St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1884-12-25
A City,s Grenl Crime.

Nine unreeognized bodies carried
away from the MOrgue to be buried in
one day may be taken as n mere sur
face indication of what the mysterious
! fatalities of life are in q great city.
Whether life was ever less safe any
where in any civilized country than it
Is with us just now, and whether n
well paid and much pampered police
ever did less to prevent acts of vio-
lence or to discover the perpetrators,
or whether cumbrous and expensive
judicial machinery ever less answered
the presumed end of making the law a
terror to criminals, are all points open
/ to doubt. Murder appears to be n
! pastime and justice a farce. In the
open streets, in the broad daylight, a
man gives Il woman a mortal blow !;
she dies in the hospital. and the police
are as much at a loss for any knOwl-
edge of the facts as if it had occurred
| in China in the time of COnfucius. And
if this blindness of the police does not
give n man of murderOus impulses as
surance enough, the administration of
| justice is fitted 10 strengthen his rcso-
! lutions, and the infinite refinements
and delays of judicial procedure as
| instanced, say, in the case of Conroy,
the policemen seem to assure absolute
immunity from forcible attendance at
what was once known as ga sherff's
ball"
Within short time two incidents
have been added to the strange chron-
icle of vast and varied ineapacity
that tine history of our criminal Justice
presents. One is the story of the dead
woman found where she had lain in
heap of ashes for year or two in the
very heart of the city-0nly a few
hundred yards from the City hall and
within IA few feet of a constantly
crowded thorOughfare the other is
the departure of that affectiOnate
''mother" of the police, Mrs. Mandel-
baum. Mrs. Mandelbaum has lived in
for all that period her house has been
an acknowledged receptacle for the
products of thousands of burglaries.
Upon the commission of any important
robbery within a hundred miles of this
city the police could have gone with
almost absolute certainty to the place
of deposit of the valuables in that wo-
mans house, or in some house that
was only a detached portion of her
premises. Nay, she kept a shop at
which stolen goods was sold over the
counter. Not Il finger was laid upon
her till lately. But the spirit of re-
form puts one good man into office.
He shows disposition to do his duty,
and all the machinery of law and Gus
tice" comes to the protection of the old
sinner and she is rescued once more.
AS to the woman in the cellar, her his
! tory provokes a doubt touching the
efficiency of the police for the perform
ance of the most modest of police func-
tions. 1t often appears as if the city
were the battle ground of the criminal
classes and as if the police were only IL
kind of ambulance corps to 20 abOut
and gather up the killed and wounded !;
but this incident shows that they are
not very excellent at police duty in
even the strictly military sense.
BY the way, should not the board of
health itself have discovered this wO-
man i'll one of the two summers through
which she lay unburied on the prem
ises of public hotel? 1t may be too
much to expect of the average police
man that he should know what is hap
pening upon his beat, and when police
commissioners have all their time tax
en- up with party politics it is hardly to
he supposed there could be discipline
enough in the force to make it etfec
tive but it is the duty of the board of
health to nose out and follow to their
sources the foul odOrs of the city, and
that body is authorized to make for
that purpose an inspection from house
to house, and should do so often in
bad neighborhoods. When was an in
spector in Frankfort street? and what
guarantee does such a board offer
against the introduction and propaga-
ton of pestlence . New York Her
aid