The Chieftain: Victorian True Crime Through The Eyes of a Scotland Yard Detective (8 page)

He is apparently about five feet six or seven inches in height, compactly built and about twenty-four or twenty-five years of age. His forehead is well developed, hair light, no whiskers or moustache, and eyes blue, but very small and very deeply set in his head; while his mouth is decidedly repulsive from its extreme width and protuberance, impressing one with the idea of dogged obstinacy and vindictive relentlessness.
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The extradition hearing was the next hurdle for Tanner and Clarke to overcome. Mr Marbury presented the case for the British Consulate and Müller was represented by Messrs Shaffer and Blankman, thanks to the German Legal Protection Society of London who paid for his defence. The first day was filled by prosecution evidence and the cross-examination of Tanner, Clarke, Kerressey, Tiernan, Death and Matthews. The second day was to prove to be a memorable day of courtroom theatre. It started quietly enough with Müller’s counsel seeking an adjournment to give them further time to prepare the defence. When this was refused, Chauncey Shaffer played the
Alabama
‘card’:

He was not present to-day to quarrel with the policy of England, but here he would fearlessly state at the outset that he did not regard the treaty under which it was sought to extradite this man as anything else than a violation of the Constitution of the United States and utterly inoperative … He would show conclusively that it [the Treaty] was at present suspended by the act of the British Government … There is that hostility on the part of English subjects towards this country which writers on international law denominate ‘mixed and unsolemn war’ … England cannot say she is neutral in this matter when she furnishes our rebellious subjects with vessels of war, mans them, opens her ports to them, furnishes them with arms and ammunition and sends them forth on their errands of destruction, burning merchant ships and destroying the commerce on the seas of a friendly Power. The
Alabama
, built and armed in England, and manned by Englishmen, sunk and burned 120 of our ships … But as in the case before the Court, when a man is found murdered near London, they pursue the supposed murderer to our shores and cry ‘Treaty, treaty, treaty’. They tore that treaty to pieces three years ago (Applause). Nay, more than that, great argosies, laden with the choicest treasures of the nation, have been sunk in countless numbers with connivance and consent of the neutral, friendly Power … England, to claim this man [Müller], must come into court with clean hands. She must not come here and ask to honour her justice when she dishonours her own justice, breaks her treaties and cries peace and neutrality, while at the same time she lets slip the dogs of war.
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Shaffer’s tour de force must have been a painful experience for the Englishmen in court that day. Fortunately, Marbury resisted the temptation to argue on the same political ground as Shaffer and concentrated on the evidence, presenting a telling claim that there was a complete chain of evidence that justified Müller’s committal and extradition. He was rewarded for his restraint by the verdict delivered by Commissioner Newton. While complimenting Müller’s defence team for their performance, Newton concluded that there was sufficient evidence to commit Müller.
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Tanner waited for the newspapers to emerge on 28 August before reporting back to Mayne:

I beg further to report that yesterday the final examination of Müller took place when the Commissioner decided that it was a case in which he should certify for a warrant of extradition. It will be seen by the newspapers which I send also by this mail that strong language was used by the prisoner’s counsel in reference to England and the applause it gained. When the papers are ready I go on to Washington to obtain the warrant from the President [Abraham Lincoln] to take the prisoners home. I do not know how long it will take but I shall endeavour to leave here by the steamship,
Etna
, on the 3 September for Liverpool. I beg also to state that extraordinary as it may seem, strong sympathy is felt here for the prisoner and it is rumoured that an attempt to rescue him from my custody will be made.
⁴⁰

While Tanner, and possibly Clarke, travelled to Washington to collect the extradition warrant from the president’s office, Müller was held in the aptly named Tombs Prison in New York. Tanner left Washington with the warrant on 31 August and Müller was surrendered into his custody in time to board the
Etna
. To reduce the risk of Müller being rescued, an announcement was placed in the local papers that he would be leaving on another ship that was due to sail on 7 September. The plan was successful, although several thousand people still crowded the quayside; most of them arriving after Müller had been placed on board, in the ship’s hospital, where he was guarded by Clarke and Kerressey.
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The newspaper reports that emerged of the voyage back to England suggest that Müller was a model prisoner, and that Tanner, Clarke and Kerressey behaved humanely as his gaolers, even providing two Charles Dickens’ novels for Müller to read. Delayed by bad weather, the steamship finally entered Liverpool harbour on 16 September. Anticipating the crowds that would gather, plans had been put in place to take Müller and the accompanying police off the
Etna
before the ship docked.
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That night, Müller was detained at Liverpool Police Station while Tanner, Clarke and Kerressey spent their first night back in England at the Crooked Billet public house. Early the next day, Müller was taken to Edgehill railway station, rather than the main rail terminus at Lime Street, where large crowds were again expected. The party was allocated an entire carriage on the London and North Western Railway train for their journey back to London. Nearing Euston, the train stopped briefly at the Camden ticket platform where ‘there was a tremendous rush of people from all directions’, and the party was joined by two other members of the Scotland Yard Detective Department, Inspector Williamson and Sergeant Thomas. With the detectives guarding the doors, ‘the prisoner Müller as he occupied his seat looked exceedingly pale and agitated’.
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The train finally arrived at Euston Square station at 2.44 p.m., where ‘the excitement of the crowd was immense’.
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After a struggle by the police to clear a route through, Müller was loaded into the waiting police van and driven off to Bow Street:

A desperate rush was made at the van as it drove down Bow-street up to the door of the police station. And at one time there appeared some risk of its being turned over; but a dozen or two of the constables pushed against the nearside of the van, and its equilibrium was fortunately not disturbed. It was some little time before a passage could be cleared for the transit of the prisoner and his attendants, but at length the door was opened, and the first person to alight from the van, with a light, jaunty step was Franz Müller himself. Then arose a storm of hissing and groaning of a most unmistakable character, but it did not in the slightest degree disconcert the prisoner. The people seemed surprised at the slight, mean, and shabby appearance of the man who had been so long the theme of universal discussion. Far below the middle height, excessively plain-looking and ill-featured, and with light-coloured hair projecting from under his hat, garments thin and seedy, and wearing a white broad-brimmed and somewhat weather-beaten straw hat, he really was not ‘equal to the occasion’ in the estimate of the crowd, who freely commented on the disappointment which they had experienced. ‘What!’ said one stalwart ragged denizen of Seven Dials, ‘
he
murder Mr Briggs,
he
chuck a big man out of the carriage! Why he couldn’t do it’.
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Though proving a disappointment to the Bow Street mob, Müller was charged and held in the cells of the heavily guarded police station.

During the absence of Tanner and Clarke in America, responsibility for the continuing investigations in London had been taken on by Inspector Williamson. Anticipating the return of his two colleagues from America, Williamson had prepared an updated summary of events on the Briggs murder case.
⁴⁶
There was little new information. However, Müller was now known to have made occasional use of the North London Railway between Bow and Fenchurch Street, despite his assertion to Clarke, when arrested, that he had not been on that line. It had also become clearer how Müller had raised the money to buy his steerage passage on the
Victoria
. In the original transaction which Müller had with the Deaths, Brigg’s watch chain had not been exchanged for cash, but for another watch chain and a ring. Further investigation had revealed that there had been other dealings with pawnbrokers and with work colleagues and friends, which had allowed Müller to raise about £4 5
s
in cash with which he had been able to buy his £4 passage. In addition, further information had been obtained about Müller’s background: ‘Müller was a native of Saxe-Weimar, twenty-five years of age. Apprenticed as a gunsmith in his native country, he had come over to England about two years before the murder of Mr. Briggs. Failing to get work as a gunsmith, he had turned tailor.’
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The remaining issues for the detectives were to establish the origin of the hat that Clarke had found in Müller’s trunk, and to locate any evidence that would specifically place Müller on the train at the time that the murder occurred. Tanner had confidently reported back from America that the hat in the trunk was the one which Briggs had been wearing on the night that he was murdered. However, despite containing the correct maker’s name (Digance), closer inspection had revealed that the hat was noticeably shorter than the original description of Briggs’ hat had suggested. A visit to the hatter was required and Digance duly solved the riddle. In evidence that he later gave at the Old Bailey, he explained that:

Mr Briggs has been a customer of mine for the last five-and-twenty or thirty years … I made a hat to order for Mr Briggs in September, 1863. According to the description in the book the hat produced does not correspond … I should say the hat has been cut down from 1 inch to 1½ inches. The bottom part of the leather has been cut off, and it has been sewn together again, and the silk has been pasted on again. It has not been cut down as a hatter would do it … The hat has been neatly sewn, and I should say it was done by a person who understands sewing. With the exception of the cutting down, the hat corresponds with the hat of Mr Briggs.
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So the supposition became that Müller, using his tailoring skills, had modified Briggs’ hat to disguise it.

The task of finding evidence that placed Müller on the 9.45 p.m. train from Fenchurch Street on 9 July 1864 proved much more elusive, and no satisfactory conclusion was reached. One witness, Thomas Lee, emerged late and clouded the issue as far as the police were concerned by claiming that he had seen two men sitting in the compartment with Mr Briggs. Lee could not confirm (or deny) that Müller was one of them, and his evidence was not used by the prosecution. Müller had been out in London that night as he had travelled south of the Thames to call on a young lady, Mary Ann Eldred, in Camberwell. However, no one came forward with evidence that they had seen Müller and Briggs together, or even that Müller had been on the same train. Clearly, the assiduous protection of the train compartment as a scene of crime by Ames, the train guard, would have yielded more clues for the police to work with if some of the modern technologies now used by forensic scientists had been available in Victorian times. As it was, fingerprinting and blood analysis were still decades away from being understood and implemented, and DNA fingerprinting techniques were only to emerge more than a century later. Thus, without a confession (which was not forthcoming), the evidence that the police had been able to obtain against Müller was entirely circumstantial.

The next step was to persuade the Bow Street magistrate that there was a sufficient case for him to commit Müller for trial. The magistrate’s hearing was convened by the presiding magistrate, Mr Flowers, at Bow Street Police Court on Monday 19 September, less than two days after Müller had arrived back in London. The magistrate, ‘Jimmy’ Flowers, was described by a contemporary lawyer as ‘one of the most kind-hearted creatures that ever lived’, but it probably didn’t feel that way to Müller.
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With the continuing high level of public interest, there was a strong body of police stationed at each end of the street and, in the court, the limited space devoted to the public was occupied almost exclusively by the representatives of the English and foreign press, the artists of the illustrated papers and a few notable gentlemen in the literary world.
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Clarke was the last witness to give evidence on that day, and the case was remanded for a week when its continuation was to clash chaotically with the resumed inquest on the murder of Mr Briggs.

The inquest (a ‘ticket-only’ affair for members of the public), which had been initiated before Clarke and Tanner had gone to America, was resumed at 8 a.m. on Monday 26 September in the Town Hall at Hackney. Müller was brought in, though he had nothing to say. After Müller had been duly identified the coroner addressed the jury, summing up the information that had been presented on previous days, and asked the jury to retire to consider their verdict. After only twenty minutes the jury concluded ‘that the deceased died from the effects of foul violence administered in a railway carriage on Saturday, the 9th of July, and we find that Franz Müller is the man by whom that violence was committed’. They then expressed their dissatisfaction with ‘the present state of railway accommodation at affording facilities for the perpetration of various crimes and offences; and earnestly desire to call the attention of the home government to the subject, and to the necessity of enforcing the adoption by railway companies of some more efficient system of protection to life, character and property’.
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