Review in the Spectator June 22 1861

“From the day when Mr. Dickens published in “Household Words” the experience of three detectives, bookstalls have abounded in stories of the feats of the police. The best of them, the series issued by an author who calls himself “Waters,” has been selling steadily for years, and threatens to rival the popularity of the old “Newgate Calendar.” “Waters” has been succeeded by Mr. M’Levy, whose fame as a professional thief-taker in Scotland added greatly to the apparent reality of his narratives, and secured for his first work, the “Curiosities of Crime,” a wide thong local circulation. Success has tempted Mr. M’Levy to call on his memory for a second series, and the present volume contains twenty-two stories of his encounters with the different sections of the great criminal class. It is a curious book. Mr. M’Levy has not the smallest idea of telling a story easily, indulges in humour of the weakest kind, and is always moralising just when the moral is most certain to spoil the point of the incident he relates. Yet the stories are really interesting, for besides the tone of reality Mr. M’Levy’s long experience imparts, they abound in the quality modern stories are apt to lack true dramatic force. The stories, however clumsily told, always excite a desire to see the end of the imbroglio, a quality which novel writers would do well to remember is of the very essence of a well-told tale. The tale, for example, called the “Orange Blossom,” is really a drama, and the characters are sketched with an unconscious force, which might put many a practised tale-writer to shame. The reader can see Elizabeth Gorman, a girl who had succeeded in robbing sixteen first-class houses to provide her dower, and who, arrested when dressed for the wedding, met the destruction of her hopes with no other visible sign of emotion than a cast-down eye. There is a quaint ability, too, in the narrative, in spite of the ludicrous verbiage, which sometimes rises into originality. Mr. M’Levy is describing a clerk whom he had just arrested on a charge of embezzlement:
“As I uttered the words, I saw in an instant a change come over him, of a kind I have often noticed in people merely nervous from temperament and not drink. He clasped the arms of the chair more firmly, his trembling ceased as if in an instant, and his eye became steady. Yes, the energy of the instinct of self-preservation shot up through the drink fever, confirmed his nerves, and prepared him for an onset. I have men fear run into firmness like the congelations of a liquid metal; but such appearances, which I have learned to understand, never in any case shook my suspicions.”
Writers who smile at the absurd use of the word “congelations,” might be proud of the simile it spoils. We have no space, and, indeed, no inclination for more than a general reference to stories of this kind; but it is curious to note the philosophy at which a man employed like Mr. M’Levy has arrived. Like most of his class, he obviously regards crime pretty much as a disease. One man has it and another has not, and in the individual, you may check or even eradicate it, but the disease will have its victims, nevertheless. The only true remedy is the preventive one; and it is curious to contrast Mr. M’Levy’s emphatic approval of the ragged schools with Mr. Cumin’s deprecatory comments. As a preventive, Mr. M’Levy regards himself as simply useless. It is Dr. Guthrie, he says, and not the police inspector, who has improved the tone of the dangerous classes in Edinburgh, and it is the schoolmaster, and not the detective, who must complete the work.
Mr. M’Levy, like most police officers, bears testimony to the permanent unhappiness of the criminal classes, who seldom gain even that immunity from the sufferings of the poor which respectable men presume to be their end. He relates a story in illustration of this theory, which, if strictly true, deserves a wider circulation than it is likely to receive. He had occasion to attack a gang of three English coiners who had settled in Edinburgh, and for some time eluded detee- tion. The party-comprising a man and two women were at last arrested, and sentenced to transportation. While still at large, their mode of life was in this wise. The man worked hard all day, as hard as at any other trade, and then returned to a lodging on one of the worst stairs of a bad wynd, where he lived with an old bedridden aunt in the most abject poverty and squalor. He did not even get good food at home, and the solitary advantage he derived from a life of toil, fear, and guilt, was a fine suit of clothes to be worn in the streets, and an occasional dinner in an inn. The women were even worse off, scantily clad, and with no power of getting a fire, yet none of the three was disqualified for the honest occupations of life. The man in particular must have been a most skilful mechanic. One would almost suspect that excitement, the pleasure of breaking the law, was the true temptation of the criminal class.

Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art, Sept. 7, 1861 p.254

We have here a second volume of stories from the notebook of Mr. M’Levy, of the Edinburgh Police. We noticed the former volume in terms of praise which are equally applicable to that now before us. The author seems to have been t moved to this further effort partly by the consideration that he had till many good things to tell, and partly by the desire to testify to the excellent effect which he thinks has been produced by Ragged and Industrial Schools, in lessening the number of that class of thieves who have become such because they never from their births lind a chance given to them of earning a living honestly. Mingled with descriptions of the strange scenes in which M’Levy acted so efficiently, are his reflections upon the past and probable future history of the offenders whom he brings to justice. The stories are amusing, and neatly and dramatically told, and the observations merit attention from the position and character of the man who makes them.

The first chapter is devoted to one or two cases in which the police of Edinburgh were baffled by the ingenuity of thieves. M-Levy says that he has had these cases thrown in his teeth, but “they are not cases of mine, anyhow.” One of the most successful artists of the tender sex that ever appeared in Edinburgh was Jean Brash. A mercantile traveller from Birmingham was caught by her demure deportment, and the pair betook themselves to what Jean called the house of a “decent woman,” being really her own abode. Here, after a short interval, the commercial gentleman discovered that he had been robbed of a 100l. note. He rushed downstairs and bawled. for a constable. A constable came while the gentleman was keeping watch at the door. Hurrying up stairs they found Jean in an easy state of conscious innocence. She adjured the constable to search the house and her own person, and to satisfy himself that the unfortunate man was in error. For that purpose, she handed to him a lighted candle placed in a brass candlestick, and well fixed there by a round of paper, so as to stand upright and steady. The constable searched for the missing note with this candle fixed by the paper roll. He failed in his search, and the gentleman gave up all hope of recovering the note. Jean was left quietly in her state of innocence; and at her own time she undid from the candle’s end the piece of paper, of which the reader will guess the value. M’Levy expresses his regret that he was not present to hold the candle during this search. On another occasion, Jean was pursuing her vocation at an hour late enough and dark enough to inspire adventurers with confidence to flirt a little with the coy damsel without danger of detection by curious friends. There are, as M’Levy says, numbers of these shy and frolicksome fish who are fond of poking their noses into the meshes without any intention of entering the seine. The regular street-walkers, such as Jean, are quite up to these “night-moths,” hate them heartily, and sometimes make them pay gold coin for silver words. With one of these flutterers round the candlelight of impurity our heroine had forgathered; and as he squeezed one soft hand, the other visited his pocket. The youth cried out to a passing constable that he had been robbed of a 51. note. The constable immediately laid hold of Jean; and as there were no passers-by to complicate the affair, the money would, of course, be got upon the instant. At least, so it might have been thought; but the youth and the constable searched Jean’s pockets, and turned the bull’s-eye on the pavement all around without result. She was then taken to the police-office, and examined by a female searcher, but still no note was found. The officer on duty was satisfied that there must have been some mistake. A day or two passed. No more was heard of the young man. The constable was again upon his beat about the same hour. Up comes Jean. and says she has a secret to tell him. The dialogue which follows is very well imagined by the author, who, of course, did not hear it, nor any trustworthy report of it. The substance of it is, that Jean’s conscience is troubled, and she desires to return the note to the young man. She will not give it openly to the policeman, but if he will search the deep cuff of his coat, after abo is gone, he may find it there. As she speaks, her nimble fingers are thrust into the cuff, and she runs off. The constable searches, and finds nothing. The fact was, that Jean had, during the conversation, abstracted from his cuff the note which she had placed there at the instant of her seizure, and which he had unconsciously carried about with him for two days. Mclevy tells this story without warranting in truth; and he adds, that he should like to t have been the policeman who wore the coat with the deep cuff.

Let us now turn to M’Levy’s own experiences. A house had been entered by thieves while closed during its master’s absence, The premises had been deliberately ransacked, and all articles of value and easily portable had been selected and carried off. Among them was a musical box, regarding which M’Lery chanced to ask the late proprietor what tunes it played. He mentioned the “Blue Bells of Scotland.” M’Levy made the usual searches for the stolen property, but with small hope and no success. One evening, being on what he calls a “watch saunter,” he passed a tavern frequented by thieves. Just as he came to the open door, his attention was arrested by a low and delicate sound. It was the above-named tune played upon a musical-box. He entered the house, and learned that the bor had been left there by two men who had just gone out after drinking, and had apparently forgotten it. The landlady knew the name of one of the men. and M’Levy, when he heard it, knew the man and his haunts. He went immediately and seized the thieves and all the stolen property. This story illustrates in a remarkable manner the importance to a detective of keeping his ears and eyes always open. In another chapter the same lesson may be learned from the discovery of the perpetrators of almost daily robberies from larders. The thieves were were exceedingly dainty. It was only the fine pieces of o meat that would would please them, and they did not seem to care for cold meat. For some time M’Levy could make no discovery. Who, he asks, could trace a leg of mutton after it was cut up and eaten? There were nd pawn-tickets for joints or beefsteaks, and the depredators were generally so hungry that they would not be likely to keep the meat, after stealing it, to improve the flavour. There was no chance of taking them in the fact, for they never tried the same larder a second time. M’Levy had given up hope, w when one night he happened to go into a shop and hear one Mrs. Biddy Riddel, who was by birth an O’Neil, and came, like himself, from Ireland, ask for half an ounce of ten, an ounce of sugar, and an ounce of real Durham mustard. The demand for the last-named article struck both M’Levy and the grocer as singular; and the latter ventured to remark that that quantity of mustard would far way with Mrs. Riddel. The lady, not altogether relishing the observation, explained that the mustard was wanted to make a blister for her son’s throat; and further stated that, although she might be now experiencing, as the grocer had assumed, a deficiency of salt-meat with which to consume the mustard, yet in her paternal home at Ballynagh pigs were kept, so that the family did not need to tie the bit or bacon to the ind ov the string and swallow it, and thin pull it out agin.” The dialogues which occur in M’Levy’s stories, whether reported or imagined, or produced by a combination of these processes, are highly humorous. Mrs. Riddel went on to assert that the bacon atBallynagh was “just purty white and and red where it should be: and we had mustard, too, galore, when we wanted it.” Mrs. Kiddel walked grandly from the shop, and the incident had passed out of M’Levy’s mind, when next day he saw her son Billy, who was a chimney-sweeper, smoking a pipe and looking as if he had been at work that morning. In answer to M’Levy’s kind inquiries, the son stated that he had not had a sore throat and that no mustard poultice had been applied to it. M’Levy was startled at the discrepancy between the story of the lady of Ballynagh and that of her son. He thought about this apparently trivial matter a good deal, but did not yet see any connection between it and the plundering of larders. He only considered that things seemed to be out of their natural fitness, and that some circumstance was required to be known to bring them into harmony. In the evening of the following day, M’Levy was strolling o on a general look-out, when along with a of mutton aler he saw a a sweep coming in his hand. The sweep proved to be his friend Billy. M’Levy insisted on Billy and the leg of mutton following him to the office, where he left them, and proceeded to Mrs. Riddel’s lodging. He found there the larger part of the interesting ounce of mustard unconsumed, and also a fine piece of salt beef. Just as he got back to the office a cook came and reported the theft of a leg of mutton, so it appeared he had not gone too far in apprehending Billy. But there might be difficulty as to identification. However, the cook had marked the leg to distinguish it from another which had not hung so long, and besides, she could swear to the string by which she had suspended it. M’Levy could not get the piece of salt beef identified, but Billy was convicted of the theft of the leg of mutton.
We must give one more example of M’Levy’s dramatic skill. He is great in expressing the feelings of mothers who had seen their sons fall within his grasp. Andrew Ireland, a climber of remarkable activity, who could go where cat would shudder, had dropped off a wall into M’Levy’s armladen with poultry which he had stolen on the other side. He was convicted and sentenced to imprisonment, but escaped by climbing through a skylight. M’Levy could get no trace of him for months, but was satisfied that he was lurking in the Old Town. One day he en- countered a funeral procession formed by ragged Irishmen. A poor woman came up and told him that it was his work. Her name was Ireland, and her speech was Irish. She said that she was burying her son, who had been killed by M’Levy’s persecution. He offered consolation in the remark that there were no skylights to the graves, and Andrew would not elimb out to do any more evil. “Skylights! ay, but there is; and Andrew Ireland will climb out and get to Heaven, while you, you varmint, will be breaking firewood in h__ to roast their honours the judges who condemned my innocent darling.” M’Levy did not feel altogether comfortable, for, as he says, there is something in these wild lives, when wound up by death, that is really touching. However, he walked up to the office, and there got notice of the robbery of a silversmith’s workshop. His investigation of the case led to no conclusion except that the robbery had probably been committed by two unknown chimney-sweepers. Hereupon he became excessively interested in all persons of this clans; and as features are difficult to discern through a mask of soot, he was in the habit of walking up to any sweep he met, and asking for a light to his pipe, so as to get a close inspection. A considerable time after the robbery, he happened to see two sweeps smoking loungingly, and contemplating, in the hand of one of them, some article which had a silvery look. The usual artifice gave M’Levy an opportunity of scanning a face which seemed to shrink under his eye. The features were familiar; but still he was for a while at at fault, and continued the conversation until he got the clue. “Andrew Ireland, when did you come out of the Canongate churchyard?” All denial was in vain. The silver article which M-Levy had seen glancing in the sooty hand proved to be part of the stolen property. This remarkable exemplification of M-Levy’s keenness of sight and strength of memory brought the buried son of the widow Ireland to transportation.
Our object in taking up this book has been amusement, and therefore we do not dwell upon those less inviting parts of which the author expresses his despair of any good result in checking crime from punishment, and his hope in the system of Ragged and Industrial Schools, which he thinks will provide even for thieves children the means of gaining a livelihood without thieving. These passages of M’Levy’a book would have deserved attention from the philosophers who have been lately meeting in the capital of his native country. to be taken The only possible exception to this contribution to social science is that M-Levy’s style, even when he advocates Ragged-schools, retains some liveliness, nor does he wholly lose his aptitude for jokes. If he could amend these faults he might be worthy to read a paper at the next Social Science Congress.