A BOUT twelve years ago there was an election anticipated in the Borough of N——. It was a notorious place for bribery, as I, who have been professionally concerned in many elections, perfectly well knew. It was an extraordinary town. It had once been a very flourishing place. A staple trade had been carried on there, and almost nowhere else; but an evil spirit of gentility pervaded its corporation in those days. The genius of two or three well-known men would have taken advantage of the neutral

A N eminently respectable tradesman was seated in his cosy little parlour, or counting-house, at the back of his shop, within a mile of the Mansion House in the City of London, one summer afternoon in the year 1861. His wife was the only other person present on this occasion. It was an unusual circumstance for this lady to be there, as Mr. Delmar also occupied, for purposes of residence, a neat little house in an eastern suburb of the metropolis. He was, moreover, the father of a family. He had

S OME years ago I was retained to penetrate the mystery of a case in many respects not very unlike the celebrated Road murder; and I was to bring the criminal to justice if possible. It was a case of child murder. The house in which the horrid deed was perpetrated was a cottage, standing in the midst of ample grounds—perhaps ten acres in extent—communicating with a turnpike-road, not much used or frequented, and along which no vehicles passed, except those going to or from the cottage or an adja

I N the year 1833 I was engaged to investigate the circumstances attending a fire—one of a series—which had ended in claims upon several of the great London offices, and which fires were believed to have arisen out of wilful fraud. The present fire broke out on a Monday afternoon between one and two o’clock, in a warehouse belonging to an extensive bonnet manufactory near Dunstable, in Bedfordshire. Among the peculiar circumstances of this case was the somewhat remarkable fact, that the business

A FEW years ago, and about fifteen miles from London, a gentleman named Freeling, returning from the village of A—— to the village of B——, a distance of only four miles, had to cross one of the two trunk lines of railway which runs northward from the great metropolis and intercepts populous districts of England. To tell the exact truth about this gentleman, he had been visiting a friend—a man of substance, and likewise in the horticultural, floricultural, and agricultural lines, in which Mr. Fre

A FEW years ago I was employed to watch “the other side” in a hotly contested election. It was my first engagement of the kind, and I sharpened my wits in order that I might fairly earn my fee,—which the reader may be glad to know was a handsome one. Perhaps he may also be pleased to learn that I am an impartial man. It is true that, on the occasion I now speak of, I was employed by the agent of the Liberal candidate; but I have, on other subsequent occasions, rendered service, and I believe goo

A BOUT four years ago there lived, in the neighbourhood of Kentish Town, a wedded couple of the name of Green. Mr. Green was a merchant, carrying on business in the City in co-partnership with a German gentleman; and in the enjoyment of a good income from “a house” at the head of which it was his pride to stand. The couple had not been long united in the holy bonds of matrimony. When he married, he considered himself fortunate in obtaining for his partner a pretty little brunette of a woman, som

I WAS once employed to track an absconding bankrupt and hand him over to the tender mercies of a criminal court. There was nothing in the case, as it appeared on my instructions, to distinguish it from a host of other cases. It had not even the merit of difficulty to lend it interest. I made sure of catching my man with little trouble, as I did, and as I will point out. The affair, however, took a rather curious turn in the sequel, as the reader will perceive. The bankrupt had been a trader in L

A BOUT six years ago a detective officer, in the employ of the regularly constituted authorities whose local habitation is Scotland Yard, Westminster, was directed to track a young delinquent who had, it was said, forged the autograph of his master, a tradesman in the borough of Southwark. The search was not a very difficult one. The culprit, who had only defrauded some one of 50 l. by that operation, I dare say, thought he had got possession of an inexhaustible fortune; or I should rather say t

D OES the reader know that all the money taken at a railway station is sent up to head-quarters every night? Such is the arrangement. The money is put into a box, constructed as well as may be to render peculation or robbery on the way difficult, if not impossible, and off it is sent. An “advice” is of course also sent by the station-master or cashier from the particular station to the head-office. The money for paying salaries and wages is also sent in a like manner in a reverse course from hea

S OME time ago a robbery was perpetrated in the mansion of Lord H——, which is situated in one of the squares of Belgravia. The thieves made a tolerably successful and remunerative haul. They cleared out the whole of the plate, and also much of the jewelry, which chiefly belonged to Lady H——, and was of enormous value. How the thieves obtained access to the premises did not for a long while seem at all clear. Appearances on the surface warranted a belief that one or more of the servants of his lo

O F all scoundrels in society, there are none so bad as disreputable or dishonest lawyers—unless it be unprincipled doctors. And I think that the palm of villany, if there be such a thing, might be claimed by a few of the latter class in any competition with the former. There is no limit to the mischief, and no fathoming the depths of crime which a surgeon may commit. Few men, perhaps, have also such ample opportunities for eluding detection. It is fair to say that I believe the crime of dishone

M R . F RANKLIN was a solicitor in good practice at the West End of London, having offices at —— Chambers, Regent Street, and a private residence near Fulham. He was a man of somewhat peculiar habits, although very shrewd, able in his profession, and generous towards his friends—who were not a few. His domestic life had been far from comfortable. He had been separated from his wife, through incompatibility of temper; and that lady, with one of her children, lived in a distant part of the metropo

L ITTLE more than five years ago, a series of robberies on a grand scale was perpetrated at the West End of London. There was hardly a tradesman of note who did not suffer from these depredations, which for a long while baffled all the skill and vigilance of the police. After a lapse of perhaps six months from the formation of the belief that these robberies were the result of a concerted action by the rascaldom of the metropolis, the victims and their friends formed themselves into a committee,

T OMMY J OHNSON was a smuggler of the modern school, about which it is hardly necessary to say more than that it differs considerably from the old or the ideal school. Neither Tommy nor any of his men were the picturesque ruffians that school-boy imagination describes, under the tutelary genius of well-known romancists; nor did they much resemble the full-booted, rollicking giants which low art, in common pictures, invariably makes the bold smuggler. Tommy, the smuggler chief, was a short, stout

I THINK that the merchants and traders of England, Scotland, and Ireland, or the Chambers of Commerce of the United Kingdom, might lay out a fair sum of money in a worse mode than by retaining me to illustrate, through my experience, some defective acts of Parliament, under which, as I have seen, frequent palpable and sometimes gigantic villany is perpetrated. Whether this notion of my usefulness to the mercantile community and the State is justified or not by any thing I can show, the reader ma

A MONG the curiosities of my experience I reckon the incidents of the narrative I am about to relate. A few years ago, a gentleman of considerable estate, one of the untitled nobility of England, called upon me, and explained that he had reason to suspect the fidelity of his wife. I did not recognise the force of these reasons. The facts on which this gloomy, although partial, faith in the lady’s impurity or falseness had been raised might, with strict literal accuracy, he described as “trifles