wearing the same clothes on the day of the murder and on the following day. On the latter, there were no bloodstains, nor did it seem that any had been washed off. It was also argued that a small man such as Muller could not possibly have successfully assaulted a larger man, such as Briggs. But their pleas were in vain. Indeed, they actually annoyed some Germans resident in London, one of whom wrote, ‘Most of the Germans in my acquaintance are fully convinced of the justness of the sentence against Muller.’ He added that the German Legal Protection Society only represented a few Germans and that, if they did not like British justice, they could always return to Germany.

Meanwhile, preparations were being made for the execution of Muller. The scaffolding was being erected outside Newgate and the time for his death was announced. Crowds gathered and the roads nearby were blocked. Respectable people were shocked at these ruffianly and dirty people, numbering about 50,000, who were there for the spectacle. As
The Times
put it, ‘Such a concourse as we hope may never again be assembled either for the spectacle which they had in view on for the gratification of such lawless ruffianism as yesterday found its scope around the gallows.’ Just before he was taken to his death, Muller confessed to the chaplain that he had indeed killed Briggs, ‘Ich habe es gethan’.

It is presumed that this was correct. Certainly Muller had the motive to kill a wealthy man who was alone, vulnerable and much older than he was. Briggs was probably taken by surprise as he was dozing on the train when he was suddenly attacked. Muller did have one of the dead man’s possessions in his hands. And the hat found in the railway compartment was his. Therefore, presumably Lee was mistaken, as was Mrs Jones and her clock which told the wrong time. Yet without the final confession, there would have remained a great deal of doubt over the justness of the verdict and execution.

After the murder, there were calls for improved safety measures on trains. An Act of Parliament of 1868 made it compulsory for all passenger trains to install a system of alarms. The earliest alarm systems were unreliable, easy to tamper with and often useless, as Rebecca Dickinson discovered in 1875 (see
Chapter 4
). However, with time they became more efficient. South Western trains went further and installed peepholes, or ‘Muller holes’ in their railway compartments, but these were not universally popular for they reduced the privacy of the travelling public.

A final comment: in the opening chapter of
A Study in Scarlet
, Holmes refers to a number of criminals; one being ‘the notorious Muller’. Could this be a reference to the killer here?

‘One feels so shocked and so shamed as a gentleman
being capable of such a thing’

Most of those involved in real crime, whether as victim, perpetrator or investigator are usually of humble status, despite fictional depictions of wrongdoing. This account of a misdeed on board a train in the middle of Victoria’s reign concerns people of a more exalted social status.

It was Thursday afternoon of 17 June 1875 and a young woman was being seen off from Midhurst station by her two sisters and widowed mother. It was 3 o’clock. She was Miss Rebecca Kate Dickinson, aged 22, and was fortunate to be both good-looking and of comfortable upper middle-class stock. Since September 1874 she had lived with her family at Dunsford, near Midhurst, Sussex. Prior to that they had resided at New Park, Lymington, until her father’s death. The family was well off, with her father William leaving nearly £60,000 in his will. Her brothers included a doctor of Chesterfield Street, a captain in the Royal Engineers and a barrister in Chancery. She was travelling to London to meet her married sister and her brother-in-law, one Bagshawe, prior to the three of them departing to Switzerland for a three-week holiday. Her labelled luggage, consisting of three cases and a portmanteau, were loaded into the same compartment.

She sat alone in a first class compartment, facing the direction of travel. Nothing happened until the next station stop, which was Petersfield. Here she changed trains to take the Portsmouth to London South Western train. The train had a corridor, so there were two exits from the compartment. At Liphook station, a middle-aged man entered the compartment and sat in the opposite corner to Miss Dickinson. He was a complete stranger to her.