Property Crime in London, 1850–Present by Willian M. Meier

Author:Willian M. Meier
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: 2010-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

APPEARANCE AND DISAPPEARANCE

Yet because confidence tricksters worked face-to-face with their victims, often over the course of days, weeks, and even months, they were especially liable to being identified (in contrast to the unseen burglar or shoplifter, or the robber who was seen for a few seconds). Therefore, the creation of the Illustrated Circular in 1935 as a codification of the physical attributes of known tricksters signaled a new approach to the policing of these expert criminals. Formerly, detectives could only lay their hands on a trickster with the cooperation of the victim—and as we have seen, the con’s methods were calculated to prevent the victim from remaining around. But detectives such as Charles Leach and Percy Smith began to specialize in fighting this type of crime and took a more active approach in rounding up tricksters. Armed with the Illustrated Circular and its portraits of known criminals, detectives could keep suspects under surveillance and arrest them for loitering with intent to commit a confidence trick.

For example, Detective Constable Frederick Fairchild recognized by sight several tricksters—Richard Wade, Thomas Burke, and William Lucas—who several times had tried to work the Hot Seat on foreigners. Because Fairchild recognized the men as known tricksters, he shadowed them and listened to their conversations along with one of the potential victims. When Fairchild heard Burke tell one man, “I am lucky. I have been left a fortune,” he knew that the Hot Seat was being prepared, and he arrested the three men as suspected persons loitering with intent to commit a confidence trick.86 In this case Fairchild’s facial recognition of the tricksters enabled him to monitor these criminals in a preventive rather than a reactive manner.

Detectives studied a great many details about tricksters’ appearance from the descriptions and images in the Illustrated Circular. We learn that the con man John William Wood had “prominent ears and speaks with Scottish accent.”87 Sidney “Pretty Sid” Grant stood five feet, eleven inches tall, with a “fresh” complexion, dark brown hair, and blue eyes; he “usually wears a small brown moustache.”88 Norman Brady displayed a gaggle of tattoos—a ship, rising sun, eagle, snake, stork, swallow, dragon, and dagger—on his right and left forearms.89 The expert cardsharper Charles “Wag” Dunbar had a tattoo of a ship and the phrase “Homeward Bound” on the back of his left hand.90 The Australian native James “Snowy Ryan” Hartley wore a tattoo of the Union Jack on his right forearm.91 George Patterson had “bulging eyes, walks with slight stoop, and has several gold filled teeth.”92 Charles Morton “stoops slightly, and has the appearance of a heavy drinker.”93 The circular even took note of such minutiae as the broken first joint of the second finger on the right hand of Edward Brown.94

And yet, already at the time of its publication in 1935, the Illustrated Circular documented a passing phenomenon. The process through which a new criminal plutocracy of share-pushers, bogus company promoters, and long-firm fraudsters replaced the fading confidence trickster was complete by the end of the Second World War.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.