Читать книгу Charles Peace, or The Adventures of a Notorious Burglar онлайн

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By the free adoption of aliases, identifications through the Hue and Cry, and even by means of photographs, have often failed.

Amusing exceptions, it is true, have occurred, one woman, who had provided herself with sixteen aliases, being convicted for the thirty-ninth time.

Lieut.-Colonel Du Cane says in his preface to the first volume of the “Register”:—​“It is, I believe, the first time that an attempt has been made to furnish all the police of this or any other country with information in such a complete and readily accessible form respecting the individuals of the class against whom they are carrying on their operations, and the first time that such a work has been carried out in a prison.”

The latest attempt, however, is to checkmate and deal with the habitual criminal in the register of their “Distinctive Marks and Peculiarities.”

The name only has proved an uncertain means of tracing their antecedents. It is found, however, that many of these people bear about with them some mark or peculiarity, which answers much better.