Mr Briggs' Hat: The True Story of a Victorian Railway Murder (24 page)

Shrewd Thomas Beard centred his questions on Matthews’ claims that he had bought a hat for Müller at Walker’s in Crawford Street. How was it possible to purchase a hat for another man? he asked. How could he be so certain of the marks on it? Could he identify the hats of any other friends with such precision? How many hats had he bought for himself since owning the one he claimed Müller admired? The cabman faltered: he was unable to say exactly what had become of the hat
he had bought for himself from Walker’s in Crawford Street, or what colour its lining was. He could not be sure, either, how many hats he had bought since, nor from whom or at what cost. He thought he had left the old hat at Down’s shop in Long Acre, but he could not swear to it.

Beard’s interrogation needled him.

I can’t say more
, he lashed out, under pressure,
I’ve come here to tell the truth and not to be badgered and bothered in this way
.

Beard deferred further cross-examination. Matthews had showed himself to be a man with a sharp enough memory relative to the hat he identified as Müller’s, but vague when it came to his own.

Beard also laboured the questions he put to Thomas James Briggs regarding his father’s silk hats. Were they not generally taller in the crown than the one found in Müller’s box?

Yes, somewhere between an inch and two inches higher.

Thomas James did not know if his father had been in the habit of inscribing his name inside his hats. Pressing his point, Beard wondered whether he could, then, identify this hat as belonging to the victim?
No,
I could not positively identify
this hat as the one my father wore on 9th July
.

This was progress. Beard chose not to cross-examine either John Death or Elizabeth Repsch, the tailor’s wife. But he succeeded in encouraging Müller’s friend John Hoffa to confirm that Müller had been limping on 9 July and that he was wearing a slipper on his injured foot when he left the Repschs’ house that evening. It further counterbalanced the weight of evidence accumulated against his client. If doubt already existed over Müller’s ability to overpower Thomas Briggs in the short time between leaving Bow Station and passing over the Duckett’s Canal bridge, an injured foot would have both hampered the attack and made his escape more tricky to conceal.

Anticipating that his client would be remanded for trial, Beard had already decided to reserve the part of his defence concerning
proof of an alibi. For now it was simply crucial to do everything in his power to destabilise the evidence of the prosecution witnesses and nurture seeds of doubt. Throughout the hearing, Müller had scarcely looked at the witnesses nor did he react as their names were called. Only once did he appear agitated. After an hour of standing in the dock, the magistrate’s offer of a chair caused him to flush rapidly; his shoulders contracted with apparent embarrassment. Was this another indication that the German, schooled in hardship and unaccustomed to consideration from his superiors, was moved by simple, thoughtful acts?

It helped Thomas Beard’s case that Müller’s conduct appeared so at variance with his guilt. A growing minority were finding it difficult to reconcile his stature and demeanour with the amount of strength and resolve needed to commit the appalling deed. As the hearing drew to a close at two o’clock Müller was remanded for a week pending his attendance before the coroner in Hackney. Beard was satisfied that he had begun to make inroads against the Treasury’s prosecution.

Müller remained in the dock until a path was cleared to a waiting police van that hastened along Bow Street and through the afternoon traffic as dull drops of rain began to drum on its roof. On the northern edge of the city another locked room awaited in the three-storey
House of Detention in Clerkenwell
designed for the incarceration of remand prisoners. Crossing the courtyard towards its
pillared portal
, Müller was conducted along a wide, high corridor floored in asphalt with whitewashed walls, then into a broad hall where he was assigned a prisoner number. Then he was led to a reception cell on the floor above.

His property was removed and his name and age recorded. After washing, a bustling warder in blue uniform read out the rules, then Müller was examined by a surgeon and allocated a small cell with a window, a warm-air grating in the corner, a seat fixed to the wall and a hammock. A blanket, a towel, soap and a comb were supplied and his clothing was taken for fumigation
before being returned to him to wear at his trial. He was told that visits and letters were prohibited, that tobacco, swearing, whistling and shouting were forbidden and that regular attendance at divine service was required. His meals would consist of eight ounces of potatoes, one and a half pints of soup and a pint of gruel daily, with an additional six ounces of meat on Tuesdays, Thursdays and at the weekends; on Sundays he would be given a sweet cup of cocoa and an additional ration of bread.

To ensure against the possibility that he would try to defy justice by committing suicide, two officers were placed on constant watch outside his cell.

*

The next morning, the inquest jury were empanelled once more in Hackney. In the body of the room, every seat was filled. Waiting for the legal representatives and witnesses to arrive,
the question of the guilt or innocence
of the accused man … was discussed with a singular degree of anxiety
.

Jonathan Matthews was the first to be called. The cabman’s experience at Bow Street the previous day had prepared him for fierce interrogation and he seemed more in control of his testimony. The audience was rapt as he repeated the circumstances surrounding the purchase of a hat for Müller and the reasons he was able so easily to identify it several months later. When passed the hat, he pointed out that the slight extra curl to one side of the brim was still evident.

What was the colour of the lining of your own hat?
asked Beard.

I told you before
, said Matthews insolently,
that I could not tell you.

Never mind what you said yesterday, have you no recollection of the colour of the lining of your own hat?

None whatsoever.

His Walker hat, said Matthews, was worn out within four or
five months of its purchase and he bought the next at Down’s in Covent Garden’s Long Acre some time during June, paying five shillings and sixpence and leaving the old hat behind at the shop. Holding up the hat said to be Müller’s once more, Beard asked the question no one had yet put to the driver.

Is not that the hat?

No
, said Matthews,
I am sure it is not.

Just try it on
, said Beard after a lengthy pause.

Beard was taking a risk, knowing that it could either work strongly to his client’s advantage or substantiate the claims of the man whose story did so much to condemn. Taking it up with both hands, Matthews pulled the hat onto his head with a flourish, letting it fall a little forward over his eyebrows. It was evidently too large. Playing up to the jury, he shrugged back his shoulders in triumph.

There
, he exclaimed.
Is that a hat to suit me
?
He laughed, and the court laughed with him.

Beard made himself a note that the lining of the hat had come away – and he wondered whether, once it was refixed, the hat might fit Matthews more snugly. Then he set out to nail Matthews with the same questions that had begun to make the witness squirm the day before. Having had time to think about it, Matthews now remembered buying yet another hat, soon after the one from Down’s, at a shop in Oxford Street. He still could not say what had become of either of them.

Do you persevere in the statement that the hat you purchased at Walker’s was the hat you left at Down’s?
asked Beard sarcastically.

I do
.

He would return to this theme, but now Beard quickly changed direction. Was Müller not intimate with Matthews’ sister-in-law, and had there not been an argument between them that led to a falling out? Matthews rejoindered that he believed there had been some agreement between Müller and this woman, but again he could not swear to it.
They were never at my house together
.
I heard from him that there had been some misunderstanding between
[them]
but I have never had any misunderstanding with him on my sister-in-law’s account.

Now Beard came from another angle, demanding that Matthews account for his own whereabouts on 9 July.
I was driving my cab
, he replied. It was hired by the day, but since the owner had gone out of business and disappeared, he was unable to substantiate his claim. Nor was he able to say whether he worked during the week following the murder. Pushed harder by Thomas Beard, the witness admitted that he was not completely certain after all that he was out driving that day.
I might have laid up all day in bed
, he said, explaining that if he was not in bed he was driving; if he was not out with the cab, he was in bed.

Beard had only one more question:
Was any one present at this pretended examination of the hat at your house before the murder? No
, admitted Matthews,
I cannot say that there was.

Sticking to the decision he had made at Bow Street not to question John Death, Thomas Beard declined to cross-examine the jeweller on his statement concerning the exchange of chains. Nor did he further question the dead man’s son over his identification of the articles that had belonged to his father – the watch and hat found in Müller’s box in New York or the chain given up to the jeweller in Cheapside. Thomas James’ uncertainty that this was his father’s hat was continuing to work to their advantage. Earlier that morning Briggs’ son had re-examined the silk hat and had told the coroner that it was
considerably shorter, and the lining inside has been cut short and sewn together again under the brim. The underside of the brim is
parramatta
, and
my father usually wore silk
.

When the last witness stepped down, Coroner Humphreys told the jury that their job was nearly done. They would reconvene in six days’ time, at eight o’clock on the following Monday morning. Franz Müller would be called to appear before them in order for his identity to be fully established; then the inquest jury would retire to consider their verdict.

CHAPTER 24

First Judgement

No one outside Müller’s legal team knew how he intended to defend himself but
it is not expected
, reported
Reynolds’s Weekly Newspaper
, that he
will disclose the nature of the defence … until the trial.
It was said that the prisoner was eating well but that his spirits were low as he continued to claim his innocence to the officers guarding his cell.

Snippets of new information
that suggested developments in the prosecution’s case began to appear in the press. Inspector Tanner had questioned a shopman employed by Digance hatters in the Royal Exchange (Thomas Briggs’ hatters) and the man was said distinctly to remember selling the hat found in Müller’s luggage to Mr Briggs, recognising it by a peculiar alteration made in the lining to make it fit more comfortably. It was also reported that Mr Digance was in the habit of marking the inside brim of all the hats he sold with the date of their sale.
Should that be so
, wrote
The Times
,
and the date be found
,
it will materially affect the issue
.

It also appeared that several people were rushing to gain from the poor tailor’s infamy. The sale of souvenirs relating to
causes
célèbres
was a highly profitable business and copyright piracy was rife. Press reports now confirmed that Thomas Beard was acting on behalf of Mr A. L. Henderson, a ‘photographiartist’ (as he called himself) in the City. Henderson accused another man of copyright infringement in the printing and sale of photographs of Franz Müller and the forgery and sale of a carte-de-visite made earlier that year for the German. Henderson contended that Müller had paid him to take his likeness in December 1863 but had left one print behind, along with its negative. A week or so after the detectives left for New York, realising the value of this image, Henderson had registered copyright and began to publish it.
The sale of the photograph
, claimed Beard,
had been such a great success that it had caused parties to pirate
.

Over the intervening weekend most of the illustrated papers carried drawings of Müller copied from Henderson’s photograph, alongside representations of the surging crowds on his arrival at Bow Street police station the previous Saturday.
Not even in the annals of crime
can be found a case that has created more general interest than this of the murder of Mr Briggs
, wrote the
Penny Illustrated Paper
under their portrait of the prisoner.
It has every element of the sensational kind that a sensation-loving public can possibly desire … Doubt hangs over the affair … Müller’s own behaviour remains as wonderful as ever. He has continued to act to the last exactly as an innocent man might be supposed to act.

Quiet and respectful, Müller’s character was particularly at odds with the bravado of Matthews and it was said that Müller had complained to his German-speaking police guard about the cab driver’s evidence at Bow Street that week. He was apparently bitter about his old friend’s falseness, claiming that Matthews knew very well that the hat he bought for Müller was worn out and that one side of its brim had been broken the last time the two men met.
It was even reported
that Müller had once threatened to have one of Matthews’ brothers-in-law arrested and that
Matthews’ evidence was thus born of spite. Most exercising was a rumour that
the solicitor for the defence is
in possession of certain facts
which are expected to materially shake the testimony given by Matthews
.