Mr Briggs' Hat: The True Story of a Victorian Railway Murder Read Online Free Page A

to the last exactly as an innocent man might be supposed to act.
    Quiet and respectful, Müller’s character was particularly at odds with the bravado of Matthews and it was said that Müller had complained to his German-speaking police guard about the cab driver’s evidence at Bow Street that week. He was apparently bitter about his old friend’s falseness, claiming that Matthews knew very well that the hat he bought for Müller was worn out and that one side of its brim had been broken the last time the two men met. It was even reported that Müller had once threatened to have one of Matthews’ brothers-in-law arrested and thatMatthews’ evidence was thus born of spite. Most exercising was a rumour that the solicitor for the defence is in possession of certain facts which are expected to materially shake the testimony given by Matthews .
    *
    A dense fog hung low over London on Monday morning as Müller was removed from his cell in Clerkenwell to a police van, accompanied by Detective Inspector Tanner and Inspector Kerressey. Extra police had been mustered to keep the approach roads to the Hackney town hall clear. Six separate mounted patrols diverted and managed the suburban traffic. Thirty constables guarded the entrance to the main building; twenty more were inside and fifty police patrolled the area around Hackney Station, within 150 yards of the hall. By half-past seven, all two hundred places in the inquest room were occupied and the corridors and staircases were crammed, while outside the police struggled to maintain an access route. At eight o’clock Müller arrived under police guard; the witnesses were ordered into an adjoining room, and the questions began. George Blyth was called first, and then his wife Ellen. Eliza Matthews spoke plainly about Müller’s visit to her on Monday 11 July and the circumstances surrounding their possession of the cardboard box from Death’s shop. John Hoffa, John Death and the Repschs identified the prisoner. Then a juryman asked Müller to put on the crushed hat found in carriage 69. Tanner stood to hand it to him and he pulled it onto his head.
    There was a flurry in the court as it fitted.
    After Humphreys reimposed silence on the room, Thomas Lee’s deposition was read to the jury and Müller’s solicitor Thomas Beard laboured over the evidence regarding the two men seen in Briggs’ compartment at Bow Station on the night of the murder. Is the prisoner one of them? … Is he like the man or not? … Will you not swear the prisoner is the man? he askedrepeatedly. Over and over again Thomas Lee simply answered, I cannot so swear .
    Lee’s refusal to put Müller in the train with Briggs that night went some way to redressing the advantage lost as Müller stood before the court with the broken Walker hat sitting comfortably on his head. Rising swiftly, Hardinge Giffard wrested back the advantage: under fire from his interrogation, Lee let slip that he was not, after all, entirely sure that either of the men he saw had whiskers. A rippling Oh! swept through the court.
    Reprising the post-mortem results and directing the jury that they must consider only the material facts presented before them, Humphreys advised them that Thomas Briggs had certainly been robbed and that his death was the result of malice. He reminded them that a hat presumed to be Müller’s had been left in the compartment while Mr Briggs’ hat had disappeared, later to be found on the prisoner. The jury’s duty was to consider, on the basis of the evidence, whether a crime had been committed. Further, if they concluded it likely that Müller had played any part in the murder of Mr Briggs then they must return the inquest’s verdict of wilful murder against him. The jury retired.
    Twenty minutes passed before they returned, preceded by the coroner. They found that the deceased died from the effects of foul violence administered in the railway carriage on the 9th July and we find that Franz Müller is