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Chris Scott
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Chris
Post Number: 1212
Registered: 4-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, May 18, 2004 - 9:41 am: |       |
Polydore De Keyser was Lord Mayor of London from November 1887 to November 1888. The Lord Mayor's show that took place on the day of the Kelly murder marked the inauguration of his successor, James Whitehead. De Keyser while in Brussels was interviewed by a Belgian newspaper, the Indépendence Belge, and the main points of this interview were published on 9 October 1888 by the Pall Mall Gazette as below:
Pall Mall Gazette (London)
9 October 1888
THE LORD MAYOR ON THE MURDERS
AN INTERVIEW WITH MR. DE KEYSER AT BRUSSELS
The editor of the Independance Belge has had an interview at Brussels with Lord Mayor De Keyser, and the conversation naturally turned on the murder mania in London. As the "first magistrate of the City" the Lord Mayor was invited to give his theory on the crimes. The Independance Belge summarises the Lord Mayor's answers as follows:-
THE MANIAC THEORY
The theories propounded on the sunject of the character and motive of the murderer made Mr. De Keyser shrug his shoulders. He does not believe either in the enraged moralist theory, or the coroner's theory, or the scientific Socialist theory. In his opinion the murderer is simply a maniac; a kind of human mad dog - a proper subject for M. Pasteur - a man whose whole physical and intellectual being is so set on the single object of his monomania that he has been able to evade all the professional and amateur detectives.
WHEN AND HOW THE MURDERER WILL BE FOUND
"Will he finally be caught?" asked the interviewer. "Yes," replied the Lord Mayor, "he will be caught when he commits his next crime." A whole army of bloodhounds (metaphorical and literal) will be on his track the moment he draws blood again. If he does not begin again, it is a corpse - the corpse of a suicide - that will ultimately be found. With a whole community against him, he cannot long escape.
WHY THE REWARD WAS OFFERED
On the subject of the reward, the Lord Mayor is reported as saying that it was meant more for show than for use. A reward would only discover the murderer if he had accomplices; and the Lord Mayor does not believe he has any. Sometimes, too, rewards do more harm than good, by creating crime. But the Lord Mayor felt compelled to offer the reward in order to appease popular clamour. As the offer will cost nothing, it would have been absurd not to make it.
LONDON THE HEADQUARTERS OF CRIME
As for the general excitement about the murders, the Lord Mayor treated it very lightly. How could London expect, he said, to be the centre of eveything else, and not also of crime? There is no hiding place from justice so secure as the vast city which keeps secrets so well.
"But why not increase your police?" asked the editor. "Why should we?" replied the Lord Mayor. "It would cost much money; and the taxpayer would resent it. Besides, the English do not like to meet authority in uniform at every turn. It would offend their instincts of liberty."
"And the liberty of the criminals, I suppose?" asked the sarcastic editor.
"But the liberty of private individuals also," rejoined the Lord Mayor, "and of individual energy."
Finally, the Lord Mayor is reported to have described the efforts to purify the slums as a piece of utopianism. The people are, he said, "miserable by taste and idlers by profession." And as for the philanthropists, who are so exceptionally pushing just now, Lord Mayor De Keyser ascribes their zeal to the fact that many of them are currying favour with a view to the approaching County Council elections. With these digs all round at the foreign community in which Lord Mayor De Keyser has been good enough to take up his abode, the interview appears to have been terminated.
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Andrew Spallek
Chief Inspector
Username: Aspallek
Post Number: 513
Registered: 5-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, May 18, 2004 - 10:25 am: | |
"And the liberty of the criminals, I suppose?" asked the sarcastic editor.
"But the liberty of private individuals also," rejoined the Lord Mayor, "and of individual energy."
Interesting that the same debate is going on today regarding terrorism: the right individual liberty of the law abiding citizen vs. the risk of giving free reign to the criminal.
Andy S.
(Message edited by aspallek on May 18, 2004) |
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