Professor Alexandre Lacassagne - a real Sexton Blake

Found in the endless Haining archive, an article cut from The Union Jack Detective Supplement, undated but about 1925. Peter Haining was a collector of Sexton Blake books so this piece on the scientific / forensic detective Professor Alexandre Lacassagne (1843-1924) would have interested him.

A Real Sexton Blake

By Donald Campbell.

They read like improbabilities, the achievements of this real-life Sexton Blake. But we credit them when we see the working methods of Professor Lacassagne, who has recently died.

A few weeks ago there died at Lyons one of the greatest scientists of his own kind in the world.

This was Professor Alexandre Lacassagne, honorary professor to the Faculty of Medicine, who passed away at the ripe old age of eighty-two. He was the first man in Europe to apply science to detective work. He served as an officer in the army of Napoleon III., and fought through the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71.He was taken prisoner. When released he was attached to the Bataillons d’Afrique, then a species of depot for all the rough characters who came to do their military service, usually very much against their wills.

 First he merely studied characters, but afterwards the real criminals, and specialized offenders who came under his treatment.

Pickpockets

Found in the Haining collection - this article from 1936 on pickpockets. The author Louis Mansfield has much advice,most still relevant. The bit about a 'dip's' long, tapering fingers may be fanciful but certainly it is not a profession for one with fat fingers...

 PEARSON'S WEEKLY, May 30, 1936

THIS IS DERBY WEEK, SO–

WATCH YOUR POCKETS!

Pickpockets will be busy among the crowds. It is their best time of the year. Louis C. S. Mansfield, detective and crime investigator, lets you into secrets of the "dip's" profession – and they have some good ones. You have been warned!

TAKE HIS ADVICE–

 I have worked against pickpockets for years. Here's my advice to you if you want to return home with your notecase.
 Be careful when you see men carrying, and not wearing, their overcoats, or holding newspapers which are open–not folded.
 Grab your wallet quickly if a stranger starts brushing paint or dust off your coat.
 If somebody hits you on the back and says "Sorry," look for a touch in front–because you won't feel it.

N

OW is the time for pickpockets ("whizzers," "dips" and "finger-smiths," as they call themselves) to get busy. Bank-holiday crowds, summer holiday-makers with money in their pockets, and Derby crowds, all give the "dips" a chance.
 They generally work together, as many as nine in a gang, but sometimes a topnotcher works alone.

Gunmen in Piccadilly (Edgar Wallace)

Found in the Haining archives - this slightly scaremongering article by Edgar Wallace from Nash's Pall Mall Magazine in March 1931. Edgar Wallace (1875-1932) was the adopted son of a Billingsgate fish porter in London, and largely self-educated - the newspaper boy who became one of the most famous writers in the world. He sold millions of books, but he was plagued by debts due to an extravagant lifestyle. He left Britain for the United States in 1931, only to die in Hollywood in 1932, aged 56, after writing the original story for King Kong. His body was returned by ocean liner in honour, only to be reunited with an ocean of outstanding bills.It is said all his debts were paid off in a few years from massive book sales. This article was copyrighted from America and one can imagine him churning it out in Hollywood to pay the bills. The title belies the content which is about criminal gangs anywhere in Britain- even art thieves. A BBC radio programme earlier this year by thriller writer Mark Billingham on Edgar Wallace (The Man Who Wrote Too Much?) suggested he was somewhat forgotten. He may not be much read anymore but his books are still collected throughout the world…

The Possibility of–

Gunmen in Piccadilly

There are in London small and completely isolated groups of men who work as independent units, rob jewellers, burgle, commit smash-and-grab raids, practise confidence tricks, print counterieit money, and commit the crimes which are peculiar to every great city.

A genuine bogus Colonel...

From the Peter Haining papers, this typed manuscript  by the great researcher and expert on British comics and periodicals W.O.G. ('Bill') Lofts (1923-1997). The type of the bogus colonel (and, more commonly, the bogus major) is well known from 1950s British films but here is the real thing - a rather pathetic tale where Lofts' losses were low and the Colonel appears to have been a reader of Henty…

Colonel Whithington-Spooner

The letter addressed to me was in bold flourishing handwriting, and the address was 'The Lodge' Cranbrook near Epsom, Surrey. I don't know why, but I slightly suspicious of the person at first sight, but briefly the letter read as follows…

Dear Mr Lofts,

In reading a back number of a collecting magazine, I note you have discovered a magazine, I note you have discovered a Henty story in a boys publication entitled 'Grip'. If it is possible to get a photocopy I would be most grateful, and of course pay the cost involved and postage.

Yours sincerely,

Colonel Whithington-Spooner

As it happened I did have several copies spare, and as the cost was so small, I thought I would make no change, and so sent the Colonel the story with my compliments. He was delighted, and said that if ever I was in his direction to give him a ring, when we could perhaps have a drink together. A few months later, and in Epsom for the Deby, with plenty of time to spare, I thought I would take up his offer. Ringing the number as given on his embossed note-paper, the phone the other end just rang and rang - just going to ring off, suddenly a gruff voice answered. Explaining who I was, his voice changed to one of pleasure.

"Unfortunately the Lodge is being redecorated, and I have sent the servants away on a paid holiday", said the Colonel. "Tell me exactly where you are and I will meet you in twenty minutes".

I was waiting at the bar in The Dog and Fiddle when in strode the Colonel.

The Sensational Story of the Christie Case

Found - a sensationalist paperback The Christie Case (Gaywood Press, London circa 1958). A rare non-fiction pulp by Ronald Maxwell - one of the youngest journalists following the case. The book begins:

The Christie case was more than the stories below the headlines for me.It was the story behind the headlines and it took many sleepless nights and long-drawn days to unfold as I followed closely upon the greatest manhunt of modern days, culminating in the final arrest of a man named John Reginald Halliday Christie, in whose flat the partly clothed bodies of four women were found strangled. In the small garden behind the flat, there were uncovered the skeletons of more women, who were still not identified weeks after the discovery.

The story began when a coloured man named Beresford Brown decided to fix the wireless in the kitchen of the ground floor flat at number 10 Rillington Place, Notting Hill, London W 11. That was on Tuesday, March 24, 1953. Beresford Brown intended to share the kitchen of the flat – which had recently been vacated by John Christie – with other tenants of this dingy, two storey house. By accident, the man tapped against the wall, and there was a hollow sound. It intrigued him. He tore away a strip of wallpaper and discovered a small hole in the partition which his action had exposed. Through the hole, in the small cavity inside, he saw a woman's leg. Shaken with horror, he looked closer. There, in the dark hollow, he could see well enough to distinguish the outline of a partly clothed body. In his brief glance it up in the fact that there were two bundles behind the body. 

… He ran excitedly into the street in search of the police, it was not difficult to find a constable in this part of the Royal Borough of Kensington... within minutes, the whole apparatus of Scotland Yard been set in motion in motion and the hunt had begun...

Ruscovitch - forger and criminal apologist

Found in a thriller from  the Donald Rudd collection of detective fiction, this preface to The Poison and the Root (Jarrolds, UK 1950) by Richard Savage. It is a sort of apologia or plea for the criminal by one G. Ruscovitch, 'professional forger'. I had thought this person was fictitious or possibly a character in the book (which is not about forgery) but in fact there was a forger of this name. He is mentioned by Havelock Ellis in The Criminal (1890) and appears to have flourished in the mid 19th Century. He may also have been a murderer but Ellis describes him thus:
'...a prince among forgers, the accomplished student of science, the perfect master of half-a-dozen languages..' He then quotes the same piece as Savage. Possibly this was spoken from the dock in mitigation:

 Too often it is forgotten that criminals are members of society. These bodies, sometimes abandoned by all except the satellites charged to guard them, are not all opaque; some of them are diaphanous and transparent. The vulgar sand that you tread underfoot becomes crystal when it has passed through the furnace. The dregs may become useful if you know how to employ them; to tread them underfoot with indifference and without thought is to undermine the foundations of society and fill it with volcanoes. The man who has not visited the caverns, can he know the mountains well? The lower strata, for being situated deeper and farther from the light, are less important than the external crust? There are deformities and diseases among us to make one shudder; but since when has horror forbidden study, and the disease driven away the physician?

Locked Room Murders - 20 Solutions

From Robert Adey's Locked Room Murders (Ferret Fantasy, London 1979)

Major discussions on the subject of locked room murders are to be found in Carr's The Hollow Man, Rawson's Death from a Top Hat and Holmes' Nine by Nine.

There appear to be some 20 different ways in which a locked room can be breached.

Analysis of solutions

1 Accident.

2 Suicide.

3 Remote control – poison gas or impelled to do so with his own hands.

4 Mechanical and other devices.

5 Animal.

6 Outside the agency made to look like inside agency. E.g. dagger fired through window.

7 Victim killed earlier but made to appear alive later.

8 Presumed dead but not killed until later, e.g., by the first person to enter the room.

9 Victim wounded outside, dies inside.

10 Turning key, bolt, catch, etc, from outside with pliers, string, etc

11 Unhinging and rehinging door or window.

12 Taking out and replacing windowpane.

13 Acrobatic manoeuvre,.

14 Door locked or wedged on outside. Key replaced or bolt thrown after re-entrance.

15 Door locked on outside. Key returned before re-entrance.

16 Other methods of gimmicking doors, windows etc.,

17 Secret passages, sliding panels, etc.,

18 Murderer still in room when entrance forced.

19 Alibi provided while murder committed in an apparently  
guarded area.
  
20 Other impersonation stunts

  A further mystery is the price and rarity of the much enlarged edition from Crossover Press 1992. A copy on Canadian Amazon (often a home for awesome prices) at $10000 seems to have now vanished...

100 year old con man - the Yellow Kid

Found in a sensational crime paperback The Big Con (Pocket Books, NY 1949) a press cutting dated 1975 - the obituary of an amazing conman/ hustler/grifter Joseph Weil (1875-1975). He seems to have been the first to put forth the idea (often mentioned in the TV series Hustle) that 'you can't con an honest man.' It is possible that their  character Albert Stroller (Robert Vaughn) the elderly 'roper' responsible for ensnaring potential marks, is based on Weil. There is an exhaustive profile of Stroller at Wikipedia with no mention of any influences but useful info such as '...he cannot go to Indonesia as he sold the air force some fighter jets in the '70s, and they still haven't arrived.' Weil's comments on bankers are especially prescient..

Joseph (Yellow Kid) Weil, 100, Leading U. S. Trickster in '20s.
 From Wire Dispatches

 Chicago, Feb 27- 1975.

 Joseph (Yellow Kid) Weil, 100, the 1920s confidence artist whose con schemes netted him an estimated $8 million, died yesterday in a convalescent home.
 For nearly three years, the fragile little man had been a welfare patient, living out his life on the memories of his heyday, when his canary-yellow gloves, cravats and suits, yellow calling cards and autos, yellowish red hair and golden whiskers made him an international figure.
"If I had to do it all over again, I would be foolish if I didn't," Weil told an interviewer last summer on his 100th birthday
. "I don't feel a day over 70. I still like to look at the ladies and take a sip of wine. I like to listen to the radio, but I'll be damned if I'll play bingo with the rest round here. It's a ripoff."


He said he had spent all his money "in high living and travel," tucking away nothing for his later years.
The son of a saloon keeper in a boisterous, two-fisted Chicago neighborhood, Weil worked as a young con artist in New York and Chicago.

 He had many aliases
 wearing various disguises, he was known as Dr. Henri Reuel, John Bauer, Sir John Ruskin Wellington and Count Ivan Ovarnoff as he swindled his wealthy financiers and industrialists for more than 40 years.
 He "retired" in 1941 after serving 27 months in a federal prison in Atlanta on a mail-fraud charge involving a phony oil-lease scheme.
Weil was a legend in his own time in the elite world of con artists. In his time he:

• Rented office space and hired lesser con men for a "brokerage office" though which he worked a bogus stock swindle for 20 years.

• Staged fake prize fights, seeded "gold mines" and promoted "talking dogs" who, of course, could not.

• Tried to sell Cook Country Hospital for $150,000.

• 
Six Years in jail. 
For his successful life in crime, Weil paid with just six years in jail, although he said he had been arrested 1,001 times.

Slang glossary 1962

From a cult novel by old Etonian Robin Cook who later changed his name to Derek Raymond to avoid being confused with schlock novelist Robin 'Coma' Cook. As Raymond his books became very dark and gory but persisted with varieties of slang for which his first book The Crust on Its Uppers (1962) was known. A rich source book of slang, some unique, some well worn and some highly ephemeral. Here is a small selection:

Angst = trouble 

Archbishop = Archbishop Laud = fraud

Baize, the = Bayswater Road

Binns= spectacles (dark binns- dark glasses)

Blag= a bluff, a tall story (Fr. 'blague?) Also as verb

Bubble=bubble-and-squeek= Greek (thus Archbubble= ArchGreek or Greek-in-chief)

Cat's-meat gaff= hospital

Charver= to have sex with

Deviator= a crook (devious= crooked; deviation= a crime)

Crook Frightfulness

'A Victim'. CROOK FRIGHTFULNESS. Birmingham: Cornish, 1932; Birmingham: Moody Bros., revised edition, 1936.

A strange and slightly disturbing book. Some consider it unintentionally hilarious. It tells of how a young man whose business was rent collecting in London's East End became the victim of of a life-long 'persecution' by crooks, even as he travelled round the world - persecution by muttering and whispering, staring, gassing, obscenities and 'Ventriloquial Terrorism.' The writer believed that his tormentors possessed a "stethoscope apparatus that enable[d] them to hear [his] thoughts". The subtitle of the book gives something of its flavour : "They are the most powerful, terrible and pitiless killers, cunning, amazingly and enormously treacherous."  Bizarre Books (Lake and Ash) describes it thus:

"...Crook Frightfulness is the autobiography of a hunted man who believes himself to be continually hounded and molested by evil men, or 'crooks'. 'How was I to know that I had of my own violation opened the doors of Hell- to turn me from a cheery, care-free youth of 18 to a prematurely aged man, terrified by horrible men, threatening my sanity and life?' ...He also provides a detailed account of what he describes as 'ventriloquial terrorism', whereby '...a molester using ventriloquism may be in a house or building or walking along in a tram or bus or in a car, yet he can throw his voice anywhere undetected by those who are near them.' This technique gives rise to various embarrassing experiences, including one where 'I had just bidden adieu to a friend on the Aberystwyth Marine Parade and had just turned away from him when I heard the words-"The old sod"- said in my voice tones too!'

The book is listed at the site First-Person Narratives of Madness.

Scent of Danger - essence of tuberose

Part of a collection of press cuttings. This incident is (so far)  UBI  i.e. unknown by internet probably because it is from the defunct UK newspaper The Daily Herald (1960). The sum quoted for the final value of distilled essence of tuberose lilies would now be about £40,000,000. Distilled essence of tuberose lilies is restricted to very high end perfumery due to the expense….