Mr Briggs' Hat: The True Story of a Victorian Railway Murder (21 page)

CHAPTER 20

Turning Back

By Monday 29 August, Commissioner Newton’s Certificate of Criminality against Müller was ready but it would be another twenty-four hours before the certified copy of the hearing transcript was finished for Tanner to collect and take to Washington.

The inspector left no record of the route he took to the capital – the slow journey by steamer or the faster, overland route – but he did make the return trip quickly, suggesting that he chose hazard and speed over relative safety. Train travellers faced dangers from both the northern and southern armies, and troops passed through New Jersey in their thousands. Goods trains transported materials, food and the many dead, while passenger trains were crammed with both soldiers and families en route to the battlefields in their hundreds
to look for missing kin
. The junctions were crowded and frantic; the lines, bridges and trains were all potential military targets. Only a month earlier, Washington had been encircled by the Confederate army.

On the last day of August, as Tanner was making his way to Washington, a journalist from the
New York
Morning Star
sought permission from Marshal Murray to interview Müller in the
Tombs. He wanted an answer to the question on every New Yorker’s mind: what defence could the prisoner possibly offer against the weight of evidence against him? Shocked by Müller’s wan appearance, the reporter asked him how he was and was told
I feel weak and bad. I am sick.
The prisoner wore the same threadbare but neatly brushed clothes in which he had appeared in court.

Müller talked first about his sister. He said she had come to New York fourteen years earlier, that the prison warden had been given her address, but that she had still not come to see him. Speaking of the night of 9 July, he swore that he had taken an omnibus to Camberwell New Road, to a public house where he drank beer until half-past nine. Returning to the Royal Exchange, he found that the last omnibus for Bow had gone and his only option was to walk, lame-footed, back to Park Terrace. He got there at past eleven o’clock, when the Blyths were already asleep.

Asked about the hat and watch, Müller answered swiftly that he had bought the hat in London a year ago and that the watch, along with a chain, came from a peddler at the London docks. They had cost all his money – four pounds, three crowns. With nothing left to get his ticket on the
Victoria
, he had pawned everything else he owned – both the chain he had got from Death’s in exchange for the one he bought at the docks and his own old watch and chain. Eventually, he had accumulated the money he needed for his fare without having to pawn the heavy gold pocket watch sold to him by the peddler.

Müller bore himself with great composure
, wrote the
Morning Star
reporter,
and was never at a loss to answer any questions that I put to him
. He was favourably impressed. But as he turned to leave, the warden took him aside.
He is a hard case, you may depend on it
, said the prison official.
His mouth shows that.
Prominently printed, the exclusive interview was lapped up by a city alive with the news of the extradition hearing.
There is interesting news enough, political and military
, the journalist wrote,
but this story
will certainly be more interesting than comments upon ‘the situation’.
In New York the supposed murderer was given equal prominence to the bloody events of the Civil War.

*

Richard Tanner returned at the end of the week with the President’s signature on the warrant for Müller’s extradition. Preparing to leave New York, he wrote a letter of thanks to NYPD Superintendent Kennedy, enclosing a ten-pound reward for Tieman, and
visited Francis Marbury
to request a reference for himself.
My opinion
, wrote the solicitor,
is that you have all performed the delicate and responsible task imposed upon you in a manner which is entirely free from exception and does credit to the force to which you belong
.

On Saturday 3 September at nine o’clock in the morning, Franz Müller was delivered into Tanner’s custody at the Tombs and escorted to a closed carriage which drove fast towards the docks and the waiting steamship the
Etna
. Hoping to avoid an impenetrable mob, Tanner had let slip that they planned to embark on the
China
the following Wednesday. By this ruse he managed to have Müller, Death, Matthews and his colleagues below decks on the
Etna
before the truth leaked out and a great, disappointed crowd rushed on board the ship. Among those who embarked was a representative of the German Legal Protection Society in London
who delivered a letter
to Müller. It read:

Mr Francis Müller – I have been instructed by the … Society for the Legal Protection of Germans in London to communicate to you that
[they]
… have taken your case into their hands and have appointed Mr Thomas Beard, a solicitor … to act in your behalf … In the meantime it will be advisable for you not to make any communication whatever to the authorities, or to private individuals, without the previous advice of a solicitor … The German
Society still consider you to be innocent of the crime you are accused of and have resolved … to save no trouble or expense to prove your being not guilty, if this is the case.

At one o’clock in the afternoon the ship bearing the police, their prisoner and the two witnesses steamed out of New York Harbor. On board, Müller continued to protest his innocence but Tanner made certain to caution him to keep his own counsel.
The law of England
was clear: since 1848 it protected prisoners under arrest from involuntary self-incrimination by proscribing the police from any questioning following arrest.

Police and prisoners were all confined to the hospital quarters amidships, a secure room with six berths in which Müller could be left unchained but guarded. The German seemed not to dwell on his misfortune but to enjoy the comparative comfort of this journey to his earlier voyage on the
Victoria
, commenting on the delicious soups and fresh fruit prepared for him. Tanner lent him a copy of Charles Dickens’
Pickwick Papers
to help pass the time and Müller lay on his back, laughing heartily at the antics of Sam Weller and the complexities of his legal wranglings. After
Pickwick
, he was given
David Copperfield
, and settled back to let his mind slide away from his own immediate difficulties. Occasionally, reality seemed to intrude. Then he appeared to draw comfort from the fact that other, respectable people were on his side, taking out the letter from the GLPS, reading it, refolding it and returning it to his coat pocket before diving back into Charles Dickens’ world.

In the pause between New York and Liverpool, Müller was free from the quiver of intense scrutiny that had followed him from the moment of his arrest, from the obsessive recording of his face and his behaviour in reports that transformed the man into a cipher. Tanner, too, could finally unwind from the
wearing anxiety
of his chase.

*

Britain’s ravenous curiosity was buoyed by newspaper reports of the ongoing coroner’s inquest in Hackney. Godfrey Repsch claimed that Müller told him that the chain and ring were bought at the docks and he related a curious story of Müller trying but failing to attach a black mourning band to his new silk hat during the week before he left, though he had refused to enlighten them about who had died. Until John Death and Jonathan Matthews returned from America, there was nothing more for the coroner to do and, since no one knew when they would be back,
sessions were repeatedly rescheduled
and postponed.

For seven weeks the papers had speculated about if, or when, Müller would be returned to England. At the end of August there was still uncertainty about whether the
Victoria
had even arrived in New York.
Rumours began to circulate
that she had been captured and sunk. Others speculated that, even if Müller had been arrested, the London detectives might have to make another round trip in order to collect more evidence to strengthen their case in the American court. At last, just short of nine weeks after the discovery of Thomas Briggs’ body, Tanner’s telegraph, sent via the
Baltimore
, arrived with news of the arrest. On Wednesday 7 September, with Tanner and his prisoner already three days out at sea,
the country awoke to news
that Briggs’ hat and watch had been found on the suspect, that Müller had denied the charge and that he had declared that he could provide an alibi.

The New York papers brought by the steamship
Baltimore
to Liverpool on 7 September were devoured by a febrile national and regional press. The following day the minutiae of Müller’s arrest and of the first day of his extradition hearing were being widely reprised. Columns headed
Scenes on the Deck of the Victoria
and
The Capture of Müller
dominated all other news. Particular attention fell once again on reports of his unprepossessing appearance. The
Globe
reminded its readers that
Müller may be innocent
and that he
will have a fair trial
, but its words
sounded hollow. The paper appeared to forget that the prosecution must prove his guilt, suggesting instead that England waited for the German to prove his innocence.
The Times
, sure that
Müller’s capture will excite an emotion which it is hard to analyse
, was optimistic that the news would halt potential murderers in their tracks,
serving to counteract
the contagion of his example
. Britain could relax. The legal process that promised
vengeance upon a wrongdoer
promised to still unquiet minds and confirm
confidence in the supremacy of law over the destructive forces of human nature.

If there was any doubt of Müller’s guilt in the majority of minds it sprang only from disbelief that he had risked so much for such small gain.
It is a strange story
, from beginning to end
, wrote
The Times
,
but the strangest part of it is the disproportion between the audacious enormity of the crime and the feebleness of the attempt to escape its consequences
.

The same paper noted that Müller’s capture was facilitated by technological advance: by steam, the telegraph and photography. The telegraph – dubbed
God’s lightning
by
Punch
– had been helping to catch criminals since the mid 1840s. Now, in the triumphant knowledge of Müller’s arrest, the paper suggested that the progression of science was continuing to make the world a safer place, that modern invention could be harnessed to the cause of civilisation. It chose to ignore that the science that limited the chances of the murderer’s escape had provided both the stage for his violent act and the means of his ensuing flight.

The day after receiving Tanner’s telegraphic message, the Commissioner wrote to the Secretary of State asking permission both to submit their official reports of evidence against Müller and to prepare for his appearance at Bow Street Magistrates’ Court when he arrived home. In anticipation of a trial, Stephen Franklin at the North London Railway’s Bow works was instructed to make a
perfect scale model
of railway carriage 69.
Inspector Williamson and Superintendent Howie collated copies of police reports, wrote lists of the witnesses for the prosecution and prepared a statement of the crucial facts of the case:

  i. Briggs found on railway insensible about 25 past 10 on 9th

 ii. Müller exchanged chain about 10 a.m. on the 11th

iii. Müller pawned that chain about 12 p.m. on the Tuesday 12th at Mr Annis

 iv. Monday 11 July around 3
[p.m.]
Müller gave paper box to Matthews daughter. Müller sold the pawn ticket for the chain at Mr Annis to Hoffa on Weds

  v. Müller pawned own watch at Mr Barker Houndsditch on the 12th July and redeemed it on 13th July and the chain on the 13th and pawned them again same day at Mr Cox’s Princes St Leicester Sq

 vi. 14th Müller embarked

vii. 15th sailed

The statement included a note emphasising that Thomas Lee had waited to make his statement until 17 July. The police were worried about the effect of his evidence and, perhaps in the hope that Lee’s dubious moral position would undermine his testimony, they highlighted the fact that
being a married man
he had been to see a girl and he did not wish it known that he was at Bow Railway Station
.

Because the
Baltimore
had left New York before the conclusion of the extradition hearing, its outcome was still unknown. Was Tanner already returning with the German? Or had the petition somehow failed? The docking of every transatlantic steamer became an event. When the
Asia
arrived at Queenstown on the southern Irish coast on Sunday 11 September, the great crowds gathered at the docks roared their disappointment that the man they had come to see was not on board. But the
Asia
did carry
the latest New York papers, which confirmed that an extradition warrant had been issued. Now there was certainty that the fugitive would be repatriated within a matter of days.