Cops & Lawyers

Sometimes the cops and lawyers get it right

Victorian policemen were not trained detectives. CSI-style criminal analysis of fingerprints and blood stains was still in the future. Lacking an eye witness or confessions, criminal cases then, as now, were mostly solved with circumstantial evidence. Police in Boston quickly identified Louis Wagner from his description and Portsmouth police arrived in Boston on the night of the murders with photographs of the suspect. Officers Thomas Entwistle (seen above) and Frank Johnson twice protected Wagner from a howling lynch mob. He was well treated as officers gathered evidence in Portsmouth. Then Maine attorney George C. Yeaton delivered Wagner to Maine for trial. Yeaton and Harris M. Plaisted created a strong case against Wagner who was defended by former judge Rufus Tapley and by a Jewish / German attorney from Boston named Max Fischacher. Wagner appears to have been treated fairly by law enforcement and lawyers in an era when an impoverished immigrant fisherman accused of a double homicide might have feared otherwise.  (Entwistle photo on Water Street courtesy of Strawbery Banke Museum)