The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney by Samuel Warren

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THE EXPERIENCES OF A BARRISTER,

AND

Confessions of an Attorney.

BY SAMUEL WARREN

1880

CONTENTS.

THE MARCH ASSIZE

THE NORTHERN CIRCUIT

THE CONTESTED MARRIAGE

THE MOTHER AND SON

"THE WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS"

ESTHER MASON

THE MARRIAGE SETTLEMENT

THE SECOND MARRIAGE

CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE

"THE ACCOMMODATION BILL"

THE REFUGEE

THE LIFE POLICY

BIGAMY OR NO BIGAMY

JANE ECCLES

"EVERY MAN HIS OWN LAWYER"

THE CHEST OF DRAWERS

THE PUZZLE

THE ONE BLACK SPOT

THE GENTLEMAN BEGGAR

A FASHIONABLE FORGER

THE YOUNG ADVOCATE

A MURDER IN THE TIME OF THE CRUSADES

CONFESSIONS OF AN ATTORNEY.

THE MARCH ASSIZE.

Something more than half a century ago, a person, in going along Holborn,
might have seen, near the corner of one of the thoroughfares which
diverge towards Russell Square, the respectable-looking shop of a glover
and haberdasher named James Harvey, a man generally esteemed by his
neighbors, and who was usually considered well to do in the world. Like
many London tradesmen, Harvey was originally from the country. He had
come up to town when a poor lad, to push his fortune, and by dint of
steadiness and civility, and a small property left him by a distant
relation, he had been able to get into business on his own account, and
to attain that most important element of success in London--"a
connection." Shortly after setting up in the world, he married a young
woman from his native town, to whom he had been engaged ever since his
school-days; and at the time our narrative commences he was the father of
three children.

James Harvey's establishment was one of the best frequented of its class
in the street. You could never pass without seeing customers going in or
out. There was evidently not a little business going forward. But
although, to all appearance, a flourishing concern, the proprietor of the
establishment was surprised to find that he was continually pinched in
his circumstances. No matter what was the amount of business transacted
over the counter, he never got any richer.

At the period referred to, shop-keeping had not attained that degree
of organization, with respect to counter-men and cashiers, which now
distinguishes the great houses of trade. The primitive till was not
yet superseded. This was the weak point in Harvey's arrangements; and
not to make a needless number of words about it, the poor man was
regularly robbed by a shopman, whose dexterity in pitching a guinea
into the drawer, so as to make it jump, unseen, with a jerk into his
hand, was worthy of Herr Dobler, or any other master of the sublime
art of jugglery.

Good-natured and unsuspicious, perhaps also not sufficiently vigilant,
Harvey was long in discovering how he was pillaged. Cartwright, the name
of the person who was preying on his employer, was not a young man. He
was between forty and fifty years of age, and had been in various
situations, where he had always given satisfaction, except on the score
of being somewhat gay and somewhat irritable. Privately, he was a man of
loose habits, and for years his extravagances had been paid for by
property clandestinely abstracted from his too-confiding master. Slow to
believe in the reality of such wickedness, Mr. Harvey could with
difficulty entertain the suspicions which began to dawn on his mind. At
length all doubt was at an end. He detected Cartwright in the very act of
carrying off goods to a considerable amount. The man was tried at the Old
Bailey for the offence; but through a technical informality in the
indictment, acquitted.

Unable to find employment, and with a character gone, the liberated thief
became savage, revengeful, and desperate. Instead of imputing his fall to
his own irregularities, he considered his late unfortunate employer as
the cause of his ruin; and now he bent all the energies of his dark
nature to destroy the reputation of the man whom he had betrayed and
plundered. Of all the beings self-delivered to the rule of unscrupulous
malignity, with whom it has been my fate to come professionally in
contact, I never knew one so utterly fiendish as this discomfited
pilferer. Frenzied with his imaginary wrongs, he formed the determination
to labor, even if it were for years, to ruin his victim. Nothing short of
death should divert him from this the darling object of his existence.

Animated by these diabolical passions, Cartwright proceeded to his work.
Harvey, he had too good reason to know, was in debt to persons who had
made him advances; and by means of artfully-concocted anonymous letters,
evidently written by some one conversant with the matters on which he
wrote, he succeeded in alarming the haberdasher's creditors. The
consequences were--demands of immediate payment, and, in spite of the
debtor's explanations and promises, writs, heavy law expenses, ruinous
sacrifices, and ultimate bankruptcy. It may seem almost too marvelous for
belief, but the story of this terrible revenge and its consequences is no
fiction. Every incident in my narrative is true, and the whole may be
found in hard outline in the records of the courts with which a few years
ago I was familiar.

The humiliated and distressed feelings of Harvey and his family may be
left to the imagination. When he found himself a ruined man, I dare say
his mental sufferings were sufficiently acute. Yet he did not sit down in
despair. To re-establish himself in business in England appeared
hopeless; but America presented itself as a scene where industry might
find a reward; and by the kindness of some friends, he was enabled to
make preparations to emigrate with his wife and children. Towards the
end of February he quitted London for one of the great seaports, where he
was to embark for Boston. On arriving there with his family, Mr. Harvey
took up his abode at a principal hotel. This, in a man of straitened
means, was doubtless imprudent; but he afterwards attempted to explain
the circumstance by saying, that as the ship in which he had engaged his
passage was to sail on the day after his arrival, he had preferred
incurring a slight additional expense rather than that his wife--who was
now, with failing spirits, nursing an infant--should be exposed to coarse
associations and personal discomfort. In the expectation, however, of
being only one night in the hotel, Harvey was unfortunately disappointed.
Ship-masters, especially those commanding emigrant vessels, were then, as
now, habitual promise-breakers; and although each succeeding sun was to
light them on their way, it was fully a fortnight before the ship stood
out to sea. By that time a second and more dire reverse had occurred in
the fortunes of the luckless Harvey.

Cartwright, whose appetite for vengeance was but whetted by his first
success, had never lost sight of the movements of his victim; and now he
had followed him to the place of his embarkation, with an eager but
undefined purpose of working him some further and more deadly mischief.
Stealthily he hovered about the house which sheltered the unconscious
object of his malicious hate, plotting, as he afterwards confessed, the
wildest schemes for satiating his revenge. Several times he made excuses
for calling at the hotel, in the hope of observing the nature of the
premises, taking care, however, to avoid being seen by Mr. Harvey or his
family. A fortnight passed away, and the day of departure of the
emigrants arrived without the slightest opportunity occurring for the
gratification of his purposes. The ship was leaving her berth; most of
the passengers were on board; Mrs. Harvey and the children, with nearly
the whole of the luggage, were already safely in the vessel; Mr. Harvey
only remained on shore to purchase some trifling article, and to settle
his bill at the hotel on removing his last trunk. Cartwright had tracked
him all day; he could not attack him in the street; and he finally
followed him to the hotel, in order to wreak his vengeance on him in his
private apartment, of the situation of which he had informed himself.

Harvey entered the hotel first, and before Cartwright came up, he had
gone down a passage into the bar to settle the bill which he had incurred
for the last two days. Not aware of this circumstance, Cartwright, in the
bustle which prevailed, went up stairs to Mr. Harvey's bedroom and
parlor, in neither of which, to his surprise, did he find the occupant;
and he turned away discomfited. Passing along towards the chief
staircase, he perceived a room of which the door was open, and that on
the table there lay a gold watch and appendages. Nobody was in the
apartment: the gentleman who occupied it had only a few moments before
gone to his bed-chamber for a brief space. Quick as lightning a
diabolical thought flashed through the brain of the villain, who had been
baffled in his original intentions. He recollected that he had seen a
trunk in Harvey's room, and that the keys hung in the lock. An
inconceivably short space of time served for him to seize the watch, to
deposit it at the bottom of Harvey's trunk, and to quit the hotel by a
back stair, which led by a short cut to the harbor. The whole transaction
was done unperceived, and the wretch at least departed unnoticed.

Having finished his business at the bar, Mr. Harvey repaired to his room,
locked his trunk, which, being of a small and handy size, he mounted on
his shoulder, and proceeded to leave the house by the back stair, in
order to get as quickly as possible to the vessel. Little recked he of
the interruption which was to be presented to his departure. He had got
as far as the foot of the stair with his burden, when he was overtaken by
a waiter, who declared that he was going to leave the house clandestinely
without settling accounts. It is proper to mention that Mr. Harvey had
incurred the enmity of this particular waiter in consequence of having,
out of his slender resources, given him too small a gratuity on the
occasion of paying a former bill, and not aware of the second bill being
settled, the waiter was rather glad to have an opportunity of charging
him with a fraudulent design. In vain Mr. Harvey remonstrated, saying he
had paid for every thing. The waiter would not believe his statement, and
detained him "till he should hear better about it."

"Let me go, fellow; I insist upon it," said Mr. Harvey, burning with
indignation. "I am already too late."

"Not a step, till I ask master if accounts are squared."

At this moment, while the altercation was at the hottest, a terrible
ringing of bells was heard, and above stairs was a loud noise of voices,
and of feet running to and fro. A chambermaid came hurriedly down the
stair, exclaiming that some one had stolen a gold watch from No. 17, and
that nobody ought to leave the house till it was found. The landlord
also, moved by the hurricane which had been raised, made his appearance
at the spot where Harvey was interrupted in his exit.

"What on earth is all this noise about, John?" inquired the landlord of
the waiter.

"Why, sir, I thought it rather strange for any gentleman to leave the
house by the back way, carrying his own portmanteau, and so I was making
a little breeze about it, fearing he had not paid his bill, when all of
a sudden Sally rushes down the stair and says as how No. 17 has missed
his gold watch, and that no one should quit the hotel."

No. 17, an old, dry-looking military gentlemen, in a particularly high
passion, now showed himself on the scene, uttering terrible threats of
legal proceedings against the house for the loss he had sustained.

Harvey was stupified and indignant, yet he could hardly help smiling at
the pother. "What," said he, "have I to do with all this? I have paid for
everything; I am surely entitled to go away if I like. Remember, that if
I lose my passage to Boston, you shall answer for it."

"I very much regret detaining you, sir," replied the keeper of the hotel;
"but you hear there has been a robbery committed within the last few
minutes, and as it will be proper to search every one in the house,
surely you, who are on the point of departure, will have no objections to
be searched first, and then be at liberty to go?"

There was something so perfectly reasonable in all this, that
Harvey stepped into an adjoining parlor, and threw open his trunk
for inspection, never doubting that his innocence would be
immediately manifest.

The waiter, whose mean rapacity had been the cause of the detention,
acted as examiner. He pulled one article after another out of the trunk,
and at length--horror of horrors!--held up the missing watch with a look
of triumph and scorn!

"Who put that there?" cried Harvey in an agony of mind which can be
better imagined than described. "Who has done me this grievous wrong? I
know nothing as to how the watch came into my trunk."

No one answered this appeal. All present stood for a moment in
gloomy silence.

"Sir," said the landlord to Harvey on recovering from his surprise, "I am
sorry for you. For the sake of a miserable trifle, you have brought ruin
and disgrace on yourself. This is a matter which concerns the honor of my
house, and cannot stop here. However much it is against my feelings, you
must go before a magistrate."

"By all means," added No. 17, with the importance of an injured man. "A
pretty thing that one's watch is not safe in a house like this!"

"John, send Boots for a constable," said the landlord.

Harvey sat with his head leaning on his hand. A deadly cold
perspiration trickled down his brow. His heart swelled and beat as if
it would burst. What should he do? His whole prospects were in an
instant blighted. "Oh God! do not desert a frail and unhappy being:
give me strength to face this new and terrible misfortune," was a
prayer he internally uttered. A little revived, he started to his feet,
and addressing himself to the landlord, he said, "Take me to a
magistrate instantly, and let us have this diabolical plot unraveled. I
court inquiry into my character and conduct."

"It is no use saying any more about it," answered the landlord; "here is
Boots with a constable, and let us all go away together to the nearest
magistrate. Boots, carry that trunk. John and Sally, you can follow us."

And so the party, trunk and all, under the constable as conductor,
adjourned to the house of a magistrate in an adjacent street.
There the matter seemed so clear a case of felony--robbery in a
dwelling-house--that Harvey, all protestations to the contrary, was
fully committed for trial at the ensuing March assizes, then but a few
days distant.

At the period at which these incidents occurred, I was a young man going
on my first circuits. I had not as yet been honored with perhaps more
than three or four briefs, and these only in cases so slightly productive
of fees, that I was compelled to study economy in my excursions. Instead
of taking up my residence at an inn when visiting ------, a considerable
seaport, where the court held its sittings, I dwelt in lodgings kept by a
widow lady, where, at a small expense, I could enjoy perfect quietness,
free from interruption.

On the evening after my arrival on the March circuit of the year 17--, I
was sitting in my lodgings perusing a new work on criminal jurisprudence,
when the landlady, after tapping at the door, entered my room.

"I am sorry to trouble you, sir," said she; "but a lady has called to
see you about a very distressing law case--very distressing indeed,
and a very strange case it is too. Only, if you could be so good as
to see her?"

"Who is she?"

"All I know about it is this: she is a Mrs. Harvey. She and her husband
and children were to sail yesterday for Boston. All were on board except
the husband; and he, on leaving the large hotel over the way, was taken
up for a robbery. Word was in the evening sent by the prisoner to his
wife to come on shore, with all her children and the luggage; and so she
came back in the pilot boat, and was in such a state of distress, that my
brother, who is on the preventive service, and saw her land, took pity on
her, and had her and her children and things taken to a lodging on the
quay. As my brother knows that we have a London lawyer staying here, he
has advised the poor woman to come and consult you about the case."

"Well, I'll see what can be done. Please desire the lady to step in."

A lady was shortly shown in. She had been pretty, and was so still, but
anxiety was pictured in her pale countenance. Her dress was plain, but
not inelegant; and altogether she had a neat and engaging appearance.

"Be so good as to sit down," said I, bowing; "and tell me all you would
like to say."

The poor woman burst into tears; but afterwards recovering herself, she
told me pretty nearly the whole of her history and that of her husband.

Lawyers have occasion to see so much duplicity, that I did not all at
once give assent to the idea of Harvey being innocent of the crime of
which he stood charged.

"There is something perfectly inexplicable in the case," I observed, "and
it would require sifting. Your husband, I hope has always borne a good
character?"

"Perfectly so. He was no doubt unfortunate in business; but he got his
certificate on the first examination; and there are many who would
testify to his uprightness." And here again my client broke into tears,
as if overwhelmed with her recollections and prospects.

"I think I recollect Mr. Harvey's shop," said I soothingly. "It seemed a
very respectable concern; and we must see what can be done. Keep up your
spirits; the only fear I have arises from the fact of Judge A ---- being
on the bench. He is usually considered severe, and if exculpatory
evidence fail, your husband may run the risk of being--transported." A
word of more terrific import, with which I was about to conclude, stuck
unuttered in my throat "Have you employed an attorney?" I added.

"No; I have done nothing as yet, but apply to you, to beg of you to be my
husband's counsel."

"Well, that must be looked to. I shall speak to a local agent, to prepare
and work out the case; and we shall all do our utmost to get an
acquittal. To-morrow I will call on your husband in prison."

Many thanks were offered by the unfortunate lady, and she withdrew.

I am not going to inflict on the reader a detailed account of this
remarkable trial, which turned, as barristers would say, on a beautiful
point of circumstantial evidence. Along with the attorney, a sharp enough
person in his way, I examined various parties at the hotel, and made
myself acquainted with the nature of the premises. The more we
investigated, however, the more dark and mysterious--always supposing
Harvey's innocence--did the whole case appear. There was not one
redeeming trait in the affair, except Harvey's previous good character;
and good character, by the law of England, goes for nothing in opposition
to facts proved to the satisfaction of a jury. It was likewise most
unfortunate that A ---- was to be the presiding judge. This man possessed
great forensic acquirements, and was of spotless private character; but,
like the majority of lawyers of that day--when it was no extraordinary
thing to hang twenty men in a morning at Newgate--he was a staunch
stickler for the gallows as the only effectual reformer and safeguard of
the social state. At this time he was but partially recovered from a long
and severe indisposition, and the traces of recent suffering were
distinctly apparent on his pale and passionless features.

Harvey was arraigned in due form; the evidence was gone carefully
through; and everything, so far as I was concerned, was done that man
could do. But at the time to which I refer, counsel was not allowed to
address the court on behalf of the prisoner--a practice since introduced
from Scotland--and consequently I was allowed no opportunity to draw the
attention of the jury to the total want of any direct evidence of the
prisoner's guilt. Harvey himself tried to point out the unlikelihood of
his being guilty; but he was not a man gifted with dialectic qualities,
and his harangue fell pointless on the understandings of the twelve
common-place individuals who sat in the jury-box. The judge finally
proceeded to sum the evidence, and this he did emphatically _against_ the
prisoner--dwelling with much force on the suspicious circumstance of a
needy man taking up his abode at an expensive fashionable hotel; his
furtive descent from his apartments by the back stairs; the undoubted
fact of the watch being found in his trunk; the improbability of any one
putting it there but himself; and the extreme likelihood that the robbery
was effected in a few moments of time by the culprit, just as he passed
from the bar of the hotel to the room which he had occupied. "If," said
he to the jury, in concluding his address, "you can, after all these
circumstances, believe the prisoner to be innocent of the crime laid to
his charge, it is more than I can do. The thing seems to me as clear as
the sun at noonday. The evidence, in short, is irresistible; and if the
just and necessary provisions of the law are not enforced in such very
plain cases, then society will be dissolved, and security for property
there will be none. Gentlemen, retire and make up your verdict."

The jury were not disposed to retire. After communing a few minutes
together, one of them stood up and delivered the verdict: it was
_Guilty!_ The judge assumed the crowning badge of the judicial
potentate--the black cap; and the clerk of arraigns asked the prisoner at
the bar, in the usual form, if he had anything to urge why sentence of
death should not be passed upon him.

Poor Harvey! I durst scarcely look at him. As the sonorous words fell on
his ear, he was grasping nervously with shaking hands at the front of the
dock. He appeared stunned, bewildered, as a man but half-awakened from a
hideous dream might be supposed to look. He had comprehended, though he
had scarcely heard, the verdict; for on the instant, the voice which but
a few years before sang to him by the brook side, was ringing through his
brain, and he could recognize the little pattering feet of his children,
as, sobbing and clinging to their shrieking mother's dress, she and they
were hurried out of court The clerk, after a painful pause, repeated the
solemn formula. By a strong effort the doomed man mastered his agitation;
his pale countenance lighted up with indignant fire, and firm and
self-possessed, he thus replied to the fearful interrogatory:--

"Much could I say in the name, not of mercy, but of justice, why the
sentence about to be passed on me should not be pronounced; but nothing,
alas! that will avail me with you, pride-blinded ministers of death. You
fashion to yourselves--out of your own vain conceits do you
fashion--modes and instruments, by the aid of which you fondly imagine to
invest yourselves with attributes which belong only to Omniscience; and
now I warn you--and it is a voice from the tomb, in whose shadow I
already stand, which addresses you--that you are about to commit a most
cruel and deliberate murder."

He paused, and the jury looked into each other's eyes for the courage
they could not find in their own hearts. The voice of conscience spoke,
but was only for a few moments audible. The suggestions that what grave
parliaments, learned judges, and all classes of "respectability"
sanctioned, could not be wrong, much less murderous or cruel, silenced
the "still, small" tones, and tranquilized the startled jurors.

"Prisoner at the bar," said the judge with his cold, calm voice of
destiny, "I cannot listen to such observations: you have been found
guilty of a heinous offence by a jury of your countrymen after a patient
trial. With that finding I need scarcely say I entirely agree. I am as
satisfied of your guilt as if I had seen you commit the act with my own
bodily eyes. The circumstance of your being a person who, from habits and
education, should have been above committing so base a crime, only
aggravates your guilt. However, no matter who or what you have been, you
must expiate your offence on the scaffold. The law has very properly, for
the safety of society, decreed the punishment of death for such crimes:
our only and plain duty is to execute that law."

The prisoner did not reply: he was leaning with his elbows on the front
of the dock, his bowed face covered with his outspread hands; and the
judge passed sentence of death in the accustomed form. The court then
rose, and a turnkey placed his hand upon the prisoner's arm, to lead him
away. Suddenly he uncovered his face, drew himself up to his full
height--he was a remarkably tall man--and glared fiercely round upon the
audience, like a wild animal at bay. "My lord," he cried, or rather
shouted, in an excited voice. The judge motioned impatiently to the
jailor, and strong hands impelled the prisoner from the front of the
dock. Bursting from them, he again sprang forward, and his arms
outstretched, whilst his glittering eye seemed to hold the judge
spell-bound, exclaimed, "My lord, before another month has passed away,
_you_ will appear at the bar of another world, to answer for the life,
the innocent life, which God bestowed upon me, but which you have
impiously cast away as a thing of naught and scorn!" He ceased, and was
at once borne off. The court, in some confusion, hastily departed. It was
thought at the time that the judge's evidently failing health had
suggested the prophecy to the prisoner. It only excited a few days'
wonder, and was forgotten.

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