The Stark County Democrat. [volume] (Canton, Ohio) 1833-1912, 1906-05-11
ESCAPED CRIMINALS
How Lawbreakers Have Succeeded In
Evading the Police.

while ostensibly conducting a legiti-
mate business, yet maintained the
closest relationship with the elite of
rascaldom, assisting them with his
advice and financing and engineering
their most promising schemes, might
have posed as a verltable double Of
the man who SO nearly foiled the re-
doubtable Sherlock Ho,mes.
True, Bridgewd,er has met with his
deserts at last and is now undergo
ing a well deserved term of penal
servitude. But his conviction was due
to a series of for him) unlucky coin
cidences, such as no intelligence, how
ever keen, could hope to guard
against or circumvent. And, besides,
there are others, keener and cleverer
even than he, says the London Tit
Bits who have houted the police all
their lives through and have died
rich and respected in the end with
out having had a solitary conviction
crimes have been manifold.
Sir Robert Anderson, X. c. b., late
chief of the criminal investigation de-
partment, Scotland Yard, who was in
terviewed by the writer, laid particu-
lar emphasis upon one such-the in
dividual responsible for the theft Of
GainsborOugh's picture of Georgiana,
Duchess of Devonshire, and its sensa-
tional restoration after a lapse of
more than 20 years.
THAT man." said Sir Robert, "liv-
ed in a bigger and finer house than
the one | now occupy. He was better
| off financially than | ever was, or am
ever likely to be. Yet he simply re
yelled in robbery 1t was his profess
| sion, you see. He had embraced 1t
as other men embrace the army as d
! profession, or the law, or the church.
He took genuine pride in it. And ne
made it pay from every point of view,
| save only the moral one"
/ Further investigation revealed the
! existence of other master criminals
of a like type. One of them-he is
| well known to the police, who, how
ever, can do nothing for lack of the
| necessary prOOfs-is an individual
who, some few years back, conceived
a certain diabOlical scheme which had
| for its object the decOying abroad Ct
rich Englishmen and numbering them
| there for the sake of their money and
| valuables. This dangerous desperate
! resides at this present moment in an
! elegant suite of bachelor chambers net
| far from Hyde Park, and can be met
with nightly at 'swagger" West End
bars as well as at other and more
questionable resorts in the same neigh
/ bOrhood
He never commits a crime himself,
! but is ever ready with advice and
money for the encouragement of those
| who do commit them. He is liberal,
too, and straight from his own
point of view, and for this reason
probably not one of the human tools
he uses SO freely has so far presumed
to round on" him.
Once, however, the police thought
they had him. 1t was when a noto-
rious jewel thief was being tried at
the Central Criminal Court for the
theft Of a duchess's jewels Scotland
Yard knew perfectly well that this
man had been financed in his enter
prise by the individual in question,
who had also disposed, through his
agents, of the bulk of the stolen prom
erty. A word from the prisoner would
have suffiCed, and he would then have
| got off with a nominal nine months
or So That word, however, he re-
fused 20 speak, and was consequently
sent down for seven years. This
was in 1899. He was released in the
spring Of 1905, went straight from the
| prison to his banker" and confeder-
ate, and received from him in hard
cash the sum of C 600, with a prom
ise afterward faithfully kept, of more
to follow
Of a different type of the above,
but equally difficult to catch, is the
master criminal who while keeping
carefully in the background devotes
all his energies to the furtheranee
and fostering of some particular
branch of rascality. Concerning one
such the writer gathered some inter-
estiing particulars in the course OF
a conversation he had with the cher
inspector Of weights and measures 70
the London. county council.
For years, it appears this gentle
mans detectives have been trying IN
vain to run to earth a mysterious in
dividual whose business in life it is
to manufacture false weights for the
use of dishonest costermongers and
fraudulent tradesmen generally. Many
thousands of these weights are turned