Adolf Beck case

In 1868 he moved to South America, where he made a living for a while as a singer, then became a shipbroker, and also engaged in buying and selling houses.

He soon amassed a considerable amount of savings, at one time earning £8,000 as commission for a sale of a Spanish concession in the Galapagos Islands.

The policeman took them both to the nearest police station, where the woman identified herself as Ottilie Meissonier, unmarried, and a language teacher.

She alleged that she had been walking down Victoria Street when Beck approached her, tipping his hat and asking if she was Lady Everton.

He insisted upon providing her with an elegant wardrobe for the voyage, wrote out a list of items for her and made out a cheque for £40 to cover her purchases.

The inspector who was assigned to the case learned that in the previous two years twenty-two women had been defrauded by a grey-haired man who called himself "Lord Wilton de Willoughby" and used the same modus operandi as Beck's accuser had described.

These women were asked to view a line-up that included Beck along with ten or fifteen men who had been selected randomly from the street.

At Beck's committal hearing, in late 1895, one of the policemen who had arrested Smith eighteen years before was called to testify.

Eless Henry Spurrell (1847-1906), who had retired in 1892,[3] gave his account as follows: In 1877 I was [a PC] in the Metropolitan Police Reserve [of E Division].

On 7 May 1877 I was present at the Central Criminal Court where the prisoner in the name of John Smith was convicted of feloniously stealing ear-rings and a ring and eleven shillings of Louisa Leonard and was sentenced to five years' penal servitude.

If Gurrin testified in court, as he had said previously, that the writing from 1877 was identical to that from 1894 and 1895, Gill could bring witnesses to show that Beck had been in Buenos Aires in 1877.

Avory did not want to call Elless Spurrell to give evidence because his testimony would have opened discussion of the past conviction, thereby allowing Gill the opportunity to cast doubt on Beck's guilt.

He chose not to proceed with the felony charges, despite the fact that the prosecution case was based wholly on the unstated premise that Adolph Beck and John Smith were the same person.

England did not yet have a court of criminal appeal, but between 1896 and 1901 Beck's solicitor presented ten petitions for re-examination of his case.

Public opinion was slowly swayed by Sims and others, including Arthur Conan Doyle, to the view that Beck's conviction was unjust.

On 22 March 1904, a servant by the name of Paulina Scott filed a complaint that a grey-haired, distinguished looking man had accosted her on the street, paid compliments to her and then stolen her jewellery.

On a routine visit to the Tottenham Court Road police station on 7 July, Inspector John Kane of the Criminal Investigation Department was told of the arrest of a man who had tried to swindle some rings from a pair of unemployed actresses that afternoon and had been apprehended at a pawnshop.

The details fitted the usual pattern but the alleged culprit, Adolph Beck, was already in jail, awaiting sentencing.

However, Beck was younger and frailer in build, and this man had a scar on the right side of his neck, as Ottilie Meissoner remembered.

The prisoner had given his name as William Thomas but the inspector, convinced that he was John Smith, informed Scotland Yard.

He later became surgeon to the King of Hawaii and was engaged in growing coffee, and in various other businesses in the United States, then setting up practice as a physician in Adelaide before moving to London.

Eventually, a Committee of Inquiry was established, headed by the noted jurist and Master of the Rolls, Sir Richard Henn Collins.

The case is still cited by judges in Commonwealth countries as a glaring example of how inaccurate eyewitness identification can be, and the extreme care with which juries must regard evidence of this kind.