Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 16.pdf/737

 680

cidence the Mr. Forrest Fulton who had been prosecuting counsel when John Smith was convicted was now Sir Forrest Fulton, and the judge before whom Beck was tried. The prosecution made no attempt to identify Beck as John Smith. On the contrary Sparrell was not called as a witness, and all evi dence on this point was excluded, the Judge ruling that "the question whether the priso ner was or was not the man convicted in 1877 was not admissible." This ruling was doubtless right although it was of the most fatal consequence to Adolf Beck, for the reason that he had an alibi which would have cleared him of the 1877 charge, so that if the prosecution had tried to show his identity with Smith he would have broken down their case, for three highly respectable witnesses, one of them a member of the royal house hold of the King of Denmark, came forward prepared to swear that Beck was in Peru in 1880, at the very time when Smith was serv ing his sentence of penal servitude. A num ber of witnesses swore that he was the per son who had robbed them, and upon this evi dence he was convicted and sentenced to five years' penal servitude. Unfortunately this was not all, for the prison authorities, al though there had not been a scintilla of evi dence at the trial to show that Beck and John Smith were the same person, marked Beck's clothing with the letters "D. W." the former signifying "Convicted in 1877" and the latter "Convicted in 1896." It has been justly ob served that the fact that the Court should have refused to raise the question whether he was Smith or not and that he should then have been sent to prison as identical with Smith, ie one of the strongest points in the whole case. While serving his term of penal servitude, Beck petitioned the Home Secretary several times, and, at last happening to hear that Smith was a Jew, and that the body marks kept by the police proved this, he pointed

out that he was not a Jew, and that the police knew it. This was conclusive even to the au thorities, who thereupon took a most extra ordinary course. They directed that the letter "D'' should be removed from his prison clothes, but peremptorily refused to reopen the question of his guilt or innocence, or to make any inquiries as to his identity. He was officially declared not to be Smith, but to be guilty of a series of crimes the exact duplicate of Smith-crimes of so unique a character that it is a tax upon human cred ulity to believe that the person who was guilty of those committed in 1877 was not guilty of those committed in 1896. Adolf Beck came out of prison in 1900 or 1901, naturally, much broken in health and spirits, and financially and socially a ruined man. He was by profession a mining engi neer and had theretofore held an excellent position and had accumulated property worth a few thousand pounds, which, if he had been able to manage it personally, might have yielded a large fortune. Among other things he owned shares in some mining ven tures upon which calls were made while he was in prison, and which were forfeited for non-payment of the calls. He lived quietly after his release, working to get his affairs to order again and never losing the hope that his name would be cleared. But a few months ago a further extraordinary thing happened. The same crimes again began to be perpe trated upon women of the same class, and again Beck was arrested. Again women came forward to swear that he was the man who had accosted them and "borrowed" their rings, and again he was convictedat the Old Bailey, this time before Mr. Justice Grantham, who, upon the reserved protest of Beck to the authorities that he was the victim of mistaken identity, wrote a letter saying he agreed with the verdict, but he considerately reserved sentence until the next term of court, and in the interval the