The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-10-19

was cruel enough 10 QFlng an expert in the silent lip language on the occa- sion of the prisoners next appearance His suspicious were fully justified. The prison doctor had apparently done the poor fellow no good. for his lips worked as energetically as ever. He was send ing messages to his pals in court quite oblivious of the fact that all his words were being taken down in short hand. The dodge played on him led to the re- cOvery of some hundreds of pounds i worth of jewelry that the invalid had misappropriated.
 Lip language has been well studied since then, and no criminal not hope lessly behind the times would rely on its secrecy to-day. It is strange that lip reading appears to have been in use among the professional criminal classes years before scientific people thought of making use of it as a medium of communication with the deaf and dumb. The wonderful manner in i which criminals can communicate with , one another by means of the lip move ments is well known.
 Was this piece of bread and butter bitten by man or woman?" was the question whicha dentalexpart was called 1 upon to decide some years ago to assist l in the elucidation of a murder mystery. l An old lady named Weston, who had lived by herself, had been found dead in her sitting room. The place had been robbed-the old lady was supposed ] to be miser and to have hidden l boards in cupboards and places-and l she had evidently been done to death 1 by some one who had called upon her and whom she had treated as friend 1 Upon the table in the room were the l tea things and two plates, on one of which was a half consumed piece of bread and butter. The piece which had been bitten by the visitor was bounced on by the detectives called on. The expert declared that the bread and but ter had been bitten by a, woman. The clue placed the trackers on the right scent and the guilty person was ! brought to justice.
 | Tn the case of the great Coram street murder the assassin had left bitten apple on the table in the room. It afforded an excellent clue to his teeth, and casts were carefully taken of the | treasure before the apple had time to shrink. It was obviously one of those clues to identify which are very diff cult to apply in the absence of other ! proofs. One cannot request 8 suspected person to kindly open his mouth and permit one to see whether plaster cast fits his teeth. The murderer was never arrested.
 l Criminals teeth are generally good. The amount of dentistry which has to be done in our convict establishments is remarkably small When the .eeth are white their possessors are apt to b3 inordinately vain of them. In the
 case of persons convicted of more ser- ious crimes the "dog's teeth are fre- i quently of formidable growth.
 It remained for an illicit diamond merchant to devise new use for set of artificial teeth, which enabled him for long time to baff1e the most ex- 1 pert searchers in South Africa. The man had very fine set of false bottom teeth, the biggest 1nolars in
 which were hollow, and which formed excellent receptacles for diamonds. They had been made in New York and were triumph of nefarious dental mechanism. The abstracted diamond having been placed in the tooth, the bottom was plugged up so as to look like part of the ordinary gold mount ing, and the proud wearer of the in-
 genious set simply laughed in the faces of the searchers. The teeth were ex- amined time after time before the trick was at last discovered. He could carry diamonds worth some thousands of pounds in them.
 One of the most extraordinary cases in which teeth have played q part occurred in 1874. A man named Goss. residing in Baltimore, had insured his life in various companies for very large sum. Goss was occupied in mak- ing samples of a substitutes for India
 rubber and used to carry on his ex-
 periments in a lonely building. The people near were one day startled by an explosion in the cottage, and the place burst at once into a mass of flames. When they were extinguished the remains of 8 man were found by the mortified searchers among the de-
 bris. Was it Goss? The insurance | companies refused to pay, as Goss had magnificent teeth, and the teeth of the
 dead lSan in the cottage were poor. and some even missing, and an action was brought against the, companies by Goss' brother-inIlaw, Tdderzook.
 While the law proceedings were pro- gressing the remains of murdered man were found buried in a wood and suspicion fell upon Udderzook as the murderer. The dead man was proved, by the teeth, to be Goss, whom Udder- zook had represented as having been burned to death.
 The whole affair of the burning cot tage and the remains found in it had