Part 36 (1/2)

CHAPTER x.x.xIV.

TWO TRAGEDIES.

[The _Daily Telegraph_, speaking of the necessity for Justice sometimes ”to strip the bandage from her eyes and look into the real merits of a case, mentions the following case as showing Sir Henry's unequalled knowledge of human nature and the sound equity of his decrees:--

”A young, respectable woman had been led away by a villain, who was already married, and under a promise of marriage had betrayed her. He induced her to elope with him, and suggested that she should tear a cheque out of her father's cheque-book and forge his name. So completely was she under his influence that she did so. He sent her to different banks to try and cash it, but it was not till she got to a local bank, where she was known, that this was accomplished. The cheque was for 200. But the seducer never obtained the money; the girl was apprehended before she reached him.

”Sir Henry openly expressed his strong sympathy for the unhappy girl, and ordered her to be bound over in her own recognizance of 20, to come up for judgment when called upon.”]

During the early years of my tenure of office as a criminal Judge I became, and still am, firmly impressed with the belief that to enable one filling that office to discharge the twofold duty attached to it--namely, that of trying the issue whether the crime imputed to the prisoner has been established by legal evidence, and if so, what punishment ought to be imposed upon the prisoner, a.s.suming the presiding Judge to be the person to determine it--it is absolutely essential that he should keep the whole of the circ.u.mstances in his mind and carefully weigh every fact which either forms an element in the const.i.tution of the offence itself or has a substantial bearing as affecting the aggravation or mitigation of the punishment; for it is not only essential that these matters should be known to and appreciated by the Judge who tried the case, but that they may be also presented for the information of the Home Secretary, who ought to be acquainted with them, so that he may form a satisfactory view of the whole of the circ.u.mstances surrounding the case.

A strange story that will ever stand out in my memory as one of the most dramatic of my life was that of a young lady who was a professional nurse at the General Hospital at Liverpool. She was young, clever, and, I believe, beautiful, as well as esteemed and loved by all who knew her.

She had become engaged to an engineer, and it had been arranged that she should pay a visit to her mother in Nottingham on a Friday, so as to acquaint her with their engagement, the intended husband having arranged to come on the following Monday.

The parents were poor, respectable people, and the girl herself was poor, so that she had no change of attire, but went in her professional nurse's dress. It was her intention, however, to buy an ordinary dress at Nottingham.

There was a dressmaker in that city whom her mother knew, and with whose children in their early days her daughter had played.

Accordingly in the evening the nurse with a younger sister went to the cottage to make the necessary arrangements.

While she was there the son of the dressmaker came in, and was at once attracted by the beauty and the manner of the girl. As they had known one another in childhood, it was not surprising that they should talk with more familiarity than would have been the case had they been strangers.

When the nurse rose to go, the young man asked permission to accompany her to her mother's. She declined, but he persisted in his request.

This man was a clever mechanic, and had invented a machine for making chenille. Sad to say, this invention he used for the purpose of inveigling the girl into his workshop, which was situated on the second floor of an extensive range of warehouses in a yard at Nottingham. He asked her to come on the Monday morning, and when she informed him that her lover was to come by the 12.30 train at Nottingham Station, he said if she came at eleven she would have plenty of time to see his invention, and then meet him. She at last consented.

I now come to a series of facts of a sensational character. On the Monday morning she went, according to the appointment, and was seen to go with this man up a flight of steps which led from the yard to the first floor. The door opened on to the landing outwardly. In about a quarter of an hour after she was seen staggering down the steps, and crossing the yard in the direction of the street. In the street she fell, and was conveyed to a neighbouring house. She was afterwards taken to a hospital.

In the course of some minutes the man himself came down the steps, and was informed that a girl had been seen coming out of his premises bleeding, and had been taken to a cottage.

”Was there?” said he, and walked away.

In the afternoon he was apprehended. He said he was very sorry, but that he was showing the girl a little toy pistol, and that it had gone off: quite accidentally. He wished to be taken to the hospital where she was.

The magistrate in the meanwhile had been informed of the occurrence, and with his clerk attended at the hospital to take her dying deposition.

There was an amount of skill and ability about the prisoner which was somewhat surprising to me, who am seldom surprised at anything.

”Did you not think it was an accident?” he asked.

The dying girl answered, ”Yes.”

In re-examination by the magistrate's clerk at the end of the business, the following answer was elicited,--

”I thought it was an accident before the second shot was fired.”

The extraordinary part of this story, to my mind, is that the able counsel--and able he indeed was who defended him--treated the matter as the most frivolous prosecution that was ever inst.i.tuted. I know that he almost laughed at the idea of murder, and, further, that the junior counsel for the prosecution treated the charge in the same manner, and said that, in his opinion, there was no case.

The man was indicted for wilful murder, and I am bound to say, after reading the depositions, I could come to no other conclusion than that he was guilty of the most cruel and deliberate murder, if the depositions were correct.