Some Curious Cases. ONE of the tragedies to which I alluded in my "Rough Notes," in the first Number of this Magazine, has terminated on that public stage the gallows, with Mr. Calcraft as principal performer. A frightful and awful conclusion to the career of any human being, be he ever so criminal; more dreadful still when the man dies protesting his innocence, and commending his wife to public care and charity. The Murderer's Widow! What a title for romance or melodrame! What abysses of crime and suffering and degradation does it open to us! Now, as this man was convicted upon evidence purely circumstantial, and tried by one jury only, there are some people who do not hesitate to express their belief in his innocence, although their doubts grow fainter, and their protests are less loud, now that they have ceased to be of any practical use. I have heard some women, in most worldly matters sensible enough, declare that it was impossible, or at any rate highly improbable, that a man could be a murderer who displayed the tender solicitude about those near and dear to him which Mullins did. They forget, these tender-hearted but illogical ladies, Lord Byron's hero Conrad the Corsair, with his "One virtue and a thousand crimes." They forget that, on their trial at Edinburgh, the cold-blooded and systematic murderer Burke manifested heartfelt exultation at the acquittal of his wife, although he felt that his own fate was certain. Has not that great moralist Dr. Johnson said, with his usual sense and wisdom, that vanity does not forsake a man even in his dying hour? Why, look at the well-known case of Eugene Aram. He committed an atrocious murder, actuated by the love of gain,-in many respects just such a murder as that perpetrated by Mullins, and yet, in the highly-argumentative, elegant, and unimpassioned address which he made to the jury, he would not condescend to be guilty of falsehood-the perhaps pardonable falsehood of denying his guilt. He seems to have studiously avoided it;* nor would he make any pathetic appeal ad misericordiam, which doubtless he could have done in a high strain of sustained eloquence. Many of the last words he wrote before he attempted suicide. would not have misbecome the lips of Christian martyrdom.† The man The judge who tried him almost taunted him with this. The jury, it is said, were about to acquit him before they heard the evidence summed up. These were some of them: "I solicitously recommend myself to the Eternal and Almighty Being, the God of Nature, if I have done amiss. But, perhaps I have not; and I hope this thing will never be imputed to me. Though I am now stained by malevolence, and suffer by prejudice, I hope to rise fair and unblemished. My life was not polluted, my morals irreproachable, and my opinions orthodox. I slept sound till three o'clock, awaked, and then writ these lines: ner of any man's exit from the world depends more upon his nervous system than any thing else. Saints have been mentally tortured in the hour of dissolution, while men of bad lives, and with sin-burdened consciences, have welcomed with a smile the King of Terrors, and played with the javelin of the great enemy. I was compelled to conclude my last Article in a manner painfully abrupt, and apparently inconsequential. The intelligent reader, however, will have gathered two or three conclusions which I very briefly indicated. Emphasis gratiâ, I will repeat them. 1st. We are incapable of judging of the merits of any case in a satisfactory manner unless present at the trial. A written report, however diffuse, is more or less inaccurate, at least, I have always found it to be so in cases in which I have been employed as counsel, or, when unemployed, I have been a careful auditor and spectator,—for it is necessary to be both. So much depends upon the general manner and demeanour of witnesses, which no report, however careful, can convey. So much depends upon advocacy, which may sometimes be strong, but is more often weak. Of this we can only judge by hearing it, and watching its effect upon the jury. I cite a clear and forcible statement on this subject which I have read since I commenced this series. "The true principle appears to me to be to estimate the value of evidence entirely by the effect which it does in fact produce upon the minds of those who hear it. The value of evidence is surely measured as exactly by the state of mind which it produces as a force is measured by the weight which it will lift. If a set of circumstances are put in evidence which, though consistent with the prisoner's innocence, leave no doubt at all in the minds of those who hear of them as to his guilt, the evidence does as much, produces as great an effect, and is therefore experimentally proved to be as strong, as if they had been inconsistent with his innocence." How rash, then, of inconsiderate folk, who, from newspaper reports, often carelessly read, point their suspicions without reticence or reserve at some one individual, as in the case of the Road mystery! "Segnius irritant animos demissa per aurem Quam quæ sunt oculis subjecta fidelibus." But in the case of newspaper reports we apply neither the auricular nor ocular tests. Come, pleasing rest, eternal slumber fall, Adieu! fair friends, and all that's good and wise.' "These lines, found along with the foregoing, were supposed to be written by Aram just before he cut himself with the razor." Annual Register, 1759, p. 362. The Characteristics of English Criminal Law. By Fitzjames Stephen, LL.B. Cambridge Essays. 1857. 2d. Circumstantial evidence is in its nature so difficult, so likely to mislead the mind of a comparatively uneducated man, that I again venture to suggest, that in all cases where the penalty is death there should be, if the first trial does not end in an acquittal, the power of moving for a new trial,- and that trial should be before a special jury, i. e. a jury composed of men of better education than common juries usually are. I am far from saying that there should not be the right of moving for a new trial in all criminal cases where the presiding judge would certify that any doubt in his mind existed about the verdict, or where counsel were prepared to say that he had misdirected the jury. The only chance of the escape of an innocent man condemned now, is an argument before the Court of Criminal Appeal on any nice legal technicality that may arise,-and in most cases there is not even the chance of this arising. His other hope may be an appeal made by means of petition to the Home Secretary. This is surely of all the least satisfactory. The Minister of the Home Office may, in the first place, not be a lawyer. In the next, he has to judge of the merits of the case, not from oral testimony, but from a written report. It appears very unreasonable that he should disturb the verdict of twelve men who have seen and heard the witnesses, and who have heard counsel on both sides, especially when the judge, as in the case of Dr. Smethurst, concurs in that verdict. A new trial before a special jury would, at any rate, be more rational than this. So strongly has this doubt about the unsatisfactory nature of circumstantial evidence been felt, that under the Civil Law the evidence of two witnesses was required in capital cases; and Jeremy Bentham proposed that a jury should declare what were the odds as to the guilt or innocence of the accused,-whether five to one, seven to one, or ten to one,— and that, unless a certain degree of probability (e. g. seven to one) were arrived at, punishment should not be inflicted. How far this would be practicable it is not my business here to discuss. I did not propose to write a treatise on criminal jurisprudence, nor even an exhaustive or methodical treatise on evidence; nor a systematic essay on circumstantial evidence, in a popular style; but some "Notes," made while reading some of the best books on the subject, and a few cases to be found in the Reports.* If I succeed in sending my lay reader to the Reports,-to Cobbett's State Trials,-to Townsend's Modern State Trials,-to Wills's Essay on Circumstantial Evidence, a clever book, quite as well suited to the layman as to the lawyer,-to Mr. Burke's Romance of the Forum,-to the Sessions Reports of the Central Criminal Court, and other sources of information to which these works will To my professional brethren need I recommend the following authorities? Best's Principles of Evidence; Best on Presumptions; Taylor on Evidence; Greenleaf on Evidence; Masgardus de Probationibus; Menochius de Præsumptionibus; Glassford; Gresley; Philips and Amos; Joy on Confessions; Corpus Juris Glossatum; Mittermaier, Traité de la Preuve en Matière Criminelle. lead them, I am sure he or she will thank me for much of what Dr. Johnson called "useful pleasure." Meanwhile, I propose, with less ambitious attempt, to mention "SOME CURIOUS CASES," and to remark upon them in my own gossiping and egotistical way. Here is a curious story, told by a London police detective officer to a relation of mine. I vary no important fact, and merely alter names. Henry Ranthorpe was a literary man; he had made some slight success as a provincial journalist and a political pamphleteer. He had a tragedy in his trunk, a plot of a comedy in his head, and one five-pound note in his pocket; and he must needs come up, in the naughtiness of his heart, stirred by "That last infirmity of noble mind," to win golden opinions and earn golden sovereigns in the great world of London. He had, moreover, made what is called an improvident marriage, that is, he had married a pretty girl without a farthing, who nevertheless was a very good wife. They were as happy as the res angusta would permit them to be. They took cheap lodgings in "the wilds of Pimlico." The tragedy had not been accepted (tragedies never are); at least the manager had not vouchsafed a reply. Nevertheless, he worked at the comedy laboriously and hopefully. As he had, however, not been for years in a London theatre, he thought, wisely enough, that it would considerably assist him if he saw a play acted at the house where he intended his five acts to be brought out. He had no special interest with actors or critics by which to secure an "order;" and his wife agreed with him that the expenditure of half a crown, low as their finances were, would nevertheless be a wise outlay. Meanwhile a pair of boots, the only shoe-leather which he had brought with him from the country, had become so heelless, dilapidated, and shabby, that he made an investment in a pair of cheap shoes, and discarded the ruined bluchers. How to dispose of them was now his difficulty. He was ashamed to give them away at his lodgings; and they were not, after a grave consultation on the subject between his wife and himself, deemed worthy of repair. He proposed taking them out into the street at night, and wilfully making away with them, when the uxor placens descried a dusty-looking cupboard high up in the wall of the bed-room, into which he threw his once-serviceable boots. The cupboard-door would not close; but the cupboard being high up and in a corner, the bluchers did not show. He started on his trip to the Temple of Thespis, leaving his fond and self-denying little wife to her tea, her needlework, and her anticipations of his report of the evening's entertainment. He entered the pit-entrance of the Theatre just after the first rush of half-past-six punctual folk had gone in; deposited his solitary half-crown, the only money which, with the exception of a few pence, he had about him; and received his check-ticket, and was about to pass on, full of disappointment at not having been earlier, and of excitement at the prospect of a little novel amusement. To his intense astonishment, he had scarcely proceeded a yard when the money taker called out to him and a policeman who was standing by simultaneously. The man in the little box had twisted the half-crown, which was a bad one; was gesticulating wildly, and declaiming incoherently; and Henry Ranthorpe, in a few moments, was in the custody of the officer in blue. It was in vain that he protested his innocence, produced his card, gave his address, mentioned the names of two or three friends he knew in London. The money-taker winked knowingly to the officer, who smiled tranquilly; and to the station-house they went. The inspector took the charge, heard the evidence, and he was placed in a wretched dark cell, where a riotous drunkard was singing and crying in turns. Afraid to alarm his wife by sending to her to state the misfortune that had befallen him, he secured, by the good offices of the inspector, who was struck with his respectable appearance and his manner, a messenger, whom he sent with a note to his landlord, and to a friend in Piccadilly, who was a respectable householder. They arrived, and gave so satisfactory an account of him, that the inspector, overstepping his duty, I think, permitted him to go; and he reached home rather earlier than his wife expected him, with very little to say about the comedy which he was to have enjoyed, but with a full and impassioned narrative of the calamity that had befallen him. They sat together over their crust of bread-and-cheese and glass of beer, vowing vengeance against the manager of the theatre and his employés, and discussing the expediency of bringing an action for false imprisonment. They little knew how really narrow the escape had been. A few days afterwards, Ranthorpe observed the ugly old boots protruding a little at the cupboard-door. To get rid of this eye-sore, he took a chair, placed his trunk upon it, and opened the dusty cupboard, in order to effectually secrete the boots. You may endeavour to imagine his astonishment when, in moving them, he descried two large bags. They were very heavy; and what do you suppose they contained? ONE HUNDRED BAD HALF-CROWNS BACH. There could be no doubt about their quality. He showed them to his wife, whose astonishment was as great as his own. They began to entertain strange suspicions about the landlord; and next began to reflect that, after what had happened at the theatre, he would probably suspect them. They, however, rang the bell, summoned the worthy householder, and showed him the useless and dangerous booty. They were relieved, however, by seeing his broad countenance, at first filled with amazement and distraction, suddenly illuminated with a glance of profound penetration, and a smile of self-satisfied sagacity. "I quite understand it now, ma'am," said their host, addressing Mrs. Ranthorpe. "Some months ago, two young men came one day and took these rooms. reference, but offered to pay in advance, which, as I always like to be on the safe side, I allowed them to do. Their hours were very strange; but they came in and went out very quiet, and gave but a very little trouble. Indeed, my missus said they were the best lodgers we had had for this many a day. The money was regular, and, what seems odd now, none of it bad. One day they went out together, after they had been in this house They gave me no |