CHAPTER II—BY THE WATERSIDE

THE RIVER OF DEATH—HOW THE hooligan works—The story of a man who escaped—"Found drowned"—The tragedy of vengeance—The mystery of John Wilson—The woman in the case

A THIN mist wraps London in a shroud of grey this dismal winter afternoon as we pick our path carefully along the miry roads and sodden footways that lead us to the gloomy little building where the mysteries of the quiet water come to the light of day again.

We have come by a region of desolation, across waste land and black patches of marshy earth where men sow seed and dig and wait patiently for a few stunted vegetables to reward their toil. Here and there under the black archways, above which the trains of a great railway thunder and shriek, we have seen a group of pale-faced, scantily-clad urchins kicking a black and battered football about among broken glass and rubbish heaps, and perhaps finding as much joy in the game as the famous performers who make a goal amid the cheers of tens of thousands of spectators.

And so, gradually—always in the mist, always in the mud—we have come to a low-lying, far-stretching expanse of dingy houses and black palings and damp, oozy walls—a bit of Holland, as it were, in which the land and the water meet upon a dead level, and the only reliefs for the wearied eye are the glimmering lights of the barges and the timber ships lying far down the quiet canal.

If we turned off the muddy road and passed inside the black palings we should be by the waterside, and on the broad towing-path that, dotted here and there with lonely little houses and black, mysterious-looking sheds and outbuildings, in the gathering night suggests that river of the nether regions over which the souls of the departed pass.

And to call this silent water-way, glistening darkly where here and there a ray of lamp-light falls upon it, the Styx, would be no wild flight of fancy, for surely to those who know its record this is a River of Death.

The humid, mud-trampled pathways that run on either side are the highways of tragedy—the beaten track of the last footsteps. Here by the water-way that brings the golden freight from the great river to the heart of the busy town is the parting of the ways of Time and Eternity for many a one who lays down the burthen of life.

Not a pleasant place this, on a night of gloom, to linger and look and think. One raises one’s eyes from the black water and sees far off the lights of the vehicles that cross the bridges in a steady stream, and the movement of busy life is a relief at once.

Beyond the refuge of despair the world is alive with hope, and the hum of patient toil and the stir of brave endeavour paint us a brighter picture of humanity.

But we have come as students to mark and to learn. We have looked upon the scene of sorrow, where many a tragedy of life comes to its last act. Let us hear the story of some of these tragedies of the water-way that are among the mysteries of modern London.

A few steps from the waterside and we are by a quiet grey church railed off from the road. We pass through a little gateway into a courtyard that leads to a building where those who have sought the waters of forgetfulness rest for a while before they are laid reverently to their last rest.

Not all who come here from the watery depths have taken their own lives. About the tragedies of which the law here seeks to know the truth there is often a mystery that is never penetrated.

Of the three hundred and eighty-six men and women who lay in this hostel of the dead in one year a large number were brought in from the canal. Of these, evidence in thirty-two cases did not, in the opinion of the juries, justify a verdict of suicide. Neither did it justify a verdict of murder, though in many cases the circumstances were more than suspicious.

The ugly wounds might be accounted for by passing barges; but wounding is not, as a rule, part of the process of waterside murder.

The victim is either pushed in in the course of a struggle or first stunned with a blow on the head or garotted, and then thrown in. In the first case there will be no positive signs after a few days’ immersion. In the case of garotting there are also difficulties of proof. It is only when there is the mark of the knife or the pistol-shot, or some injury that points conclusively to deliberate infliction, that the worst construction can be placed on the tragedy.

Garotting was the method adopted by the hooligans who at one time infested the canal side, and made it so perilous a place that now the banks are patrolled by plain-clothes officers.

The gangs of young roughs who gather in secluded parts of the banks, where they are hidden by sheds or stacks of material, are there to gamble. They have such a well-organized system of guarding against the unwelcome intrusion of the policeman by well-placed “scouts,” that in order to circumvent them it has become necessary to employ detectives for the tow-path.

These disguise themselves in such a way that they can pass without attracting the suspicion of the sentinels posted at a convenient distance from the muddy Monte Carlo. Most of the youths are hooligans of the worst class, and occasionally the little game of pitch-and-toss is only indulged in to reassure the stranger who, coming alone in the gloaming, or at night, might not like the look of the band, and so might take precautionary measures.

On a quiet Sunday afternoon some little time back a young man walking along the path in broad daylight was suddenly set upon by one of these gangs. He escaped the fate intended for him, and lived to tell the tale. He was going to tea with some friends, and was dressed in a frock-coat, and had on a watch and chain and a scarf-pin, and he had some loose silver in his pocket. He came upon a group of young roughs playing cards behind a stack of timber, looked at them, and passed on. It never occurred to him that on a bright Sunday afternoon in the heart of London a man could be robbed and murdered.

But before he had gone half a dozen paces farther he felt his throat clutched from behind, and two powerful hands trying to throttle him. At the same time two roughs seized his arms, while another of the gang took the watch and chain and pin and went over the victim’s pockets.

But the victim was a strong young fellow, and fought desperately, though a hand thrust over his mouth prevented him from calling out.

“Throw him in!” exclaimed one of the gang.

There was a desperate struggle on the tow-path. The man, knowing that he would be stunned and pushed into the canal, to be found there perhaps days afterwards and looked upon as a suicide, fought furiously for his life.

He managed by a desperate effort to fling off his assailants, and then he took to his heels and fled. He reached his home in a condition of such exhaustion that there he fainted. The usage he had received was so brutal that he was compelled to keep his bed for a week.

That is the story of a man who escaped. The men, and the women, too, who have been less fortunate in their encounters with waterside assassins have been “found drowned.”

It is a remarkable thing that there is hardly ever any money on the bodies that are brought from the canal to the mortuary. Every article found is entered in a book kept for that purpose by the official in charge. If you turn over the pages, you will find against almost every entry in which the word “drowned” occurs the words “no money” also.

To this last Guest House on the road to God’s Acre there come again and again the mysteries of the unclaimed dead. Someone lies there waiting to be identified, and waits in vain. Neither kith nor kin come forward. The man has mattered so little to anyone that he has been able to pass out of life without a fellow-creature troubling as to why his home and his accustomed haunts know him no more.

Sometimes the identity of the dead upon whom the curious or the anxious come to gaze is violently disputed. Not long since two women claimed one man as a missing husband, and in the end it was proved that he belonged to neither of them. Yet both recognized the features and the clothes, and both gave certain indications as to marks which were found to exist on the body. Only those who have official knowledge of the number of people who come to identify a body “found drowned” are aware of the vast number of men and women who leave their homes and make no communication to their relatives as to their whereabouts. And these people are not always of the poorest class.

Here lay some time ago a man done to death—a foreigner shot in the streets of London. The man had been tracked by an assassin sent by a secret society from his native land. The society’s agent came to London with orders to shoot the condemned man on sight.

Soon after the news of the crime got into the papers, two men of the victim’s own nationality came to the mortuary to see if they could identify him.

One glance was sufficient. As they turned shuddering away, one muttered to the other, “This fate is for us, too; we shall be the next.” A few days later those men met their doom, and came to lie side by side with the first victim.

The murderer being eventually discovered in the neighbourhood, and brought to bay, shot himself as he was on the point of being arrested. He was brought to this mortuary, too, and made up a...