THE Englishman's pet word, "extraordinary," is but a mild one to describe the career of George Joseph Smith. If it were not for a distrust of superlatives, I would say that his case is the most astonishing ever heard in a Court. It is no narrow spirit of patriotism which makes me think that the murders in this country, in Fall River, in 1892, are more interesting than the performances of Mr. Smith in three towns of England. For their amazing novelty, however, the achievements of this humourless Londoner should have entitled him—had there been any such decoration—to the De Quincey Medal, with the statement that, in his honour, the award would not be made again for fifty years. Brutal as were his crimes, they also had a grotesque quality, a .dreadful approach to comedy, which often causes a description of them to be received with smiles. A bath-tub, useful and desirable as it may be, is not exactly dignified. Like the folding-bed, it has figured in too many jests to. fit into a tragedy. And when the name of Mr. Smith became associated with three bath-tubs, and three tragedies, it is apparent why some folk look upon his misdeeds as verging perilously close to French farce.

Mr. Eric Watson, the learned and very readable biographer of G. J. Smith, calls him "the most atrocious English criminal since Palmer." The question of "atrocity" is one of opinion, and hard to decide. Palmer, the sporting doctor of Rugeley, was a convivial soul, who died game: he hardly seems in Smith's class until one remembers how he sat by the bed-side and watched the agonies of his betting-partner, whom he had poisoned. One also recalls the pious entries in his diary, and the string of poisonings which he probably committed. Yes, he belongs with Smith, and so perhaps does Dr. Cream, who used to treat his acquaintances to poison capsules. But these men were crude and conventional by comparison with Smith.

For Smith invented a new way to commit murder, and one which enabled him to face coroner's juries, and come forth triumphant, "without a stain on his character." I have heard a writer of detective novels, one with a lively fancy, begging for "a new kind of murder," yet this stodgy Mr. Smith, without the imagination of a green-grocer (notoriously a duller profession than any other color of grocer) thought out, in minute detail, a most successful plan for homicide, and only went to ruin because, like so many great artists, he could not resist one more farewell appearance.

IN an earlier paper in Vanity Fair, I mentioned the requirements for an interesting murder case. Smith's performances answer all of these except one, and this is the personality of Smith himself. His was not a hitherto blameless character; he was not an educated man; and he had lived in anything but the odour of sanctity. He was an habitual, although petty, criminal, whose early associations were those of a reformatory, where he lived from the age of nine to sixteen. As he was always bad, it would be argued, by some humanitarians, that he had never had a "chance," and so should not have been punished. The same folk, by the way, would also excuse from punishment anybody who had, prior to his offence, always been "good,".so the advantages of. a criminal career, under these rulings, seem to be undeniable. Smith had done time in prison more than once between his release from the reformatory and the age of twenty-seven, when he entered upon his career of wholesale matrimony and murder.

THE student will recall, in this class of murderers, Monsieur Landru of Paris, and Mr. J. P. Watson of California. But if these exceeded Smith in quantity, in technique they were inferior to the Englishman. Of the trio, Watson alone survives: the murderer, in America, is the only citizen whose life we sedulously and meticulously seem to preserve.

One other feature of Smith's crimes really docs much to enhance their interest: a considerable mystery still surrounds them. We do not know exactly his methods, either physical, or (if there were any) psychical. He never confessed. To the end, the view of himself which he wished the world to adopt was that of an afflicted man who had suffered from what he called "a phenomenal coincidence",—that three of his wives had died in their bath. In Court, he interrupted the Judge to protest at the charge to the jury as "a disgrace to a Christian country." He added that he was not a murderer, although he might "be a bit peculiar." As this seems to have been his method of admitting the fact that he had seven times committed bigamy, it is apparent that he had so mastered the art of modest understatement that he might have been envied even by an Oxford man. He never murdered a woman if he could, just as easily, rob her of every penny without taking her life. This fact throws doubt upon the theory that he enjoyed murder solely for its own sake and as an art.

SMITH'S matrimonial campaigns began in 1898; they were ended by his arrest early in 1915. His one lawful wife, Miss Thornhill, after difficulties with the police which both of them shared, retired to Canada, perhaps about 1902. She returned to England to testify at the trial in 1915. Some of his other courtships need not be described in detail: they merely involved a bigamous marriage, innocently if incautiously entered into on the part of the lady; and her subsequent grief when her husband decamped with all her cash and as much of her clothing as she did not happen to be wearing at the time. It is not recorded that he left any of his living brides without at least the conventional "stitch" to cover her. The marriage with a lady known to the public only as Miss—, in the respectable neighborhood of the Registry at St. George's, Hanover Square; the robbery of "Mrs. F. W.", after a proposal of marriage; the marriage with "Miss F." at Southampton; and the marriage with Miss Alice Reavil at Woolwich in 1914, are all items in a rather monotonous programme. Mr. Watson tabulates a typical instance thus: 29 October. Marries Miss F. at Southampton. 5 November. Absconds with all Miss F.'s property.

It is queer that he took so long about it; either Miss F. was of unusual attractiveness, or else something delayed the bridegroom in his business arrangements, which customarily were promptly transacted. Miss Reavil was humble in social station; she is described as a "domestic servant." Most of the other brides were, as he said, "a notch above" him.

Leaving these minor incidents in Smith's career, let us consider his most remarkable marriages,—four in number. In 1908, and for the first time under his own name, he was married at Bristol to Miss Edith Pegler. To her he was what might almost be called a model husband. He never murdered her and he never robbed her. Indeed, she profited, in a small way, and quite innocently, by his robbery of another. From one of his mysterious absences he returned, bringing her an outfit of clothing. He "had been doing a deal in ladies' second hand clothing",—in other words he had robbed poor Alice Reavil of her small outfit. Edith Pegler was the Catharine Parr to this Henry VIII; she survived him and she had, comparatively speaking, small cause for complaint against him. She was forced to appear and give testimony, and when the tale of her husband's escapades was told, her sensations must have been indescribable.

It was Smith's custom, when hard up—and that was his usual state, for he never worked—to wander from this town to that, ostensibly as "a dealer in antiques." One of the worst deeds of th.'s wicked man was to bring a reproach upon a business hitherto associated with nothing impure, by representing himself as a buyer and seller of antiquities and objects of art. In his wanderings, having left Miss Pegler somewhere or other, he met, and quickly wooed and won Miss Beatrice Mundy. This was a respectable lady, thirty-three years of age, and the heiress to £2500 by the will of her late father, a bank manager. Smith, as "Henry Williams," married her, inquired about her money, and found to his distress that it was so tied up that he could not lay his hands upon it. The sum of £138 was available, however. He seized that and departed, leaving behind, as a gratuitous insult, a letter in which he charged the innocent woman with being diseased,—the result of profligacy!

By a strange but real coincidence some months later he met Miss Mundy at Weston-super-Mare. Despite everything, she instantly agreed to rejoin him. This time he resolved to get all of her money. It could be done only if she died, having willed her fortune to him. The deluded woman readily consented to a will; Smith, at the same time making his own will in her favor. His was quite worthless, as he hadn't a penny. The wills were signed July 8, 1912. On July 9, Smith went to a shop in Herne Bay, where he and Miss Mundy were living, and bargained for a bath tub. He beat the dealer down from £2 to £1, IF., 6d. On July 10, he took his "wife" to a doctor, saying that she had had a fit. Miss Mundy remembered nothing of any fit} she had merely complained of a headache. The doctor was called twice on July 12, although there seemed to be nothing much the matter with the lady. On Saturday, July 13, the doctor was sent for again: Smith under his assumed name, Williams had found his wife dead in her bath. A policeman, and a woman neighbor were also called; Smith led them upstairs and exhibited, to their astonishment and horror, the naked body of the dead woman, lying on the bath-room floor. Owing to the shrewdness exercised in the preliminary visits to the doctor, the coroner's jury found that the death was accidental: an epileptic fit followed by drowning. Smith buried his wife in a cheap grave and commenced proceedings to obtain probate of the will. After some difficulties, he secured over £2000. Later in the summer he rejoined Miss Pegler, telling her that he had made £1000 on the sale of a Chinese image.

During the next expedition, in the latter part of 1913, he met a nurse Miss Alice Burnham at South-sea. She was a plump young woman of twenty-five, with a father who had sufficient perspicacity to distrust Smith at sight. It should be said, by the way, that Smith's easy conquests over

women were equalled by the dislike he seems to have aroused in most men. Miss Burnham and Smith visited her home at Aston Clinton and her father afterwards described his prospective son-in-law as a man of very evil appearance; in fact Mr. Burnham "could not sleep while Smith was in the house." Mr. Burnham's insomnia did not interfere with his daughter's romantic intentions, and she was married to "George Joseph Smith, 40, bachelor, of independent means" at Portsmouth on November 4. The name and age of the groom were correctly given. Miss Burnham's funds, from all sources were exactly £132 and Smith soon had these in his care. On December 4 he insured her life for £500. Four days later she made her will,—in favor of the man whom she honestly supposed to be her husband.

In two days they were at Blackpool, seeking lodgings,—lodgings with a bath. They rejected rooms in one house, because a tub was lacking. After they had found quarters, they called upon a doctor; Miss Burnham said she had a headache. The next day she called for a bath, which was prepared for her. While she was upstairs, the landlady, like the one in "Tess," looked at the ceiling and saw a stain, not of blood, but of water. The tub, for some reason, had overflowed. Smith went out on an errand: to buy two eggs for breakfast. When he returned he talked with the landlady for a few minutes, and then went upstairs. He was soon calling for a doctor, for the same one who had seen his wife yesterday. Mrs. Smith was dead—most unaccountably drowned in her bath. Soon after the inquest, Smith departed from Blackpool, leaving his address on a post-card with the landlady.

Smith returned to Miss Pegler at Bristol; he had been, he told her, trading in Spain, where he had done fairly well. So he had; in a few weeks the insurance was paid, and it amounted to £506.

In September of the next year, 1914, occurred the marriage with Alice Reavil, who escaped without any bathing incident. Three months later Smith married at Bath—with rare irony—Margaret Elizabeth Lofty, whose occupation was that of companion to elderly ladies. She was a clergyman's daughter, and a spinster of thirty-eight. The bridegroom appeared as "John Lloyd, land agent". Miss Lofty had but £19 in cash; and her thoughtful fiance had her insured for £700, before the wedding. They repaired immediately to Highgate, and Smith engaged rooms,—after a fuss at one house where they did not like his manner as he asked about the bath. Then followed the usual procedure: the visit to a doctor, a will made in the husband's favor, a hot bath, requested by the wife at 7:30 p. m., and at 8:15 a police constable called in to view the naked body of a drowned woman.

Another "phenomenal coincidence", but it was one too many. Mr. Burnham, as well as another man who had met Smith at the time of an earlier bereavement, saw a newspaper account of this distressing death of a bride in her bath. They communicated with Scotland Yard, and an investigation began which carried the detectives into more than forty towns of England, and led to the interview of 150 witnesses; of whom 112 were called at the trial. Smith was identified with "Williams" and "Lloyd." He soon ceased to deny the many marriages and the deaths: he always insisted that the deaths were accidental. He was tried, in June 1915, at the Old Bailey, for the murder of Miss Mundy.

The trial of Professor Webster indicated how accurately circumstantial evidence may lead to the discovery of truth, and the Smith trial illustrated its value. Nobody had seen Smith kill any of the three women. He took care to seem to absent himself. But the long string of coincidences fell upon him with crushing force. There were no less than thirteen points of similarity in the three deaths; of these, the wills, the insurance policies, the inquiries about the baths, the visits to a doctor, the ostentatious absence just after the time of death, and. the fact that the brides were more profitable to Smith if dead than alive, were the most remarkable.

If Smith had one good quality, one amiable trait, or even one agreeable human failing, it does not appear. He was abominably closerfisted; his idea of a wedding journey was to take his bride to a free picture gallery, or to some shilling treat. He could cheat his victims, and anybody else, out of pounds or out of pence, with equal deliberation. And when he had killed Miss Mundy, and thereby come into £2000, he returned the tub, over which he had haggled with the dealer, and refused to pay for it at all.

It is still unknown how the murders were accomplished. The simplest explanation is that he suddenly seized his victim by the feet and lowered her head beneath the water.

Sir Edward Marshall Hall, the famous barrister, who defended Smith, thinks that the murderer hypnotized his wives in advance. This, he believes, explains the curious fact that the bath-room doors were invariably left unlocked,—and in strange houses. It has been suggested that as a result of hypnotic suggestion, Smith did not even have to enter the bath-rooms; that the brides drowned themselves! Drugs have also been offered as an explanation, and "poisonous vapor" in the water. There is certainly something odd in the dazed condition noted in the brides by one or two of the doctors who interviewed them. Smith was heard to prompt them in their replies, and in their inquiries of their prospective landladies whether there were a bath in the lodgings.

One of the most bizarre theories is that Smith had a mania, an impulse, which could not be denied, once he saw a woman in a tub. He simply must drown her. This notion is based on the fact that he warned Miss Pegler, just before the murder of Miss Lofty, against bath-tubs! "I should advise you to be careful of those things," he said, "as it is known that women often lose their lives through weak hearts and fainting in a bath." Certainly, it is impossible to say what are all the fantastic impulses of sexual psychopathy, but there was too much careful planning, too much calculation of pounds, shillings and pence, to let an English jury be hoodwinked into thinking that Smith was not responsible for his acts.

When his last morning came—a day in August—he was in complete collapse. The executioners led him from his cell across the prison yard. Outside the wall, a crowd had collected— many of them women,—and the loud chatter of women's voices reached the inside of the prison, drowning the tones of the chaplain as he recited the service for the Burial of the Dead.