In the early hours of October 10, 1878, three policemen patrolling the affluent streets of Blackheath in southeast London noticed a light burning inside a house. They watched for a while, then moved in. One officer went to the rear of the property while the other two rang the front bell. The burglar inside rushed out the back door and came face to face with the waiting constable.

He was armed and warned the officer to stand aside. The officer pressed on. Shots rang out, and a bullet struck the young policeman in the arm, but the other two officers arrived, and the burglar was finally subdued and arrested. That same morning, he appeared before the magistrate at Greenwich Police Court.

Asked his name, he replied, “John Ward. ” He was remanded in custody for a week. The man calling himself John Ward was in fact Charles Peace, one of the most wanted criminals in England, wanted for a murder committed two years earlier in Sheffield. For nearly two years he had lived openly in London under a false identity, presenting himself as a respectable gentleman while supporting himself through a long string of housebreakings.

Charles Peace was born in Sheffield on May 14, 1832, the youngest of four children. His father John worked in the mines but lost a leg in an accident and afterward joined a traveling animal show, where his way with animals made him a popular figure. Charles’s mother, the daughter of a naval surgeon, saw to it that her children received an education. Charles went to work in a factory as a boy, but in 1846, when he was fourteen, he suffered a leg injury just below the knee.

He spent months in hospital, and the leg never fully recovered. Around the same time, his father died. With his mother widowed and his own work options reduced, Charles turned to petty crime, chiefly stealing watches and jewelry. On October 26, 1851, he broke into the house of an elderly woman.

Police found him in possession of some of the stolen goods. He was prosecuted, but the court took pity on him, noting that he had been a hard-working young man whose circumstances had changed drastically after his injury and his father’s death. He was sentenced to just one month in prison. On release, he tried to make a living as a musician, traveling from town to town, collecting and selling instruments and playing the violin.

The money was not enough to live on, so he resumed burglary, targeting the wealthier parts of Sheffield. The police knew him from his earlier conviction, and in 1854 he was arrested and sentenced to four years in prison. Released in 1858, he married a woman named Hannah Wards, who had a young son, William, from a previous relationship. Charles played the violin for an income and continued to burgle houses.

By then he was well known to the Sheffield police, so he traveled forty miles to Manchester. In August 1859, he robbed the house of a well-to-do resident. Police caught up with him, but when they tried to take him into custody he resisted violently and nearly killed one of the officers. In court he was sentenced to six years.

He was released in 1864, having served less than the full term. Prison did nothing to reform him. In 1866 he was caught robbing another house in Manchester and sentenced to eight years. He was released in 1872, again before completing his sentence.

He was now forty years old and had spent nearly half his life behind bars. Charles returned to Sheffield, determined to leave crime behind. He started a picture framing business. In 1875 he moved to the suburb of Darnall, where he met Mr.

Arthur Dyson, an engineer who had recently returned from America to work for the Northeastern Railway, and his wife Catherine. Charles was taken with Catherine Dyson, who was attractive, lively, and several years younger than him. He became infatuated, and she rejected his advances. Arthur Dyson, anxious to put a stop to it, took out a legal injunction against him.

Charles moved to Hull, where he opened a small café. To maintain his income, he continued to break into houses and steal money and items he could easily sell, sometimes traveling as far as a hundred miles to Manchester to burgle the homes of the wealthy. On August 1, 1876, two policemen spotted him and tried to arrest him. Charles pulled out a revolver, warned them off, and fired a warning shot.

The officers, armed only with truncheons, did not back down. Charles fired again and killed one of them, then fled back to Hull. Two brothers, John and William Habron, were later arrested and charged with the murder. At trial, John was acquitted for lack of evidence, but William was found guilty and sentenced to death.

Remarkably, Charles attended the two-day trial. Petitions were raised, and newspapers questioned the verdict. Just days before the execution, the Home Secretary commuted William Habron’s sentence to life in prison. Charles, meanwhile, was still hoping to win Catherine Dyson.

He had earlier threatened to shoot her husband, which had hardly endeared him to her. On November 29, 1876, he went to the Dyson house and saw Catherine in the garden. She saw him and ran inside. Her husband came out to see what was happening.

An argument started, and two shots were fired. Catherine found her husband lying on the ground. Arthur Dyson died two hours later. Charles was already on the train back to Hull to see his wife.

Catherine told detectives that the killer was Charles Peace, a name well known to police. Officers went to his home in Hull, where Hannah said she had not seen her husband in months. She managed to delay them long enough for Charles to slip out the back door. When the search was over, he returned, but now he was a fugitive.

To stay ahead of the law, he shaved his beard, dyed his hair, took to wearing glasses, and even acquired a false arm. A reward of one hundred pounds was offered for information leading to his capture, and his description was circulated across the region. He left Hull and spent months traveling, staying for a time in Bristol, Bath, and Derby before settling in Nottingham, where he lodged with a woman named Mrs. Adamson, who was known to receive and store stolen goods.

Also staying there was Mrs. Susan Thompson, a thirty-five-year-old woman recently separated from her husband. Charles told her he was taken with her, and that if she rejected him, he would be so upset he would shoot her. The next day he apologized, and she became his mistress.

He continued to burgle houses, and Mrs. Adamson moved the stolen goods. After a near capture in Nottingham, he went back to Hull, found the wanted posters still up, and decided he was better off returning to Nottingham. The police were on alert.

Acting on a tip that a burglar was in the area, they tracked him to his room, where they found him in bed with Susan Thompson. He gave his name as John Ward, asked for privacy while he and the lady dressed, and escaped through a window. He now realized he needed a place where he would not be recognized. In 1877, with Susan Thompson, he traveled to London, a city of over four million people where he thought he could remain inconspicuous.

He settled in Greenwich and set up a small business dealing in musical instruments, while making most of his money robbing houses and selling the proceeds. Before long he had enough to bring his wife and her son to London. He acquired two adjoining properties, living in one with Susan and placing Hannah and William next door. This arrangement did not last, and he moved everyone into the same house in Peckham, where he went by the name Mr.

Thompson, introduced Susan as his wife, and referred to Hannah, his actual wife, as a relative. To his neighbors, Charles looked the part of a gentleman. He attended Sunday church services and presented himself as a pillar of the community, even traveling to Parliament to present an invention he claimed could raise sunken ships. At night, he burgled houses, mostly in south London.

On one rare trip north of the Thames, a policeman visiting London from Sheffield recognized him and gave chase. Charles escaped and decided to stay closer to home. Over the next three months, burglaries increased in southeast London, especially in the wealthy district of Blackheath. Residents grew concerned, and the police agreed to increase night patrols.

In the early hours of October 10, 1878, those patrols found their man. At the Greenwich court, Charles wrote to a friend, Henry Bryan, asking for news of his family. His family, on learning of his arrest, had quickly left London. Susan Thompson returned to Nottingham, and Hannah went to Sheffield.

Bryan, questioned by detectives, said he knew the prisoner as Mr. Thompson. Police located both Susan and Hannah, and Susan, in a bizarre attempt to claim the one-hundred-pound reward, told the police everything she knew about Charles Peace. The rooms of both women were searched, and stolen items from the Blackheath burglaries were found.

A police officer from Yorkshire was sent to London and identified John Ward as Charles Peace. In November 1878, Charles was tried at the Old Bailey for burglary and attempted murder. He was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. But he was still wanted for the murder of Arthur Dyson.

In January 1879, the paperwork was completed, and Charles was escorted by train to Sheffield. In a bold attempt to escape, he jumped from the moving train. He failed, injuring himself so badly he could not move, and the officers simply walked back down the track and took him into custody. His trial began on February 4, 1879.

Catherine Dyson had returned from America to give evidence, describing the events of November 29, 1876. She told how Charles had made unwanted advances and, when rejected, became angry and threatened to kill her husband. The defense disputed her testimony, claiming she had in fact been in a relationship with the defendant and that her husband, discovering this, had attacked him. They argued the killing of Arthur Dyson was self-defense.

Catherine confirmed she and Charles had been seen together and that her husband had objected to the friendship. The prosecution produced forensic evidence showing the bullet that killed Arthur Dyson had been fired from the same type of revolver recovered from Charles’s London home after his arrest. Medical evidence showed there had been no struggle between the two men. Witnesses reported seeing Charles acting strangely on the day of the murder.

The jury took only ten minutes to find him guilty of murder, and the judge sentenced him to death. Knowing he was to be hanged, Charles confessed to the murder of the police officer in August 1876. William Habron was given a free pardon and eight hundred pounds in compensation. Charles continued to insist that Catherine Dyson had been his mistress, that her husband had been upset by it, and that he had acted only in self-defense.

She continued to deny that any such relationship had taken place. Charles Peace was hanged on February 25, 1879, at Armley Prison in Leeds. He was forty-seven years old.