SOME FAMOUS CRIMES

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 118, 5 October 1912, Page 9

SOME FAMOUS CRIMES

UNCLAIMED REWARDS. The rewards oll'ered for I lie arrest ol criminals to-day compare quite favorably with those of the halcyon days when prices were put on the heads of highwaymen and sheep-stealers, and police work was paid for as piecework done by amateurs. Old records show that £4O or £SO was a very good sum for a much wanted mail. It is true that in one year not long before the advent of the police force Parliament paid £90,000 in blood money,

but that was because the work was done in an expensive way rather than because the rates in individual eaSes were particularly Wgh. When a reward of £I9OO was offered in 1810 for information concerning the murder Of Benjamin Bathurst, an English envoy of the Court of Vienna, who was supposed to have been killed for his papers, it was large enough to create a sensation on both sides of the Channel.

It was never claimed. Bathurst was starting from an inn at Perleberg, on the way from Hamburg to Berlin, where he had paused for refreshment, and stepped round ;to the front of the horses before entering the coach. From that moment he disappeared. His pantaloons, riddled with bullets, were afterwards found, with one of his letters in the pockets, and last year, more than a hundred years afterwards, a skeleton was unearthed not far from the scene of the disappearance, which is- believed to have been that of Bathurst. The crime, if crime there was, remains still unexplained. GIFT OF A FREE PARDON.

The date of the announcement ol the reward for information which would lead to the conviction of the murderers of Burke and Cavendish was, May 8, 1882, two'days after the crime. A free pardon was offered to any person concerned in the plot who was not the actual murderer, as well as protection "in any part of her Majestys' dominions." "Clues" poured in at once from all points of the compass, and twenty-one suspects were arrested in the course of six months. But not until February in the following year did the authorities obtain the information which led to the conviction of Brady, Curley, Fagan and Kelly (who were all executed), and the arrests speedily followed.

In 1888 the various rewards offered for the capture of Jack the Ripper totalled £2OOO. The city authorities offered £SOO, two newspapers £4OO, the Vigilance Committee ' £IOO, Sir Samuel Montague £IOO, and Stock Exchange members the balance. But the crimes continued, and the money went unclaimed.

The worth of a clue to "Peter the Painter," of Fritz Vaars, and others associated in the Houndaditch murders in 1910 was assessed at £SOO, but this likewise was never paid, the police themselves finding the clue which led them to account for the men who "fell in the siege of Sidney street.

FAMOUS JEWEL ROBBERIES RECALLED.

In May, 1905, £IOOO was offered in an advertisement in the Daily Mail in connection with the disappearance of three diamonds from the premises of Messrs Tiffany in New York. In J. 907 the Dublin Castle authorities offered a similar amount for the recovery of the missing regalia of St. Patrick, worth over £30,000 in all, stolen from the Castle safe. Mr. Wertheimer offered £IOOO, too, after the burglary at his house in the same year, when his masterpieces and gold snuff-boxes were stolen, with other valuable, to the worth of £70,000. Thanks to the vigilance of Scotland Yard, most of the Wertheimer treasures were recovered, and the offenders sent to prison.