Morning journal and courier., 1888-12-27

He and all his colleagues were in constant
 touch with the criminal classes. Their
 pertinaeity in following up clue was un-
 rivalled; they played a waiting game and
 often found "stern chase long chase, D but
 almost invariably ran down their quarry.
 Townsend captured Jerry Abershaw, one of
 the most desperate villains of any epoch,
 after he had shot one officer dead, wounded
 another and entrenched himself in the tap
 room of an inn in the borough, vowiHg
 destruction to any one who entered. He
 also captured Burlington, the champion
 pick-poeket, whose daring and protean dis
 guises had made him famous in criminal an
 nals. The runners made no pretence of for
 malism or official retieence. Bluff and out
 spoken, they mingled with people in gene- ral, saying little, but listening to everything; and they had an extraordinary aptitude for
 sitting information and acting on what WAS valuable. Their usual equipment was a
 brace of pistols, but they seldom had to use them. As rule they had the criminal class es of London under their immediate eye, and somehow or other they managed to know all their movements. No men ever better understood the fallacy of the adags about honor among thieves; the consequence was that each criminal was willing to give infor- nation about everybody else. Townsend was as much in his own bluff way a genius as Vidoeq or Fouche. He began life as a boot~blaoker and cinder sitter in old New gate, and then took to coal heaYing, his fathers occupation. After this he returned to Newgate as a turnkey; thence going to Bow street as runner, where he soon acted on his great rule in life of "putting himself forward" He became the special and con6- dential officer of Sir Richard Birnie, the chief magistrate at Bow street; and was con- suited by different ohancellors, from Lough- borough to Eldan, and by Cabinet ministers from Spencer PercevaI to Peel His rise was aYtraroa1v raT0i6 and hia oonduof iuafiEod if for under his leadership the runners became an extraordinarily efficient body of officers and his name-es also his we'll known white hat-struck terror into the worst districts in London.
 In country cases of importance the run. ners were often quite as successful as they were in London; and their acumen and capa bility for hitting off a doubtful trail were the wonder, envy and admiration of the ru ral mind. When they chose to disguise themsel7es-whfch, as 8 general rule, they did not take the trouble to do-their make up was most artistic and defed detection while as regarded highwaymeD. then most numerous, they usually knew the next morn ing, from some of their many and secret sources of information, what practitioner | had been "operating'' on the various greaI | roads and commons round the metropolis or 1 the preceding night. To the end of his dayl | Townsend was firm advocate of the system I of hanging atroeious criminals in chains af | ter execution. He used to say that betweer \ 1781 and 1788 he had every month seen iron | ten to twenty malefactors hanged at time ! the first three years at Tyburn (now Con ! naught Square) and afterwards before th' Debtors door in Newgate. He remembered seven people. four men and three women | hanged together in Kent street, Borough, fol | a robbery with violence in the house oppo site to which the gsllows was erected. Al regards himself and all the other Bow stree
 runners, they worked on the principle of i'm
 mediate and thorough investigation, no only at the scene of great crime, but in I wide radius all round; and they, 8 rule never formed theory, but fitted the theor,
 to the facts, as they bit by bit ascertainet | them