It had on board a man and a woman, who disguised as a Quebec merchant and
his son, were expecting to reach Canada without detection. For a week
previously search had been made for them in every corner of Europe, and
once on board a ship sailing from a foreign port they might reasonably
have anticipated that they were safe.
But their portraits had been so widely circulated by the newspapers that
their faces were familiar wherever English papers were read, and the ship
was only a few miles on its journey when their disguise was penetrated by
the captain.
The vessel was fitted with a wireless installation, and now for the first
time since its invention wireless telegraphy played the leading part in
the capture of fugitives from the land.
The police in London were thus immediately acquainted with the whereabouts
of the wanted pair, and an officer was sent off by a swifter steamer to
greet them on their reaching Canada. Day by day, with almost feverish
excitement, the progress of the _Montrose_ across the ocean was followed,
and the chief topic of public interest was the race between the police
officer on one steamer and the fugitives upon the other.
The inspector won easily, and was ready waiting to arrest Crippen and his
companion at the first approach of the _Montrose_ to the Canadian shore.
The trial that followed had many features of scientific interest to which
reference is made in another place.
The recent advances in the methods of telegraphing a facsimile of a
specimen of handwriting or a sketch, or of reproducing a photograph at a
distance have greatly increased the difficulties of criminals escaping
detection, and the telectrograph, as it is termed, will prove a powerful
weapon in the hands of the detective.
The selenium machines of Professor Korn were employed by the _Daily
Mirror_ in transmitting the portraits of the chief actors in the Steinheil
case, and one of these photographs, which was received in London while the
Court was still sitting in Paris, is shown in the accompanying picture.
A still more practical telectrograph is that invented by Mr. Thorne Baker,
which weighs only about twenty-four pounds. This has been simplified to
such an extent that the photograph may be printed upon a flexible plate
with a backing of lead foil, and by attaching this to the transmitting
cylinder the thousands of minute points which go to make up the image will
be exactly reproduced upon a receiving cylinder at the other end of a
telephone wire.
The instrument may also be used with wireless installations for the
transmission of simple pictures or diagrams, and by its means it would be
easy for a ship at sea to send or receive portraits of an individual under
suspicion.
[Illustration: PHOTO SENT BY TELEGRAPH FROM PARIS
_By kind permission of "The Daily Mirror"_]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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