Read Ebook: The Experiences of a Barrister and Confessions of an Attorney by Warren Samuel

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Ebook has 1295 lines and 110118 words, and 26 pages

"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.

"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.

"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 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.

"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."

"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.

"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.

Two days afterwards the county paper had the following announcement:--

The prophecy was fulfilled!

THE NORTHERN CIRCUIT.

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.

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:--

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