Part 31 (1/2)
[45] This John Dimsdale was apparently the father of the first Baron Dimsdale, who inoculated Catharine of Russia and the Grand Duke Paul, her son, for smallpox in 1728. John's father was William, who accompanied William Penn to America in 1684; so that it is not clear who the Mr. Dimsdale, senior, and Dr. Robert Dimsdale of this trial were.
The family is, however, one which has long been settled in Hertfords.h.i.+re.
[46] _Vulgar Errors_, Book IV., ch. vi., 'Of Swimming and Floating.'
[47] The Lord of the Manor might have a right to the forfeited goods of a felon.
[48] Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753) was born in Co. Down. He studied medicine abroad, and was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1685.
In 1687 he went to the West Indies as secretary to the Duke of Albemarle, and made valuable scientific collections. He was elected secretary of the Royal Society in 1693, and succeeded Sir Isaac Newton as president of the same body in 1727. He was physician to Queen Anne and George the Second, and founded the botanical garden at Chelsea for the Society of Apothecaries. He left his collections to the nation, and they formed part of the original nucleus of the British Museum. Sloane Street and Hans Square derive their names from him.
[49] The lay reader must observe that Sloane is talking of the 'civil law.'
[50] William Cowper (1666-1709) was a leading surgeon at the time of this trial, having been elected a member of the Royal Society in 1696, and in 1698 having published a treatise on anatomy, which led to a vigorous controversy between him and a Dutch doctor of the name Bidloo, whose anatomical plates he seems to have adopted for his own work. He subsequently published a variety of papers on surgery, and was the discoverer of Cowper's glands.
SAMUEL GOODERE AND OTHERS
On the 18th of March 1741, at the Bristol Gaol-delivery, Samuel Goodere,[51] Matthew Mahony, and Charles White were indicted for the murder of Sir John Dineley Goodere, the brother of the first-named prisoner. They were tried before Serjeant Michael Foster.[52] The trial was adjourned to the 26th on account of Goodere's health, when there appeared for the prosecution _Vernon_, and for the prisoner _Goodere_, _Shepard_ and _Frederick_. The other prisoners were undefended.
_Vernon_ opened the case. He began--
May it please you, Mr. Recorder, and you, gentlemen that are sworn on the jury, I am counsel for the King against the prisoners at the bar, who stand indicted for the murder of sir John Dineley Goodere; they are also charged on the coroner's inquest with the same murder; and though it is impossible for human nature not to feel some emotions of tenderness at so affecting a sight as now presents itself at the bar; yet, gentlemen, should the guilt of this black and frightful murder be fixed upon the prisoners (as from my instructions I fear it will be), pity must then give way to horror and astonishment at the baseness and barbarity of the fact and circ.u.mstances; and our sorrow ought to be that, through the lenity of the laws, the unnatural author and contriver of so shocking a piece of cruelty, and this, his brutal accomplice in the ruffianly execution of it, should be to share the common fate of ordinary malefactors.
He then proceeds to point out that the indictment alleges that Mahony strangled the deceased, and that Goodere was present aiding and abetting him in the act; that therefore it would be immaterial for the jury which of the two actually committed the act, if they were acting together; and that it would not be material whether they strangled the deceased with a rope, a handkerchief, or their hands, 'so the kind of death be proved.'
Goodere was Sir John's brother, and there had long been a quarrel between them owing to various causes, particularly because Sir John had cut off the entail of a property in Worcesters.h.i.+re, to which Goodere would otherwise have been the heir in default of Sir John's issue. He had recently been appointed captain of the _Ruby_ man-of-war, and in January last she was lying in the King's road, within the county of Bristol. Sir John had been ordered to Bath for his health, and had made an engagement to call, on his way there, at the house of Mr. Jarrit Smith, in Bristol, to transact some business. Goodere had asked Smith to arrange a meeting between him and his brother to effect a reconciliation, and accordingly this visit, which was to take place on Tuesday the 13th of January, had been fixed upon for the purpose. On Monday the 12th, Goodere and Mahony called at the White Hart Inn, near the foot of College Green, in view of, and almost opposite to, Smith's house; and Goodere, commending the view from a closet above the porch, ordered breakfast to be prepared for him there the next day. On Tuesday, Goodere, accompanied by Mahony, and a gang of men belonging to a privateer called the _Vernon_, whom he had hired to a.s.sist him in seizing Sir John, 'but whom one would have thought, the name of that gallant admiral should have inspired with n.o.bler sentiments,' came to the White Hart, where Goodere went upstairs to the closet he had ordered, and the others posted themselves below to watch for Sir John.
He soon arrived, armed with pistols, and followed by a servant, but only made a short stay at Mr. Smith's, promising to come again the next Sunday. He was too well protected for it to be advisable to interfere with his movements, but Goodere's men, at his order, followed him a little way down the hill as he left the house. Mr. Smith afterwards told Goodere that his brother would return the next Sunday, and advised him to be in the way, that he might bring them together. Goodere accordingly made all his arrangements to effect his purpose. He ordered one Williams, a mids.h.i.+pman, to bring up the man-of-war's barge on Sunday, to leave it at a point a little below Bristol, with two or three men in charge of her, and to bring on the rest of the crew to meet him at the White Hart, explaining that he was going to bring some one on board.
Accordingly, on the Sunday, Goodere, the barge-men, and the privateersmen, all met at the White Hart; and at three in the afternoon Goodere went across to Mr. Smith's. There he met his brother, with whom he spent some time, conversing and drinking with him apparently on perfectly friendly terms. After half an hour, however, Sir John rose to go, followed by his brother; as soon as they got into the street Goodere made a sign to his men in the White Hart, who immediately seized Sir John, and partly led him, and partly carried him towards the boat which was waiting for them, as Goodere had ordered. Sir John made what resistance he could, calling out that he was ruined, and that his brother was going to take his life; his captors, however, explained to bystanders who tried to interfere that he was a murderer, whom they were arresting, and kept off the crowd by means of the bludgeons and truncheons with which they were armed. They could not prevent Sir John, however, from calling out, as he was being put into the barge, that he was going to be murdered, that the people by were to tell Mr. Smith, and that his name was Sir John Dineley. The privateersmen were landed lower down the river, and at about seven in the evening Sir John was brought on board the _Ruby_. There his brother pretended to the crew that he was a madman, and shut him up in the purser's cabin, on to the door of which he had two new bolts fitted. A sentry was posted outside the door, but at some time after midnight he was relieved by Goodere himself, who admitted Mahony and White, keeping back another man from approaching it.
A struggle was heard in the cabin, and Sir John calling out, 'Murder!
must I die! Help, for G.o.d's sake! save my life, here are twenty guineas, take it!' Then Mahony called for a light, which was handed in to him by Goodere, while he still kept another man away from the cabin door by his cutla.s.s. Goodere then withdrew to his cabin, and Mahony and White were put ash.o.r.e in the s.h.i.+p's yawl. In the morning the s.h.i.+p's cooper, who had heard Sir John calling out, and in fact seen a part of the attack on him through a c.h.i.n.k, broke open the door of the purser's cabin and found the dead body. Goodere was then arrested by the crew, and brought before the Mayor of Bristol, where he denied all knowledge of the matter.
_Shepard_ asked that the witnesses for the prosecution should be ordered out of court.
_Vernon_ replied that he had no right to this, and that as it would seem to cast a slur upon their honesty he objected to it being done.
_Shepard_ admitted that he had no right to it, but asked it as a favour; on which all witnesses were ordered to leave the court, an exception being made in favour of Mr. Jarrit Smith, who claimed a right to be present as he was prosecuting solicitor as well as a witness.
_Chamberlayn_ was called, and said that about three weeks before the death of Sir John he was asked by Goodere to interpose with Mr. Jarrit Smith to bring about a reconciliation between him and Sir John. He went to Mr. Smith as he was asked to, and he promised to do all he could in the matter. The brothers had been at law a long while, and spent a great deal of money, and that was why Goodere wanted Mr. Smith to bring about a reconciliation between them.
_Jarrit Smith_ was then called, and deposed that Mr. Chamberlayn had brought him the message he had described, and had brought Goodere to his house, and that he had promised him to do what he could to bring about a reconciliation.
Some little time after they were gone, I saw sir John, and told him that Mr. Goodere had applied to me to do all I could to reconcile them. Sir John seemed to speak much against it at first, and thought it would be to no purpose; for that he had been a real friend to the captain, who had used him very ill; but at last he was pleased to pa.s.s a compliment on me, and said, I cannot refuse anything you ask of me. He then mentioned several things the captain had said; and in particular told me that at the death of sir Edward Goodere, his father, Mr.
Goodere, the prisoner, had placed several persons in the house where sir Edward lay dead, in order to do him some mischief, and he apprehended to take away his life.
SHEPARD--I must submit it to the Court, that what sir John said at that time is not a matter of evidence.
THE RECORDER--It is not evidence, but perhaps it is introductory to something Mr. Smith has further to say; if it be not, it should not have been mentioned.
SMITH--And that he had endeavoured to set aside a common recovery, and made strong application to the Court of Common Pleas for that purpose.