Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #110737 in Books
• Published on: 1999-11-04
• Format: Abridged
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 264 pages

Synopsis
The foggy streets of Edwardian London were alive with cads, swindlers, ladies of dubious reputation and all manner of lowlife who fed on human frailty. In 1895, Adolph Beck was arrested and convicted of the crimes of deception and larceny. Using the alias Lord Winton de Willoughby, he had entered into the apartments of several ladies, some of whom preferred, for obvious reasons, not to give their names. The ladies gave evidence, as did a handwriting expert, and Mr. Beck was imprisoned. But an utterly bizarre sequence of events culminated in a judge declaring that, since he could himself determine perfectly whether or not the accused is of the criminal classes, juries should never be allowed to decide the outcome of a trial. The account given here is of one of the strangest true stories in British legal history.

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Customer Reviews

Stellar book in a remarkable series
This fascinating documentary history is one of the stellar debut volumes in the Stationery Office series reprinting official British Government reports on divers crimes and disasters. (Other volumes treat of the Titanic sinking, the outbreak of war with Germany in 1939,the Bethnal Green tragedy, the Nuremberg war crimes trials, the 1949 Evans murders at Rillington Place, etc.) Many of the actual documents in the Beck case (affidavits, court testimony, correspondence, handwriting analysis) amplify the almost incredible narrative in telling ways. In 1877, a London man was arrested,tried and imprisoned for a term of five years. His peculiar crime was a particularly cruel confidence game practiced on women of the demimonde, in which he ingratiated himself as a titled noble wishing to "set them up" in his household. After giving them worthless cheques, the "nobleman" would abscond with their jewelry (borrowed for "sizing")and, often, even a few shillings for carfare. Twenty years later, a man calling himself Adolf Beck was arrested in London for practicing the same confidence game, down to the last detail of manner, dress and false name. Beck was convicted and sentenced to five years on the testimony of his wronged female victions--just as the man of 1877 had been. But were they the same man? And if not, which one of them was the guilty party? In 1904, Beck was once again arrested for the same offence. While he was incarcerated, however, another man was arrested for the same crime and British lawmen began to entertain the dreadful notion that Adolf Beck was the wrong man, after all. This is an remarkable story, deftly told by the documents in the case themselves. I would also highly recommend "Rillington Place" in the same series for those with less squeamish sensibilities. Let us hope this true-crime/disaster series finds its deserved public.