Murder on the Victorian Railway

November 1864, London's most notorious prison.

Inside, at the far end of the Dead Man's Walk...

..Franz Muller, a 24-year-old German immigrant,

was being readied for the scaffold.

It was a scene that gave a thorough wrench to my nerves.

It was horrid.

Muller had been convicted of a crime that shook Victorian Britain

to the core - the first murder on a train.

This was a crime which aroused an almost

instinctive spirit of vengeance.

This one act of extreme violence had brought to the surface the anxieties

Victorians had about the iron roads spreading across the land.

Muller had come to personify all that seemed

dangerous about the new world of steam and speed.

But was he even guilty?

I knew Mr Muller for about six months. He was kind.

That was how Franz was.

We now reopen the railway murder case,

an investigation which becomes a journey into the Victorian mind

at the dawn of the railway age.

21st-century London,

its streets shiny with glass and steel.

Also a city where the past is everywhere.

This film brings Victorian London back to life.

We recreate documents and images from the first railway murder.

We meet the people who became caught up in this sensational crime.

The words they speak are taken from court transcripts,

letters and reportage, their own testimony

and that of other 19th-century witnesses.

Frederick Wicks was then a young journalist.

His search for the truth inspired him

to follow this story right to the end.

Now, Wicks is our guide,

helping us to travel from the present day back to the 1800s.

STEAM TRAIN WHISTLES

As news of the murder spread, a feverish fear emerged.

It was said that no-one knew when they opened a carriage door

that they might not find blood on the cushion,

that not a parent would entrust his daughter to the train

without a horrid anxiety.

That not a traveller took his seat

without feeling how he runs his chance.

DOG BARKS

Our investigation begins in Hackney, East London.

In the 19th century, a railway ran between this terrace

and the main road behind.

In 1864, on Saturday 9th July, at 10:10pm,

the crime was first discovered right here,

as train driver Alfred Ekin later testified.

I was on me way and my attention was caught by something on the line.

I stopped the engine as soon as possible,

and backed to the spot where the body was lying.

He was lying on 'is back,

with 'is head towards Hackney.

He was alive...

at the time.

Victorian train drivers were the aristocrats of the

new steam-powered world. Railwaymen like Ekin were also resourceful.

The victim was quickly moved to the nearest available shelter.

I found four or five people to help carry the...

the body. Several other persons also came to help

besides those who carried the body.

I suppose there must have been a dozen altogether.

The body was carried to the public house,

the bottom of the railway embankment.

Then called the Mitford Castle,

the pub has since been renamed and remodelled.

But behind the bar is a small room that has been left as it was

150 years ago.

He was lying on the table. I made an examination.

His shirt was rumpled and his hat was gone.

It was clear that the unfortunate man's skull was broken,

and he had a severe wound on the side of his head.

He was still living, but groaning. He was perfectly unconscious.

-Did you send for help?

-A medical man was sent for.

Nobody knew who the body was, nor where he'd come from.

Just up the line at Hackney Station,

the Victorian tracks are still in use.

Here, another discovery was made at the same time as

the bloodied body was found on the tracks.

A suburban train pulled in to Hackney Station.

One of the carriages was empty but stained with blood.

From the appearance of the compartment, there had been

a foul crime, there could be no doubt.

What conclusion was drawn from the blood-stained carriage

when put together with the body that Ekin found?

The unfortunate victim had been assaulted on the train

that had pulled in here.

He had then been thrown onto the line by his assailant,

or had struggled and fallen from the carriage in his endeavour to escape.

STEAM TRAIN PUFFS

The world's first steam locomotive had been built in Cornwall

just 60 years earlier.

The 1820s had seen the first passenger trains.

By the mid-19th century, thousands of miles of track had been laid.

Railway mania had created a network across the whole country.

Speed, once a luxury for the few, had become commonplace.

Journeys that once took days now took hours. The iron roads

were changing how people saw their world.

We feel we are approaching almost to the final extinction

of space and distance.

The surface of our country is shrivelling in size.

It will soon become not much bigger than one immense city.

In 1864, the power of steam was a thrilling phenomenon.

It was also terrifying.

In the early hours of Sunday 10th July,

the condition of the victim in Hackney worsened.

From letters found in his pocket, he was identified

as Thomas Briggs. This is his photograph.

He was nearly 70.

He had a wife and four children.

His son was also called Thomas.

I was sent for at two o'clock on Sunday morning, the 10th July.

A police constable called.

I was told my father was then gravely injured

and in the back room of a public house called the Mitford Castle.

Naturally, I went there directly.

My father was then in a state of insensibility,

covered with a blanket, his shirt open at the neck.

Despite the best efforts of a local doctor,

old Thomas Briggs died without regaining consciousness.

There was no final farewell for his son.

He was affectionate and kind,

pleasant, courteous.

A fine man, highly respected.

With Briggs's death, this was a murder,

the highest and rarest criminal incident.

Now, even this had happened in a railway carriage.

Though the railway carriage was covered with blood,

there was no forensic science to analyse the crime scene,

not even fingerprinting.

Victorian police had to work with no more evidence than what

they could see with their own eyes.

The police investigation was led by an up-and-coming detective.

Inspector Richard Tanner was described by his colleagues

as brilliant.

I went first thing to the works of the North London Line.

In a shed there was the railway carriage.

The door handle was bloody.

And what about the inside of the compartment?

A large quantity of blood appeared to have flowed profusely

from the corner seat.

There was also a small quantity of blood on the window,

two spots, like splashes.

They were about the size of sixpences,

and they contained particles of brain matter.

I inferred that Mr Briggs had been sitting in this corner,

and that he'd fallen asleep resting his head against the window,

and that he'd been struck by someone on the opposite side

to the left temple.

This murder appeared to be a sudden

and unprovoked attack on a sleeping man.

The police also had the medical notes of the doctor

who'd tried to save Briggs.

There was a jagged wound across the left ear.

In front of that ear, there was another jagged wound.

There were also two deep wounds to the temple.

The medical notes suggested to the police how Briggs had

ended up on the railway tracks.

A distinction was made between the wounds on the side of the head

and those to the temple.

Those up above were attributed to some blunt instrument.

I think that those wounds on the side of the head

were owing to a fall.

You're saying he fell, so it could have been an accident?

Appearances would indicate that the murderer took Mr Briggs

to the door and threw him out.

The first railway murder immediately captured

the imagination of the public and the press.

It was one of the foulest murders of our time.

A thrill of horror ran through the whole country

at news of this murder.

Within seconds, would have come the crushing blow.

It was the rapidity of the incident,

done on a frequented line, that caused alarm in the public mind.

We were face to face with a fact which brought home to our mind

with the utmost force the perils of railway travelling.

The new rail network meant that for the first time,

newspapers were available all over the country.

Huge press empires were being created,

and new readerships were often built on the back of true-life whodunnits.

A new reading public sprang up under the stimulus of this curiosity.

People had to have their papers and learn, even in the farthest

village of the United Kingdom, how the case was going.

The mainline terminus at the heart of the railway murder case

was the City of London's Fenchurch Street.

150 years ago, this was the start of a new suburban route

called the North London Line.

And here, old Thomas Briggs had boarded the train on which

he'd ridden to his death.

Trains leave Fenchurch Street under a covered way.

This was originally to prevent horses taking fright from the noise

and smoke of the steam engines.

Soon after emerging into the open,

the Victorian tracks turned north, away from the city.

This stretch of the line has now been ripped up.

But we do have an eyewitness account from the time.

We pass through fields to Bow Common.

We get to breathe a bit more freely.

We've left behind the smoke of the chimneys.

We find ourselves in deep countryside.

We've got extensive views right over the Hackney Marshes.

Then, on the right, rises the tower of the old Hackney church.

We have arrived at Hackney Station.

TRAIN WHISTLES

Hackney Station, where the blood-stained carriage was found,

and where Briggs would have got off the train

if he'd lived to complete his journey.

Nearby Clapton Square was the Briggs family home.

In the 1860s, this was one of the smartest addresses in East London.

My father arrived in London from Lancashire as a teenager

and got a job in a City bank.

And he'd made a success of his life in London?

He was a gentleman, greatly trusted and respected by his employers,

and held in high esteem by a large circle of friends.

From his home here in suburban Hackney, Thomas Briggs had

travelled daily to his banking job in the City.

He'd been one of London's very first railway commuters.

One aspect of Briggs's commute reveals a great deal

about life in Victorian London.

He'd always travelled first class, sitting in a private compartment

that couldn't be accessed from the rest of the train.

In the 19th century, the division between classes

was meant to be impenetrable.

The condition we live in is justly regarded as one of the strangest

ever seen in the world. We have more riches than any other nation

and London is full of wealth of every kind.

But here, there are also those steeped in the most abject poverty,

sinking into the deepest degradation.

Victorian London had no safety net.

For those who fell, it was a long way down, to a separate world.

There is no intercourse, and no sympathy between rich and poor.

They are fed by different foods,

they are ordered by different manners,

and they are as ignorant of each other's habits,

thoughts and feelings as if they were dwellers on different planets.

One can only wonder that the whole crazy fabric still hangs together.

The murder of Thomas Briggs suggested a new fear -

that the train was crashing through class barriers.

If we can be murdered thus,

travelling first class for a mere step of a journey,

we could be slain in our pew at church

or assassinated at our dinner table.

Panic was coursing along the rails.

Central London's Great Scotland Yard,

the original headquarters of the Metropolitan Police.

Here, the pressure was on to find the killer as soon as possible.

The police investigation of the crime scene

produced a promising lead.

Inspector Tanner reckoned he had the killer's hat.

We took from the train compartment a bag, a stick and a hat.

The bag and stick were both recognised as having belonged

to Mr Briggs, but the hat was not his.

Mr Briggs had been wearing a tall hat, and that had disappeared.

While this hat, found in the carriage,

is a black beaver hat, and lower in the crown than the high hat

that Mr Briggs was in the habit of wearing.

The hat's crushed, as if it's been trodden upon in a struggle.

And the conclusion appeared to me inevitable that the murderer,

in hurry and excitement, took the wrong hat.

He took Mr Briggs's hat with him and left his own.

Though inexpensive, the hat was a new look,

with a distinctive striped lining, which revealed the maker's name.

Eager to find the owner of the half-crushed beaver hat,

the police offered a huge reward.

£300 was about five years' wages for a working man.

I thought if I could discover the person who wore this hat

on that night, I'd have found the murderer.

Initially, the police's handling of the railway murder case

was highly praised.

In 1864, the Metropolitan Police's detective branch was newly

established, so their investigative skills were a novelty.

The acuteness displayed by these detectives

in following the threads of intricate plots was very striking.

But days passed by and nobody came forward to identify

the owner of the killer's hat, despite the huge reward.

It was another Victorian fashion accessory

that gave the police their next breakthrough,

a small gold stud.

It was found attached to the victim's waistcoat.

On it is a broken hook

from where Mr Briggs had once anchored his gold watch and chain.

It seems that Thomas Briggs was a victim of petty crime.

This beloved old man was killed for a watch.

At least this gave the investigation a trail to follow.

Anyone familiar with Victorian London

knew where the stolen jewellery would probably be fenced.

Cheapside.

On the edge of the City banking district,

it's now lined with glass-fronted office blocks.

150 years ago, it was full of shops.

Cheapside is one mass of life,

the greatest, busiest street in London, perhaps the world.

It is as full of activity as a nest of vipers.

There are tailors, shirt makers, tobacconists

and, above all, jewellers.

Most jewellers were also pawnbrokers.

They exchanged valuables for cash, no questions asked.

Here was the nucleus of Victorian London's black economy.

It was Tanner's job to know Cheapside

and the world that surrounded it.

He put out word of the missing watch and chain.

A Cheapside dealer,

with a not inappropriate name,

came forward with critical evidence.

Death stated a man called at his shop selling a gold watch chain.

It matched the watch chain worn by Mr Briggs

on the night of his murder.

But Death didn't know the name of the man

who fenced Briggs's watch and chain.

The jeweller could barely provide a description of him.

Tanner's foray into Cheapside had left him chasing shadows.

Briggs had now been dead for a week.

The early promise of the investigation

seemed to have led the police into a dead end.

The press grew impatient.

It was made clear that no stone could be left unturned,

no agency unemployed,

to bring to justice the perpetrator of this crime.

Then, after more days of silence,

someone came forward to claim the £300 reward.

A cab driver called Jonathan Matthews

said he knew whose hat Tanner had found.

I had a new hat,

and this friend, he saw my hat,

and said that he would like to have one like it.

Did he look at it?

Yes, he put it on his head, and said it was too small for him.

But he said he should like one like it,

and I said I would get him one if he wished it.

And you got him one?

Yes.

-At what shop?

-At the same.

What same, what shop?

At the hatter's.

Of course, but where?

Mr Walker's, Crawford Street, Marylebone.

Matthews identified the owner of the hat

as a young German immigrant called Franz Muller.

He was working for a brother-in-law and came to dinner frequently.

Twice or three times in a month.

After one of these dinners,

Muller had even given Matthews' family a portrait of himself.

Calling cards with photos on were then the latest fashion.

Tanner now had a name and a photo of a suspect.

But along with it came disappointing news.

This bird had flown.

Matthews said he didn't know where Muller was gone,

but that Muller had told Mrs Matthews, the cabman's wife,

that he was going to America.

Matthews' account didn't entirely add up.

He hadn't contacted the police until after Muller had disappeared.

Matthews later claimed

it was because he hadn't heard about the Briggs murder,

despite it having been the talk of the town for a whole week.

When you are about in your cab,

do you ever take a break?

Yes, occasionally, when I want something to eat.

Do you ever go into a public house?

Perhaps I may go there sometimes.

There's no harm in going into a public house to have a glass of ale.

Every day?

Yes, sir.

I've got to loiter about for hours, in all weathers,

so I'm none the worse for drinking a pint of beer.

Yet, you never heard about the murder of Mr Briggs?

No.

Do you take in a newspaper?

Sometimes I do.

Did you not see a paper from the 9th until the 15th of July?

Not to bring the murder into my mind, no.

They are great readers of newspapers, the cabmen,

and, in this, they devote themselves first of all to the police reports.

I find it almost impossible to believe

that Matthews is telling the truth

when he says he knew nothing whatever about this before Friday.

Matthews was a shadowy character.

In his trade, survival depended on being ruthless and cunning.

Because the economy of the Victorian streets

was an energetic free for all.

If a cabman sometimes overcharges a passenger,

a passenger quite often underpays a cabman.

I find ladies the worst passengers.

They're timid and obstinate,

and run into houses and send out their servants.

We cabmen are neither worse than anybody else, nor yet better.

There's good and bad amongst us, like in any basket of eggs.

Perhaps Matthews was just spinning a yarn to get the £300 reward.

For a Victorian cabman, money was always tight.

As to our earnings, that depends.

The best day is one with a fine morning and a wet afternoon.

The people come out and are caught.

Mind, if a day begins wet, it's bad for cabs.

Why, in the winter time, I had ten hours of it

without so much as a single oat for myself.

Reading Matthews was extremely difficult for Inspector Tanner.

Matthews's manner appeared mysterious.

There didn't appear any truth in him.

But one element of Matthews' story did ring true.

He said that Franz Muller had come to visit after the Briggs murder,

bearing a gift - a decorative box from Death, the jeweller.

This linked the young German to the stolen watch and chain.

So Tanner felt there had to be something in the cabman's story.

The police soon established

that Muller had boarded a ship called the Victoria.

Part of the fleet that crossed the Atlantic

carrying emigrants from Europe

hoping to make a fresh start in New York.

I reported to the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police,

my ultimate superior,

that Muller was indeed a suspect.

Then, I left Euston Station for Liverpool.

I sailed from there to New York.

We were able to publish the gratifying intelligence

that the police were, beyond any doubt,

on the track of the murderer of Mr Briggs.

It took a load of apprehension off a lot of minds.

Although he had a head start,

Muller's ship, the Victoria, was wind-powered

and would take over a month to reach America.

He was about to be caught up by the Industrial Revolution.

By 1864, there were steam-powered ships,

which crossed the Atlantic

in a fraction of the time it took a sailing ship.

Though he'd left after Muller,

Tanner steamed into New York weeks before him.

Now, Tanner lay in wait for his prey.

Muller made many mistakes.

But his greatest was taking passage on a sailing ship.

Even he must have known

that if the police had alighted on the broad trail he'd left behind,

that steam would frustrate his escape.

Back in London, Muller, up till now an enigma,

was becoming better known.

A report sent to the Yard by the police in Germany

states, "Reflecting on his character and conduct,

"nothing whatever has transpired to his disadvantage."

But after coming to Britain,

Muller slid almost to the bottom

of Victorian London's steep social pyramid.

It seems that Muller was apprenticed as a gunsmith in his native country.

He came over to England

about two years before the murder of Mr Briggs

and, failing to find work as a gunsmith, he'd turned tailor.

Johan Hoffa was also a German immigrant.

He'd once worked alongside Muller,

and so was interviewed by the police.

A German tailor's testimony

gives us a glimpse of the life that Muller endured

in what were unforgiving streets.

The German tailors in the eastern part of London

are not that well-off.

It's a piece-work system in the clothing factories,

and production is incredibly cheap.

We make these coats for eight pence each.

Trousers and waistcoats are made for three to four pence.

I very often have to work all night, but slave as hard as I might

I never can get out of debt.

What is to become of a society

in which it is not possible for the hard-working worker

to support himself, let alone a family?

It's not surprising

that people who live such an existence despair of their future.

You talk of despair.

Might this have driven Franz Muller to murder?

Franz was always very well conducted, in every respect.

I never heard of him getting into rows or committing any assaults.

He was kind.

Across the Atlantic, Muller breezed into New York harbour,

on the 25th August.

He'd no idea the police were lying in wait for him.

I found Muller on board the Victoria.

I remember he said to me, "What's the matter?"

And then what?

The American police officer I was with said,

"You are charged with the murder of Mr Briggs."

And I followed up with, "Yes, on the North London Railway,

"between Hackney and Bow, on the 9th of July."

Muller said, "I never was on that line."

Then, I took possession of the effects of the prisoner.

In particular, I took hold of a hat.

I asked Muller, "Is this your hat?"

He said, "Yes."

This is the hat.

It was not a hat a poor tailor would wear,

but a gentleman's topper made from silk.

What's more, it tied Muller

even closer to the crime scene.

The topper matched the description

of the one taken from Briggs

on the night of his murder.

I asked him, "How long have you possessed it?"

He said, "About 12 months."

What did you say in reply?

I told him I should have to hold him as a prisoner.

The hat from the crime scene had made Muller a police suspect.

The hat in his luggage seemed to confirm his guilt

in the public mind.

The hat of the murdered man!

If it was true that the hat of the murdered man

had actually been found on the prisoner's person,

it would have been idle

to entertain any doubt as to his criminality.

So far as anything that is done in secret can be certain,

we were certain that Muller committed this crime.

Tanner and Muller embarked for home together on an ocean liner.

The two men shared quarters,

and seem to have got to know each other on the 15-day passage.

I told him that it was usual

to place prisoners of his class in irons,

but that I didn't wish to put him to any discomfort.

If, therefore, he would promise to comply with my requests,

I should not iron him.

I supplied him with books to pass away the time.

I lent him first Mr Dickens' hilarious Pickwick Papers.

Then, two volumes of David Copperfield.

Muller behaved himself well.

He could not have been a better-conducted prisoner.

Tanner and Muller's ship docked at Liverpool,

from where they took the train south.

Muller's imminent arrival at London's Euston Station

was somehow discovered beforehand.

A mob turned out to greet the young German.

Muller's arrival here was a tumult.

Two months before,

there had been scarcely a human being in our vast metropolis more unknown

than this waif and stray from a foreign land.

Poor Muller.

To wake up one morning and find oneself famous.

By strange fortune, this is what befell this obscure German tailor.

This was also the first time the press set their eyes on Muller.

A dull-looking young man

with a mouth like a slit cut into wood

and eyes sunk deep under a low forehead.

On 17th September, two months after the murder of Thomas Briggs,

Franz Muller was back in London under arrest.

This was the end of Inspector Tanner's involvement

in the first railway murder.

It seemed that the case was closed.

We didn't know the precise circumstances of the deed,

but that Franz Muller committed it

was more certain than any human conclusion can be.

These London backstreets were where Muller was imprisoned

while he awaited his trial.

It was scheduled for a month after his return.

Though a pariah to many,

Muller's predicament meant he did attract some supporters.

I considered Mr Muller to be innocent of the crime

and resolved to save no trouble or expense

to prove him being not guilty.

Gottfried Kinkel was another German immigrant.

He too had done time.

He'd been imprisoned in his home country

for rebelling against Germany's autocratic rulers.

He'd escaped and had fled to Britain,

where he'd become as well known as his fellow radical Karl Marx.

Kinkel now became a leading figure

in a group of influential Germans who tried to help Muller.

I first met Muller in here.

I explained that we were undertaking his defence, that he had friends.

When I told him a change of clothes had been provided for him,

his lips quivered forth an expression of thanks

as his eyes filled with tears.

Things were very bad for him.

Muller's whole demeanour was not that of a man

who is guilty of murder.

His natural kindliness of temper never was seen to change.

Yet, it was supposed that this poor tailor

got into a first-class carriage

able to murder or rob someone in a minute or two.

Such a hypothesis was fallacious.

Muller's German supporters claimed the case against him

was based on prejudice.

Germans had initially been welcomed to Britain.

By the 1860s, they were the second largest immigrant group in London.

But in February 1864,

Denmark, a British ally,

had been invaded by Germany.

Then, attitudes had changed.

Muller was a German.

And Englishmen of those days

had been reading often enough in their papers

that the war that we were carrying on was nothing better than burglary.

So a German, in English eyes, was more likely to be a robber than not.

Muller's bad character was by now deeply etched into the public mind.

Calling the case against him "anti-German prejudice"

appears to have backfired.

With extraordinary obtuseness of feeling,

Muller's defence was treated

as one in which German honour was also on trial.

And every sensible unprejudiced man,

be he a foreigner or an Englishman,

must have considered this as impertinence.

If some of the Germans residing in England were not happy with that,

they had much better stay at home.

On 27th October, three months after Briggs was killed,

Franz Muller stood trial for the first railway murder

at London's Old Bailey,

the most famous criminal court in Britain.

A Victorian courtroom contained little that looks like justice

to 21st-century eyes.

In the 1860s, someone accused of murder wasn't allowed

to say a word in their own defence other than to enter their plea.

Muller's plea was not guilty.

And the punishment Muller faced if convicted was death by hanging,

in public.

If ever there are cases

in which care and caution need to be exercised,

it's cases like this was,

where life or death hung upon the balance.

The jury had the transcendent power

to bid that young man to live or to die.

John Parry was Muller's lawyer.

He'd made a name for himself by winning sensational trials.

So Gottfried Kinkel had raised the money to pay Parry to defend Muller.

In court, Parry tore into the case against the young tailor.

The prosecution relied mainly

upon three pieces of evidence.

The watch and chain,

exchanged at Mr Death's.

The hat found in the railway carriage.

Next, upon the hat found with the prisoner.

Now,

as regard the watch and chain,

Muller never denied having been at Mr Death's.

But it does not follow he knew anything of the murder.

He said he purchased those articles at the docks.

Either the murderer or an agent of the murderer

must have sold them to him.

And the hat that is supposed to belong to Mr Briggs...

Well, there are thousands just like it at the second-hand market.

Muller said he'd had his 12 months.

As regard the hat found in the railway carriage,

Matthews' evidence was entirely unreliable.

Does anyone believe he never heard of the murder for a week

after it was in the newspapers?

Matthews was evidently actuated by a desire to obtain the reward.

That has animated his whole conduct.

The attempt to destroy the prosecution case

hinged on Matthews becoming the villain of this story.

Parry revealed to the jury that the cabman had debts

and had done time for theft.

It was a catastrophic miscalculation of the public mood.

I should be very wicked if I was not to admit

that suspicion has pointed towards Matthews.

But I should be very sorry to see him charged

with being a party to the murder.

What is the imputation against Matthews?

What is the object of advertising a reward

if you do not want anyone to be influenced by them?

And if you are to disbelieve

every man who gives evidence because of a reward,

at once and for ever cease to give rewards

for the purpose of detecting great offences.

Matthews was regarded as a lovable rogue.

His testimony was accepted, and the case against Muller remained strong.

So Parry played his trump card -

an alibi for Muller.

Camberwell, in south London,

was miles away from the scene of the attack on Briggs.

Here, just off Vassall Road,

where there is still a terrace of Victorian cottages,

Muller was seen just minutes before the murder.

Did you know Mr Muller?

Yes. I met him a twelvemonth before.

Did you see him often?

He asks, "Did you see him often?"

Yes. Yes.

Mary Ann Eldred, a young deaf woman, was Muller's sweetheart.

She testified along with her landlady, Elizabeth Jones.

When was the last time you saw him...before the 9th of July?

He says, "When was the last time..."

I met him on the Saturday preceding the 9th of July, in Cheapside.

And did you see him on the 9th?

The night that Thomas Briggs was murdered?

I went out at nine o'clock.

Mary Ann wasn't at home.

She had gone out at nine o'clock,

and she'd been out about half an hour.

Muller called to see her and found she wasn't at home.

He stayed talking with me about five or ten minutes at the door.

I'm quite sure it was as much as half past nine o'clock.

He then left.

Elizabeth Jones's testimony put Muller in south London

only a few minutes before he was alleged to be killing Thomas Briggs

in a train on the North London Line.

I am quite sure it was Saturday evening, the 9th of July,

about half past nine, that I saw that young man.

I thought his name was Miller,

and I used to call him the little Frenchman.

I didn't know he was a German.

Mary Ann used to say that he was a German,

but I used to call him the little Frenchman.

Parry's unveiling of an alibi

was the first glimmer of hope for Muller in many weeks.

But under cross-examination,

another story emerged from behind this tale

of a missed rendezvous with a sweetheart.

Parry's key witness was exposed as a prostitute.

Mary Ann Eldred was what is called an unfortunate girl.

But moral indignation ought not to press too heavily on her head.

We all know well what is going on in all the classes,

from the highest to the lowest.

Victorian London's sex industry was vast.

There were an estimated 55,000 prostitutes,

about one for every 20 adult men.

What drove many women into prostitution was economic necessity.

I had worked at shirt making,

the fine full-fronted white shirts.

I got tuppence each for them.

By working from five o'clock in the morning till midnight each night,

I was able to do seven in the week.

This brought me to a profit of 15 pence.

It stands to reason that no-one can live, pay rent, and find clothes

upon 15 pence a week.

So I was forced to go out at night to make my living.

I can and I will solemnly state that it was the smallness of the price

for my labour that drove me to prostitution for a living.

It's cruel to call them prostitutes.

I know how horrible all this is.

In my heart, I hate it,

my whole nature rebels against it.

And no-one but God...

knows how I struggle to give it up.

Mary Ann Eldred's admission of prostitution was devastating

for the reputation of Elizabeth Jones.

It became clear that Jones was no ordinary landlady,

but was running a house of ill repute.

Mary Ann Eldred...

It was difficult to see her without feeling some compassion

for the situation of life that she was in.

But Mrs Jones...

Someone who is living off the profits of such a calling

is about the most infamous of womankind.

In court, the judge advised the jury

that they shouldn't trust Jones's testimony.

Muller's alibi was in tatters.

The girl Eldred evidently did her best

to save the life of the young man.

And as she left the court,

Muller looked at her with an expression of sincere gratitude.

The trial lasted just three days.

The verdict of the jury

was that Muller was guilty of murdering Thomas Briggs.

The judge passed a sentence of death by hanging.

Gottfried Kinkel refused to give up the fight for Franz Muller.

A petition was organised

and sent to the Home Secretary begging for mercy.

A delegation of Germans went to the Briggs home in Hackney.

It was hoped that if the victim's family signed the petition,

Muller's death sentence would be overruled.

Refused entry, the Germans persisted.

They waited on the doorstep for 45 minutes.

You cannot doubt that the widow and children of a murdered man

would have been the last to wish to see an innocent man punished.

But I put it to you

we should have been spared so indelicate and ill-timed an appeal.

It was foolish, unwarranted and cruel.

The Briggs family refused to meet the Germans.

And the Home Secretary turned down Kinkel's appeal.

Nothing could now save Muller from the rope.

What had begun in death, by the law which society these days maintains,

also ended in death.

Early on the morning of 14th November,

three months after the death of Thomas Briggs,

Franz Muller was prepared for his execution.

Watched closely by the journalist Frederick Wicks.

I remember it all as if it had occurred last week.

And I believe I shall never forget it.

The hangman was as quick in his movements as he was noiseless.

Muller had his hands down at his sides in the most natural manner,

and in this position they were strapped down

by a pair of leather handcuffs.

The hangman then removed Muller's collar.

With gruesome delicacy, he tucked this into the waistcoat.

It was horrid.

But the horror was only just beginning.

Muller was led out of his prison so that he could be hanged in public.

Wicks, determined to keep on his story,

went with Muller all the way to the scaffold.

It was erected right here -

between the church of St Sepulchre

and the Old Bailey courthouse across the road.

The chaplain led the way to the scaffold,

reading the burial service.

And the hangman then led Muller up a flight of about ten steps.

And I...

..followed.

Perhaps my presence on the scaffold was regarded as an intrusion,

but nothing to me seemed more proper.

From up on the scaffold,

Wicks had a condemned man's view of a judicial slaughter.

50,000 people came to see Muller hang.

The entire space in front of me

presented an unbroken mass of human faces

and every unholy passion that humanity is capable of.

The mouths of all the myriads of dirty yellow faces were open

and all the thousands of eyes upturned upon the spot where I stood.

Meanwhile, the hangman put the rope round Muller's neck,

and tightened the slipknot just under his right ear.

And last of all, he pulled a dirty yellow hood

down over the man's head to his chin.

He then stood aside.

The priest continued to beseech Muller to confess his crimes.

But Muller preserved the same stolid, unimpassioned manner

that had characterised his attitude throughout.

I stood just behind him as...

..the drop fell.

Then a movement -

so slight, it could scarcely be called a movement,

but rather an almost imperceptible muscular flicker

went through Muller's frame.

This was all...

..and Muller had ceased to live.

HE SIGHS

But just before he died,

Muller, up till then silent in this story, had finally spoken.

It was as he was launched into eternity,

that Muller gave his infamous last words.

He spoke in German,

"Ich habe es gethan."

I am told this means...

"I did it."

In a few years, the terror inspired by the first railway murder faded.

The train became part of everyday life.

For Inspector Richard Tanner,

finding and capturing Muller was the highlight of his career.

He died soon after, aged just 41.

Gottfried Kinkel, the former revolutionary,

founded London's only German-language newspaper.

He never returned to his native country.

The cabman, Jonathan Matthews,

got the £300 reward

for providing the information that led to Muller's arrest.

But it was all swallowed up by his creditors.

There is no record of the fate of Mary Ann Eldred.

But the prospects of a Victorian prostitute

were for a short and miserable life.

Frederick Wicks became a notable writer and newspaper owner.

Franz Muller was buried beneath the Old Bailey prison.

It has since been knocked down

and replaced with another court complex.

But perhaps his bones lie here still.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd