A Burglar Caught by a Skeleton & Other Singular Tales from the Victorian Press (38 page)

They therefore gave the cup to the soldier, at the same time solemnly warning him for the future against similar favours from images of any kind, and impressing him with the conviction that the Virgin required profound silence from him as a proof of his gratitude.

Supplement to the Nottinghamshire Guardian
, September 9, 1864

A Chelsea Girl Breaks the Record

A fat and blushing girl from Chelsea has broken the record at Marlborough Street. Her complaint was rum and coffee, and her actions showed how fearfully strong that Chelsea coffee is.

When the Clerk of the Court yesterday asked the honour of an introduction, she said her name was ‘the same as it was before’: but he could not remember it, and it had slipped from everybody’s memory and it continues in a state of slip.

It ought to be preserved, however, because the recording angel of the law had all these memoranda against her:

1. She got drunk.

2. She got ever so much drunker.

3. She got fired out of a restaurant near the Haymarket.

4. She reached for the constable’s eye with her shoe, which she had in her hand, and the constable’s eye is all wrong.

5. She threw herself on the pavement and had to be taken in with the official van.

6. She hit the constable again, and knocked his helmet an illegal distance.

7. She rolled all over the street and part of her clothes came off.

8. In riding to the station, she yelled, and she yelled, and she yelled.

9. She drew pictures on the walls of her cell with a button-hook.

10. They were bad pictures, and the damage to the walls is 2s 6d.

This was a large order for the book-keepers of justice to figure out, but they made the whole bill £1 2s 6d.

The Dundee Courier and Argus
, September 20, 1889

The Falmouth Riot

Seven soldiers of the Royal Artillery stationed at Pendennis Castle were charged at the Falmouth Police Court yesterday with assaulting the police while in the execution of their duty. From the evidence of the Superintendent and other police officers it appeared that Chudleigh, one of the soldiers, was taken into custody for fighting, and that his six comrades, after procuring swords from the barracks, proceeded to the police station, and by means of threats, obtained Chudleigh’s liberation. They afterwards paraded the streets, flourishing their swords, and behaving otherwise in a riotous manner. At the conclusion of the evidence, five of the prisoners – viz., Beaney, Callahan, Connor, McInverney, and Seaham – were sent to prison for six months. Chudleigh was committed for three months, and Barker, who did not get possession of his sword, for one month.

The Sheffield Daily Telegraph
, January 17, 1879

The Romance of Crime

A strange story comes from Constantinople. A few nights ago – so runs the version of the affair given in a German paper – three robbers, armed to the teeth, broke into the house of a Prussian living in Constantinople.

Threatening to forthwith murder him if he resisted they compelled the owner to submit to being bound, and then demanded from him his valuables and money. The Prussian at once gave up his gold watch and some £4 of Turkish money which he had in his pockets; but this small booty did not satisfy the robbers.

Again they threatened death, and finally obliged the bound and helpless man to tell them where they could find the key of his business safe. This safe happened to be in a room on the third floor, at the top of the house, and thither the three robbers, having obtained possession of the key, hastened, leaving the owner bound, and threatening to return and shoot him if he called for assistance.

But as they went up stairs, his wife, who had been watching what was taking place from another room, slipped quietly in and cut the bonds of her husband. Arming themselves with revolvers, the pair crept quietly up the stairs, came upon the robbers absorbed in dividing among themselves the contents of the safe, and without a word shot down two of them.

The other threw down his weapons and begged for mercy. Turning the tables upon him, the Prussian bound his late assailant fast, and leaving his wife to watch over him with a loaded revolver in her hand, hastened to the nearest zaptieh station.

There he found the officer in charge absent, and on enquiring for a sub-officer was told that both of the latter were also away. Thereupon the Prussian asked four of the men to accompany him to his house and take the bound burglar into custody.

Arrived in the room where the two men had been shot the zaptiehs looked at the two corpses, looked at the prisoner and recognised in the former the two sub-officers and in the latter the officer of their own guard.

The Ipswich Journal, and Suffolk, Norfolk, Essex and Cambridgeshire Advertiser
, May 4, 1880

A ‘Glass Eye’ Impostor

At Westminster Police Court, on Friday, a middle-aged, shabbily-dressed man, known by a number of names, including those of McKenzie and Paybourne, in which he has been recently charged, was placed in the dock, on remand, before Mr Sheil, charged with obtaining charitable contributions by fraud.

The prisoner, who has called himself a pianoforte maker, has lost the sight of his right eye. According to the evidence of Coltman, Chief Constable of the Mendicity Society, the prisoner turned his infirmity to account by going to noblemen and charitable people all over the country, to whom he made appeals for assistance to obtain a new glass eye.

He usually represented that he had broken one he had obtained from a charitable institution, though at the time he had four or five glass eyes, which had been procured for him at different times, in his waistcoat pocket.

On the 11th inst. he called on Lord St Oswald, at 11, Grosvenor Place, but his lordship at once recognised him, having heard the glass eye story before when the prisoner called on him at his country seat in Yorkshire, and got a sovereign from him.

Lord St Oswald gave him into custody, after listening to his tale. Mr Sheil sentenced him to three months’ hard labour, and said the next imposition would mean 12 months.

Berrow’s Worcester Journal
, July 25, 1896

Desperate Attack on a Hull Policeman.

Strange Case of Somnambulism.

At the Hull Police Court on Monday, Herman Laman, a German, who appeared in the dock with his head in bandages and his clothes bespattered with blood, was brought before Mr Travis, stipendiary magistrate, charged with being a suspected person, and also with assaulting Police Constable Wright.

From the officer’s statement it appeared that the prisoner is a native of a small village in Westphalia, and arrived at Hull on Sunday afternoon, in company with other emigrants,
en route
for New York. At eleven o’clock the same night, Amos Moss, emigrant agent and boarding-house keeper, residing in Grimsby Lane, Hull, reported to the police that Laman was missing, and he requested assistance in seeking him, as he could not speak a word of English, and giving an amount of money in his possession, he (Moss) felt anxious concerning him.

A search was instituted and subsequently Police Constable Wright discovered him sitting on the roof of a house in Barker’s Entry, off Grimsby Lane. It was raining very hard at the time, and he (witness) called to him, but received no answer. With the assistance of Police Constable Porter, Wright obtained a ladder, and ascending to the roof, he requested the prisoner to come down. Instead of answering him the man shot at him with a revolver, but fortunately missed him.

The officer repeated his request, and the prisoner shot at him again. This time the bullet struck Wright on the metal part of his belt, and glanced off harmless. Finding that further parley was useless, witness hurled a brick that happened to be lying with others on the roof and hit him on the head, inflicting a serious wound.

He then got upon the roof, and advanced to the prisoner, who shot at him a third time. Witness gave him more bricks (laughter) and part of a chimney pot (renewed laughter), and after Laman had fired five shots, none of which hit him, he managed to knock the weapon out of his hand.

Determined not to be conquered, prisoner also had recourse to the bricks, and a ‘pitched battle’ was fought with bricks and tiles on the roof at two o’clock in the morning. Ultimately the German, finding he was getting the worst of it, tore up some tiles and let himself through the roof of a house occupied by a Mr Beecroft, and concealed himself between the ceiling and the roof.

Other policemen having arrived on the scene, the party got into the house, and after making a large hole through the ceiling they succeeded in capturing the prisoner, who was weak with loss of blood from the wounds on his head.

He was secured by ropes, lowered from a window, and conveyed to the police-station in a handcart. Dr Kitching’s assistant dressed six severe wounds on the man’s head at the station house. Wright was but little hurt.