A Detective’s Tale of the London Sewers

William Harvey, or as he was better known, English Bill, had that morning pleaded guilty to a crime which gave him to the State Penitentiary for life, and as I took him back to his cell he told me to come and see him the next day, and perhaps he could tell me something that would astonish me. We detectives are not easily astonished, however, and the oft-repeated assurance, by hopeless criminals, that they could and would astonish us with wonderful revelations, [too] often tell us little or nothing more than we know. A few new dodges, some robbery yet in its infancy and only conceived, and occasionally some really useful clues or information, generally being the substance of the prisoner’s confessions, and made in the hopes of its being used to mitigate and shorten the present punishment and confinement. It was not with the expectation of hearing anything of consequence that I went, the next day, therefore, [to] English Bill’s cell. That he was a celebrated burglar, thief, and criminal I had long known, but as I said before, it is seldom that reliable information, which can be made of use to us detectives, is furnished by such men.

Bill seemed none the worse for the severity of the sentence he had so lately received, though, to a less hardened criminal, the bare thought of confinement for life is generally so appalling as to age them in a few hours. But [Bill] had counted the cost over and over again, and now the game was up, the race run, and all chance gone; he was prepared to pay the penalty and meet his fate like a man.

It is such men as these that alone make the successful burglar or criminal; the coward when his doom has come will have been a coward before, and the chances are that the very innate cowardice has been the cause of unsteadying his nerve or hand and had led to his detection and capture.

After a few words of ordinary… Read More