THE DARE SIDE OF THE THAMES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 103, 21 October 1911, Page 10

THE DARE SIDE OF THE THAMES.

Til 10 DOST LEO!OX. The river of a great city is inevitably associated with crime, mysteries and desperate deeds," remarked Williamson, the one-time chief of Scot 1 land Yard. "What terrible histories are connected with the Thames and the Seine! Along the banks of the Thames, in its lower parts, you find districts crowded with foreigners—desperate men who have spent much of their lives in parts of the world where murder and robbery are almost every-day events. In the fog which wraps the great river's banks during the winter months how many people disappear and are seen alive no more? The number of bodies found in the Thames in a year varies considerably. In one year there were between 1 two and three hundred, while its lowest death roll in recent years' has been one hundred and five. With regard to about half of these no one knows how the victim met his or her fate. One body in seven is that of a woman, and the majority of these have sought refuge in the great river's waters from starvation and despair. KEEPING THE RIVER CRIMINAL IN CHECK. No part of London is now more carefully police supervised than the Thames. From Fulham to Barking Creek, by day and night throughout the year, the police watchers are ever busy. They number between two and three hundred men. The life of the Thames policeman is one. which, if exciting, is at the same time full of hardship. They have to be men of exceptionally strong physique. Bad weather is just the time when the river criminal is most busy. Merchants and others engaged in business on the river, when they first sought for police protection stated that the criminals infesting it numbered eighty thousand. One ! wonders how they arrived at the mim- J ber, but that the river swarmed with i terrible and desperate men is certain. ] To meet them the poMee were then (in j 1797) armed with cutlasses and firearms.

, THE THAMES' WEIRD SHADOWS. Some parts of the river have the reputation of being haunted. Waterloo Bridge has a ghost of its own. Late wayfarers, crossing the bridge, declared that they had been startled by the apparition of a woman with deathly white face and clothed in black. They saw the weird figure quite distinctly. She glided noiselessly along and, according to some who met her, suddenly threw up her hands- in a gesture of despair and disappeared. At times people who mistook her for a living person imagined she had leapt over the parapet into the water bejow, and gave the alarm. At Wapping are some stone steps leading from the blank wall of a warehouse to the leaping water. The door which was once there has been built up long ago. But at night, according to folk who have been passing that place, the figures of two men are sometimes seen carrying a mysterious bundle, which they appear to throw into the water. Deptford has a ghost boat rowed by a ghost crew. The boat has been pursued by patrols who have endeavored to chase it down. It has vanished just when on the point of being overtaken. MYSTERIES THAT HAVE CAUSED SENSATIONS. Every year the Thames has its mvsteries. What was the story of the., skeleton of a young, well-foi : med man stuffed into a large carpet bag with great gaudy flowers on its side, found on one of the buttresses of Waterloo Bridge? The man had been killed by a dagger thrust from behind. The mark of it was distinct on the ribs. What, again, was the story of the giant man whose body was found in the Thames three or four years ago? He was about thirty-two years of age. over six feet in height, and of magnificent physiaue.' There was no scrap of clothing on the ' body, and the hands and feet of the - man were tied with a cord secured with I sailors' knots. What was the story of the mysterious boat seen one night in I 1.854 gliding towards London Bridge and then swallowed up in an explosion which, I after one moment of the terrific light J and a shock that shook the buildings around, disappeared so completely that no fragments were discovered sufficient to afford a clue to the boat or its occupants? What, again, was the story of the fair, white, jewel-ringed hand found in the mud near Hungerford Bridge? It was a small delicate hand—one that had done no labor, and clearly that of a woman of wealth.

THE ".MAD POISON"" Tn Limchouse and Poplar are lodginghouses for Chinese, Arabs, Lascars and others engaged in shipping work. A passer-by might imagine that the houses were deserted 1 . The windows are boarder up, and the ordy light that can enter trickles in through chinks up in the boards. In the cellars and the rooms throughout the houses are straw pallets and rugs upon the floor—pallets on which the lodgers take their re»t fcy day and night. There is little other furniture in the place. In some of these places dark mysteries occur. On» of the inmates—often a man who has just arrived in London from a long voy-ages-goes mad. The police are summoned, and he is secured and taken oil to an asylum. The man will never recover his reason—or if he does i| will only be at the end of long years. Drink and drugs have, it is supposed, turned him into a raving madman. Very often the man is the victim of a crime beside which murder seems almost less in its degree of turpitude. He. has taken "the mad poison." It is safer for the Oriental, who knows the secret of the maddening drug, to drive a man mad than to murder him. In that case there is the body to dispose of.

"OLD MOTHER CRAY," THE FORTUNE-MAKER. The sailor is often a superstitious person, and in most of'the riverside districts wlie.ro lie lodges the woman fortuneteller does a big business. Some of these WO7HPH have weird reputations in the matter of being able to fortell fortune or disaster on a voyage. They also frequently give their eonsnltors advice in their love affairs. One of these fortune-tellers, a woman named Cray, who died « few years back, was noted for her marvellous powers of seeing the future. She did a large business in selling charms which would enable the wearer to escape the terrible disasters that were otherwise in store for him. Her knowledge of the past, too. was wonderful. Sailors who (locked to her were informed where they had come from and what their last voyage had been like. For some days "Mother Cray" was seen by no one. and the door of the filthy hovel in which she lived remained closed. At last the place was broken into. Stretched upon the floor of the front room the searchers came on the body of the old woman. She had been dead some days. "Old Mother Cray" turned out to be a man in disguise. Concealed under loose boards and in nooks and corners of the filthy rooms were found gold, notes and jewels worth several hundred pounds. Who "Old Mother Cray" was was never discovered.

K-M-.M WITH j. lUDDKX DEATH TKAP. What terrible deeds have been f.-om-milteil in si urn! o!' tin- old waterside houses at Wapping! A year or two hack tin' tenant of one of the olil houses abutting mi (lie river made ;i strange discovery. The flooring in a. corner of one of the rooms on the ground lloor appeared to he giving way. Examining it, the tenant was amazed to lind that there was a square patch that was loose. A wooden support beneath it had given way. That part of the door was a concealed flap working on hinges, and when the flap was thrown back, the man looked down into a dark, yawning chasm of water beneath it. An examination showed that the supports of the (lap could be withdrawn by means of a chain passing beneath the floor and attached to a lever under the boards of a lloor of an adjoining room. A person in the next room could, by pulling the lever, cause the flap to drop and precipitate anyone standing or lying on it into the water below.

(RIME-STAKED TREASURE AXD BARGAIN-SEEKERS.

[ Receivers of goods evilly come by were ! cummtiii in Rotherhithe, Shadwell and i Limehouse. The, sailor who had come from foreign parts had often strange booty to dispose of —booty that he i wished to sell with no questions asked. The fact that sailors have bargains to dispose of once tempted many persons' with money to these haunts to see what they could pick up. They were quickly -recognised by the regular practitioners, and traps were laid for them. The bogus sailor with bogus treasure he wished secretly to dispose of awaited them, and the amateur receiver often found himself lured into some trap from which he was only allowed to escape by parting with all the money he had about him. Robbed of his money, and not daring to complain to the police, he learnt that there are some forms of crime with which it is dangerous to meddle. RIPPLES. Detective disguised as sailors are common in the waterside districts of the Thames. i Waterloo Bridge is known as the "Bridge of Sighs," more suicide having taken place from it than from any other bridge of the Thames. Every man in the Thames Police has to bo an accomplished swimmer, and to be acquainted with the best mode of l dealing with persons apparently drowned. The rescues effected by theih dn a twelve-month sometimes number as many as eighty. ) The vigilance of the Customs House oflicers had led to smuggling becoming anything but a paying practice. Sometimes, however, the officers swoop down upon a big find, as they did a short time back when they seized 3281bs of tobacco in a vessel disguised as "phosphate of chalk." r