Charles Peace, or The Adventures of a Notorious BurglarAnonymous
General
Charles Peace, or The Adventures of a Notorious Burglar
Anonymous
Burglars -- England -- London -- Biography; Murderers -- England -- London -- Biography; Peace, Charles Frederick, 1832-1879
“‘They talk,’ said he, ‘about identifying me! Why I could
dodge any bobby living! I have dodged all the detectives in
London many a time. I have walked past them, looked them
straight in the face; and they have thought I was a
mulatto.’
“Then he asked us if we knew how he did it; and said ‘Just
turn your faces away a minute, and I’ll show you.’
“We turned our heads away, and when we looked again we found
he had completely altered the expression of his countenance,
and so entirely distorted and disfigured it――save the
mark!――that he did not look like the same man.
“He threw out his under jaw, contracted the upper portion of
his face, and appeared to be able so to force the blood up
into his head as to give himself the appearance of a
mulatto.
“Then he laughed heartily at his cleverness; went through
pantomimic gestures that would have done credit to ‘Quilp,’
and again boasted of the many times he had ‘put on that
face,’ and walked past the cute detectives in London and
elsewhere.
“We then made allusion to the clever way in which he dodged
the police and got away from Sheffield on the night of the
murder; and he at once went off into a long story of his
escape, telling it with almost fiendish glee, and
occasionally laughing joyously at his exploits. He said:――
“‘After that affair at Bannercross I went straight over the
field opposite, and through Endcliffe Wood to Crookes, and
round by Sandygate. Then I doubled and came down to
Broomhill, and there I took a cab and was driven down to the
bottom of Church-street.
“‘I got out and walked into Spring-street, to the house of
an old pal. There I doffed my own clothes and disguised
myself. I stopped there a short time, and then I went boldly
through the streets to the railway station, and took train
for Rotherham. I walked from that station down to Masbro’,
where I took a ticket for Beverley.
“‘On reaching Normanton I left the train, retaining my
ticket, and took a ticket for York, where I put up that
night. The next morning I went to Beverley, and then walked
on to Hull.
“‘I got in an eating house near the docks, where I stopped a
considerable time, and did a ‘bit of work’――(meaning, of
course, committed a few robberies).
“‘Then I went to Leeds, and from Leeds to Bradford; and from
Bradford I went to Manchester. I was there a short time and
then I went to Nottingham; and in a lodging house there I
picked up Mrs. Thompson.
“‘Whilst we were together one night, an inspector, who had
heard I was there and suspected I was a “fence,” came and
said to the landlady――“You have got a lodger here――have you
not?” She said, “Yes, he is upstairs.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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