The Chieftain: Victorian True Crime Through The Eyes of a Scotland Yard Detective

by Payne, Chris

  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.41

  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.42 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’.43 The train finally arrived at Euston Square station at 2.44 p.m., where ‘the excitement of the crowd was immense’.44 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’.45

  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 5s 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.’47

  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.48

  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.49 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.50 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’.51

  There was then a mad dash for the prisoner and witnesses to get from Hackney to Bow Street for the resumed magistrate’s hearing due to start at 11 a.m. The Times noted that ‘the coroner had deprived the witnesses of all chance of rest or refreshment before being exposed to another long examination and the occurrence was the subject of bitter complaint’.52 At the end of a disgruntled day’s proceedings, Mr Flowers formally concluded that there was sufficient evidence to warrant a trial by jury and committed Müller for trial at the next sessions of the Central Criminal Court, on the charge of wilfully murdering Mr Briggs. Müller was then transported to Newgate Prison, where the mob was waiting for him outside.

  Müller’s trial started at a crowded Old Bailey on Thursday 27 October. The prosecution team for the Crown consisted of the solicitor general, Sir Robert Collier (Liberal MP for Plymouth and later to become attorney general).53 He was assisted, amongst others, by Serjeant-at-Law William Ballantine and Hardinge Giffard, later Earl of Halsbury and a lord chancellor.54 Müller’s defence team was led by Serjeant-at-Law John Humffreys Parry, a senior barrister and popular and successful advocate.55 As was the practice at that time, there were two judges, the more senior of whom was the Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer Sir Frederick Pollock, a previous attorney general in the Tory administrations of Sir Robert Peel.56 The junior judge was Baron Martin. ‘The judges having taken their seats the prisoner Müller was placed at the bar … He was neatly dressed in a plain brown-coloured morning coat, which he wore buttoned on the chest. His manner was quiet, self-possessed, and respectful. For some time at first his countenance was pale, but at length assumed what appeared to be its natural hue.’57

  Müller pleaded ‘not guilty’ to the charge of murder and, somewhat surprisingly, elected to be tried by twelve Englishmen rather than a jury partly composed of foreigners which, in view of his nationality, he was entitled to elect for (an entitlement that ended in 1870). The case for the Crown was opened by Collier who began by entreating the jury to remove from their minds any of the hostile press coverage that had been so prevalent.58 Collier then proceeded to summarise the key issues of the Crown case: that Thomas Briggs had been murdered by Müller, and that the motive was the theft of his watch and chain. Müller had been keen to travel to America but needed money to do it. Through a sequence of financial transactions involving several pawnbrokers, he had raised the money he needed for his passage. Mistakenly removing Briggs’ hat from the railway carriage and leaving his own, he had modified Briggs’ hat in an attempt to disguise it. When arrested on board the Victoria, his trunk was found to contain both Brigg’s watch and his hat. Though Müller had not been observed in the train compartment where Briggs was murdered, he had been in London on the night of 9 July and had the opportunity to commit the murder.

  The individuals that were called to provide evidence on behalf of the Crown on the first day of the trial included relatives of Briggs (with whom he had been dining on 9 July before travelling homeward), the two clerks who had first entered the blood-soaked compartment at Hackney Wick, the railway staff, the medical men and the police from K Division. These were followed by John and Robert Death and by Müller’s landlady and landlord, Mrs Blyth and her husband. The Blyths bore sympathetic testimony to the quiet and inoffensive disposition of the prisoner. They also mentioned that, on 9 July, Müller had discarded one of his boots and replaced it with a slipper because he had injured his right foot; a feature that one assumes should have made him more noticeable as he travelled round London on that day. Important evidence was presented by the next witnesses, Mrs Repsch and her husband, a fellow German and work colleague of Müller. The couple were regularly visited by Müller, with whom they were on friendly terms. When Müller had visited them on 11 July, he had shown Mrs Repsch a new watch chain which he claimed to have bought at the docks. When the chain that had been purchased by Müller at Death’s silversmiths was shown to her in court, Mrs Repsch identified it as the one shown to her by Müller. In addition, she stated that Müller had been wearing a new hat on that Monday, and she had chided him for his extravagance. She also described Müller’s previous hat, her description being consistent with that found in the railway carriage. By 5 p.m., with seven or eight Crown witnesses still to be examined, the court was adjourned and the jury ‘in accordance with custom, were escorted to the London Coffee-House in Ludgate-hill to stay over night’.59

  On the following day the trial resumed with the examination of further prosecution witnesses, including several pawnbrokers who gave evidence of the financial transactions that had taken place between them and Müller. But the court (which was again crowded, with hundreds of people congregated outside) was most keenly anticipating the appearance of the key witness, Jonathan Matthews. Would the defence team suggest that Matthews rather than Müller was the guilty man? Was the hat found in the railway compartment really Matthews’ hat rather than Müller’s? Was Matthews making things up, simply to claim the £300 reward? As events turned out, Matthews stood his ground and persisted with his claim that he had not heard about the murder until the day (18 July) on which he had first contacted the police. Parry provided evidence that Matthews had been previously convicted of theft in 1850 (serving a prison sentence of twenty-one days for the offence), but the consensus view seemed to be that ‘severe as was the cross-examination of Matthews, in the judgement of those who heard it, it had not shaken the weight of his evidence in any material degree’.60

  Later in the day the evidence of Müller’s arrest given by Clarke and Tanner came as something of an anti-climax, with all the essential details being well known. However, Parry did probe Clarke on whether Müller had said ‘I never was on the line’ or ‘I never was on the line that night’. Clarke couldn’t remember, but, when pressed, told the court that ‘I am quite certain that if the passage quoted is in the deposition, the prisoner used it’.61 Clarke was also recalled during Tanner’s evidence and asked whether Müller had sold any clothes during the voyage (yes, a waistcoat that Müller had subsequently bought back), and whether his clothes had been forensically analysed (no). The prosecution evidence was then concluded by the witnesses Thomas Briggs (the younger) and the hatter, Daniel Digance.

  It was now the turn of Müller’s defence team to present their case. The legal procedures of the time dictated that the speech for the defence was made before calling any witnesses. The prosecution then had the right to reply to the case presented by the defence team, and often exercised that option. Defendants were also not allowed to give evidence in their own defence at Crown courts, so Müller could not be called into the witness box even if his counsel had thought that would help his cause. Müller’s counsel delivered a speech which ended with applause from sections of the courtroo
m.62 As expected, he first reminded the jury that they should disregard the comprehensive newspaper coverage of events before the trial and chastised the press:

  I must say that it is for the most part unusual when a person has been arrested on a charge on which, if found guilty, his life must be sacrificed [the death penalty was the mandatory sentence for murder], to find writers, not in insignificant journals but in the most respectable and the most eminent parts of the press, commenting on the likelihood of the guilt or the innocence of such a person.63

  He then concentrated on undermining the credibility of two of the key prosecution witnesses, Mrs Repsch and Jonathan Matthews. With Mrs Repsch, who had damagingly identified the hat found in the train compartment as being one that she had seen Müller wearing, he implied that the prosecution may effectively have ‘trained’ her into its recognition, though ‘he cannot conscientiously charge her with perjury’.64 Sailing close to the wind, he moved on to Matthews:

  If I were to point to Matthews as having been guilty of the murder, or a party to it, I should be a disgrace to the profession to which I am proud to belong. There was no such stuff in my thoughts; but this I will say of Matthews, that he is a man whose evidence is entirely untrustworthy, who gave his evidence in a most unsatisfactory manner, and to whose testimony I am sure no educated man, having the responsibility of the life of a fellow-creature on his shoulders would pay any attention for a moment. He is obviously actuated by a desire to obtain the reward offered for the murder of Mr Briggs.65