The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney by Samuel Warren
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Samuel Warren >> The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney
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The position of a barrister in such circumstances is always painful. I
need hardly say that my own feelings were of a very distressing kind.
Conscious that if the unfortunate man really was guilty, he was at least
not deserving of capital punishment, I exerted myself to procure a
reprieve. In the first place I waited privately on the judge; but he
would listen to no proposal for a respite. Along with a number of
individuals--chiefly of the Society of Friends--I petitioned the crown
for a commutation of the sentence. But being unaccompanied with a
recommendation from the judge, the prayer of our petition was of course
disregarded: the law, it was said, must take its course. How much cruelty
has been exercised under shelter of that remorseless expression!
I would willingly pass over the succeeding events. Unable to save his
life, I endeavored to soothe the few remaining hours of the doomed
convict, and frequently visited him in the condemned cell. The more I saw
of him, the deeper grew my sympathy in his case, which was that of no
vulgar felon. "I have been a most unfortunate man," said he one day to
me. "A destiny towards ruin in fortune and in life has pursued me. I feel
as if deserted by God and man; yet I know, or at least would persuade
myself, that Heaven will one day vindicate my innocence of this foul
charge. To think of being hanged like a dog for a crime at which my soul
revolts! Great is the crime of those imbecile jurors and that false and
hard-hearted judge, who thus, by an irreversible decree, consign a
fellow-mortal to a death of violence and disgrace. Oh God, help me--help
me to sustain that bitter, bitter hour!" And then the poor man would
throw himself on his bed and weep.
But the parting with his wife and children. What pen can describe that
terrible interview! They knelt in prayer, their wobegone countenances
suffused in tears, and with hands clasped convulsively together. The
scene was too harrowing and sacred for the eye of a stranger. I rushed
from the cell, and buried myself in my lodgings, whence I did not remove
till all was over. Next day James Harvey, a victim of circumstantial
evidence, and of a barbarous criminal code, perished on the scaffold.
Three weeks afterwards, the court arrived at a populous city in the west
of England. It had in the interval visited another assize town, and there
Judge A ---- had left three for execution. At the trials of these men,
however, I had not attended. So shocked had been my feelings with the
mournful event which had taken place at ------, that I had gone into
Wales for the sake of change of scene. After roaming about for a
fortnight amidst the wild solitudes of Caernarvonshire, I took the stage
for the city which I knew the court was to visit, and arrived on the day
previous to the opening of the assizes.
"Well, are we to have a heavy calendar?" I inquired next morning of a
brother barrister on entering the court.
"Rather light for a March assize," replied the impatient counsel as
he bustled onward. "There's Cartwright's case--highway robbery--in
which I am for the prosecution. He'll swing for it, and perhaps four
or five others."
"A good hanging judge is A ----," said the under-sheriff, who at
this moment joined us, rubbing his hands, as if pleased with the
prospect of a few executions. "No chance of the prophecy yonder coming
to pass I suppose?"
"Not in the least," replied the bustling counsel. "He never looked
better. His illness has gone completely off. And this day's work will
brighten him up."
Cartwright's trial came on. I had never seen the man before, and was not
aware that this was the same person whom Harvey had incidentally told me
he had discharged for theft; the truth being, that till the last moment
of his existence, that unfortunate man had not known how much he had been
a sacrifice to this wretch's malice.
The crime of which the villain now stood accused was that of robbing a
farmer of the paltry sum of eight shillings, in the neighborhood of
Ilfracombe. He pleaded not guilty, but put in no defence. A verdict was
recorded against him, and in due form A ---- sentenced him to be hanged.
An expression of fiendish malignancy gleamed over the haggard features of
the felon as he asked leave to address a few words to the court. It was
granted. Leaning forward, and raising his heavy, scowling eyes to the
judge, he thus began:--"There is something on my mind, my lord--a
dreadful crime--which, as I am to die for the eight shillings I took from
the farmer, I may as well confess. You may remember Harvey, my lord, whom
you hanged the other day at--?"
"What of him, fellow?" replied the judge, his features suddenly
flushing crimson.
"Why, my lord, only this--that he was as innocent of the crime for which
you hanged him as the child yet unborn! I did the deed! I put the watch
in his trunk!" And to the unutterable horror of the entire court he
related the whole particulars of the transaction, the origin of his
grudge against Harvey, and his delight on bringing him to the gallows.
"Inhuman, execrable villain!" gasped the judge in extreme excitement.
"Cleverly done, though! Was it not, my lord?" rejoined the ruffian with
bitter irony. "The evidence, you know, was irresistible; the crime as
clear as the sun at noonday; and if in such plain cases, the just and
necessary law was not enforced, society would be dissolved, and there
would be no security for property! These were your words, I think. How on
that occasion I admired your lordship's judgment and eloquence! Society
would be dissolved if an innocent man were not hanged! Ha!--ha!--ha!
Capital!--capital!" shouted the ferocious felon with demoniac glee, as he
marked the effect of his words on the countenance of the judge.
"Remove the prisoner!" cried the sheriff. An officer was about to do so;
but the judge motioned him to desist. His lordship's features worked
convulsively. He seemed striving to speak, but the words would not come.
"I suppose, my lord," continued Cartwright in low and hissing tones, as
the shadow of unutterable despair grew and settled on his face--"I
suppose you know that his wife destroyed herself. The coroner's jury said
she had fallen accidentally into the water, _I_ know better. She drowned
herself under the agonies of a broken heart! I saw her corpse, with the
dead baby in its arms; and then I felt, knew, that I was lost! Lost,
doomed to everlasting perdition! But, my lord,"--and here the wretch
broke into a howl wild and terrific--"_we_ shall go down together--down
to where your deserts are known. A--h--h! that pinches you, does it?
Hound of a judge! legal murderer! coward! I spurn and spit upon thee!"
The rest of the appalling objurgation was inarticulate, as the monster,
foaming and sputtering, was dragged by an officer from the dock.
Judge A ---- had fallen forwards on his face, fainting and speechless
with the violence of his emotions. The black cap had dropped from his
brow. His hands were stretched out across the bench, and various members
of the bar rushed to his assistance. The court broke up in frightful
commotion.
Two days afterwards the county paper had the following announcement:--
"Died at the Royal Hotel, ------, on the 27th instant, Judge A ----, from
an access of fever supervening upon a disorder from which he had
imperfectly recovered."
The prophecy was fulfilled!
THE NORTHERN CIRCUIT.
About the commencement of the present century there stood, near the
centre of a rather extensive hamlet, not many miles distant from a
northern seaport town, a large, substantially-built, but somewhat
straggling building, known as Craig Farm (popularly _Crook_ Farm) House.
The farm consisted of about one hundred acres of tolerable arable and
meadow land; and at the time I have indicated, belonged to a farmer of
the name of Armstrong. He had purchased it about three years previously,
at a sale held, in pursuance of a decree of the High Court of Chancery,
for the purpose of liquidating certain costs incurred in the suit of
Craig _versus_ Craig, which the said high court had nursed so long and
successfully, as to enable the solicitor to the victorious claimant to
incarcerate his triumphant client for several years in the Fleet, in
"satisfaction" of the charges of victory remaining due after the proceeds
of the sale of Craig Farm had been deducted from the gross total. Farmer
Armstrong was married, but childless; his dame, like himself, was a
native of Devonshire. They bore the character of a plodding, taciturn,
morose-mannered couple: seldom leaving the farm except to attend market,
and rarely seen at church or chapel, they naturally enough became objects
of suspicion and dislike to the prying, gossiping villagers, to whom
mystery or reserve of any kind was of course exceedingly annoying and
unpleasant.
Soon after Armstrong was settled in his new purchase another stranger
arrived, and took up his abode in the best apartments of the house. The
new-comer, a man of about fifty years of age, and evidently, from his
dress and gait, a sea-faring person, was as reserved and unsocial as his
landlord. His name, or at least that which he chose to be known by, was
Wilson. He had one child, a daughter, about thirteen years of age, whom
he placed at a boarding-school in the adjacent town. He seldom saw her;
the intercourse between the father and daughter being principally carried
on through Mary Strugnell, a widow of about thirty years of age, and a
native of the place. She was engaged as a servant to Mr. Wilson, and
seldom left Craig Farm except on Sunday afternoons, when, if the weather
was at all favorable, she paid a visit to an aunt living in the town;
there saw Miss Wilson; and returned home usually at half-past ten
o'clock--later rather than earlier. Armstrong was occasionally absent
from his home for several days together, on business, it was rumored, for
Wilson; and on the Sunday in the first week of January 1802, both he and
his wife had been away for upwards of a week, and were not yet returned.
About a quarter-past ten o'clock on that evening the early-retiring
inhabitants of the hamlet were roused from their slumbers by a loud,
continuous knocking at the front door of Armstrong's house: louder and
louder, more and more vehement and impatient, resounded the blows upon
the stillness of the night, till the soundest sleepers were awakened.
Windows were hastily thrown open, and presently numerous footsteps
approached the scene of growing hubbub. The unwonted noise was caused,
it was found, by Farmer Armstrong, who accompanied by his wife, was
thundering vehemently upon the door with a heavy black-thorn stick.
Still no answer was obtained. Mrs. Strugnell, it was supposed, had not
returned from town; but where was Mr. Wilson, who was almost always at
home both day and night? Presently a lad called out that a white sheet
or cloth of some sort was hanging out of one of the back windows. This
announcement, confirming the vague apprehensions which had begun to
germinate in the wise heads of the villagers, disposed them to adopt a
more effectual mode of obtaining admission than knocking seemed likely
to prove. Johnson, the constable of the parish, a man of great
shrewdness, at once proposed to break in the door. Armstrong, who, as
well as his wife, was deadly pale, and trembling violently, either with
cold or agitation, hesitatingly consented, and crowbars being speedily
procured, an entrance was forced, and in rushed a score of excited men.
Armstrong's wife, it was afterwards remembered, caught hold of her
husband's arm in a hurried, frightened manner, whispered hastily in his
ear, and then both followed into the house.
"Now, farmer," cried Johnson, as soon as he had procured a light, "lead
the way up stairs."
Armstrong, who appeared to have somewhat recovered from his panic, darted
at once up the staircase, followed by the whole body of rustics. On
reaching the landing-place, he knocked at Mr. Wilson's bedroom door. No
answer was returned. Armstrong seemed to hesitate, but the constable at
once lifted the latch; they entered, and then a melancholy spectacle
presented itself.
Wilson, completely dressed, lay extended on the floor a lifeless corpse.
He had been stabbed in two places in the breast with some sharp-pointed
instrument. Life was quite extinct. The window was open. On farther
inspection, several bundles containing many of Wilson's valuables in
jewelry and plate, together with clothes, shirts, silk handkerchiefs,
were found. The wardrobe and a secretary-bureau had been forced open.
The assassins had, it seemed, been disturbed, and had hurried off by the
window without their plunder. A hat was also picked up in the room, a
shiny, black hat, much too small for the deceased. The constable snatched
it up, and attempted to clap it on Armstrong's head, but it was not
nearly large enough. This, together with the bundles, dissipated a
suspicion which had been growing in Johnson's mind, and he roughly
exclaimed, "You need not look so scared, farmer; it's not you: that's
quite clear."
To this remark neither Armstrong nor his wife answered a syllable, but
continued to gaze at the corpse, the bundles, and the broken locks, in
bewildered terror and astonishment. Presently some one asked if any body
had seen Mrs. Strugnell?
The question roused Armstrong, and he said, "She is not come home: her
door is locked."
"How do you know that?" cried the constable, turning sharply round, and
looking keenly in his face. "How do you know that?"
"Because--because," stammered Armstrong, "because she always locks it
when she goes out."
"Which is her room?"
"The next to this."
They hastened out, and found the next door was fast.
"Are you there, Mrs. Strugnell?" shouted Johnson.
There was no reply.
"She is never home till half-past ten o'clock on Sunday evenings,"
remarked Armstrong in a calmer voice.
"The key is in the lock on the inside," cried a young man who had been
striving to peep through the key-hole.
Armstrong, it was afterwards sworn, started as if he had been shot;
and his wife again clutched his arm with the same nervous, frenzied
gripe as before.
"Mrs. Strugnell, are you there?" once more shouted the constable. He was
answered by a low moan. In an instant the frail door was burst in, and
Mrs. Strugnell was soon pulled out, apparently more dead than alive, from
underneath the bedstead, where she, in speechless consternation, lay
partially concealed. Placing her in a chair, they soon succeeded--much
more easily, indeed, than they anticipated--in restoring her to
consciousness.
Nervously she glanced round the circle of eager faces that environed her,
till her eyes fell upon Armstrong and his wife, when she gave a loud
shriek, and muttering, "They, _they_ are the murderers!" swooned, or
appeared to do so, again instantly.
The accused persons, in spite of their frenzied protestations of
innocence, were instantly seized and taken off to a place of security;
Mrs. Strugnell was conveyed to a neighbor's close by; the house was
carefully secured; and the agitated and wondering villagers departed to
their several homes, but not, I fancy, to sleep any more for that night.
The deposition made by Mrs. Strugnell at the inquest on the body was in
substance as follows:--
"On the afternoon in question she had, in accordance with her usual
custom, proceeded to town. She called on her aunt, took tea with her, and
afterwards went to the Independent Chapel. After service, she called to
see Miss Wilson, but was informed that, in consequence of a severe cold,
the young lady was gone to bed. She then immediately proceeded homewards,
and consequently arrived at Craig Farm more than an hour before her usual
time. She let herself in with her latch key, and proceeded to her
bedroom. There was no light in Mr. Wilson's chamber, but she could hear
him moving about in it. She was just about to go down stairs, having put
away her Sunday bonnet and shawl, when she heard a noise, as of persons
entering by the back way, and walking gently across the kitchen floor.
Alarmed as to who it could be, Mr. and Mrs. Armstrong not being expected
home for several days, she gently closed her door, and locked it. A few
minutes after, she heard stealthy steps ascending the creaking stairs,
and presently her door was tried, and a voice in a low hurried whisper
said, "Mary, are you there?" She was positive it was Mr. Armstrong's
voice, but was too terrified to answer. Then Mrs. Armstrong--she was sure
it was she--said also in a whisper, and as if addressing her husband,
"She is never back at this hour." A minute or so after there was a tap at
Mr. Wilson's door. She could not catch what answer was made; but by
Armstrong's reply, she gathered that Mr. Wilson had lain down, and did
not wish to be disturbed. He was often in the habit of lying down with
his clothes on. Armstrong said, "I will not disturb you, sir; I'll only
just put this parcel on the table." There is no lock to Mr. Wilson's
door. Armstrong stepped into the room, and almost immediately she heard a
sound as of a violent blow, followed by a deep groan and then all was
still. She was paralyzed with horror and affright. After the lapse of a
few seconds, a voice--Mrs. Armstrong's undoubtedly--asked in a tremulous
tone if "all was over?" Her husband answered "Yes: but where be the keys
of the writing-desk kept?" "In the little table-drawer," was the reply.
Armstrong then came out of the bedroom, and both went into Mr. Wilson's
sitting apartment. They soon returned, and crept stealthily along the
passage to their own bedroom on the same floor. They then went down
stairs to the kitchen. One of them--the woman, she had no doubt--went out
the back way, and heavy footsteps again ascended the stairs. Almost dead
with fright, she then crawled under the bedstead, and remembered no more
till she found herself surrounded by the villagers."
In confirmation of this statement, a large clasp-knife belonging to
Armstrong, and with which it was evident the murder had been perpetrated,
was found in one corner of Wilson's bedroom; and a mortgage deed, for one
thousand pounds on Craig Farm, the property of Wilson, and which
Strugnell swore was always kept in the writing-desk in the front room,
was discovered in a chest in the prisoner's sleeping apartment, together
with nearly one hundred and fifty pounds in gold, silver, and county
bank-notes, although it was known that Armstrong had but a fortnight
before declined a very advantageous offer of some cows he was desirous of
purchasing, under the plea of being short of cash. Worse perhaps than
all, a key of the back-door was found in his pocket, which not only
confirmed Strugnell's evidence, but clearly demonstrated that the
knocking at the door for admittance, which had roused and alarmed the
hamlet, was a pure subterfuge. The conclusion, therefore, almost
universally arrived at throughout the neighborhood was, that Armstrong
and his wife were the guilty parties; and that the bundles, the broken
locks, the sheet hanging out of the window, the shiny, black hat, were,
like the knocking, mere cunning devices to mislead inquiry.
The case excited great interest in the county, and I esteemed myself
professionally fortunate in being selected to hold the brief for the
prosecution. I had satisfied myself, by a perusal of the depositions,
that there was no doubt of the prisoners' guilt, and I determined that no
effort on my part should be spared to insure the accomplishment of the
ends of justice. I drew the indictment myself; and in my opening address
to the jury dwelt with all the force and eloquence of which I was master
upon the heinous nature of the crime, and the conclusiveness of the
evidence by which it had been brought home to the prisoners. I may here,
by way of parenthesis, mention that I resorted to a plan in my address to
the jury which I have seldom known to fail. It consisted in fixing my
eyes and addressing my language to each juror one after the other. In
this way each considers the address to be an appeal to his individual
intelligence, and responds to it by falling into the views of the
barrister. On this occasion the jury easily fell into the trap. I could
see that I had got them into the humor of putting confidence in the
evidence I had to produce.
The trial proceeded. The cause of the death was scientifically stated by
two medical men. Next followed the evidence as to the finding of the
knife in the bedroom of the deceased; the discovery of the mortgage deed,
and the large sum of money, in the prisoners' sleeping apartment; the
finding the key of the back-door in the male prisoner's pocket; and his
demeanor and expressions on the night of the perpetration of the crime.
In his cross-examination of the constable, several facts perfectly new to
me were elicited by the very able counsel for the prisoners. Their
attorney had judiciously maintained the strictest secrecy as to the
nature of the defence, so that it now took me completely by surprise. The
constable, in reply to questions by counsel, stated that the pockets of
the deceased were empty; that not only his purse, but a gold watch,
chain, and seals, which he usually wore, had vanished, and no trace of
them had as yet been discovered. Many other things were also missing. A
young man of the name of Pearce, apparently a sailor, had been seen in
the village once or twice in the company of Mary Strugnell; but he did
not notice what sort of hat he generally wore; he had not seen Pearce
since the night the crime was committed; had not sought for him.
Mary Strugnell was the next witness. She repeated her previous evidence
with precision and apparent sincerity, and then I abandoned her with a
mixed feeling of anxiety and curiosity, to the counsel for the defence.
A subtle and able cross-examination of more than two hours' duration
followed; and at its conclusion, I felt that the case for the
prosecution was so damaged, that a verdict of condemnation was, or ought
to be, out of the question. The salient points dwelt upon, and varied in
every possible way, in this long sifting, were these:--"What was the
reason she did not return in the evening in question to her aunt's to
supper as usual?"
"She did not know, except that she wished to get home."
"Did she keep company with a man of the name of Pearce?"
"She had walked out with him once or twice."
"When was the last time?"
"She did not remember."
"Did Pearce walk with her home on the night of the murder?"
"No."
"Not part of the way?"
"Yes; part of the way."
"Did Pearce sometimes wear a black, shiny hat?"
"No--yes: she did not remember."
"Where was Pearce now?"
"She didn't know."
"Had he disappeared since that Sunday evening?"
"She didn't know."
"Had she seen him since?"
"No."
"Had Mr. Wilson ever threatened to discharge her for insolence to Mrs.
Armstrong?"
"Yes; but she knew he was not in earnest."
"Was not the clasp-knife that had been found always left in the kitchen
for culinary purposes?"
"No--not always; generally--but not _this _time that Armstrong went away,
she was sure."
"Mary Strugnell, you be a false-sworn woman before God and man!"
interrupted the male prisoner with great violence of manner.
The outbreak of the prisoner was checked and rebuked by the judge, and
the cross-examination soon afterwards closed. Had the counsel been
allowed to follow up his advantage by an address to the jury, he would, I
doubt not, spite of their prejudices against the prisoners, have obtained
an acquittal; but as it was, after a neutral sort of charge from the
judge, by no means the ablest that then adorned the bench, the jurors,
having deliberated for something more than half an hour, returned into
court with a verdict of "guilty" against both prisoners, accompanying it,
however, with a strong recommendation to mercy!
"Mercy!" said the judge. "What for? On what ground?"
The jurors stared at each other and at the judge: they had no reason to
give! The fact was, their conviction of the prisoners' guilt had been
very much shaken by the cross-examination of the chief witness for the
prosecution, and this recommendation was a compromise which conscience
made with doubt. I have known many such instances.
The usual ridiculous formality of asking the wretched convicts what they
had to urge why sentence should not be passed upon them was gone through;
the judge, with unmoved feelings, put on the fatal cap; and then a new
and startling light burst upon the mysterious, bewildering affair.
"Stop, my lord!" exclaimed Armstrong with rough vehemence. "Hear me
speak! I'll tell ye all about it; I will indeed, my lord. Quiet,
Martha, I tell ye. It's I, my lord, that's guilty, not the woman. God
bless ye, my lord; not the wife! Doant hurt the wife, and I'se tell ye
all about it. I _alone_ am guilty; not, the Lord be praised, of murder,
but of robbery!"
"John!--John!" sobbed the wife, clinging passionately to her husband,
"let us die together!"
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