The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1868-08-14


A great metropolis must necessarily offer
from time to time extraordinary cases of
mystery and orime. New York 10 no excep-
ton to the general rule. On the contrary, its
position - . central point Of transit from
Europe to every part of America, and to the
islands Of the Pacific, and to China and Japan
and other Asistio countries makes Il the focus
Of oil the wickedness Of tho world. Our own
dangerous classes may at any time receive
sccesslons from the cracksmen of London and
tho thugs of India. The daily arrival and
departure of thousands Of strangers renders
the vigilance Of the most efficient police COM
paratively useless. 1t il impossible for the
police to ''spot' every suspicious character
who seeks in New York fresh neld Of opera
tions. A full record of the larcenies and bur-
glaries and murders of the past six months in
this city would be almost incredible. A long
list of unexplained disappearance during that
period might be made out from the daily
papers. The daylight robberies in Wall street
alone would furnish thrilling chapter in the
history of crime. Hotels and fashionable
boarding houses, if the secrets Of their inner
life were exposed, would reveal pictures of
iniquity no less startling than the more dis
houses are sometimes the theatre. Many
Skeleton in the house" might be discovered
in the recesses of the brown stone front man
siOns occupied by the families belonging pre-
eminently to our comfortable classes" The
sudden death of Mr.. Spicer, of Eleventh street,
is still q mystery as profound and apparently as
insoluble as that OF the Burdell murder, in Bond
street. The strange and unsatisfactory verdict
of the coroner's inquest in the Spicer case ex-
onerated the druggist and the servant sent for
the seidlitz powder, and perhaps strained
point to exonerate Mr.. Spicer himself from the
suspicion that he had committed suicide. But if
there were a murder in the case the cOroners
inquest failed to discover it, or at least to dis
close it. The responsibilities of coroners
jury are, indeed, limited; but it really seems
that in the Spicer case the jury confined itself
SO strictly within its legal limitations as to have
left the public mind in painful state of I'M
certainty respecting it. The family Of the
deceased should demand full and searching
investigation, if it be only to relieve certain of
its members from the cloud Of suspicion which
now, justly or unjustly, rests upon them.
We might easily multiply instances of un-
ravelled mystery afforded by the experience of
the past few days in New York. But it will
suffice to refer to only two other cases-the
assault upon Mr. Edward Seaman, merchant,
who resides in West Thirty-seventh street,
and who was found insensible at about one
0 clock the other morning at the corner of Sixth
avenue and Twenty-fifth street, having been
attacked and severely beaten by several I'M
known rowdies, without apparent motive; and
the probable murder of Mr.. Charles Ellet,
another merchant, who left after dinner on last
Friday the hotel on Broadway where he
boarded, having mentioned that he WAS going
up town to receive q sum Of four thousand
dollars, and whose body was found on Satur-
day floating in the East river, bearing marks
of robbery and violence. These two recent
instances must be added to the many which
show that crime is fearfully on the increase in
our midst, whether this lamentable fact be due
to the defective education of the youth, who, as
they grow up, swell our own vicious and
dangerous classes, or to an unusual influx OF
" ticket-of-lesve men, escaped cOnvicts and
professional villains from Great Britain and
the European continent.