The Reminiscences of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) Part 41

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII.

THE TILNEY STREET OUTRAGE--"ARE YOU NOT GOING TO PUT ON THE BLACK CAP, MY LORD?"

One evening, while sitting with some friends in Tilney Street, there was one of the most tremendous explosions ever heard. It seemed as if the world was blown up. But as nothing happened, we did not leave the room, and went on with the conversation.

It was not until the next day it was ascertained that an attempt had been made to blow in Reginald Brett's front door, which was a few houses off, and that it had been perpetrated by some Fenians, whose friends had been awarded penal servitude for life for a similar outrage with dynamite. Why their anger was directed against Mr.

Reginald Brett--a most peaceful and excellent man--it was difficult to say, for he was very kind-hearted, and, above all, the son of the Master of the Rolls, who never tried prisoners at all, only counsel.

Having made inquiries the next morning--I don't know of whom, there were such a number of people in Tilney Street--I was astonished to hear some one say, "They meant to pay _you_ that visit, Sir Henry."

"Then _they knocked at the wrong door_," said I.

The stranger seemed to know me, and I had a little further conversation with him. It turned out he was a Chancery barrister, and a friend of Brett's.

"Why," I asked, "do you think they meant the visit for me?"

"Well," he answered, "it was."

"If it was intended for me," I replied, "I can only say they, were most ungrateful, for I gave their friends all I could."

"Yes--penal servitude for life."

"Very well," I added; "if they think they'll frighten me by blowing in Reginald Brett's front door, they are very much deceived."

Lord Esher, I believe, always considered that _he_ was the object of this attack, and as I had no wish to disturb so comforting an idea, took no further notice, and the Fenians took no further notice of me. Years after, however, my name was mentioned in Parliament in connection with this case; nor was my severity called in question.

There were no more explosions in Tilney Street, but a singular circ.u.mstance occurred, which placed me in a position, if I had desired it, to deprive Lord Esher of the satisfaction of believing that he was the object of so much Fenian attention. But if it was a comfort to him or a source of pride, I did not see why I should take it away.

A reverend father of the Roman Church told me that a long while ago a man in confession made a statement which he wished the priest to communicate to me. It was under the seal of confession, and he refused, as he was bound to do, to mention a word. The man persisted in asking him, and he as persistently declined.

Some considerable time, however, having elapsed, the same man went to the priest, not to confess, but to repeat his request in ordinary conversation. This the father could have no objection to, and the culprit told him that he had undertaken to throw the bomb at the front door of Number 5, but that through having in the gas-light misread the figure, he had placed it against that of Number 2. He begged the priest as a great favour to a.s.sure me on his word that the bomb was certainly intended for me, and not for Brett.

On this subject the _Kent Leader_ had some interesting remarks on the anarchists as well as their Judge.

"Speaking of dynamite," it said, "we have serious cause for alarm in our free land. The wretches concerned in the abominable outrage of Tuesday last cannot be too severely dealt with. It is evident that their intent was against Justice Hawkins, and the fact that Sir Henry was the presiding Judge at the recent anarchists' trial points the connection between the outrage and other anarchists....

"Justice Hawkins has been spoken of as a harsh Judge. Ever since the 'Penge mystery' trial many have termed him the hanging Judge. We have sat under him on many eventful occasions, and venture the opinion that no one who has had equal opportunity would come to any other conclusion than that he was painstaking and careful to a degree, and particularly in criminal cases formed one of the most conscientious Judges on the Bench. Hanging Judge! Why, we have seen the tears start to his eyes when sentencing a prisoner to death, and, owing to emotion, only by a masterful effort could his voice be heard. Above all, he is a just Judge."

[Many persons were not aware, and thousands are not at the present time, that when a verdict of "Wilful murder" is p.r.o.nounced a Judge has no alternative but to read the prescribed sentence of death. If this were not so, the situation would be almost intolerable, for who would not avoid, if possible, deciding that the irrevocable doom of the prisoner should be delivered? In many cases the feelings of the Judges would interfere with the course of justice, and murderers would receive more sympathy than their victims, while fiends would escape to the danger of society.

And yet that Judges have sympathy, and that it can be, and is, in these days properly exercised, the following story will testify. I give the story as Lord Brampton told it.]

In a circuit town a poor woman was tried before me for murdering her baby. The facts were so simple that they can be told in a few words.

Her baby was a week old, and the poor woman, unable to sustain the load of shame which oppressed her, ran one night into a river, holding the baby in her arms. She had got into the water deep enough to drown the baby, while her own life was saved by a boatman.

The scene was sad enough as she stood under a lamp and looked into the face of the policeman, clutching her dead child to her breast, and refusing to part with it.

At the trial there was no defence to the charge of wilful murder except _one_, and that I felt it my duty to discountenance. I think the depositions were handed to a young barrister by my order, and that being so, I exercised my discretion as to the mode of defence. In other words, I defended the prisoner myself.

In order to avoid the sentence that would have followed an acquittal _on the ground of insanity_, which would have entailed perhaps lifelong imprisonment, I took upon myself to depart from the usual course, and ask the jury whether, _without being insane in the ordinary sense, the woman might not have been at the time of committing the deed in so excited a state as not to know what she was doing_.

I thus avoided the technical form of question sane or insane, and obtained a verdict of guilty, but that the woman at the time was not answerable for her conduct, together with a strong recommendation to mercy. This verdict, if not according to the strictest legal quibbling, was according to justice.

I was about to p.r.o.nounce sentence in accordance with the law, which it was not possible for me to avoid, however much my mind was inclined to do so, when the pompous old High Sheriff, all importance and dignity, said,--

"My lord, are you not going to put on the black cap?"

"No," I answered, "I am not. I do not intend the poor creature to be hanged, and I am not going to frighten her to death."

Addressing her by name, I said, "Don't pay any attention to what I am going to read. No harm will be done to you. I am sure you did not know in your great trouble and sorrow what you were doing, and I will take care to represent your case so that nothing will harm you in the way of punishment."

I then mumbled over the words of the sentence of death, taking care that the poor woman did not hear them--much, no doubt, to the chagrin of the High Sheriff and to the lowering of his high office and dignity. Nothing so enhances a Sheriff's dignity as the gallows.

[There was a great deal of unlooked-for appreciation of his merits, and from quarters where, had he been a hard Judge, one could never have expected it.

There was even the observation of the costermonger leaning over his barrow near the a.s.size Court when one morning Sir Henry was going in with little Jack.

"Gorblime, Jemmy! see 'im? The ole bloke's been poachin' agin. See what he's got?"

It was a brace of pheasants, and not going into court with his gun, but only his dog, it was taken for granted he had been out all night on an unlawful expedition.

Some one once asked Sir Henry what was the most wonderful verdict he ever obtained.

He answered: "It depends upon circ.u.mstances. Do you mean as to value?"

"And amount."

"Well, then," he said, "_half a farthing_."

Some of the company were a little disconcerted.

"I'll tell you," said the Judge. "There was in our Gracious Majesty's reign a coinage of _half a farthing_. It was soon discountenanced as useless, but while it was current as coin of the realm I had the honour of obtaining a verdict for that amount, and need not say, had it been paid in _specie_ and preserved, it would in value more than equal at the present time any verdict the jury might have given in that case."]

One of the most remarkable trials in which as a Judge I have presided was what was known as the Muswell Hill tragedy. It was a brutal, commonplace affair, and with its sordid details might make a respectable society novel. I should have liked Sherlock Holmes to have been in the case, because he would have saved me a great deal of sensational development, as well as much anxiety and observation.

Burglars are usually crafty and faithless to one another. They never act alone--that is, the real professionals--and invariably, while in danger of being convicted, betray one another. Such, at all events, is my experience. Each fears the treachery of his companion in guilt, and endeavours to be first in disclosing it. In the case I am now speaking of, this experience was never more verified than in the attempt on the part of these two murderers each to shift the guilt on to the other.

The ruffians, Milsome and Fowler, resolved to commit a burglary in the house of an old man who led a lonely life at the suburb known as Muswell Hill, near Hornsey.

The sole occupant of the cottage slept in a bedroom on the first floor. In his room was an iron safe, in which he kept a considerable sum of money, close by the side of his bed.

In the dead of night the two robbers found their way into the kitchen, which was below the bedroom. They made, however, so much noise as to arouse the sleeper in the room above. The old man rose, and went down into the kitchen, where he found the two prisoners preparing to search for whatever property they might carry away. Instantly they fell upon their victim, threw him on to the floor, and with a tablecloth, which they found in the room, and which they cut into strips for the purpose, bound the poor old man hand and foot, and struck him so violently about the head that he was killed on the spot, where he was found the following morning. The prisoners failed to obtain the booty they were in search of, and made off with some trifling plunder, the only reward for a most cruel murder. They escaped for a time, but were at last traced by a singular accident--one of the prisoners having taken a boy's toy lamp on the night of the burglary from his mother's cottage and left it in the kitchen of the murdered man. The boy identified one of the prisoners as the man who had been at his mother's and taken the lamp.

The men were jointly charged with the murder before me. Each tried to fix the guilt on the other, knowing--or, at all events, believing--that he himself would escape the consequences of wilful murder if he succeeded in hanging his friend. I knew well enough that, unless it could be proved that _both_ were implicated in the murder, or if it should be left uncertain which was the man who actually committed it, or that they both went to the place with the joint intention of perpetrating it if necessary for their object, they might both avoid the gallows. I therefore directed my attention closely to every circ.u.mstance in the case, and after a considerable amount of evidence had been given without much result, so far as implicating both prisoners in the actual murder was concerned, an accidental discovery revealed the whole of the facts of the tragedy as plainly as if I had seen it committed.

I have said that the tablecover had been _cut_ into strips to accomplish their purpose; and it was clear that a penknife had been used, for one was found on the floor. Suddenly my attention was called to the fact that _two_ penknives, which no one had hitherto noticed, were produced. They belonged, not to the prisoners, but to the deceased man, and were usually placed on the shelf in the kitchen. But it came out in evidence, quite, as it seemed, accidentally, that they had been taken from that place, and were found on the floor where the cutting up of the tablecover had been performed, at some little distance from one another; but each knife _by the side of and not far from the deceased man_. They were at my wish handed to me; I also asked for some of the shreds which had bound the dead man. Upon examination it seemed that these were the knives that had been used to cut the tablecloth into shreds, and if so, the jury might well a.s.sume that _each_ prisoner had used one of the knives for that purpose, for one man could not at the same time use two.

The tablecloth had jagged or hacked edges, which satisfied the jury that the knives had been used hurriedly, and that each man had been doing his share of the cutting. It was thus clearly established that both the men were engaged in the murder and equally guilty, and so the jury found by their verdict.