THE CASE OF MR. OSCAR SLATER SPECIAL INVESTIGATION BY SIR A. CONAN DOYLE Due to the success of the Sherlock Holmes stories, many people wrote letters to Conan Doyle over the years, asking him for help with real life crimes. The two most famous examples were George Edalji and Oliver Slater. Conan Doyle’s involvement in both these cases led to the establishment of the Court of Criminal Appeal in both England and Scotland. In 1908 a wealthy 82-year-old woman named Marion Gilchrist, was bludgeoned to death at her home in Glasgow. Her body was discovered by a downstairs neighbour and a maid. Oscar Slater, a petty criminal known to police as an illegal gambling-den operator had been staying in Glasgow for only 6 weeks, near the Gilchrist residence, before he boarded an ocean liner for New York. When he found out he had been accused of Gilchrist’s murder Slater returned to Glasgow to clear his name. However, his trial, characterized by Conan Doyle as a great injustice, left Slater imprisoned for nearly two decades on sketchy evidence. Conan Doyle believed the actual murderer was a member of the victim’s family and known to the police. However because of that person’s political and social connections a cover-up was necessary and Slater became the perfect scapegoat for the crime.
Oscar Slater, 1908
CONTENTS THE CASE OF OSCAR SLATER UNTO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE LORD PENTLAND, HIS MAJESTY’S SECRETARY OF STATE FOR SCOTLAND MEMORIAL ON BEHALF OF OSCAR SLATER
THE CASE OF OSCAR SLATER IT is impossible to read and weigh the facts in connection with the conviction of Oscar Slater in May, 1909, at the High Court in Edinburgh, without feeling deeply dissatisfied with the proceedings, and morally certain that justice was not done. Under the circumstances of Scotch law I am not clear how far any remedy exists, but it will, in my opinion, be a serious scandal if the man be allowed upon such evidence to spend his life in a convict prison. The verdict which led to his condemnation to death, was given by a jury of fifteen, who voted: Nine for “Guilty,” five for “ Non-proven,” and one for “ Not Guilty.” Under English law, this division of opinion would naturally have given cause for a new trial. In Scotland the man was condemned to death, he was only reprieved two days before his execution, and he is now working out a life sentence in Peterhead convict establishment. How far the verdict was a just one, the reader may judge for himself when he has perused a connected story of the case. There lived in Glasgow in the year 1908, an old maiden lady named Miss Marion Gilchrist. She had lived for thirty years in the one flat, which was on the first floor in 15, Queen’s Terrace. The flat above hers was vacant, and the only immediate neighbours were a family named Adams, living on the ground floor below, their house having a separate door which was close alongside the flat entrance. The old lady had one servant, named Helen Lambie, who was a girl twenty-one years of age. This girl had been with Miss Gilchrist for three or four years. By all accounts Miss Gilchrist was a most estimable person, leading a quiet and uneventful life. She was comfortably off, and she had one singular characteristic for a lady of her age and surroundings, in that she had made a collection of jewelry of considerable value. These jewels, which took the form of brooches, rings, pendants, etc., were bought at different times, extending over a considerable number of years, from a reputable jeweller. I lay stress upon the fact, as some wild rumour was circulated at the time that the old lady might herself be a criminal receiver. Such an idea could not be entertained. She seldom wore her jewelry save in single pieces, and as her life was a retired one, it is difficult to see how anyone outside a very small circle could have known of her hoard. The value of this treasure was about three thousand pounds. It was a fearful joy which she snatched from its possession, for she more than once expressed apprehension that she might be attacked and robbed. Her fears had the practical result that she attached two patent locks to her front door, and that she arranged with the Adams family underneath that in case of alarm she would signal to them by knocking upon the floor. It was the household practice that Lambie, the maid, should go out and get an evening paper for her mistress about seven o’clock each day. After bringing the paper she then usually went out again upon the necessary shopping. This routine was followed upon the night of December 21st She left her mistress seated by the fire in the dining-room reading a magazine. Lambie took the keys with her, shut the flat door, closed the hall door downstairs, and was gone about ten minutes upon her errand. It is the events of those ten minutes which form the tragedy and the mystery which were so soon to engage the attention of the public. According to the girl’s evidence, it was a minute or two before seven when she went out. At about seven, Mr. Arthur Adams and his two sisters were in their dining-room immediately below the room in which the old lady had been left. Suddenly they heard “ a noise from above, then a very heavy fall, and then three sharp knocks.” They were alarmed at the sound, and the young man at once set off to see if all was right. He ran out of his hall door, through the hall door of the flats, which was open, and so up to the first floor, where he found Miss Gilchrist’s door shut. He rang three times without an answer. From within, however, he heard a sound which he compared to the breaking of sticks. He imagined therefore that the servant girl was within, and that she was engaged in her household duties. After waiting for a minute or two, he seems to have convinced himself that all was right. He therefore descended again and returned to his sisters, who persuaded him to go up once more to the flat. This he did and rang for the fourth time. As he was standing with his hand upon the bell, straining his ears and hearing nothing, someone approached up the stairs from below. It was the young servant-maid, Helen Lambie, returning from her errand. The two held council for a moment. Young Adams described the noise which had been heard. Lambie said that the pulleys of the clothes-lines in the kitchen must have given way. It was a singular explanation, since the kitchen was not above the dining-room of the Adams, and one would not expect any great noise from the fall of a cord which suspended sheets or towels. However, it was a moment of agitation, and the girl may have said the first explanation which came into her head. She then put her keys into the two safety locks and opened the door. At this point there is a curious little discrepancy of evidence. Lambie is prepared to swear that she remained upon the mat beside young Adams. Adams is equally positive that she walked several paces down the hall. This inside hall was lit by a gas, which turned half up, and shining through a coloured shade, gave a sufficient, but not a brilliant light. Says Adams: “I stood at the door on the threshold, half in and half out, and just when the girl had got past the clock to go into the kitchen, a well-dressed man appeared. I did not suspect him, and she said nothing; and he came up to me quite pleasantly. I did not suspect anything wrong for the minute. I thought the man was going to speak to me, till he got past me, and then I suspected something wrong, and by that time the girl ran into the kitchen and put the gas up and said it was all right, meaning her pulleys. I said: ‘Where is your mistress?’ and she went into the dining-room. She said: ‘Oh! come here!’ I just went in and saw this horrible spectacle.” The spectacle in question was the poor old lady lying upon the floor close by the chair in which the servant had last seen her. Her feet were towards the door, her head towards the fireplace. She lay upon a hearth-rug, but a skin rug had been thrown across her head. Her injuries were frightful, nearly every bone of her face and skull being smashed. In spite of her dreadful wounds she lingered for a few minutes, but died without showing any sign of consciousness. The murderer when he had first appeared had emerged from one of the two bedrooms at the back of the hall, the larger, or spare bedroom, not the old lady’s room. On passing Adams upon the doormat, which he had done with the utmost coolness, he had at once rushed down the stair. It was a dark and drizzly evening, and it seems that he made his way along one or two quiet streets until he was lost in the more crowded thoroughfares. He had left no weapon nor possession of any sort in the old lady’s flat, save a box of matches with which he had lit the gas in the bedroom from which he had come. In this bedroom a number of articles of value, including a watch, lay upon the dressing-table, but none of them had been touched. A box containing papers had been forced open, and these papers were found scattered upon the floor. If he were really in search of the jewels, he was badly informed, for these were kept among the dresses in the old lady’s wardrobe. Later, a single crescent diamond brooch, an article worth perhaps forty or fifty pounds, was found to be missing. Nothing else was taken from the flat. It is remarkable that though the furniture round where the body lay was spattered with blood, and one would have imagined that the murderer’s hands must have been stained, no mark was seen upon the half-consumed match with which he had lit the gas, nor upon the match box, the box containing papers, nor any other thing which he may have touched in the bedroom. We come now to the all-important question of the description of the man seen at such close quarters by Adams and Lambie. Adams was short-sighted and had not his spectacles with him. His evidence at the trial ran thus: “He was a man a little taller and a little broader than I am, not a well-built man but well featured and clean-shaven, and I cannot exactly swear to his moustache, but if he had any it was very little. He was rather a commercial traveller type, or perhaps a clerk, and I did not know but what he might be one of her friends. He had on dark trousers and a light overcoat. I could not say if it were fawn or grey. I do not recollect what sort of hat he had. He seemed gentlemanly and well- dressed. He had nothing in his hand so far as I could tell. I did not notice anything about his way of walking.” Helen Lambie, the other spectator, could give no information about the face (which rather bears out Adams’ view as to her position), and could only say that he wore a round cloth hat, a three-quarter length overcoat of a grey colour, and that he had some peculiarity in his walk. As the distance traversed by the murderer within sight of Lambie could be crossed in four steps, and as these steps were taken under circumstances of peculiar agitation, it is difficult to think that any importance could be attached to this last item in the description. It is impossible to avoid some comment upon the actions of Helen Lambie during the incidents just narrated, which can only be explained by supposing that from the time she saw Adams waiting outside her door, her whole reasoning faculty had deserted her. First, she explained the great noise heard below: “The ceiling was like to crack,” said Adams, by the fall of a clothes-line and its pulleys of attachment, which could not possibly, one would imagine, have produced any such effect. She then declares that she remained upon the mat, while Adams is convinced that she went right down the hall. On the appearance of the stranger she did not gasp out: “ Who are you? “ or any other sign of amazement, but allowed Adams to suppose by her silence that the man might be someone who had a right to be there. Finally, instead of rushing at once to see if her mistress was safe, she went into the kitchen, still apparently under the obsession of the pulleys. She informed Adams that they were all right, as if it mattered to any human being; thence she went into the spare bedroom, where she must have seen that robbery had been committed, since an open box lay in the middle of the floor. She gave no alarm however, and it was only when Adams called out: “ Where is your mistress? “ that she finally went into the room of the murder. It must be admitted that this seems strange conduct, and only explicable, if it can be said to be explicable, by great want of intelligence and grasp of the situation. On Tuesday, December 22nd, the morning after the murder, the Glasgow police circulated a description of the murderer, founded upon the joint impressions of Adams and of Lambie. It ran thus: “A man between 25 and 30 years of age, five foot eight or nine inches in height, slim build, dark hair, clean-shaven, dressed in light grey overcoat and dark cloth cap.” Four days later, however, upon Christmas Day, the police found themselves in a position to give a more detailed description: “ The man wanted is about 28 or 30 years of age, tall and thin, with his face shaved clear of all hair, while a distinctive feature is that his nose is slightly turned to one side. The witness thinks the twist is to the right side. He wore one of the popular tweed hats known as Donegal hats, and a fawn coloured overcoat which might have been a waterproof, also dark trousers and brown boots.” The material from which these further points were gathered, came from a young girl of fifteen, in humble life, named Mary Barrow- man. According to this new evidence, the witness was passing the scene of the murder shortly after seven o’clock upon the fatal night. She saw a man run hurriedly down the steps, and he passed her under a lamp-post. The incandescent light shone clearly upon him. He ran on, knocking against the witness in his haste, and disappeared round a corner. On hearing later of the murder, she connected this incident with it. Her general recollections of the man were as given in the description, and the grey coat and cloth cap of the first two witnesses were given up in favour of the fawn coat and round Donegal hat of the young girl. Since she had seen no peculiarity in his walk, and they had seen none in his nose, there is really nothing the same in the two descriptions save the “ clean-shaven,” the “ slim build “ and the approximate age. It was on the evening of Christmas Day that the police came at last upon a definite clue. It was brought to their notice that a German Jew of the assumed name of Oscar Slater had been endeavouring to dispose of the pawn ticket of a crescent diamond brooch of about the same value as the missing one. Also, that in a general way, he bore a resemblance to the published description. Still more hopeful did this clue appear when, upon raiding the lodgings in which this man and his mistress lived, it was found that they had left Glasgow that very night by the nine o’clock train, with tickets (over this point there was some clash of evidence) either for Liverpool or London. Three days later, the Glasgow police learned that the couple had actually sailed upon December 26th upon the Lusitania for New York under the name of Mr. and Mrs. Otto Sando. It must be ad mitted that in all these proceedings the Glasgow police showed considerable deliberation. The original information had been given at the Central Police Office shortly after six o’clock, and a detective was actually making enquiries at Slater’s flat at seven-thirty, yet no watch was kept upon his movements, and he was allowed to leave between eight and nine, untraced and unquestioned. Even stranger was the Liverpool departure. He was known to have got away in the southbound train upon the Friday evening. A great liner sails from Liverpool upon the Saturday. One would have imagined that early on the Saturday morning steps would have been taken to block his method of escape. However, as a fact, it was not done, and as it proved it is as well for the cause of justice, since it had the effect that two judicial processes were needed, an American and a Scottish, which enables an interesting comparison to be made between the evidence of the principal witnesses. Oscar Slater was at once arrested upon arriving at New York, and his seven trunks of baggage were impounded and sealed. On the face of it there was a good case against him, for he had undoubtedly pawned a diamond brooch, and he had subsequently fled under a false name for America. The Glasgow police had reason to think that they had got their man. Two officers, accompanied by the witnesses to identity — Adams, Lambie and Barrowman — set off at once to carry through the extradition proceedings and bring the suspect back to be tried for his offence. In the New York Court they first set eyes upon the prisoner, and each of them, in terms which will be afterwards described, expressed the opinion that he was at any rate exceedingly like the person they had seen in Glasgow. Their actual identification of him was vitiated by the fact that Adams and Barrowman had been shown his photographs before attending the Court, and also that he was led past them, an obvious prisoner, whilst they were waiting in the corridor. Still, however much one may discount the actual identification, it cannot be denied that each witness saw a close resemblance between the man before them and the man whom they had seen in Glasgow. So far at every stage the case against the accused was becoming more menacing. Any doubt as to extradition was speedily set at rest by the prisoner’s announcement that he was prepared, without compulsion, to return to Scotland and to stand his trial. One may well refuse to give him any excessive credit for this surrender, since he may have been persuaded that things were going against him, but still the fact remains (and it was never, so far as I can trace, mentioned at his subsequent trial), that he gave himself up of his own free will to justice. On February 21st Oscar Slater was back in Glasgow once more, and on May 3rd his trial took place at the High Court in Edinburgh. But already the very bottom of the case had dropped out. The starting link of what had seemed an imposing chain, had suddenly broken. It will be remembered that the original suspicion of Slater was founded upon the fact that he had pawned a crescent diamond brooch. The ticket was found upon him, and the brooch recovered. It was not the one which was missing from the room of the murdered woman, and it had belonged for years to Slater, who had repeatedly pawned it before. This was shown beyond all cavil or dispute. The case of the police might well seem desperate after this, since if Slater were indeed guilty, it would mean that by pure chance they had pursued the right man. The coincidence involved in such a supposition would seem to pass the limits of all probability. Apart from this crushing fact, several of the other points of the prosecution had already shown themselves to be worthless. It had seemed at first that Slater’s departure had been sudden and unpremeditated — the flight of a guilty man. It was quickly proved that this was not so. In the Bohemian clubs which he frequented — he was by profession a peddling jeweller and a man of disreputable, though not criminal habits — it had for weeks before the date of the crime been known that he purported to go to some business associates in America. A correspondence, which was produced, showed the arrangements which had been made, long before the crime, for his emigration, though it should be added that the actual determination of the date and taking of the ticket were subsequent to the tragedy. This hurrying-up of the departure certainly deserves close scrutiny. According to the evidence of his mistress and of the servant, Slater had received two letters upon the morning of December 21st. Neither of these were produced at the trial. One was said to be from a Mr. Rogers, a friend of Slater’s in London, telling him that Slater’s wife was bothering him for money. The second was said to be from one Devoto, a former partner of Slater’s asking him to join him in San Francisco. Even if the letters had been destroyed, one would imagine that these statements as to the letters could be disproved or corroborated by either the Crown or the defence. They are of considerable importance, as giving the alleged reasons why Slater hurried up a departure which had been previously announced as for January. I cannot find, however, that in the actual trial anything definite was ascertained upon the matter. Another point had already been scored against the prosecution in that the seven trunks which contained the whole effects of the prisoner, yielded nothing of real importance. There were a felt hat and two cloth ones, but none which correspond with the Donegal of the original description. A light- coloured waterproof coat was among the outfit. If the weapon with which the deed was done was carried off in the pocket of the assassin’s overcoat — and it is difficult to say how else he could have carried it, then the pocket must, one would suppose, be crusted with blood, since the crime was a most sanguinary one. No such marks were discovered, nor were the police fortunate as to the weapon. It is true that a hammer was found in the trunk, but it was clearly shown to have been purchased in one of those cheap half-crown sets of tools which are tied upon a card, was an extremely light and fragile instrument, and utterly incapable in the eyes of commonsense of inflicting those terrific injuries which had shattered the old lady’s skull. It is said by the prosecution to bear some marks of having been scraped or cleaned, but this was vigorously denied by the defence, and the police do not appear to have pushed the matter to the obvious test of removing the metal work, when they must, had this been indeed the weapon, have certainly found some soakage of blood into the wood under the edges of the iron cheeks or head. But a glance at a facsimile of this puny weapon would convince an impartial person that any task beyond fixing a tin-tack, or cracking a small bit of coal, would be above its strength. It may fairly be said that before the trial had begun, the three important points of the pawned jewel, the supposed flight, and the evidence from clothing and weapon, had each either broken down completely, or become exceedingly attenuated. Let us see now what there was upon the other side. The evidence for the prosecution really resolved itself into two sets of witnesses for identification. The first set were those who had actually seen the murderer, and included Adams, Helen Lambie, and the girl Barrowman. The second set consisted of twelve people who had, at various dates, seen a man frequenting the street in which Miss Gilchrist lived, and loitering in a suspicious manner before the house. All of these, some with confidence, but most of them with reserve, were prepared to identify the prisoner with this unknown man. What the police never could produce, however, was the essential thing, and that was the least connecting link between Slater and Miss Gilchrist, or any explanation how a foreigner in Glasgow could even know of the existence, to say nothing of the wealth, of a retired old lady, who had few acquaintances and seldom left her guarded flat. It is notorious that nothing is more tricky than evidence of identification. In the Beck case there were, if I remember right, some ten witnesses who had seen the real criminal under normal circumstances, and yet they were all prepared to swear to the wrong man. In the case of Oscar Slater, the first three witnesses saw their man under conditions of excitement, while the second group saw the loiterer in the street under various lights, and in a fashion which was always more or less casual. It is right, therefore, that in assigning its due weight to this evidence, one should examine it with some care. We shall first take the three people who actually saw the murderer. There seems to have been some discrepancy between them from the first, since, as has already been pointed out, the description published from the data of Adams and Lambie, was modified after Barrowman had given her information. Adams and Lambie said: “A man between twenty-five and thirty years of age, 5 feet 8 or 9 inches in height, slim build, dark hair, clean shaven, dressed in light grey overcoat and dark cloth cap.” After collaboration with Barrowman the description became: “ Twenty-eight or thirty years of age, tall and thin, clean shaven, his nose slightly turned to one side. Wore one of the popular round tweed hats known as Donegal hats, and a fawn-coloured overcoat which might have been a waterproof, also dark trousers and brown boots.” Apart from the additions in the second description there are, it will be observed, two actual discrepancies in the shape of the hat and the colour of the coat. As to how far either of these descriptions tallies with Slater, it may be stated here that the accused was thirty-seven years of age, that he was above the medium height, that his nose was not twisted, but was depressed at the end, as if it had at some time been broken, and finally that eight witnesses were called upon to prove that, on the date of the murder, the accused wore a short but noticeable moustache. I have before me a verbatim stenographic report of the proceedings in New York and also in Edinburgh, furnished by the kindness of Shaughnessy & Co., solicitors, of Glasgow, who are still contending for the interests of their unfortunate client. I will here compare the terms of the identification in the two Courts: Helen Lambie, New York, January 26th, 1909. Q. “Do you see the man here you saw there? “ A. “ One is very suspicious, if anything.” Q. “Describe him.” A. “ The clothes he had on that night he hasn’t got on to-day — but his face I could not tell. I never saw his face.” (Having described a peculiarity of walk, she was asked): Q. “ Is that man in the room? “ A. “ Yes, he is, sir.” Q. “Point him out.” A. “ I would not like to say “ (After some pressure and argument she pointed to Slater, who had been led past her in the corridor between two officers, when both she and Barrowman had exclaimed: “ That is the man,” or “ I could nearly swear that is the man.”) Q. “ Didn’t you say you did not see the man’s face? “ A. “ Neither I did. I saw the walk.” The reader must bear in mind that Lambie’s only chance of seeing the man’s walk was in the four steps or so down the passage. It was never at any time shown that there was any marked peculiarity about Slater’s walk. Now take Helen Lambie’s identification in Edinburgh, May 9th, 1909. Q. “ How did you identify him in America?” A. “ By his walk and height, his dark hair and the side of his face.” Q . “ You were not quite sure of him at first in America?” A. “ Yes, I was quite sure.” Q. “ Why did you say you were only suspicions? “ A. “It was a mistake.” Q. “What did you mean in America by saying that you never saw his face if, in point of fact, you did see it so as to help you to recognise it? What did you mean? “ A. “Nothing.” On further cross-examination she declared that when she said that she had never seen the man’s face she meant that she had never seen the “ broad of it” but had seen it sideways. Here it will be observed that Helen Lambie’s evidence had greatly stiffened during the three months between the New York and the Edinburgh proceedings. In so aggressively positive a frame of mind was she on the later occasion, that, on being shown Slater’s overcoat and asked if it resembled the murderer’s, she answered twice over: “ That is the coat,”although it had not yet been unrolled, and though it was not light grey, which was the colour in her own original description. It should not be forgotten in dealing with the evidence of Lambie and Adams that they are utterly disagreed as to so easily fixed a thing as their own proceedings after the hall door was opened, Adams swearing that Lambie walked to nearly the end of the hall, and Lambie that she remained upon the doormat. Without deciding which was right, it is clear that the incident must shake one’s confidence in one or other of them as a witness. In the case of Adams the evidence was given with moderation, and was substantially the same in America and in Scotland. “ I couldn’t say positively. This man (indicating Slater) is not at all unlike him.” Q. “ Did you notice a crooked nose? “ A. “No.” Q. “ Anything remarkable about his walk? “ A. “No.” Q. “ You don’t swear this is the man you saw? “ A. “ No, sir. He resembles the man, that is all that I can say.” In reply to the same general questions in Edinburgh, he said: “ I would not like to swear he is the man. I am a little near-sighted. He resembles the man closely.” Barrowman, the girl of fifteen, had met the man presumed to be the murderer in the street, and taken one passing glance at him ‘under a gas lamp on a wet December’s night — difficult circumstances for an identification. She used these words in New York: “That man here is something like him,” which she afterwards amended to “ very like him.” She admitted that a picture of the man she was expected to identify had been shown to her before she came into the Court. Her one point by which she claimed to recognise the man was the crooked nose. This crooked nose was not much more apparent to others than the peculiarity of walk which so greatly impressed Helen Lambie that, after seeing half a dozen steps of it, she could identify it with confidence. In Edinburgh Barrowman, like Lambie, was very much more certain than in New York. The further they got from the event, the easier apparently did recognition become. “ Yes, that is the man who knocked against me that night,” she said. It is remarkable that both these females, Lambie and Barrowman, swore that though they were thrown together in this journey out to New York, and actually shared the same cabin, they never once talked of the object of their mission or compared notes as to the man they were about to identify. For girls of the respective ages of fifteen and twenty-one this certainly furnishes a unique example of self- restraint. These, then, are the three identifications by the only people who saw the murderer. Had the diamond brooch clue been authentic, and these identifications come upon the top of it, they would undoubtedly have been strongly corroborative. But when the brooch has been shown to be a complete mistake, I really do not understand how anyone could accept such half-hearted recognitions as being enough to establish the identity and guilt of the prisoner. There remains the so-called identification by twelve witnesses who had seen a man loitering in the street during the weeks before the crime had been committed. I have said a “so-called” identification, for the proceedings were farcical as a real test of recognition. The witnesses had seen portraits of the accused. They were well aware that he was a foreigner, and then they were asked to pick out his swarthy Jewish physiognomy from among nine Glasgow policemen to two railway officials. Naturally they did it without hesitation, since this man was more like the dark individual whom they had seen and described than the others could be. Read their own descriptions, however, of the man they had seen, with the details of his clothing, and they will be found in many respects to differ from each other on one hand, and in many from Slater on the other. Here is a synopsis of their impressions: Mrs. McHaffie.—” Dark. Moustached, light overcoat, not waterproof, check trousers, spats. Black bowler hat. Nose normal.” Miss M. McHaffie.—”Seen at same time and same description. Was only prepared at first to say there was some resemblance, but 4 had been thinking it over, and concluded that he was the man.’” Miss A. M. McHaffie.—”Same as before. Had heard the man speak and noticed nothing in his accent. (Prisoner has a strong German accent.) “ Madge McHaffie (belongs to the same family).—”Dark, moustached, nose normal. Check trousers, fawn overcoat and spats. Black bowler hat. ‘ The prisoner was fairly like the man.’” In connection with the identification of these four witnesses it is to be observed that neither check trousers, nor spats were found in the prisoner’s luggage. As the murderer was described as being dressed in dark trousers, there was no possible reason why these clothes, if Slater owned them, should have been destroyed. Constable Brien. “Claimed to know the prisoner by sight. Says he was the man he saw loitering. Light coat and a hat. It was a week before the crime, and he was loitering eighty yards from the scene of it. He picked him out among five constables as the man He had seen.” Constable Walker.—” Had seen the loiterer across the street, never nearer, and after dark in December. Thought at first he was someone else whom he knew. Had heard that the man he had to identify was of foreign appearance. Picked him out from a number of detectives. The man seen had a moustache.” Euphemia Cunningham.—” Very dark, sallow, heavy featured. Clean shaven. Nose normal. Dark tweed coat. Green cap with peak.” W. Campbell.—” Had been with the previous witness. Corroborated. ‘There was a. general resemblance between the prisoner and the man, but he could not positively identify him.’” Alex Gillies.—” Sallow, dark haired and clean shaven. Fawn coat. Cap. ‘ The prisoner resembled him, but witness could not say he was the same man.’” R. B. Bryson.—”Black coat and vest. Black bowler hat. No overcoat. Black moustache with droop. Sallow, foreign. (This witness had seen the man the night before the murder. He appeared to be looking up at Miss Gilchrist’s windows.) “ A. Nairn.—”Broad shoulders, long neck. Dark hair. Motor cap. Light overcoat to knees. Never saw the man’s face. ‘Oh! I will not swear in fact, but I am certain he is the man I saw — but I will not swear.’” Mrs. Liddell.—” Peculiar nose. Clear complexion, not sallow. Dark, clean shaven, brown tweed cap. Brown tweed coat with hemmed edge. Delicate man ‘rather drawn together.’ She believed that prisoner was the man. Saw him in the street immediately before the murder.” These are the twelve witnesses as to the identify of the mysterious stranger. In the first place there is no evidence whatever that this lounger in the street had really anything to do with the murder. It is just as probable that he had some vulgar amour, and was waiting for his girl to run out to him. What could a man who was planning murder hope to gain by standing nights beforehand eighty and a hundred yards away from the place in the darkness? But supposing that we waive this point and examine the plain question as to whether Slater was the same man as the loiterer, we find ourselves faced by a mass of difficulties and contradictions. Two of the most precise witnesses were Nairn and Bryson who saw the stranger upon the Sunday night preceding the murder. Upon that night Slater had an unshaken alibi, vouched for not only by the girl, Antoine, with whom he lived, and their servant, Schmalz, but by an acquaintance, Samuel Reid, who had been with him from six to ten-thirty. This positive evidence, which was quite unshaken in cross examination, must completely destroy the surmises of the stranger and Slater. Then come the four witnesses of the McHaffie family who are all strong upon check trousers and spats, articles of dress which were never traced to the prisoner. Finally, apart from the discrepancies about the moustache, there is a mixture of bowler hats, green caps, brown caps, and motor caps which leave a most confused and indefinite impression in the mind. Evidence of this kind might be of some value if supplementary to some strong ascertained fact, but to attempt to build upon such an identification alone is to construct the whole case upon shifting sand. The reader has already a grasp of the facts, but some fresh details came out at the trial which may be enumerated here. They have to be lightly touched upon within the limits of such an argument as this, but those who desire a fuller summary will find it in an account of the trial published by Hodge of Edinburgh, and ably edited by William Roughead, W.S. On this book and on the verbatim precognitions and shorthand account of the American proceedings, I base my own examination of case. First, as to Slater’s movements upon the day of the crime. He began the day, according to the account of himself and the women, by the receipt of the two letters already referred to, which caused him to hasten his journey to America. The whole day seems to have been occupied by preparations for his impending departure. He gave his servant Schmalz notice as from next Saturday. Before five (as was shown by the postmark upon the envelope), he wrote to a post office in London, where he had some money on deposit. At 6.12 a telegram was sent in his name and presumably by him from the Central Station to Dent, London, for his watch, which was being repaired. According to the evidence of two witnesses he was seen in a billiard room at 6.20. The murder, it will be remembered, was done at seven. He remained about ten minutes in the billiard room, and left some time between 6.30 and 6.40. Rathman, one of these witnesses, deposed that he had at the time a moustache about a quarter of an inch long, which was so noticeable that no one could take him for a clean-shaven man. Antoine, his mistress, and Schmalz, the servant, both deposed that Slater dined at home at 7 o’clock. The evidence of the girl is no doubt suspect, but there was no possible reason why the dismissed servant Schmalz should perjure herself for the sake of her ex- employer. The distance between Slater’s flat and that of Miss Gilchrist is about a quarter of a mile. From the billiard room to Slater’s flat is about a mile. He had to go for the hammer and bring it back, unless he had it jutting out of his pocket all day. But unless the evidence of the two women is entirely set aside, enough has been said to show that there was no time for the commission by him of such a crime and the hiding of the traces which it would leave behind it. At 9.45 that night, Slater was engaged in his usual occupation of trying to raise the wind at some small gambling club. The club-master saw no discomposure about his dress (which was the same as, according to the Crown, he had done this bloody crime in), and swore that he was then wearing a short moustache “like stubble,” thus corroborating Rathman. It will be remembered that Lambie and Barrowman both swore that the murderer was clean shaven. On December 24th, three days after the murder, Slater was shown at Cook’s Office, bargaining for a berth in the “Lusitania” for his so-called wife and himself. He made no secret that he was going by that ship, but gave his real name and address and declared finally that he would take his berth in Liverpool, which he did. Among other confidants as tor the ship was a barber, the last person one would think to whom secrets would be confided. Certainly, if this were a flight, it is hard to say what an open departure would be. In Liverpool he took his passage under the assumed name of Otto Sando. This he did, according to his own account, because he had reason to fear pursuit from his real wife, and wished to cover his traces. This may or may not be the truth, but it is undoubtedly the fact that Slater, who was a disreputable, rolling- stone of a man, had already assumed several aliases in the course of his career. It is to be noted that there was nothing at all secret about his departure from Glasgow, and that he carried off all his luggage with him in a perfectly open manner. The reader is now in possession of the main facts, save those which are either unessential, or redundant. It will be observed that save for the identifications, the value of which can be estimated, there is really no single point of connection between the crime and the alleged criminal. It may be argued that the existence of the hammer is such a point; but what household in the land is devoid of a hammer? It is to be remembered that if Slater committed the murder with this hammer, he must have taken it with him in order to commit the crime, since it could be no use to him in forcing an entrance. But what man in his senses, planning a deliberate murder, would take with him a weapon which was light, frail, and so long that it must project from any pocket? The nearest lump of stone upon the road would serve his purpose better than that. Again, it must in its blood-soaked condition have been in his pocket when he came away from the crime. The Crown never attempted to prove either blood-stains in a pocket, or the fact that any clothes had been burned. If Slater destroyed clothes, he would naturally have destroyed the hammer, too. Even one of the two medical witnesses of the prosecution was driven to say that he should not have expected such a weapon to cause such wounds. It may well be that in this summary of the evidence, I may seem to have stated the case entirely from the point of view of the defence. In reply, I would only ask the reader to take the trouble to read the extended evidence. (“ Trial of Oscar Slater “ Hodge & Co., Edinburgh.) If he will do so, he will realise that without a conscious mental effort towards special pleading, there is no other way in which the story can be told. The facts are on one side. The conjectures, the unsatisfactory identifications, the damaging flaws, and the very strong prejudices upon the other. Now for the trial itself. The case was opened for the Crown by the Lord-Advocate, in a speech which faithfully represented the excited feeling of the time. It was vigorous to the point of being passionate, and its effect upon the jury was reflected in their ultimate verdict. The Lord-Advocate spoke, as I understand, without notes, a procedure which may well add to eloquence while subtracting from accuracy. It is to this fact that one must attribute a most fatal misstatement which could not fail, coming under such circumstances from so high an authority, to make a deep impression upon his hearers. For some reason, this misstatement does not appear to have been corrected at the moment by either the Judge or the defending counsel. It was the one really damaging allegation — so damaging that had I myself been upon the jury and believed it to be true, I should have recorded my verdict against the prisoner, and yet this one fatal point had no substance at all in fact. In this incident alone, there seems to me to be good ground for a revision of the sentence, or a reference of the facts to some Court or Committee of Appeal. Here is the extract from the Lord-Advocate’s speech to which I allude: “At this time he had given his name to Cook’s people in Glasgow as Oscar Slater. On December 25th, the day he was to go back to Cook’s Office — his name and his description and all the rest of it appear in the Glasgow papers, and he sees that the last thing in the world that he ought to do, if he studies his own safety, is to go back to Cook’s Office as Oscar Slater. He accordingly proceeds to pack up all his goods and effects upon the 25th. So far as we know, he never leaves the house from the time he sees the paper, until a little after six o’clock, when he goes down to the Central Station.” Here the allegation is clearly made and it is repeated later that Oscar Slater’s name was in the paper, and that, subsequently to that, he fled. Such a flight would clearly be an admission of guilt. The point is of enormous even vital importance. And yet on examination of the dates, it will be found that there is absolutely no foundation for it. It was not until the evening of the 25th that even the police heard of the existence of Slater, and it was nearly a week later that his name appeared in the papers, he being already far out upon the Atlantic. What did appear upon the 25th was the description of the murderer, already quoted: “with his face shaved clean of all hair,” &c., Slater at that time having a marked moustache. Why should he take such a description to himself, or why should he forbear to carry out a journey which he had already prepared for? The point goes for absolutely nothing when examined, and yet if the minds of the jury were at all befogged as to the dates, the definite assertion of the Lord- Advocate, twice repeated, that Slater’s name had been published before his flight, was bound to have a most grave and prejudiced effect. Some of the Lord-Advocate’s other statements are certainly surprising. Thus he says: “The prisoner is hopelessly unable to produce a single witness who says that he was anywhere else than at the scene of the murder that night.” Let us test this assertion. Here is the evidence of Schmalz, the servant, verbatim. I may repeat that this woman was under no known obligations to Slater and had just received notice from him. The evidence of the mistress that Slater dined in the flat at seven on the night of the murder I pass, but I do not understand why Schmalz’s positive corroboration should be treated by the Lord-Advocate as non-existent. The prisoner might well be “hopeless” if his witnesses were to be treated so. Could anything be more positive than this? Q. “Did he usually come home to dinner? “ A. “Yes, always. Seven o’clock was the usual hour.” Q. “Was it sometimes nearly eight? A. “ It was my fault. Mr. Slater was in.” Q. “ But owing to your fault was it about eight before it was served? “ A. “ No. Mr. Slater was in after seven, and was waiting for dinner.” This seems very definite. The murder was committed about seven. The murderer may have regained the street about ten minutes or quarter past seven. It was some distance to Slater’s flat. If he had done the murder he could hardly have reached it before half-past seven at the earliest. Yet Schmalz says he was in at seven, and so does Antoine. The evidence of the woman may be good or bad, but it is difficult to understand how anyone could state that the prisoner was “ hopelessly unable to produce, etc.” What evidence could he give, save that of everyone who lived with him? For the rest, the Lord-Advocate had an easy task in showing that Slater was a worthless fellow, that he lived with and possibly on a woman of easy virtue, that he had several times changed^ his name, and that generally he was an unsatisfactory Bohemian. No actual criminal record was shown against him. Early in his speech, the Lord-Advocate remarked that he would show later how Slater may have come to know that Miss Gilchrist owned the jewels. No further reference appears to have been made to the matter, and his promise was therefore never fulfilled, though it is clearly of the utmost importance. Later, he stated that from the appearance of the wounds, they Must have been done by a small hammer. There is no “ must” in the matter, for it is clear that many other weapons, a burglar’s jemmy, for example, would have produced the same effect. He then makes the good point that the prisoner dealt in precious stones, and could therefore dispose of the proceeds of such a robbery. The criminal, he added, was clearly someone who had no acquaintance with the inside of the house, and did not know where the jewels were kept. “ That answers to the prisoner.” It also, of course, answers to practically every man in Scotland. The Lord-Advocate then gave a summary of the evidence as to the man seen by various witnesses in the street. “ Gentlemen, if that was the prisoner, how do you Account for his presence there? “ Of course, the whole point lies in the italicised phrase. There was, it must be admitted, a consensus of opinion among the witnesses that the prisoner was the man. But what was it compared to the consensus of opinion which wrongfully condemned Beck to penal servitude? The counsel laid considerable stress upon the fact that Mrs. Liddell (one of the Adams family) had seen a man only a few minutes before the murder, loitering in the street, and identified him as Slater. The dress of the man seen in the street was very different from that given as the murderer’s. He had a heavy tweed mixture coat of a brownish hue, and a brown peaked cap. The original identification by Mrs. Liddell was conveyed in the words: “ One, slightly,” when she was asked if any of a group at the police station resembled the man she had seen. Afterwards, like every other female witness, she became more positive. She declared that she had the clearest recollection of the man’s face, and yet refused to commit herself as to whether he was shaven or moustached. We have then the recognitions of Lambie, Adams and Barrowman, with their limitations and developments, which have been already discussed. Then comes the question of the so-called “flight” and the change of name upon the steamer. Had the prisoner been a man who had never before changed his name, this incident would be more striking. But the short glimpse we obtain of his previous life show several changes of name, and it has not been suggested that each of them was the consequence of a crime. He seems to have been in debt in Glasgow and he also appears to have had reasons for getting away from the pursuit of an ill-used wife. The Lord-Advocate said that the change of name “could not be explained consistently with innocence.” That may be true enough, but the change can surely be explained on some cause less grave than murder. Finally, after showing very truly that Slater was a great liar and that not a word he said need be believed unless there were corroboration, the Lord-Advocate wound up with the words: “ My submission to you is that this guilt has been brought fairly home to him, that no shadow of doubt exists, that there is no reasonable doubt that he was the perpetrator of this foul murder.” The verdict showed that the jury, under the spell of the Lord-Advocate’s eloquence, shared this view, but, viewing it in colder blood, it is difficult to see upon what grounds he made so confident an assertion. Mr. M’Clure, who conducted the defence, spoke truly when, in opening his speech, he declared that “ he had to fight a most unfair fight against public prejudice, roused with a fury I do not remember to have seen in any other case.” Still he fought this fight bravely and with scrupulous moderation. His appeals were all to reason and never to emotion. He showed how clearly the prisoner had expressed his intention of going to America, weeks before the murder, and how every preparation had been made. On the day after the murder he had told witnesses that he was going to America and had discussed the advantages of various lines, finally telling one of them the particular boat in which he did eventually travel, curious proceedings for a fugitive from justice. Mr. M’Clure described the movements of the prisoner on the night of the murder, after the crime had been committed, showing that he was wearing the very clothes in which the theory of the prosecution made him do the deed, as if such a deed could be done without leaving its traces. He showed incidentally (it is a small point, but a human one) that one of the last actions of Slater in Glasgow was to take great trouble to get an English five-pound note in order to send it as a Christmas present to his parents in Germany. A man who could do this was not all bad. Finally, Mr. M’Clure exposed very clearly the many discrepancies as to identification and warned the jury solemnly as to the dangers which have been so often proved to lurk in this class of evidence. Altogether, it was a broad, comprehensive reply, though where so many points were involved, it is natural that some few may have been overlooked. One does not, for example, find the counsel as insistent as one might expect upon such points as, the failure of the Crown to show how Slater could have known anything at all about the existence of Miss Gilchrist and her jewels, how he got into the flat, and what became of the brooch which, according to their theory, he had carried off. It is ungracious to suggest any additions to so earnest a defence, and no doubt one who is dependent upon printed accounts of the matter may miss points which were actually made, but not placed upon record. Only on one point must Mr. M’Clure’s judgment be questioned, and that is on the most difficult one, which a criminal counsel has ever to decide. He did not place his man in the box. This should very properly be taken as a sign of weakness. I have no means of saying what considerations led Mr. M’Clure to this determination. It certainly told against his client. In the masterly memorial for reprieve drawn up by Slater’s solicitor, the late Mr. Spiers, it is stated with the full inner knowledge which that solicitor had, that Slater was all along anxious to give evidence on his own behalf. “ He was advised by his counsel not to do so, but not from any knowledge of guilt. He had undergone the strain of a four days’ trial. He speaks rather broken English, although quite intelligible — with a foreign accent, and be had been in custody since January.” It must be admitted that these reasons are very unconvincing. It is much more probable that the counsel decided that the purely negative evidence which his client could give upon the crime would be dearly paid for by the long recital of sordid amours and blackguard experiences which would be drawn from him on cross-examination and have the most damning effect upon the minds of a respectable Edinburgh jury. And yet, perhaps, counsel did not sufficiently consider the prejudice which is excited — and rightly excited — against the prisoner who shuns the box. Some of this prejudice might have been removed if it had been made more clear that Slater had volunteered to come over and stand his trial of his own free will, without waiting for the verdict of the extradition proceedings. There remains the summing up of Lord Guthrie. His Lordship threw out the surmise that the assassin may well have gone to the flat without any intention of murder. This is certainly possible, but in the highest degree improbable. He commented with great severity upon Slater’s general character. In his summing-up of the case, he recapitulated the familiar facts in an impartial fashion, concluding with the words, “ I suppose that you all think that the prisoner possibly is the murderer. You may very likely all think that he probably is the murderer. That, however, will not entitle you to convict him. The Crown have undertaken to prove that he is the murderer. That is the question you have to consider. If you think there is no reasonable doubt about it, you will convict him; if you think there is, you will acquit him.” In an hour and ten minutes the jury had made up their mind. By a majority they found the prisoner guilty. Out of fifteen, nine, as was afterwards shown, were for guilty, five for non-proven, and one for not guilty. By English law, a new trial would have been needed, ending, possibly, as in the Gardiner case, in the complete acquittal of the prisoner. By Scotch law the majority verdict held good. “I know nothing about the affair, absolutely nothing,” cried the prisoner in a frenzy of despair. “I never heard the name. I know nothing about the affair. I do not know how I could be connected with the affair. I know nothing about it. I came from America on my own account. I can say no more.” Sentence of death was then passed. The verdict was, it is said, a complete surprise to most of those in the Court, and certainly is surprising when examined after the event. I do not see how any reasonable man can carefully weigh the evidence and not admit that when the unfortunate prisoner cried, “ I know nothing about it,” he was possibly, and even probably, speaking the literal truth. Consider the monstrous coincidence which is involved in his guilt, the coincidence that the police owing to their mistake over the brooch, by pure chance started out in pursuit of the right man. Which is A Priori the more probable: That such an unheard-of million-to-one coincidence should have occurred, Or, that the police, having committed themselves to the theory that he was the murderer, refused to admit that they were wrong when the bottom fell out of the original case, and persevered in the hope that vague identifications of a queer- looking foreigner would justify their original action? Outside these identifications, I must repeat once again there is nothing to couple Slater with the murder, or to show that he ever knew, or could have known that such a person as Miss Gilchrist existed. The admirable memorial for a reprieve drawn up by the solicitors for the defence, and reproduced at the end of this pamphlet, was signed by 20,000 members of the public, and had the effect of changing the death sentence to one of penal servitude for life. The sentence was passed on May 6th. For twenty days the man was left in doubt, and the written reprieve only arrived on May 26th within twenty-four hours of the time for the execution. On July 8th Slater was conveyed to the Peterhead Convict prison. There he has now been for three years, and there he still remains. I cannot help in my own mind comparing the case of Oscar Slater with another, which I had occasion to examine — that of George Edalji. I must admit that they are not of the same class. George Edalji was a youth of exemplary character. Oscar Slater was .a blackguard. George Edalji was physically incapable of the crime for which he suffered three years’ imprisonment (years for which he has not received, after his innocence was established, one shilling of compensation from the nation). Oscar Slater might conceivably have committed the murder, but the balance of proof and probability seems entirely against it. Thus, one cannot feel the same burning sense of injustice over the matter. And yet I trust for the sake of our character not only for justice, but for intelligence, that the judgment may in some way be reconsidered and the man’s present punishment allowed to atone for those irregularities of life which helped to make his conviction possible. Before leaving the case it is interesting to see how far this curious crime may be reconstructed and whether any possible light can be thrown upon it. Using second-hand material one cannot hope to do more than indicate certain possibilities which may already have been considered and tested by the police. The trouble, however, with all police prosecutions is that, having once got what they imagine to be their man, they are not very open to any line of investigation which might lead to other conclusions. Everything which will not fit into the official theory is liable to be excluded. One might make a few isolated comments on the case which may at least give rise to some interesting trains of thought. One question which has to be asked was whether the assassin was after the jewels at all. It might be urged that the type of man described by the spectators was by no means that of the ordinary thief. When he reached the bedroom and lit the gas, he did not at once seize the watch and rings which were lying openly exposed upon the dressing-table. He did not pick up a half-sovereign which was lying on the dining-room table. His attention was given to a wooden box, the lid of which he wrenched open. (This, I think, was “ the breaking of sticks” heard by Adams.) The papers in it were strewed on the ground. Were the papers his object, and the final abstraction of one diamond brooch a mere blind? Personally, I can only point out the possibility of such a solution. On the other hand, it might be urged, if the thief’s action seems inconsequential, that Adams had rung and that he already found himself in a desperate situation. It might be said also that save a will it would be difficult to imagine any paper which would account for such an enterprise, while the jewels, on the other hand, were an obvious mark for whoever knew of their existence. Presuming that the assassin was indeed after the jewels, it is very instructive to note his knowledge of their location, and also its limitations. Why did he go straight into the spare bedroom where the jewels were actually kept? The same question may be asked with equal force if we consider that he was after the papers. Why the spare bedroom? Any knowledge gathered from outside (by a watcher in the back-yard for example) would go to the length of ascertaining which was the old lady’s room. One would expect a robber who had gained his information thus, to go straight to that chamber. But this man did not do so. He went straight to the unlikely room in which both jewels and papers actually were. Is not this remarkably suggestive? Does it not pre-suppose a previous acquaintance with the inside of the flat and the ways of its owner? But now note the limitations of the knowledge. If it were the jewels he was after, he knew what room they were in, but not in what part of the room. A fuller knowledge would have told him they were kept in the wardrobe. And yet he searched a box. If he was after papers, his information was complete ; but if he was indeed after the jewels, then we can say that he had the knowledge of one who is conversant, but not intimately conversant, with the household arrangements. To this we may add that he would seem to have shown ignorance of the habits of the inmates, or he would surely have chosen Lambie’s afternoon or evening out for his attempt, and not have done it at a time when the girl was bound to be back within a very few minutes. What men had ever visited the house? The number must have been very limited. What friends? what tradesmen? what plumbers? Who brought back the jewels after they had been stored with the jewellers when the old lady went every year to the country? One is averse to throw out vague suspicions which may give pain to innocent people, and yet it is clear that there are lines of inquiry here which should be followed up, however negative the results. How did the murderer get in if Lambie is correct in thinking that she shut the doors? I cannot get away from the conclusion that he had duplicate keys. In that case all becomes comprehensible, for the old lady — whose faculties were quite normal — would hear the lock go and would not be alarmed, thinking that Lambie had returned before her time. Thus, she would only know her danger when the murderer rushed into the room, and would hardly have time to rise, receive the first blow, and fall, as she was found, beside the chair, upon which she had been sitting. That is intelligible. But if he had not the keys, consider the difficulties. If the old lady had opened the flat door her body would have been found in the passage. Therefore, the police were driven to the hypothesis that the old lady heard the ring, opened the lower stair door from above (as can be done in all Scotch flats), opened the flat door, never looked over the lighted stair to see who was coming up, but returned to her chair and her magazine, leaving the door open, and a free entrance to the murderer. This is possible, but is it not in the highest degree improbable? Miss Gilchrist was nervous of robbery and would not neglect obvious precautions. The ring came immediately after the maid’s departure. She could hardly have thought that it was her returning, the less so as the girl had the keys and would not need to ring. If she went as far as the hall door to open it, she only had to take another step to see who was ascending the stair. Would she not have taken it if it were only to say: “ What, have you forgotten your keys? “ That a nervous old lady should throw open both doors, never look to see who her visitor was, and return to her dining-room is very hard to believe. And look at it from the murderer’s point of view. He had planned out his proceedings. It is notorious that it is the easiest thing in the world to open the lower door of a Scotch flat. The blade of any penknife will do that. If he was to depend upon ringing to get at his victim, it was evidently better for him to ring at the upper door, as otherwise the chance would seem very great that she would look down, see him coming up the stair, and shut herself in. On the other hand, if he were at the upper door and she answered it, he had only to push his way in. Therefore, the latter would be his course if he rang at all. And yet the police theory is that though he rang, he rang from below. It is not what he would do, and if he did do it, it would be most unlikely that he would get in. How could he suppose that the old lady would do so incredible a thing as leave her door open and return to her reading? If she waited, she might even up to the last instant have shut the door in his face. If one weighs all these reasons, one can hardly fail, I think, to come to the conclusion that the murderer had keys, and that the old lady never rose from her chair until the last instant, because, hearing the keys in the door, she took it for granted that the maid had come back. But if he had keys, how did he get the mould, and how did he get them made? There is a line of inquiry there. The only conceivable alternatives are, that the murderer was actually concealed in the flat when Lambie came put, and of that there is no evidence whatever, or that the visitor was some one whom the old lady knew, in which case he would naturally have been admitted. There are still one or two singular points which invite comment. One of these, which I have incidentally mentioned, is that neither the match, the match-box, nor the box opened in the bedroom showed any marks of blood. Yet the crime had been an extraordinarily bloody one. This is certainly very singular. An explanation given by Dr. Adams who was the first medical man to view the body is worthy of attention. He considered that the wounds might have been inflicted by prods downwards from the leg of a chair, in which case the seat of the chair would preserve the clothes and to some extent the hands of the murderer from bloodstains. The condition of one of the chairs seemed to him to favour this supposition. The explanation is ingenious, but I must confess that I cannot understand how such wounds could be inflicted by such an instrument. There were in particular a number of spindle-shaped cuts with a bridge of skin between them which are very suggestive. My first choice as to the weapon which inflicted these would be a burglar’s jemmy, which is bifurcated at one end, while the blow which pushed the poor woman’s eye into her brain would represent a thrust from the other end. Failing a jemmy, I should choose a hammer, but a very different one from the toy thing from a half-crown card of tools which was exhibited in Court. Surely commonsense would say that such an instrument could burst an eye-ball, but could not possibly drive it deep into the brain, since the short head could not penetrate nearly so far. The hammer, which I would reconstruct from the injuries would be what they call, I believe, a plasterer’s hammer, short in the handle, long and strong in the head, with a broad fork behind. But how such a weapon could be used without the user bearing marks of it, is more than I can say. It has never been explained why a rug was laid over the murdered woman. The murderer, as his conduct before Lambie and Adams showed, was a perfectly cool person. It is at least possible that he used the rug as a shield between him and his victim while he battered her with his weapon. His clothes, if not his hands, would in this way be preserved. I have said that it is of the first importance to trace who knew of the existence of the jewels, since this might greatly help the solution of the problem. In connection with this there is a passage in Lambie’s evidence in New York which is of some importance. I give it from the stenographer’s report, condensing in places: Q. “Do you know in Glasgow a man named ? “ A. “ Yes, sir.” Q. “What is his business?” A. “A book-maker.” Q. “ When did you first meet him? “ A. “ At a dance.” Q. “ What sort of dance? “ A. “A New Year’s dance.” (That would be New Year of igo8.) Q. “ When did you meet him after that? “ A. “In the beginning of June.” Q. “Where?” A. “In Glasgow.” Q. “ At a street corner? “ A. “No, he came up to the house at Prince’s Street.” Q. “ Miss Gilchrist’s house? “ A. “Yes, sir.” Q. “That was the first time since the dance? “ A. “Yes, sir.” Q. “ Do you deny that you had a meeting with him by a letter received from him at a corner of a street in Glasgow? “ A. “I got a letter.” Q. “ To meet him at a street corner? “ A. “ Yes.” Q. “The first meeting after the dance?” A. “ Yes.” Q. “ And you met him there? “ A. “ Yes.” Q. “ And you went out with him? “ A. “ No, I did not go out with him.” Q. “ You went somewhere with him, didn’t you? “ A. “ Yes, I made an appointment for Sun day.” Q. “Did you know anything about the man?” A. “Yes, I did, sir.” Q. “ What did you know about him? “ A. “ I didn’t know much.” Q. “ How many times did he visit you at Miss Gilchrist’s house? “ A. “Once.” Q. “ Quite sure of that? “ A. “ Quite sure.” Q. “ Didn’t he come and take tea with you there in her apartment? “ A. “That was at the Coast.” Q. “ Then he came to see you at Miss Gil- Christ’s summer place? “ A. “Yes.” Q. “How many times?” A. “Once.” Q. “ Did he meet Miss Gilchrist then? “ A. “Yes, sir.” Q. “You introduced him?” A. “Yes, sir.” Q. “ Did she wear this diamond brooch? “ A. “I don’t remember.” Q. “ When did you next see him? “ A. “ The first week in September.” Q. “In Glasgow?” A. “Yes, sir.” Q. “By appointment?” A. “Yes.” Q. “When next?” A. “I have not met him since.” Q. “ And you say he only called once at the country place?” A. “Once, sir.” Q. “ In your Glasgow deposition you say: ‘ He visited me at Girvan and was entertained at tea with me on Saturday night, and at dinner on Sunday with Miss Gilchrist and me.’” A. “Yes, sir.” Q. “ Then you did see him more than once in the country.” A. “Once.” He read the extract again as above. Q. “Was that true?” A. “Yes.” Q. “ Then you invited this man to tea at Miss Gilchrist’s summer house? “ A. “Yes.” Q. “ On Saturday night? “ A. “Yes.” Q. “ And on Sunday night? “ A. “ He wasn’t there.” Q. “ On Sunday you invited him there to dinner with Miss Gilchrist and yourself, didn’t you? “ A. “Yes, sir. I didn’t invite him.” Q. “Who invited him.” A. “ Miss Gilchrist.” Q. “Had you introduced him?” A. “Yes, sir.” Q. “ He was your friend, wasn’t he? “ A. “Yes, sir.” Q. “ She knew nothing about him? “ A. “No.” Q. “ She took him to the house on your recommendation? “ A. “Yes.” Q. “Did she wear her diamonds at this dinner party? “ A. “I don’t remember.” Q. “You told him that she was a rich woman? “ A. “Yes.” Q. “ Did you tell him that she had a great many jewels?” A. “Yes.” Q. “Have your suspicions ever turned towards this man? “ A. “Never.” Q. “ Do you know of any other man who would be as familiar with those premises, the wealth of the old lady, her jewelry, and the way to get into the premises as that man? “ A. “No, sir.” Q. “Was the man you met in the hallway this man? “ A. “No, sir.” This is a condensation of a very interesting and searching piece of the cross-examination which reveals several things. One is Lambie’s qualities as a witness. Another is the very curious picture of the old lady, the bookmaker and the servant-maid all sitting at dinner together. The last and most important is the fact, that a knowledge of the jewels had got out. Against the man himself there is no possible allegation. The matter was looked into by the police, and their conclusions were absolute, and were shared by those responsible for the defence. But is it to be believed that during the months which elapsed between this man acquiring this curious knowledge, and the actual crime, never once chanced to repeat to any friend, who in turn repeated it to another, the strange story of the lonely old woman and her hoard? This he would do in full innocence. It was a most natural thing to do. But, for almost the first time in the case we seem to catch some glimpse of the relation between possible cause and effect, some connection between the dead woman on one side, and outsiders on the other who had the means of knowing something of her remarkable situation. There is just one other piece of Lambie’s cross-examination, this time from the Edinburgh trial, which I would desire to quote. It did not appear in America, just as the American extract already given did not appear in Edinburgh. For the first time they come out together: Q. “Did Miss Gilchrist use to have a dog? “ A. “Yes, an Irish terrier.” Q. “What happened to it?” A. “ It got poisoned.” Q. “ When was it poisoned? “ A. “I think on the 7th or 8th of September.” Q. “ Was that thought to be done by some one?” A. “I did not think it, for I thought it might have eaten something, but Miss Gil- Christ thought it was poisoned by some one.” Q. “ To kill the watch-dog — was that the idea?” A. “ She did not say.” The reader should be reminded that Slater did not arrive in Glasgow until the end of October of that year. His previous residences in the town were as far back as 1901 and 1905. If the dog were indeed poisoned in anticipation of the crime, he, at least, could have had nothing to do with it. There is one other piece of evidence which may, or may not have been of importance. It is that of Miss Brown, the schoolmistress. This lady was in court, but seems to have been called by neither side for the reason that her evidence was helpful to neither the prosecution nor the defence. She deposed that on the night of the murder, about ten minutes past seven, she saw two men running away from the scene. One of these men closely corresponded to the original description of the murderer before it was modified by Barrowman. This one was of medium build, dark hair and clean shaven, with three-quarter length grey overcoat, dark tweed cap, and both hands in his pockets. Here we have the actual assassin described to the life, and had Miss Brown declared that this man was the prisoner, she would have been a formidable addition to the witnesses for prosecution. Miss Brown, however identified Oscar Slater (after the usual absurd fashion of such identifications) as the second man, whom she describes, as of “Dark glossy hair, navy blue overcoat with velvet collar, dark trousers, black boots, something in his hand which seemed clumsier than a walking stick.” One would imagine that this object in his hand would naturally be his hat, since she describes the man as bare-headed. All that can be said of this incident is that if the second man was Slater, then he certainly was not the actual murderer whose dress corresponds closely to the first, and in no particular to the second. To the Northern eye, all swarthy foreigners bear a resemblance, and that there was a swarthy man, whether foreign or not, concerned in this affair would seem to be beyond question. That there should have been two confederates, one of whom had planned the crime while the other carried it out, is a perfectly feasible supposition. Miss Brown’s story does not necessarily contradict that of Barrowman, as one would imagine that the second man would join the murderer at some little distance from the scene of the crime. However, as there was no cross-examination upon the story, it is difficult to know what weight to attach to it. Let me say in conclusion that I have had no desire in anything said in this argument, to hurt the feelings or usurp the functions of anyone, whether of the police or the criminal court, who had to do with the case. It is difficult to discuss matters from a detached point of view without giving offence. I am well aware that it is easier to theorise at a distance than to work a case out in practice whether as detective or as counsel. I leave the matter now with the hope that, even after many days, some sudden flash may be sent which will throw a light upon as brutal and callous a crime as has ever been recorded in those black annals in which the criminologist finds the materials for his study. Meanwhile it is on the conscience of the authorities, and in the last resort on that of the community that this verdict obtained under the circumstances which I have indicated, shall now be reconsidered. Arthur Conan Doyle. Windlesham, Crowborough. COPY OF MEMORIAL FOR REPRIEVE
UNTO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE LORD PENTLAND, HIS MAJESTY’S SECRETARY OF STATE FOR SCOTLAND MEMORIAL ON BEHALF OF OSCAR SLATER THIS Memorial is humbly presented on behalf of Oscar Slater presently a Prisoner in the Prison of Glasgow, who was, in the High Court of Justiciary at Edinburgh, on Thursday, the sixth day of May, Nineteen hundred and nine, found guilty of the charge of murdering Miss Marion Gilchrist in her house in West Princes Street, Glasgow, and sentenced to death. The Prisoner is a Jew, and was born in Germany. He is 37 years of age. The Jury returned a verdict of “ Guilty “ by a majority of nine to six, and the legal advisers of the condemned man hold a very strong opinion that the verdict of the majority of the Jury was not in accordance with the evidence led, and that this evidence was quite insufficient to identify the Prisoner with the murderer, and so to establish the Prisoner’s guilt. This view, they believe, is shared by the general public of all classes in Scotland, and by the Glasgow press (vide leading article in The Glasgow Herald of 7th May, 1909, sent herewith). Your Memorialist has endeavoured in this paper to deal with the matter as briefly and with as little argument as possible; but in view of the fact that the trial of the Prisoner occupied four days, it is inevitable that the Memorial should extend to some length. It is common ground that the late Miss Gilchrist, a lady of about 82 years of age, resided alone with her domestic servant, Nellie Lambie, a girl of about 21 years of age. According to the evidence of Lambie, the latter left Miss Gilchrist alone in the house at seven o’clock on the evening of 21st December, 1908, and went to purchase an evening paper. Lambie deponed that she securely shut the house door behind her, and also the door at the close, or street entry; that she was only absent about ten minutes; that on returning about ten minutes past seven o’clock she found the close door open; that upon ascending the stair she found Mr. Adams, a gentleman who resides in the flat below, standing at Miss Gilchrist’s house door; that Adams informed her that he had gone up to Miss Gilchrist’s door because he had heard knocking on the floor of Miss Gilchrist’s house, and had rung the bell, but that he could obtain no admittance; that the lobby was lighted by one gas jet turned half up, but giving a good light; that Lambie thereupon opened the house door with her keys; that upon the door being opened a man came through the lobby or hall of Miss Gilchrist’s house, passed Lambie and Adams, went downstairs, and disappeared; and that, upon Lambie and Adams entering the house, they found Miss Gilchrist lying on the dining-room floor dead, her head having been smashed. Upon the Wednesday following the murder (23rd December, 1908), the Glasgow Police were informed by a message girl named Mary Barrowman (about 15 years of age), that she had seen a man wearing a Donegal hat and a light coat running out of the close which leads from the street to Miss Gilchrist’s house shortly after seven o’clock on the night of the murder; that the man passed her, running at top speed; that she noticed that he was dark, and clean shaven, and that his nose was twisted towards the right side. The servant Lambie had also informed the Police that a gold crescent brooch, set in diamonds, had disappeared from Miss Gilchrist’s house on the night of the murder, and that this was all of Miss Gilchrist’s property that she missed. These statements were published in the Glasgow newspapers on Friday, 25th December, 1908, and following upon this the witness Allan Maclean, a member of a club to which Slater be- longed, informed the Police that Slater’s appearance somewhat corresponded with the description advertised, and that he had been trying to sell a pawn ticket for a diamond brooch. Following up this clue, the Police went to Slater’s house at 69, St. George’s Road, Glasgow, on the night of Friday, 25th December, and learned that he and Miss Andree Antoine, with whom he had been cohabiting, had left Glasgow that night with their belongings. The Police thereafter ascertained that Slater had sailed on the “ Lusitania “ for New York from Liverpool on Saturday, 26th December, and cabled to the Authorities at New York to detain and search him on his arrival. This was done, and the pawn ticket, which he had been trying to sell, was found upon him, but turned out to be a pawn ticket for a brooch which belonged to Miss Antoine, had never belonged to Miss Gilchrist, and had been pawned a considerable time before the murder. Proceedings, however, were instituted for Slater’s extradition. The witnesses Lambie, Adams, and Barrowman gave evidence in America, purporting to identify him as the man seen leaving Miss Gilchrist’s house, and Slater was (he states of his own consent) extradited, and brought back to Scotland for trial. An advertisement was published by the Authorities in Glasgow offering a reward of £200 for information which would lead to the arrest of the murderer. The only evidence against Slater, which might be called direct evidence, was the evidence of the persons who saw a man walk out of the lobby or hall in Miss Gilchrist’s house on the night of the murder (Lambie and Adams), or leaving the close leading therefrom, or running along the street (Barrowman). At the trials Lambie professed to identify Slater, as the man whom she had seen leaving the house, by the side of his face. It was put to her, however, and clearly proved, that when she gave evidence in New York in the extradition proceedings she stated in Court there that she did not see the man’s face, and professed to identify him by his walk. When Slater’s own coat, the one found in his luggage, was shown to her at the trial, she at once remarked, even before it was unrolled, that it was not like the coat the man in the lobby wore — it was the coat. It was obviously impossible that she knew it to be the same coat. Lord Guthrie referred to this in his charge to the jury as a typical example of the nature of her evidence. With regard to the positive nature of her evidence generally, it is interesting to note that her first answer in America, when asked if she saw the man, was, “ One is very suspicious, if any thing,” She stated that, when she saw Slater in the Central Police Office at Glasgow, she recognised him in his “own coat” It was proved that he was not then wearing his own coat, but one with which he had been dressed for identification purposes. The witness only saw the man who was leaving the house for a moment or two. Adams and she contradicted each other as to where she was when the man walked across the lobby. Adams deponed that she was by the lobby clock and walking towards the kitchen. If so, she must practically have had her back to the man. She says she was on the threshold of the door. In any event, her view was momentary. The witness Adams, who deponed that he had a better view of the man in the house than Lambie, stated at the trial that he, standing at the threshold, saw the man’s face as he approached, that their eyes met, and that the man walked slowly towards him, face to face, but Adams would not go further than to say that Slater resembled the man very much. He is superior to Lambie and Barrowman in years, education and intelligence. Your Memorialist begs to emphasise the fact that this witness had a much better view of the man than any of the other witnesses. The witness Barrowman stated at the trial that the man ran out of the close and rushed past her at top speed, brushing against her, and that he had his hat pulled well down over his forehead. The witness is a message girl, about 15 years of age. She also stated that the man had on brown boots, a Donegal hat, and a fawn coat, and that he was dark and clean shaven, and that his nose had a twist to the right. She professed to have noticed all these things as he rushed past her at top speed. At the trial this witness stated in cross-examination (1) that she was proceeding in the opposite direction from the man, to deliver a parcel, but that she turned and went some distance after him; that she thought he was probably going to catch a tram- car; but she could not explain why she should go out of her way to turn and follow a man running for a car in a busy city like Glasgow; and (2) that, although the girl Lambie and she had occupied the same cabin on the voyage to America, which lasted about twelve days, she had not once discussed the appearance of the man, and that no one had warned her not to do so. These two statements do not impress your Memorialist as bearing the stamp of truth. This girl started the description of the twisted nose. She is the only witness who refers to it. Her view of the man’s face must necessarily have been momentary. Slater’s nose cannot properly be described as “twisted to the right.” It has a noticeable prominence in the centre. * All of these three witnesses had, as has been said, only a momentary view of the man, and it was proved that before Barrowman professed to identify Slater in New York she was shown his photograph, and that both she and Lambie, before attempting to identify him in New York, saw him being brought into Court by a Court official, wearing a badge. In her New York evidence she first said, “ He is something like the man I saw.” At the trial she stated that he was the man. These facts very much reduce, if they do not altogether vitiate, the value of the evidence of these identifying witnesses. Another witness, Mrs. Liddell, who is a married sister of the witness Adams, stated that, at five minutes to seven on the evening of the murder, she saw a dark, clean-shaven man leaning against a railing at the street entry to Miss Gilchrist’s house, but that this man wore a heavy brown tweed coat and a brown cap. It is to be observed that Constable Neil, who passed the house at ten minutes to seven, saw no one there; and Lambie, who left the house promptly at seven, or, as she said in America, “perhaps a few minutes before seven,” saw no one there. Further, Mrs. Liddell did not observe where the man went to; according to her he merely glided away; and although she was in Miss Gilchrist’s house that night and saw the body, and would naturally be greatly concerned over the murder, she did not recollect having seen this man until the Wednesday after the murder. Even taking her evidence as absolutely true and reliable, it provides an excellent object-lesson on the difficulty and responsibility of convicting on such evidence as this, because the man she saw was obviously dressed differently from the man seen by the other three witnesses. Her evidence does not, to any appreciable extent, further the case against Slater, as she stated that she thought this man was Slater, but admitted that she might be in error. The other witness is a girl named Annie Armour, a ticket clerk in the Subway Station at Kelvinbridge, who says that between 7.30 and 8 that evening a man, whom she identified as Slater, rushed past her office without waiting for a ticket, and seemed excited. Lord Guthrie in his charge to the jury did not refer to this witness, and your Memorialist thinks advisedly. The mere question of time is sufficient to render her evidence valueless. She is sure the incident did not happen before 7.30. According to the other witnesses, the murderer must have run from the house by at least 7.15. It was proved that it would only take a man five or six minutes to run from the scene of the tragedy to this station, either by the most direct route or by the route which Barrowman’s evidence suggests he took. Then it is impossible to suppose that she could get anything like a good view, even of the side face, of a man who rushed past her in the way she described. All the witnesses who saw the man on the night of the murder (Monday) say that he was clean shaven. It was proved that on the next day or two after the murder Slater had a short, black, stubbly moustache. These were the only witnesses called by the Crown to identify Slater with the murderer. Further circumstantial evidence, however, was led by the Crown to show that, on occasions before the day of the murder, Slater had been seen standing in or walking up and down West Princes Street — Mrs. M’Haffie, her daughters and niece, Campbell, Cunningham, Bryson, Nairn, and O’Brien and Walker (two policemen). It may be noted that Slater’s house was situated about three minutes’ walk from West Princes Street. These witnesses did not all agree in their evidence. Some said that Slater was the man they had seen; others, equally or perhaps better able to judge, only said that he was very like him. The Memorialist does not propose in this paper to deal at length with this part of the evidence, except to point out that two witnesses (Nairn and Bryson) say they saw Slater in West Princes Street on the Sunday evening previous to the murder. Against this there is the evidence that Slater on this day, as usual, spent all Sunday (day and evening) in his house. Three witnesses from Paris, London, and Dublin spoke to this. Coming from different places, they had no chance to concoct a story. At Slater’s trial it was suggested that there were various circumstances tending to create an atmosphere of suspicion around him; but it is submitted that all these were capable of explanation, and in no way pointing to Slater’s guilt as a murderer. Slater had written to Cameron that he could prove where he was on the evening of the murder “ by five people.” When this letter was written, he thought that the date of the murder was the Tuesday, the 22nd. The evidence of his witnesses was to the effect that on the evening of the murder he was in a billiard room until 6.30 p. m., after which he went home for dinner. It was shown that Slater dealt in diamonds. There was, however, no evidence of any dishonest dealing of any kind. The brooch said to have been missing from Miss Gilchrist’s house has not been traced. There was no evidence of any kind led to show that Slater ever knew, or even heard of, Miss Gilchrist or her house, and the Memorialist would emphasise the fact that it was the missing brooch that put the Police on the track of Slater. With reference to Slater’s departure for America on 25th December, 1908, it was proved that he had formed the intention, some weeks before the murder, of going to America. Cameron, Rattman, and Aumann proved this. Slater had, in fact, tried to get the last named to take over his flat. The letter from Jacobs, of 28th December, and the card bearing the words “ address till 30th December,” produced by the Crown, also corroborate the evidence of this intention of leaving, which is further corroborated by the evidence of Nichols, the barber, a Crown witness. On the morning of 21st December, 1908, Slater received two letters — one from London, stating that his wife was demanding his address, and the other from San Francisco, asking him to come over. These were spoken to by Schmalz, his servant girl, and Miss Antoine. Further corroboration of his intention to leave is (1) on the morning of 21st December he raised a further £30 from Mr. Liddell, pawnbroker, on his brooch, and on the same day tried to sell the ticket; (a) he wrote to the Post Office for payment of the money at his credit; (3) he wired to Dent, London, to send on his watch, which was being repaired, immediately; (4) on the Monday morning he gave notice to the servant girl that she would not be required after the following Saturday (these events all happened before the murder); (5) on the Tuesday morning he redeemed a pair of binoculars from another pawnbroker whose assistant, Kempton, proved this, and who stated that he was in no way excited; (6) on the 23rd and 24th December he made inquiries at Cook’s Shipping Offices regarding berths, and betrayed no signs of any excitement; on the 23rd he was, in the evening, in Johnston’s billiard room, which he used to frequent; and on the 24th he spent the afternoon about Glasgow with his friend Cameron, who gave evidence; (7) on Friday morning a Mrs. Freedman and her sister arrived from London to take over his flat, so that he and Miss Antoine left on Friday night. A rumour got abroad at the time to the effect that he booked to London and left the train at Liverpool. This rumour was published in the various newspapers, to Slater’s great prejudice, but nothing of the kind was proved at the trial. The Police were evidently misled by the fact that he went by a London train, but it was proved that there were two carriages in that train for Liverpool, and also that Slater’s luggage, consisting of nine boxes, was labelled to Liverpool. The Porter who labelled the luggage was called, and stated that Slater told him that he was going to Liverpool, and entered a Liverpool carriage. The point was also raised against Slater that he used various aliases. He had been staying apart from his wife for about four years, during which time he cohabited with Miss Antoine. She stated that Slater’s wife was a drunken woman, and caused him a deal of trouble. At one time he adopted the name of “George,” and when he came to Glasgow on the last occasion he took the name of “ Anderson.” On the voyage to America he took the name of Otto Sando, because his luggage was labelled O. S. At times he called himself a dentist. There was no evidence that he really was a dentist Miss Antoine explained that he adopted the title of dentist, as he required a designation of some sort, although he was a gambler. A great deal was published in the newspapers about a hammer that had been found in one of his boxes. This turned out to be an ordinary small domestic nail hammer, purchased on a card containing several other tools, the lot costing only 2s. 6d. He, of course, took the hammer to America with him with all the rest of his belongings. Nothing incriminating was found in any of his boxes. No evidence whatever was led to show how the murderer gained access to the house. It will be conceded that identification evidence, especially in a serious charge of this kind, must be examined very carefully, and should have little weight attached to it, unless it is very clear. To sum up, the only real evidence in the case is that of those who saw a man running away on the night of the murder; and, as has been pointed out, these witnesses had only a momentary glance at him. Adams does not positively identify the prisoner as the man. He says he closely resembles him. Lambie’s New York evidence has already been referred to, and her evidence at the trial cannot be reconciled with it. . Lambie and Barrowman both saw him in custody before trying to identify him in New York, and the latter, before identifying him, was shown his photograph. All the other identifying witnesses called to give evidence as to his having been seen in the vicinity on days previous to the murder were taken down to the General Police Office when Slater returned from America to identify him. They were shown into one room together, and then separately taken into a room in the Police Office, where Slater was amongst about a dozen men, none of whom were like him. (Cunningham says she could see that the other men were policemen in plain clothes.) All these witnesses knew that Slater had arrived from America, and was in the room. They had all read his description in the newspapers, or had seen his photograph. They all, therefore, looked for, and had no difficulty in pointing out, a dark, foreign- looking man, with a somewhat peculiarly shaped nose. It is submitted that this is not identification evidence in the proper sense at all. Had these people been able to pick out, as their man, from amongst several others, a man whose description they only knew from what they had previously seen of him, unassisted by description, and unassisted by a photograph, the value of their evidence would have been entirely different. Some Crown witnesses identified him as the man they had seen and talked to (Shipping Clerk, Porter, &c.), but they, of course, were able to do so. None of the identifying witnesses had ever spoken to him. Identification evidence is a class of evidence which the law distrusts. The most famous authority is the case of Adolf Beck. Beck was, in 1896, sentenced to seven years’ penal servitude, on the evidence of ten women, who swore positively that he was a man whom they had each met on two occasions, and spent some time with in their own houses, and who had defrauded them, and on the evidence of two policemen, who swore positively that Beck was the man who had been previously convicted of similar crimes, taken along with certain circumstantial evidence — that he was known to frequent a hotel on the notepaper of which one of the women had received a letter. Again, in 1904, Beck was convicted of similar crimes on similar evidence. It was subsequently demonstrated that Beck committed none of the crimes, but that a man bearing a general similarity to him was the criminal. In the report issued by the Commission appointed to investigate the matter, consisting of Lord Collins, Sir Spencer Walpole, and Sir John Edge, the following passage occurs:—”Evidence of identity, upon personal impression, however bona fide, is of all classes of evidence the least to be relied upon, and, unless supported by other evidence, an unsafe basis for the verdict of a Jury.” Now, the evidence in the Beck case was infinitely more overwhelming and consistent than in this case; and the report in the Beck case, and the report on which it followed, make it clear that on the evidence in this case the Jury had no right to bring in a verdict of “ Guilty.” A good deal was said by the learned Lord Advocate to the Jury about Slater’s immoral character. It was not disputed that he was a gambler. It was also admitted that he had cohabited for about four years with Madame Antoine, who was of doubtful virtue, and who gave evidence. Yet the learned Lord Advocate addressed the Jury to the effect that the prisoner “ had followed a life which descended to the very depth of human degradation, for, by the universal judgment of mankind, the man who lived upon the proceeds of prostitution has sunk to the lowest depth, and all moral sense in him had been destroyed.” This he cited as proof of the disappearance of an obstacle which had previously been in his way, viz: — Whether it was conceivable that such a man as Slater could commit such an inhumanly brutal crime. The only evidence on that point was that of Cameron, Slater’s friend, who, in cross-examination, said he had heard that Slater lived on the earnings of prostitution, but who did not say he knew. The Jury were distinctly told by the Lord Advocate, and by the prisoner’s Counsel, and by the Judge, to banish from their minds anything they had heard regarding the man’s character; but they had previously heard all about it, and the Memorialist feels strongly that they were evidently unable to do so. Public feeling is also very strong on the point that the question of Slater’s character should never have been brought before the Jury. The Memorialist thinks it is only fair to prisoner to point out that he was all along anxious to give evidence on his own behalf. He was advised by his Counsel not to do so, but not from any knowledge of guilt. He had undergone the strain of a four days’ trial. He speaks rather broken English — although quite intelligibly — with a foreign accent, and he had been in custody since January. Apart from what has been set forth above, your Memorialist begs to draw attention to the fact that on the Crown list of witnesses is the name of a witness, Miss Agnes Brown (No. 46). This lady is 30 years of age, and a very intelligent school teacher. Your Memorialist is informed that she told the Police and Procurator-Fiscal that on the night of the murder, about ten minutes past seven o’clock, two men in company rushed along West Princes Street from the direction of Miss Gilchrist’s house, and passed close to her at the corner of West Princes Street and West Cumberland Street; that one of them was dressed in a blue Melton coat with a dark velvet collar, black boots, and without a hat; that both men ran past the opening of West Cumberland Street, straight on along West Princes Street, crossed West Princes Street, and ran down Rupert Street, a street further west, and opening off the opposite side of West Princes Street Your Memorialist understands that, in the identification proceedings before referred to, this witness pointed out Slater as the man in the Melton coat, as she thought This witness’s evidence is thus in sharp contradiction on material points to that of the message girl Barrowman (who had only a momentary glance at the man), but upon whose evidence so much weight has evidently been laid, and who says that Slater was dressed in a light coat, a Donegal hat, and brown boots, was alone, and ran down West Cumberland Street Your Memorialist respectfully submits that this illustrates the danger of convicting a man upon the kind of evidence given in this case. Miss Brown was in attendance at the trial, but was not called as a witness. Even on the evidence led, the votes of two more jurymen in his favour would have liberated the prisoner. In England the probability is that a conviction would never have been obtained. Your Memorialist is authorised to state that Slater’s Counsel agree that the evidence did not justify the conviction. Your Memorialist, who has all along acted as Slater’s Solicitor since he was brought back from America after the Extradition Proceedings, and who has had very many interviews with Slater, begs respectfully to state his absolute belief in Slater’s innocence. May it therefore please the Right Honourable the Secretary of State for Scotland to take this Memorial into his most favourable consideration, and thereafter to advise his Most Gracious Majesty to exercise his royal prerogative to the effect of commuting the sentence passed upon the prisoner, or to do otherwise as in the circumstances may seem just. And your Memorialist will ever pray. EWING SPIERS, 190 West George Street, Glasgow, Oscar Slater’s Solicitor. Dated this seventeenth day of May, One thousand nine hundred and nine.
THE HOLOCAUST OF MANOR PLACE In the study of criminal psychology one is forced to the conclusion that the most dangerous of all types of mind is that of the inordinately selfish man. He is a man who has lost his sense of proportion. His own will and his own interest have blotted out for him the duty which he owes to the community. Impulsiveness, jealousy, vindictiveness are the fruitful parents of crime, but the insanity of selfishness is the most dangerous and also the most unlovely of them all. Sir Willoughby Patterne, the eternal type of all egoists, may be an amusing and harmless character as long as things go well with him, but let him be thwarted, let the thing which he desires be withheld from him, and the most monstrous results may follow. Huxley has said that a man in this life is for ever playing a game with an unseen opponent, who only makes his presence felt by exacting a penalty every time one makes a mistake in the game. The player who makes the mistake of selfishness may have a terrible forfeit to pay, but the unaccountable thing in the rules is that some, who are only spectators of his game, may have to help him in the paying. Read the Story of William Godfrey Youngman, and see how difficult it is to understand the rules under which these penalties are exacted. Learn also from it that selfishness is no harmless peccadillo, but that it is an evil root from which the most monstrous growths may spring. About forty miles to the south of London, and close to the rather passé watering-place of Tunbridge Wells, there lies the little townlet of Wadhurst. It is situated within the borders of Sussex at a point which is close to the confines of Kent. The country is a rich pastoral one and the farmers are a flourishing race, for they are near enough to the Metropolis to take advantage of its mighty appetite. Among these farmers there lived in the year 1860 one Streeter, the master of a small homestead and the father of a fair daughter, Mary Wells Streeter. Mary was a strong, robust girl, some twenty years of age, skilled in all country work, and with some knowledge also of the town, for she had friends up there, and above all she had one friend, a young man of twenty-five, whom she had met upon one of her occasional visits, and who had admired her so that he had actually come down to Wadhurst after her, and had spent a night under her father’s roof. The father had expressed no disapprobation of the suitor, a brisk, masterful young fellow, a little vague in his description of his own occupation and prospects, but an excellent fireside companion. And so it came about that the deep, town-bred William Godfrey Youngman became engaged to the simple, country-bred Mary Wells Streeter, William knowing all about Mary, but Mary very little about William. July the 29th of that year fell upon a Sunday, and Mary sat in the afternoon in the window of the farm-house parlour, with her bundle of love- letters upon her lap, reading them again and yet again. Outside was the little square of green lawn, fringed with the homely luxuriance of an English country garden, the high hollyhocks, the huge nodding sunflowers, the bushes of fuchsia, and the fragrant clumps of sweet William. Through the open lattice came the faint, delicate scent of the lilac and the long, low droning of the bees. The farmer had lain down to the plethoric sleep of the Sunday afternoon, and Mary had the room to herself. There were fifteen love-letters in all some shorter, some longer, some wholly delightful, some with scattered business allusions, which made her wrinkle her pretty brows. There was this matter of the insurance, for example, which had cost her lover so much anxiety until she had settled it. No doubt he knew more of the world than she, but still it was strange that she, so young and so hale, should be asked and again asked to prepare herself for death. Even in the flush of her love those scattered words struck a chill to her heart. ‘Dearest girl,’ he had written, ‘I have filled up the paper now, and took it to the life insurance office, and they will write to Mrs. James Boric today to get an answer on Saturday. So you can go to the office with me before two o’clock on Monday.’ And then again, only two days later, he had begun his letter: ‘You promised me faithfully over and over again, and I expect you to keep your promise, that you would be mine, and that your friends would not know it until we were married; but now, dearest Mary, if you will only let Mrs. James Bone write to the insurance office at once and go with me to have your life insured on Monday morning next!’ So ran the extracts from the letters, and they perplexed Mary as she read them. But it was all over now, and he should mingle business no longer with his love, for she had yielded to his whim, and the insurance for £100 had been duly effected. It had cost her a quarterly payment of 10s. 4d., but it had seemed to please him, and so she would think of it no more. There was a click of the garden-gate, and looking up she saw the porter from the station coming up the path with a note in his hand. Seeing her at the window he handed it in and departed, slyly smiling, a curious messenger of Cupid in his corduroys and clumping boots — a messenger of a grimmer god than Cupid, had he but known it. She had eagerly torn it open, and this was the message that she read: ‘16, Manor Place, Newington, S.E. Saturday night, July 28th. ‘My BELOVED POLLY, ‘I have posted one letter to you this afternoon, but I find that I shall not have to go to Brighton tomorrow as I have had a letter from there with what I wanted inside of it, so, my dear girl, I have quite settled my business now and I am quite ready to see you now, therefore I send this letter to you. I will send this to London Bridge Station tomorrow morning by 6:30 o’clock and get the guard to take it to Wadhurst Station, to give it to the porter there, who will take it to your place. I can only give the guard something, so you can give the man who brings this a small sum. I shall expect to see you, my dear girl, on Monday morning by the first train. I will await your coming at London Bridge Station. I know the time the train arrives — a quarter to ten o’clock. I have promised to go to my uncle’s tomorrow, so I cannot come down; but I will go with you home on Monday night or first thing Tuesday morning, and so return here again Tuesday night, to be ready to go anywhere on Wednesday; but you know all that I have told you, and I now expect that you will come up on Monday morning, when I shall be able to manage things as I expect to do. Excuse more now, my dearest Mary. I shall now go to bed to be up early tomorrow to take this letter. Bring or burn all your letters, my dear girl. Do not forget; and with kind love and respects to all I now sum up, awaiting to see you Monday morning a quarter to ten o’clock. Believe me, ever your loving, affectionate, WILLIAM GODFREY YOUNGMAN.’ A very pressing invitation this to a merry day in town; but there were certainly some curious phrases in it. What did he mean by saying that he would manage things as he expected to do? And why should she burn or bring her love-letters? There, at least, she was determined to disobey this masterful suitor who always ‘expected’ in so authoritative a fashion that she would do this or that. Her letters were much too precious to be disposed of in this off-hand fashion. She packed them back, sixteen of them now, into the little tin box in which she kept her simple treasures, and then ran to meet her father, whose step she heard upon the stairs, to tell him of her invitation and the treat which awaited her to-morrow. At a quarter to ten next morning William Godfrey Youngman was waiting upon the platform of London Bridge Station to meet the Wadhurst train which was bringing his sweetheart up to town. No observer glancing down the straggling line of loiterers would have picked him out as the man whose name and odious fame would before another day was passed be household words to all the three million dwellers in London. In person he was of a goodly height and build, but commonplace in his appearance, and with a character which was only saved from insignificance through the colossal selfishness, tainted with insanity, which made him conceive that all things should bend before his needs and will. So distorted was his outlook that it even seemed to him that if he wished people to be deceived they must be deceived, and that the weakest device or excuse, if it came from him, would pass unquestioned. He had been a journeyman tailor, as his father was before him, but aspiring beyond this, he had sought and obtained a situation as footman to Dr. Duncan, of Covent Garden. Here he had served with credit for some time, but had finally resigned his post and had returned to his father’s house, where for some time he had been living upon the hospitality of his hard-worked parents. He had talked vaguely of going into farming, and it was doubtless his short experience of Wadhurst with its sweet-smelling kine and Sussex breezes which had put the notion into his Cockney head. But now the train rolls in, and there at a third-class window is Mary Streeter with her pink country cheeks, the pinker at the sight of her waiting lover. He takes her bag and they walk down the platform together amongst the crinolined women and baggy-trousered men whose pictures make the London of this date more strange to us than that of last century. He lives at Walworth, in South London, and a straw-strewn omnibus outside the station conveys them almost to the door. It was eleven o’clock when they arrived at Manor Place, where Youngman’s family resided. The household arrangements at Manor Place were peculiar. The architect having not yet evolved the flat in England, the people had attained the same result in another fashion. The tenant of a two-storied house resided upon the ground-floor, and then sub-let his first and second floors to other families. Thus, in the present instance, Mr. James Bevan occupied the ground, Mr. and Mrs. Beard the first, and the Youngman family the second, of the various floors of No. 16. Manor Place. The ceilings were thin and the stairs were in common, so it may be imagined that each family took a lively interest in the doings of its neighbour. Thus Mr. and Mrs. Beard of the first floor were well aware that young Youngman had brought his sweetheart home, and were even able through half-closed doors to catch a glimpse of her, and to report that his manner towards her was affectionate. It was not a very large family to which he introduced her. The father departed to his tailoring at five o’clock every morning and returned at ten at night. There remained only the mother, a kindly, anxious, hard-working woman, and two younger sons aged eleven and seven. At eleven o’clock the boys were at school and the mother alone.She welcomed her country visitor, eyeing her meanwhile and summing her up as a mother would do when first she met the woman whom her son was likely to marry. They dined together, and then the two set forth to see something of the sights of London. No record has been left of what the amusements were to which this singular couple turned: he with a savage, unrelenting purpose in his heart; she wondering at his abstracted manner, and chattering country gossip with the shadow of death already gathering thickly over her. One little incident has survived. One Edward Spicer, a bluff, outspoken publican who kept the Green Dragon in Bermondsey Street, knew Mary Streeter and her father. The couple called together at the inn, and Mary presented her lover. We have no means of knowing what repellent look mine host may have observed in the young man’s face, or what malign trait he may have detected in his character, but he drew the girl aside and whispered that it was better for her to take a rope and hang herself in his skittle-alley than to marry such a man as that — a warning which seems to have met the same fate as most other warnings received by maidens of their lovers. In the evening they went to the theatre together to see one of Macready’s tragedies. How could she know as she sat in the crowded pit, with her silent lover at her side, that her own tragedy was far grimmer than any upon the stage? It was eleven o’clock before they were back once more at Manor Place. The hard-working tailor had now returned, and the household all supped together.Then they had to be divided for the night between the two bedrooms, which were all the family possessed. The mother, Mary, and the boy of seven occupied the front one. The father slept on his own board in the back one, and in a bed beside him lay the young man and the boy of eleven. So they settled down to sleep as commonplace a family as any in London, with little thought that within a day the attention of all the great city would be centred upon those two dingy rooms and upon the fates of their inmates. The father woke in the very early hours, and saw in the dim light of the dawn the tall figure of his son standing in white beside his bed. To some sleepy remark that he was stirring early the youth muttered an excuse and lay down once more. At five the tailor rose to his endless task, and at twenty minutes past he went down the stair and closed the hall door behind him. So passed away the only witness, and all that remains is conjecture and circumstantial evidence. No one will ever know the exact details of what occurred, and for the purpose of the chronicler it is as well, for such details will not bear to be too critically examined. The motives and mind of the murderer are of perennial interest to every student of human nature, but the vile record of his actual brutality may be allowed to pass away when the ends of justice have once been served by their recital. I have said that on the floor under the Youngman’s there lived a couple named Beard. At half-past five, a little after the time when the tailor had closed the hall door behind him, Mrs. Beard was disturbed by a sound which she took to be from children running up and down and playing. There was a light patter of feet on the floor above. But as she listened it struck her that there was something unusual in this romping at so early an hour, so she nudged her husband and asked him for his opinion. Then, as the two sat up in bed, straining their ears, there came from above them a gasping cry and the dull, soft thud of a falling body. Beard sprang out of bed and rushed upstairs until his head came upon the level of the Youngman’s landing. He saw enough to send him shrieking down to Mr. Bevan upon the ground-floor. ‘For God’s sake, come here! There is murder!’ he roared, fumbling with his shaking fingers at the handle of the landlord’s bedroom. His summons did not find the landlord entirely unprepared. That ill- boding thud had been loud enough to reach his ears. He sprang palpitating from his bed, and the two men in their nightdresses ascended the creaking staircase, their frightened faces lit up by the blaze of golden sunlight of a July morning. Again they do not seem to have got farther than the point from which they could see the landing. That confused huddle of white-clad figures littered over the passage, with those glaring smears and blotches, were more than their nerves could stand. They could count three lying there, stark dead upon the landing. And there was someone moving in the bedroom. It was coming towards them. With horror-dilated eyes they saw William Godfrey Youngman framed in the open doorway, his white nightdress brilliant with ghastly streaks and the sleeve hanging torn over his hand. ‘Mr. Beard,’ he cried, when he saw the two bloodless faces upon the stairs, ‘for God’s sake fetch a surgeon! I believe there is some alive yet!’ Then, as they turned and ran down stairs again, he called after them the singular explanation to which he ever afterwards adhered. ‘My mother has done all this,’ he cried; ‘she murdered my two brothers and my sweetheart, and I in self-defence believe that I have murdered her.’ The two men did not stop to discuss the question with him. They had both rushed to their rooms and huddled on some clothes. Then they ran out of the house in search of a surgeon and a policeman, leaving Youngman still standing on the stair repeating his strange explanation. How sweet the morning air must have seemed to them when they were once clear of the accursed house, and how the honest milkmen, with their swinging tins, must have stared at those two rushing and dishevelled figures. But they had not far to go. John Varney, of P Division, as solid and unimaginative as the law which he represents, was standing at the street corner, and he came clumping back with reassuring slowness and dignity. ‘Oh, policeman, here is a sight! What shall I do?’ cried Youngman, as he saw the glazed official hat coming up the stair. Constable Varney is not shaken by that horrid cluster of death. His advice is practical and to the point. ‘Go and dress yourself!’ said he. ‘I struck my mother; but it was in self defence,’ cried the other. ‘Would you not have done the same? It is the law.’ Constable Varney is not to be drawn into giving a legal opinion, but he is quite convinced that the best thing for Youngman to do is to put on some clothes. And now a crowd had begun to assemble in the street, and another policeman and an inspector had arrived. It was clear that, whether Youngman’s story was correct or not, he was a self-confessed homicide, and that the law must hold her grip of him. But when a dagger-shaped knife, splintered by the force of repeated blows, was found upon the floor, and Youngman had to confess that it belonged to him; when also it was observed that ferocious strength and energy were needed to produce the wounds inflicted, it became increasingly evident that, instead of being a mere victim of circumstances, this man was one of the criminals of a century. But all evidence must be circumstantial, for mother, sweetheart, brothers — the mouths of all were closed in the one indiscriminate butchery. The horror and the apparent purposelessness of the deed roused public excitement and indignation to the highest pitch. The miserable sum for which poor Mary was insured appeared to be the sole motive of the crime; the prisoner’s eagerness to have the business concluded, and his desire to have the letters destroyed in which he had urged it, forming the strongest evidence against him. At the same time, his calm assumption that things would be arranged as he wished them to be, and that the Argus Insurance Office would pay over the money to one who was neither husband nor relative of the deceased, pointed to an ignorance of the ways of business or a belief in his own powers of managing, which in either case resembled insanity. When in addition it came out at the trial that the family was sodden with lunacy upon both sides, that the wife’s mother and the husband’s brother were in asylums, and that the husband’s father had been in an asylum, but had become ‘tolerably sensible’ before his death, it is doubtful whether the case should not have been judged upon medical rather than upon criminal grounds. In these more scientific and more humanitarian days it is perhaps doubtful whether Youngman would have been hanged, but there was never any doubt as to his fate in 1860. The trial came off at the Central Criminal Court upon August 16th before Mr. Justice Williams. Few fresh details came out, save that the knife had been in prisoner’s possession for some time. He had exhibited it once in a bar, upon which a bystander, with the good British love of law and order, had remarked that that was not a fit knife for any man to carry. ‘Anybody,’ said Youngman, in reply, ‘has the right to carry such a knife if he thinks proper in his own defence.’ Perhaps the objector did not realize how near he may have been at that moment to getting its point between his ribs. Nothing serious against the prisoner’s previous character came out at the trial, and he adhered steadfastly to his own account of the tragedy. In summing up, however, Justice Williams pointed out that if the prisoner’s story were true it meant that he had disarmed his mother and got possession of the knife. What necessity was there, then, for him to kill her? and why should he deal her repeated wounds? This argument, and the fact that there were no stains upon the hands of the mother, prevailed with the jury, and sentence was duly passed upon the prisoner. Youngman had shown an unmoved demeanour in the dock, but he gave signs of an irritable, and occasionally of a violent, temper in prison. His father visited him, and the prisoner burst instantly into fierce reproaches against his treatment of his family — reproaches for which there seem to have been no justification. Another thing which appeared to have galled him to the quick was the remark of the publican, which first reached his ears at the trial, to the effect that Mary had better hang herself in the skittle-yard than marry such a man. His self-esteem, the strongest trait in his nature, was cruelly wounded by such a speech. ‘Only one thing I wish,’ he cried, furiously, ‘that I could get hold of this man Spicer, for I would strike his head off.’ The unnatural and bloodthirsty character of the threat is characteristic of the homicidal maniac. ‘Do you suppose,’ he added, with a fine touch of vanity, ‘that a man of my determination and spirit would have heard these words used in my presence without striking the man who used them to the ground?’ But in spite of exhortation and persuasion he carried his secret with him to the grave. He never varied from the story which he had probably concocted before the event. ‘Do not leave the world with a lie on your lips.’ said the chaplain, as they walked to the scaffold. ‘Well, if I wanted to tell a lie I would say that I did it.’ was his retort. He hoped to the end with his serene self-belief that the story which he had put forward could not fail eventually to be accepted. Even on the scaffold he was on the alert for a reprieve. It was on the 4th of September, a little more than a month after the commission of his crime, that he was led out in front of Horsemonger Gaol to suffer his punishment. A concourse of 30,000 people, many of whom had waited all night, raised a brutal howl at his appearance. It was remarked at the time that it was one of the very few instances of capital punishment in which no sympathizer or philanthropist of any sort could be found to raise a single voice against the death penalty. The man died quietly and coolly. ‘Thank you, Mr. Jessopp,’ said he to the chaplain, ‘for your great kindness. See my brother and take my love to him, and all at home.’ And so, with the snick of a bolt and the jar of a rope, ended one of the most sanguinary, and also one of the most unaccountable, incidents in English criminal annals. That the man was guilty seems to admit no doubt, and yet it must be confessed that circumstantial evidence can never be absolutely convincing, and that it is only the critical student of such cases who realizes how often a damning chain of evidence may, by some slight change, be made to bear an entirely different interpretation. TRANSCRIPT OF THE MANOR PLACE MURDER TRIAL Proceedings Of The Old Bailey, 13th August 1860 723. WILLIAM GODFREY YOUNGMAN (25), was indicted for the wilful murder of Mary Wells Streeter. He was also charged on the Coroner’s Inquisition with the like offence. MESSRS. CLERK and BEASLEY conducted the Prosecution. JAMES BEVAN. I am a carman, and reside at 16, Manor-place, Walworth — I am the landlord of the house — I occupy the ground floor — the house consists of a first and second floor — the first floor is immediately above my rooms — on 31st July last Mr. Beard occupied the first floor — that consists of a front and a back room — there was Mr. Beard, his wife, and one son — the floor above that was occupied by Mr. Youngman — I believe his name to be John — he is the father of the prisoner — his family consisted of his wife and two little boys — the second floor consisted of two rooms, a front and a back one — I had known at that time that the prisoner had been there for a few days; for a holiday, I understood — I had seen him backwards and forwards before 31st July — I believed him to be sleeping there — I remember the morning of 31st July — I was disturbed about ten minutes to 6, or something like that — I was then in bed, in the lower back room on the ground floor — I was disturbed by hearing a lumbering, as I supposed, on the top of the house; a lumbering, or heavy fell on the floor; a lumbering noise, as if something had fallen on the floor — the noise proceeded from the top of the house, as I supposed at the time, the second floor — as soon as I heard the noise I immediately jumped out of bed to hear and see what was amiss, and, before I could get to the door, Mr. Beard, who has the first floor, tapped at the door and said, “For God’s sake come up stairs, here is murder;” that was before I had got out of my room — I immediately proceeded up stairs to see what was amiss — I went on to the top landing, the landing of the seoond floor, and I turned my head and saw the little boy — there is a staircase that ends with a landing, and a door on each side of the landing — a door opens on to the landing from each room; the doors front each other on the landing — I saw the little boy lying dead on the top floor — I did not take very particular notice of him — I believe him to be the eldest boy — I did not see any one else about — I came down stairs and dressed as quickly as I could, to get assistance — as I was about to proceed for the officer the prisoner was standing on the first staircase — that was the first time I saw him that morning — it was directly I came down stairs and dressed; after I had dressed — I was then about to proceed for the officers — I should think not two minutes had been occupied by my dressing — on coming out of my room dressed I saw the prisoner standing three parts of the way on the first staircase; the staircase leading from the ground floor to the first floor — he was standing at that time looking downwards; looking down stairs — that staircase does not face the front door — the stairs, face the passage which leads to the door — at the bot-tom of the stairs there is a long passage, quite through the house, and the staircase is in the middle of the passage — he had got nothing on then, only his shirt — he told me his mother had done all this. COURT. Q. What were the words he used, as near as you can say? A. He said, “My mother has done all this; she has murdered my two brothers and my sweetheart, and I, in self-defence, believe I have murdered her.” MR. BEASLEY. Q. Was that all he said at the time? A. Yes — I then went for the police — I believe I heard the prisoner’s father go out that morning about half-past five. COURT. Q. You heard somebody go out? A. Yes; and believe it was he. Cross-examined by MR. BEST. Q. Had the Youngmans lived long in your house? A. On 24th March they came to lodge with me — I am not much at home in the day-time — I go out in the morning and come back in the evening, calling in sometimes in the course of the day — I do not know but what Youngman and his wife lived on pretty tolerable good terms — perhaps occasionally I heard them have a word or two, but not enough for me to interfere. COURT. Q. They had a word or two occasionally, but nothing particular? A. Nothing particular. MR. BEST. Q. Did they seem to be pretty well off in the money way? A. Well, the man always paid me his rent, and so far I had nothing more to do with him; he paid me regularly 4s. a week — I was awoke by a lumbering noise — the noise was like a heavy fall on the floor, as if something heavy had fallen — I do not know how far the distance is from the room where I was sleeping to the landing where I saw the body of the boy; I never measured it — I cannot tell you — the floor of the second floor was not so high as this Court — I lived on the ground floor — I never measured the distance between the ground floor and this third floor where these people were living — it is about three parts of the height of this Court, I should say — when I went up to the landing the first time I saw no live person there; I did not go up on to the top of the landing, as soon as I saw the boy’s body I turned down stairs — I saw the prisoner afterwards, not at that time, some portion of the way down stairs — I cannot say much as to his being collected and composed at the time — I should not think he was very collected at that time; I did not stop long enough to make any particular observation of the man. FREDERICK HENRY CAIGER. I am a surveyor — I made this plan of the premises. COURT. Q. Is it made to a scale? A. It is; I have not measured any heights, but I should say that from the floor of the ground floor to the floor of the second floor was about from twenty to twenty-one feet. MR. CLERK. Q. I see by the plan there is a door to each room opening on to the landing? A. Opening inwards to the rooms from the landing — I am speaking of the second floor — the doors are exactly opposite each other — the two doors, when closed, are 5ft. 10 1/2 in. from one another, across the landing — from that landing of 5ft. 10 1/2 in. there is a narrow landing 2ft. 6in. wide — that goes toward the head of the stairs — that goes from the landing that is between the two doors towards the head of the stairs — 2ft. 6in. is the width of each stair. SUSANNAH BEARD. I am the wife of Philip Beard — I live with my husband at 16 Manor-place — we occupy the first floor — I have one little boy about 11 years old — I occupy the back room as a sleeping-room — the little boy slept in the same room — on the morning of Tuesday, 31st July, I should think it was nearly 6 o’clock when I awoke — a noise above my head awoke me — it was a sort of scuffling on the boards — I thought it was the children playing when I first awoke — I awoke my husband, thinking it was late — I heard a sort of lumbering as if something fell on to the boards after that; that was not till after I awoke my husband — I could not say what it sounded like, falling — it appeared to be as if something heavy had fallen on the boards — I thought it was in the bed-room; it seemed over my head — I could not say whether what I heard fall fell on the landing or in the room — my husband went to the bed-room door and went up the stairs — he then called out the “Murder!” and came down — he afterwards went up again with Mr. Bevan, the landlord — after he came down the second time I went to the door of our room and saw the prisoner on the stairs between the first and second floors — he either said, “Mr. Beard” or, “Mrs. Beard, my mother has done all this, she has murdered my sweetheart and my two little brothers, and, in seltdefence, I believe I have murdered her” — while my husband was dressing the prisoner called out from the stairs, “Mr. Beard, for God’s sake fetch a surgeon, I believe there are some alive now” — when my husband was dressed he left the house — he and I went down stairs into the lower parlour — I locked my bed-room door, and locked my child in, and we went down below to the landlord’s room, and my husband directly went for a doctor — I did not see the body of the young woman at all — I had seen a young woman come to the house on the previous day, Monday, 30th July; I think it was pretty well 11 o’clock in the morning when she came — she came with the prisoner — I saw them again about 7 in the evening, going out, as I thought for a walk; they went as if they were going to the Walworth-road — I afterwards saw them return about 10 o’clock; they returned together, by themselves — I saw them come down stairs again about five minutes afterwards, that is I saw them outside the door as if they had come down stairs — I saw them come into the house again about a quarter of an hour afterwards; that would be about a quarter past 10. Cross-examined. Q. Had you seen this young man before that day? A. Oh, yes; he had been staying at the house for a short time previously — he and the young woman seemed very friendly when they were at the door together at 10 o’clock — they seemed on affectionate terms with each other — when the prisoner addressed me on the stairs, and said, “This is my mother’s doing,” he seemed very much excited — on other occasions he was generally calm and quiet in his manner. PHILIP WILLIAM BEARD. I am a carpenter and joiner — I and my wife occupy the first floor at 16 Manor-place — I remember the prisoner coming to the house, but I cannot say exactly what time he came — I had seen him there some days before 31st July — I had seen him in the house — I remember Sunday the 29th — I had some conversation with the prisoner that day in the yard — a little conversation passed on trivial affairs, and he told me that he had been a valet and footman, but that he had left that, and was going into the farming business — he did not say why he had left it — I did not see the young woman on the Monday night — on the Tuesday morning I was awoke by my wife early; it was about 5 minutes before 6, or something like that — after she had awoke me I heard a sort of rumbling noise on the stairs, it appeared to be on the landing over me, it was like children running about, or something like that, I had heard the noise frequently before — I was on my landing — it seemed to come from the top floor above me — when I came out of my room I heard a slight scream, when I got to the foot of the stain — I went up stairs — the first thing I saw was a spot of blood on the stairs, on the fourth stair from the top, I did not notice any on any other — I went a little higher, and the first thing I saw was the little boy lying on the landing — I thought he was dead, he had his throat cut, and was lying on his back with his head towards the stairs — I then went a little higher and there saw the female lying on the landing — I did not then know who she was — I found afterwards it was Mary Streeter — she was also lying dead, a little beyond the dead body of the boy — I did not observe any other body at that time — I was alarmed, and went down, and called up Mr. Bevan, the landlord — I then went up again with him, behind him; there was no one else with us; the inspector had not come at that time — when I had called the landlord I went up stairs and began to drees — I did not go up with him then, I went up to my own bed-room, I did not go up to the second floor then, not till the inspector came — he did not come till Mr. Bevan went for him — I did not go up any more till after the police had been — I went for a surgeon — I saw a policeman at the top of Manor-place, and I sent him down — I did not see anything more of the prisoner — he called me out of my bed-room after I had began to dress, he was then on the stain — he called me and said, “Mr. Beard, my mother has done it all, she has murdered my two little brothers and my sweetheart, and, in self-defence, I believe I have murdered her” — that was all he said then — I then went into my bed-room again, and finished dressing and he begged of me to go for a surgeon. Cross-examined. Q. Did he say to you, “For God’s sake go to a surgeon’s, I think there is some of them alive now?” A. Yes — I was about five minutes in my room dressing myself — I dressed as speedily as I possibly could — I do not know whether my wife was present at this conversation on the stain — she was present in one instance, I believe, I did not see her — I have not known the prisoner for any time — I only just saw him backwards and forwards in the house — I never had any particular conversation with him — I was not at home most of the day — I was always out at work from 6 in the morning till 8 or 9 at night — I had no opportunity of observing how Mr. Youngman and his wife lived towards each other. MR. CLERK. Q. Your wife used to be at home? A. Yes. JOHN YOUNGMAN. I am the father of the prisoner — I resided on the second-floor of the house, 16, Manor-place, Wai worth — I can’t say exactly how long I had been there — my wife, Elizabeth Youngman, also lived there, and my two sons, Thomas Neale Youngman, and Charles Youngman — Thomas was eleven years of age, and Charles seven — in the month of July the prisoner came to live with me — he had before that been at service at Dr. Duncan’s; that was the last place he had lived at — he was footman there — I do not recollect on what, day it was that he came to my lodgings, but I should suppose it was about a fortnight before the 31st July — he used to sleep in the back room, the same room that I slept in — Thomas, the eldest of the two boys, slept with him in the same bed — I slept on a bed made up on the shop-board — I am a tailor, but I work away from home along with a son who lives in the neighbourhood — my wife slept in the front room and the boy Charles with her — I am frequently away from home at my work, during the day; mostly all day — I go home to dinner very frequently; not at all times — I was away from morning till night, except sometimes when I went home to dinner — on Monday, 30th July, I came home about a quarter or twenty minutes after 10 at night, as near as I can bring it to mind — I did not see the young woman, Mary Streeter, at all that night — I saw my wife before I went to bed — the prisoner went, to bed that night as usual, in the room — I should think it wanted about twenty minutes to 11, at that time — I told him when he was ready I would put the light out, and he said he was all ready, and I put the light out and went to bed directly, and he at the same time — my boy, Thomas, was in bed when I got into bed; he was in the bed with the prisoner — I awoke in the morning, I consider, somewhere about 4 o’clock; I did not know the time because I had not a clock in my room; I imagine that was the time by the appearance of the morning — at that time I saw the prisoner at the foot of his bed — it was daylight; just the break of day — he was in the act of getting into bed — I supposed he had been to look at the clock — I believe the door of the room was not closed; it generally stood open, but I did not take that notice — I usually slept with the door about an inch open — I took no notice of it then — the door of the front room was always closed at night, to the best of my knowledge — I fell asleep again — I got up at 5 o’clock that morning — it was about twenty minutes after 5 when I left my room — I expected that the clock went 6, but in lien of that it was 5 I found when I got out — the prisoner and Thomas were in bed at that time — I went to my son John’s to work — I did not go into the front room before I left; the door of that room was closed — I was afterwards fetched from my son’s — I should think it was about twenty minutes after 6 — I came back to the house — I saw the body of the young woman, Mary Streeter — she was then dead — I had seen her before, three or four times, I believe — the first time I saw her I dare say might have been two years previous — she had not been in the habit of coming to our house then — I saw her two or three times since — I saw her once or twice in July; that was at Manor-place — I do not think I saw her more than once in Manor-place — I saw her once at my son John’s, along with William, and once at Manorplace with him — the prisoner had never said anything to me about his intended marriage — I understood it was to be the case, but he never acquainted me with it — a knife was shown to me on the morning of 31st July, by Lack the constable — this (produced) is it — I had seen that knife before that day — I saw it in my son John’s shop — it was in the prisoner’s possession — it was then quite whole, to the best of my knowledge; not broken as it is now — the prisoner was showing it to a man who was working at my son John’s, and the man said it was not a fit knife to carry — the prisoner said anybody had a right to carry such a knife, if they thought proper, for their own protection — I should think this was about nine days or a fortnight before 31st July — I never saw him use the knife for any purpose — I never saw him show it at home to my wife; not to my recollection — as soon as I got back to the house on the morning in question, I called out, “Where is William?” he was then brought down in to the passage by the police; he was in custody — he said, “This is all mother’s doings, father” — that was all he said — to the best of my knowledge the prisoner was not possessed of any property at this time; he had no money, except what he had from service — I believe he had been in Dr. Duncan’s service for half a year — he was out of employment for some time before he went there — I cannot say for how long — it was as long as a year — I learnt so from him. Q. Had he ever said anything to you about insuring the life of the young woman? A. I had heard it talked of; I don’t think he ever said anything about it to me — I am not certain he did not; I have heard it repeated and talked of at different times — I heard it talked about at my son John’s. COURT. Q. You say he never mentioned it to you; but did you hear him mention that he was about insuring the life? A. Oh, yes; at different times — I heard him mention it at my son John’s. MR. CLERK. Q. Do you know the prisoner’s handwriting? A. I think I should know it, but I am not sure; I am a very little writer myself — I saw the dead body of my wife and of my son Thomas, at the same time I saw the dead body of the young woman — I also saw the dead body of my youngest boy, Charles; I saw him last. Cross-examined. Q. You say this insurance was talked about at your son John’s; was that in the presence of several persons? A. Yes, openly — I should think that was something like nine days, or a fortnight, or a week before 31st July, and perhaps a day or two before, but I cannot bring it to mind — my wife’s maiden name was Golden — I knew her mother quite well — she was a lunatic at the latter part of her life — she died in Peckham Asylum — a brother of my own also died’a lunatic in Norwich Thorpe Asylum — none of my children have died in that way — my father, I believe, died tolerably sensible, but he had been in an asylum two or three times — I work for my son as a journeyman and receive journeyman’s wages — I receive a pound a week, on an average; I am sometimes short of work — I was not short at this time; I had plenty doing just then — my wife and I lived upon tolerably good terms; we used to have more words about the children than anything else; I thought that she talked to them a good deal more than there was any occasion for — we quarrelled occasionally about the children — I thought she interfered with them too much — she used to correct them more than I thought she had any occasion for — she did not correct them particularly severely, but she corrected Thomas more than I thought she ought, because I thought Charles was quite as much or more in fault than Thomas — my wife and I did not sleep together at all times — we had not slept together for the last week previous to William coming to the house — that was because I wished to get to bed always when I got home of a night; and not only that, my wife was troubled with an inward complaint — she had a cancer in the womb; that was the reason why we did not sleep together — I sometimes took my breakfast at my son John’s — I sometimes took my supper at home, not often — I supped at my son’s, and sometimes I had no supper at all — I always took my tea at my son’s when I was there — I did not go to any place of entertainment to spend my evenings, or to any public-house; and had not done so for a long time — I saw this knife when I was at my son John’s house — I do not remember the prisoner saying that it was a good sort of knife for eating meals with — I cannot say that I ever heard him say that — I have seen him take his meals in the house, but I never saw him use that knife at all — I did not sup in the house the night before 31st July — the front room was used for supper and meals; that was the room in which the family lived in the daytime — the point of this knife is broken off and the guard is also broken. MR. CLERK. Q. When was it that your wife’s mother died? A. 15 years ago, in October — I never visited her in the asylum but once — I can’t say whether she was there 12 mouths or 2 years — I think she was between sixty and seventy when she died — my wife had never been confined in any asylnm — I cannot say that I ever perceived any appearance of an unsound mind in her during our marriage — I never did — she was rather more kind to Charles than to Thomas — that has been a cause of difference, a cause of words between us — I have frequently told her that Charles was most in fault. JOHN VARNEY (Policeman, P 333). I remember Beard speaking to me on the morning of 31st July — I went by myself to 16, Manor-place, Walworth, about 6 o’clock — I went into the house and went up stairs on to the second floor landing — when I went up there I saw three dead bodies on the landing; the first was a boy about 10 or 11 years old; the next was a female lying on her face; and another female a little to the left of her — the prisoner came to the door; he said, “Oh! policeman, here is a sight; what shall I do?” — he made a step to come towards me on the landing — he was standing at the back room door when he said that — he was stepping out on to the landing, and I said,” Go back into the room and put on your clothes” — he was not dressed; he was in his night-shirt; I noticed the right sleeve of the shirt was torn, and the wristband was hanging on his hand — I noticed that when he was standing at the door — the wristband appeared to hang on the back of his hand — the inspector arrived just then — I then left the prisoner with him and went into the front room — the prisoner did not say anything to me before the inspector came, further than what I have stated; he said his mother had done all this — he said that at the time that he said “Here is a sight; what shall I do?” he said, “My mother has done all this;” and when in the back room he said, “I struck my mother, but it was in self-defence, and would not you have done the same? that is law.” Crosi-examined. Q. You told him to go into his room and dress himself? A. Yes — at that time he was only in his shirt — I am sure I saw the wristband hanging down — after my coming into the front room he took off his shirt to put another one on, and at that time I missed the wristband of it; I could not find it anywhere — I am quite sure it was on when I saw him first — I have the shirt here. JAMES DANN (Police Inspector, P). Shortly before 6 o’clock on the morning of 31st July I heard of what had taken place at Manor-place — I went to the house accompanied by a constable of the name of Lack — I went up the stall’s — I saw the prisoner standing on the landing on the second floor — we were both on the landing — he said, “This is my mother’s doing; she came to the bedside where my brother and I were sleeping; killed him, and made a stab at me, and I in my own defence wrenched the knife from her hand and killed her, if she is dead” — upon that, the constable Lack, pointing to the body of the young woman, said, “Was this young woman lying here when you killed your mother?” — the prisoner hesitated a little and then said, “I don’t know” — at that time there were three bodies on the landing — the boy, Thomas Neale Youngman, was lying on his back — his head was close to the edge of the top stair — his feet were in a direction away from the stairs; towards the wall of the house; the opposite wall — he was in his night-shirt — the right leg was a little drawn up — there was a great deal of blood where the body of the boy was lying — I then observed the position of the young woman, Mary Streeter — she was lying on the landing with her head inside the back room door — I should say that her head was about a foot or thirteen inches inside the doorway — her feet were towards the front room door — the body wag lying on the right side — she was in her night-dress — there was nothing on her feet; no slippers — there was a great deal of blood near where her head was lying — the blood had flowed from near her head under the door of the back room and under the foot of the bed in the back room; the Stream was about four feet six or seven inches in length — the breadth at the commencement was about fifteen inches, at the termination about six or seven — I then observed the body of the elder woman, Elizabeth Youngman — she was lying on the landing with her face downwards; on her stomach — her face was close to the thighs of the young woman; resting on the floor — the right shoulder of the elder woman rested on the legs of the young woman — the feet of Mrs. Youngman were inside the front room door — she was also in her night-dress; without slippers, or steckings, or anything on her feet — I observed a great deal of blood where she was lying — most of it was close to her head and throat; it had spread some distance; several inches away from her — there was a pool of blood where she was lying; where her bead was — I went into the front room and there saw the body of the youngest child — it was on a bed in the front room, outside the bed-clothes, quite dead — he was in his nightdress — he was lying move on the right side than any other position — the feet were towards the head of the bed; and the head towards the foot — there was a great deal of blood on the bed — it had soaked through the counterpane, blanket, and sheet; and into the bed — the blood was just underneath where the child was lying; underneath the child’s neck and shoulders — I observed the floor of that room — there was not any pool of blood anywhere on the floor in that room — I saw marks of blood in the room — some had been trodden into the room with a naked foot — the footmark was sufficiently distinct for me to be able to speak of its size — it appeared to be the foot of a grown-up person — I saw two footmarks of blood; both in the same direction — I mean that I saw two footsteps which had imprints of blood, which had left the marks of blood, both going in the same direction, from the door towards the bed where the child was lying — there was no smear of blood along the floor of that room — there was no other blood in the bed except that which I have mentioned as being underneath the head and shoulders of the child, and that which had soaked through the clothes — I examined the bed in the back room — there was an appearance of blood about that bed — there wen three or four drops of blood on the sheet, and some smears of blood on the sheet — it appeared to have been wiped off a person’s hands — there was no pool of blood about that bed — there was some blood that had run from the door under the foot of the bed, and there was some blood that bad been trampled about the floor of the room; but no pool of blood in any part — when I first came to the house the prisoner was not dressed; he was in his night-shirt — his bands and feet were bloody; his night-shirt was very much stained with blood also — I did not see any wound about any part of his person — I did not examine him particularly, but I stripped him, and I did not see any wound — I saw the weapon after it was found — the prisoner was taken into custody — I did not see any cut on him when he was taken into custody; he did not complain of any — on the evening of the same day I went down to Wadhurst, to the residence of Mr. Streeter the father of the deceased — I received from Mr. Streeter a number of letters, which I have here — I have fifteen in all — six of these letters were read before the Magistrate — these (produced) are the six given in evidence, and these (produced) are the nine — they are all here — on my return to town I saw a box at the police-station, in the possession of Superintendent Payne — I opened that box with a key which I found in the prisoner’s possession — I there found the paper which I now produce — it is a policy of assurance — I have a piece of the guard of the knife which has been produced — the prisoners brother John gave it to me. Cross-examined. Q. You have told us there were two footmarks leading into the front room? A. Two — the first I should say was about two feet inside the door; that is, as near as I can remember — the second was about two feet six inches further on; towards the bed — one was the right, and the other was the left foot — there were no more footsteps round the bed — there was too much blood just at the landing outside between the two doors, to trace any footmark there — when the prisoner had the conversation with Lack, myself, Lack, and Varney were present — when the question was put to him he was a little confused — he was not so all through — he was very little excited; not at all — he appeared confused when Lack put the question — he hesitated, as I have said — he was not confused during any other part of the time — he appeared to be quite collected. DAVID LACK (Policeman, P 132). On the morning of 31st July I went with Mr. Dann to 16, Manor-place, Walworth, a few minutes before 6 — I saw three bodies lying on the second landing — I found this knife — it was lying just between the two females; it was open as it is now, with the point and a piece of the guard broken off, and smeared with blood just the same as it is now — I picked it up — I saw the prisoner at this time — he spoke to me first — he pulled his right shirt-sleeve up and said, “Here is a job; my mother has done all this” — I said, “Where is your mother?” he pointed down to the elder female and said, “There she lies; I struck her in my own defence” — I said, “Was this young female lying here when you struck your mother?” — he hesitated for a moment and then said, “I do not know.” EDMUND PAYNE. I am superintendent of the P division of police — I obtained the box which was opened by inspector Dann at the house, 16, Manor- place — I found it in the back room on the top floor — I directed its removal to my office and went with it — when the prisoner was brought to the police-station on the morning of 31st July, I spoke to him about the knife which has been produced here — I said, “Do you know anything about that knife?” — Lack the constable had just shown the knife to me; I think that was in the presence of the prisoner — the prisoner’s reply was, “It is my knife; it is what I had to cut my bread and cheese with” — I think I asked how long he had had it, and he said, “A few days,” or “about a fortnight” — I did not expect at that time to be called as a witness, and I do not recollect distinctly whether it was in reply to me or of his own accord, but he said he had had it in his possession a few days or nearly a fortnight — I believe he used both expressions; first, “a few days,” and I believe he afterwards said, “Nearly a fortnight.” JOHN VARNEY (re-examined). When I saw the prisoner on that morning at the house in Manor-place, I asked him where the young woman slept the previous night, and he said, “In the front room” — he said she had slept with his mother and his little brother, and the elder boy slept with himself in the back room WILLIAM BARNARD BODDY. I am a surgeon, and practise at 3, Savillerow, Walworth — on the morning of Tuesday, 31st July, I was called to go to the house 16, Manor-place — that was, I should think, about 6 o’clock — Beard, the carpenter, the man who lives in the second floor, came to me — I went to the house immediately — I there found the bodies of four persons, who were dead — three were on the landing and the body of the little boy was on the bed in the front room — the bodies were all quite warm; as warm as if they had been alive; from animal heat — I examined the body of the young woman, Mary Wells Streeter, which was lying on the landing — I found a stab over her left breast which penetrated the cavity of the chest — there was also a wound on the throat; it was literally cut from ear to ear — that had been done with a very sharp and very strong instrument — the carotid artery and jugular vein on each side were divided; making a clean sweep through everything, down to the cervical vertebrae or bones of the neck — the wound had severed the windpipe and the gullet — such a wound would, I think, have caused instantaneous death; the cutting through the windpipe and the gullet would prevent a person from calling out; it would be quite impossible for a person to call out with such a wound — I think it must have required a strong arm to have inflicted that wound. COURT. Q. That must, of course, depend upon the instrument? A. It would depend upon the instrument. MR. CLERK. Q. What sort of person was the deceased? A. A young woman in good animal condition, I think — in no way emaciated, but healthy — she was anything but weak; I think she was healthy and strong — I then examined the body of the elder woman; she had three stabs altogether, two over the left shoulder-blade, one over the sternum or breast- bone, and a deep cut or stab behind the left side of the neck, which divided the carotid artery and jugular vein on the left side down to the cervical vertebra — that wound would have caused almost immediate death, perhaps not so instantaneous as with the other, who had her throat cut — I should not think it possible that the wounds either upon the young woman or the elder woman could have been inflicted by themselves, particularly upon the elder woman; it would be an impossibility — the elder woman seemed to be a person in tolerably good health, not particularly bulky or muscular, but tolerably healthy, I thought — she was not particularly strong certainly, rather inclined to be stout than thin — I did not discover any injury about the hands of either of the women — I then examined the body of the younger boy, Charles, who was lying on the bed in the front room — I discovered one wound over the chest-bone, and two small incised cuts on the left upper arm, and there was one deep plunging cut or stab through the back of the neck, which divided the bones of the neck and cut right through the spinal cord — that wpund would have caused immediate death — a part of the gullet and windpipe was likewise wounded in the sweep of the knife; that would have quite prevented the child from crying out — I then examined the body of the elder boy, which was lying on the stairs; he had two cuts, one on the right angle of the lower lip, and one cut all round the throat, merely dividing the cutis, not the skin positively, but the small enveloping membrane — there were six stabs altogether, one on the right side of the neck and half way between the ear and the right shoulder, one over the left breast, another over the left breast about an inch and a half below the former, and more to the left side, and three stabs on the left side over the ribs — the three first fingers of the right hand at the extremities were cut through to the bone; the third finger of the left hand was likewise cut at its extremity quite into the bone — those were all the wounds — the one that entered the chest was the cause of death — there wore two wounds on the chest; both were fatal wounds; one entered the pericardium, the enveloping membrane of the heart, that would be necessarily fatal, the other penetrated the lungs — both wounds entered the lungs, the top as well as the bottom plunge, and both would be fatal — if the child had grasped a sharp instrument, the hands would have presented exactly the appearance that I discovered, if the weapon had been drawn through the hands — I see the knife that has been produced; the marks I saw were just such as I should have expected to find from such an instrument — all the wounds upon all the four bodies were inflicted with a sharp instrument; it must have been a very sharp, powerful instrument — I have seen this knife before; the point of it is broken — I apprehend that it was originally a sharp pointed instrument; such an instrument as that, if the point had been sharp, might have inflicted all the wounds I saw upon all the bodies — there was no mark upon any of the bodies of a struggle having taken place during life, except upon that of the child that was lying near the stairs; his were the only hands that were wounded. Cross-examined, Q. If I understand you rightly the mother had one wound in the chest? A. Yes — if that wound had been inflicted first I think she would possibly have screamed; I think it is more than probable she would — she had four wounds — I think the mischief that was product on the boy’s hand was from an attempt in struggling to relieve himself from some injury that was being inflicted upon him; the cuts presented the appearance as if they were inflicted when struggling with some person, putting his hands up to prevent his throat being cut — if those wounds on the boy had been inflicted with great rapidity he would have died almost immediately — the two in the chest would have caused nearly instant death — I think he might have had time to scream out; death would not have followed so rapidly as that; there would have been some moments between the infliction of the wound and death — I have had very little experience in cases of cancer of the womb — I have never known it to create delirium; it produces a great deal of emaciation if it is of long continuance — it is an extremely painful disease — I should not think the pain would affect the brain; it might occasionally, but not as a general rule — it is not taken as a symptom or consequence of disease of the womb — supposing that Mrs. Youngman had been in a state of delirium I think she was strong enough to have inflicted these blows. MR. CLERK. Q. Had there been an attempt to cut the throat of the boy that was lying on the stairs? A. Yes. COURT. Q. That was the wound on the throat you have described? A. Yes, the superficial cut — that led me to suppose that there had been an attempt to cut the throat; the mark was very defined all round the throat — I did not distinguish much difference as to size and bulk between Mrs. Youngman and Mary Streeter; the elder woman was the fatter of the two I think — there was no appearance whatever of any struggle on the part of Mary Streeter. MARY ANN WOOTTON. I am in the service of Dr. Duncan, of Henriettastreet, Covent-garden — I know the prisoner; he was there a week before me — he left on 16th July last — he had been in Dr. Duncan’s service three months, I believe; during that time I have seen him writing frequently — he used to write letters and poetry — the date of the letter I am looking at is the 21st June; I believe it is the prisoner’s handwriting — this one of 18th Juue is his writing, and this of the 21st — I believe this letter of 13th July is in his handwriting; also these two on 16th, and this one of the 19th — to the best of my belief this one without a date is in his haudwriting — this letter of 21st is his, and also the one of the 28th. JAMES ANDREW DUNCAN. I am a physician, residing at Henrietta-street, Covent-garden — the prisoner was in my service as a footman; he came to me on 18th April last, and quitted on 16 th July — I was in the habit of seeing him frequently; it was the greater part of his duty to wait on me. Cross-examined. Q. Have you had any experience in cases of cancer? A. Yes: cancer in the womb is a most painful disease; it generally makes a patient very irritable — I should not set down delirium as one of its symptoms; it may come up as an accidental symptom — if there has been mania in a family and a disease is acting upon a person, it would be more likely to bring it on — I know a mania, described as homicidal mania, especially among women — one of the great features of that mania, is, that persons afflicted by it, most frequently attack those to whom they have the greatest affection — it generally occurs after confinement, where the mother, although she has the greatest affection for her child, cannot resist destroying it — I have read Dr. Taylor’s work on homicidal mania — I agree with him when he says that individuals are liable to be seized by a sudden impulse, when they will destroy persons to whom they are most strongly attached; but it is impossible to define what madness is; that is to say a person may have reason and know the wickedness of what he is going to commit, but yet be unable to resist the animal part of the functions, of the brain. MR. CLERE. Q. Does cancer in the womb, where it exists, produce emaciation of the body? A. Yes; that is how the patient dies, from being completely worn out. COURT. Q. Supposing a person not to be emaciated, does that indicate anything with respect to the state of the disease? A. That would show it was merely beginning, not advanced; that the disease had made but little progress — it might or it might not be attended with pain, then it would not necessarily follow the patient would be made more irritable — in my judgment if the disease had not got so far as to emaciate the patient, I don’t think the pain would be such as to bring on delirium — the patient might, possibly have taken opium as a remedy for it, which would perhaps cause it. EDWARD SPICE. I keep the Green Dragon public-house, Bermondsey-street, in the Borough — I knew the deceased Mary Streeter — on Monday, 23d July last, she came to my house on a visit; she came with the prisoner — she came in the afternoon and stayed there all night — on the next day, the 20th, the prisoner came, as near as I can recollect, about half-past 6 in the morning — Mary Streeter stayed four days at my house on a visit — she was an old friend of mine; I and her father Were brought up together — after partaking of breakfast on that morning, they went away together and returned again about 9 o’clock in the evening — he came down at half-past 5 the next morning — it rained on that day, and they stopped till 9 o’clock — on Thursday morning I called her out at 5 o’clock, and the prisoner came in about five minutes past 5 — I had some conversation with him about the girl — I spoke to her first in the tap-room — I saw what I did not like in the man, and said to her in his presence, “Mary, I would sooner see you take a rope and hang yourself in the skittle ground, than marry a man like that” — I said to the prisoner, “What means have you got to support my girl? “I called her my girl — he said, “I am independent” — I said, “What is your independency, was it left by a legacy? have you got anything to show me, any paper?” — his reply was, “In houses” — I then asked him if they were in the country or London? “Various places in London — he said — I said, “Well, you must be a rich man,” and said to deceased, “Now, Mary, take my advice, give him a total denial, have no more to do with him; go and seat yourself in my bar parlour, and I will take you home safe to your father” — the prisoner made no remark on that — he said he intended to take her either to Hastings or Brighton; I think it was Hastings he said. Cross-examined. Q. He did not say to reside there? A. He said he was going to take lodgings there to keep her independent — I said, You must have a good income to support a young woman like this” — he said, he was a retired tailor — I did not know anything about his being a valet. SAMUEL WELLS STREETER. I am a farmer in Essex — the deceased young woman was my daughter — the prisoner came to my house on Sunday, 8th July last, and stayed there one night; I had never seen him before — my daughter had never mentioned to me that he was paying his addresses to her — the prisoner had not mentioned it to me — when Inspector Dann came down to my house I gave him some letters that were locked up in my daughter’s writing-desk. Cross-examined. Q. I believe you had the misfortune to lose another of your daughters some time before? A. Yes; in May last — she was not married, she died of consumption — this girl had not been subject to any disease of the chest or anything of that kind. THOMAS TANNER. I am clerk in the office of the Argus Insurance Company — on 19th July last I saw the prisoner at that office (he had had a form previously) — he brought a form of application with him; I have it here (produced) — this is one of the forms issued by our office; the name of William Godfrey Youngman was signed in my presence by the prisoner — he wrote the answer to question No. 18, it is “William Godfrey Youngman, 16, Manor Place, Newington, London, retired from the business of a tailor” — that is written opposite the question “Name and place of residence” — before he signed it I asked him what he was — he said he was no trade — he came again on the following day, the 24th, accompanied by a young woman — she was examined by the medical officer, and a policy on her life was prepared — that is the policy (produced) — there is no attesting witness; that is the policy that was effected on that day — the premium was paid on 25th, 10s. 1d. for three months — the premiums are according to the wish of the parties; if they wish they can pay quarterly or half-yearly — in this case the prisoner expressed a wish to pay quarterly — I gave a receipt for the premium; I have it here, this is the first receipt — I believe the young woman paid the money. (The following letters from the prisoner to the deceased were read; the first was dated 18th June, from Henrietta-street, Covent-garden; it contained some allusions to his long silence, and expressed a desire to renew his former intimacy with the deceased; the second was dated 21st June, acknowledging a reply to his first letter, and expressing a wish to see her when she came to town. Editor’s note: Spelling errors in these letters are italicized.) “8, Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, July 13th, 1860. “My dearest Mary. — This comes with my kindest love to you, trusting you are well and happy; myself I am pretty well in health. Now, come to London, dear girl, on Monday next, the 23d, and stay till Mrs. Walker leaves her situation, then go back home again and come up again on Friday morning, 10th August, and I will come on 10th Augnst to meet you, and shall stay at the lodgings I shall take for you and myself. I shall engage furnished lodgings for a week only, when I shall be able to settle all things and go down to your father and stay with him a day or two. You can lodge somewhere on the Friday you come up, and I, at our lodgings, so be ready for Saturday morning, when we will be married at St. Martin’s, Charing Cross, on Saturday, August 11th next; I have published the banns of our marriage, last Wednesday, and it will be asked in church on Sunday next, and Sunday, 29th, for the third time. I gave warning to leave on Wednesday hist, 11th, can leave on 10th ef next mouth having a day’s wages less; now you will have quite money enough, my dear, till after we are married, when I shall have plenty, but not till then; but you need only wear your black clothes, my dear girl, at our wedding. I shall only wear black things and have no white gloves at all dearest; our coachman will stand as father for you, and I shall not require a bridesmaid unless you like, if so, our housemaid will come if she can, and we will go after we are married to Kew Gardens or somewhere, and breakfast before we are married, by ourselves. I think I want to assure your life when you come up on Monday week; it will be settled in the time you are here, two or three days; bring all your things when you come on 10th August; say to your mother you are going to stay with my Mends a fortnight and then look for a situation in the time. After we are married you can have all you wish for, so you will have enough money for the present time, as you do not want to boy anything; all the clothes you have will do for the present, till we are married, and on Wednesday, after we are man and wife for life, I shall take money enough to supply all your wants and wishes, so rest happy till then, my dearest girl. I will expect to see youthen in London on Monday week, to assure your life and buy you the wedding-ring to give you to keep till the day 1 put it on your finger; the 11th August next must be the day, I cannot wait another day longer than that my dearest girl Buy nothing except you want it very much indeed, as I will buy you all you want the Wednesday after we are married on a certainty, but at the same time remember all I have told you. I am now awaiting to hear from you again; say you will do as I write by return of post — I am, dearest Mary, your ever affectionate lover, W. G. YOUNGMAN. — Kind respects to all friends, remember, do not forget what I have said; be careful keep all your letters looked up, so your mother and no one can see them, and bring them when you come here.” “8, Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, July 16th, 1860. “My beloved Polly. — I received your kind and most welcome letter this morning, and was glad to hear you were enjoying good health, myself I am pretty well in health, bnt am anxious to see you again; indeed I long for the 23d, Monday, to come to see you. I suppose you will stay as you said before with Mrs. Walker, at Gloucester-terrace, till she leaves, which you said would be on 26th of this month, that would be on Thursday week, so you could stay three or four days there, and I shall be, of course, there with you once a day at least, I have made up my mind to get away from here this week, so I shall be with you next week when you come. Since I gave notice to leave here last Wednesday, our people have spoken to me in such a manner that has not suited me, and I am certain to give Mrs. Duncan a good talking to next time she goes on at me again, when I hope the Doctor will tell me to go at once, has then that is what I want, when I shall be paid my wages the same up to 11th August, when I shall go to my brother’s and be able to do many things I want to do before we are married, dearest girl. I know I shall have a job to get a holiday when I want it if I stay here longer than this week, so I am in hopes of getting off from here this week, to-day; tonight I want Mrs. Duncan or the Doctor to talk to me, then I shall he ready to talk to them, and so be sent off. You understand, I am a little sharp in this. Now, my dearest Polly, I have a form to be filled up to take to the Life Assurance Company’s office, that his, to answer all the written questions as asked on the printed forms, which is necessary should be done first. I know your name and address, but your occupation, I shall say you have (none) — you understand? But I want to know your place of birth, and date, and your certificate of birth is required to be taken to the office, just to let them see your right age; then, of course, I shall say single, and a spinster; then I want to know your father’s and mother’s ages, and also to know if you have ever been abroad; if so, where, and for what period of time; also, have you had the small-pox, or have you been vaccinated; have you ever had the gout, or spitting of blood, asthma, rupture, convulsions, fits of insanity, vertigo, habitual cough, disease of the lungs, complaint of the liver, or any other disease which tends to the shortening of life; let me know this, but I can say what I like, or you like, has any of these complaints, of corse, would be against your having your life assured. Then it’s asked, has any member of the family died of consumption; I think you said your sister died of that dreadful complaint; but I must say no to that answer. Then they want to know the name and residence of your medical attendant; you could say you had none, to that question; but the name and residence of an intimate friend is required to be referred to for general information, that is to say, they must have some one who knows you to write to, to ask they how long they have known you and your family, and are they healthy, and his your health been good, and his it so now, and to ask if any member of the family have died of any bad disorder, such as I have said; and you must tell the friend, whoever you get to do this for you, to make it out in the best manner he or she can, has you will also do; and let them say they are not a near relation, only a friend, if ever you are. You understand that, dearest girl, has all must be done in the best possible manner to have them assure your life, has they would not take you if they thought you were unhealthy, or any of your family had died of anything bad, or where any of them unhealthy, that would be, of corse, against it, so, when they write to your friend, let them give a good letter to them — he sure and manage that with them, and to answer the letter they send by return of post; so, when you come up on Monday next, all you will have to do will be to go with me to the Assurance Office, near the Bank of England, city, and see the, medical man there, then I can give you the money to pay the first premium upon your life, which will not be a large sum to assure 100l. in case you should die any death, which sum would be of use to your children or me, in that case, dearest girl; but it his a very good thing to do, and the duty of every mother, or wife, or father to assure their lives, if they can but spare a little to pay every quarter; see what distress often arises from friends not leaving any thing to their relations or dear friends when they die! You know the benefit of all this, therefore you will, of corse, just send me the information I require of you, that I may take and fill up the form to take to the office, so they can write to your friend has I tell you. Write has soon has you can, I am anxious to get on with it before you come next Monday to London. Now, I am, with love ever to you, your loving, affectiouate, WILLIAM GODFREY YOUNGMAN. — My kindest remembrance to your friends, and quick answer I hope to have, my most beloved girl; I am indeed anxious to get all these things settled, and look forward for the happy day when you will be mine for life. Adieu, dearest.” “16, Manor-place, Newington, London, S. “My most beloved Mary. — I received your affectionate note this morning, but I must say I am very much hurt to find you state in your note that you do not wish to have your life assured; why, my dearest girl, why do you alter your mind? I have been to the office, have told them to write to your friend, Mrs. James Bone, for the information they require, they did so yesterday, and expect her to send them answer by return of post; and I told them you would come with me on Monday for the policy, so let Mrs. James Bone write to them has they wish, and that you will go with me and assure your life on Monday next has you said you would before. Why can you go from your word? You will never lose anything by assuring your life; will not die any sooner, my dear girl And as regards your father and mother not liken you to do so, you can do has you like without them preventing. Now, say no more to them about it, but come and do has I wish you to do. I shall, indeed, never forgive you if you do not, has I, wish you to do so for a particular purpose, which I will tell you of. I will always pay for it, of corse, and you will never lose anything by it. I intend to get a house for you and myself near or in Brighton next week, as it will, of corse, be foolish for me to go there without you can go with me, even after you have assured your life; but if you will not do this, and will rather mind what your friends say to you about assuring your life, why I cannot think you would love me has I wish you would. You will never find any one to love you so again, and would you break my heart aud not do has I wish you in this little thing? Why do you not do has you said? Can you cease to love me? Will you now refuse to do this which is for the good of those you leave behind when you should DIE? Surely, my dearest girl, you will still love me and do this, or how can I think you do love me if you refuse? no, I cannot believe you love me. Now, my dearest girl, I have nearly settled the assurance, I have left my situation, I have look for a house for us to live in, and with your consent I have published the bans of our marriage, and you have consented to be mine next Monday week. Now, can you break my heart and act like-this? do has I tell you, dearest girl, and I will do anything you wish to be done, only do has you have agreed to do, let me assure your life on Monday next, and be mine own dear wife the following Monday has you promised me in your letter, and every thing you wish for shall be yours. I shall have money enough to supply more than our wants. Next Wednesday or Thursday come and be mine, and we will have all this settled, and we will go down and see all your friends in a few days after things are Bettled. I want you to go to Brighton to get a house, where I wish to live with you, my dearest Polly. Do you love me still 1 if so, do as I wish and keep your promise; be sure and bring the certificate of your birth with you on Monday, and let Mrs. James Bone answer the letter to the Assurance Company to-day, if she has not done so yesterday, so they will get answer on Monday morning before you and I go there. They will not keep you a moment, ray dear girl, only be mine and do this and be happy. You cannot do wrong in this, you will never have cause to regret; pray do has I wish, come and do this on Monday; come, come to me, and be mine, you will never want for a thing while you live, believe me. I cannot but be hurt, hurt, indeed, if you do not comply with my request; do make me happy, do this, it will be all for your good. Write again so I can have a letter on Monday before you come up. Oh, my dearest girl, I know you will not break my heart, I that love you more than life; be mine and never will you want for anything, I swear; but say not a word to your friends till we are married, then they shall be made glad, and we will have a jolly day near home; they will not be sorry for your having me, one that make a lady of you soon, and make you happy for life; one who loves you more thau his life, and can you not do has he wished you to do I say yes, dearest Mary. — I am,-with love to you, hoping you are well and happy, your ever affectionate lover, and ever more I am your best Friend, believe me; but I am hurt, pray heal me, say you will do has I wish, my dearest girl, I am your dearest W. G. YOUNGMAN.” “16, Manor Place, Newington, July 19, 1860. “My most beloved Mary. — I received your kind and most welcome letter this morning about 11 o’clock; I was expecting to get it by 8 o’clock, but you put Boro’ in the address too much, so it was sent to the Boro’ first, which caused it to be late; put the address only as above, dearest girl. I have filled up the paper now and took it to the Life Assurance Office, aud they will write to Mrs. James Bone to-day to get answer on Saturday, so you can go with me to the office before 2 o’clock on Monday; when you come up you will arrive in London about half-past 9 o’clock on Monday morning, that was the time I arrived last Monday week. Do not, my dearest girl, say anything to your mother about what you are going to do, only say you are coming to see me and stay with me and my friends till you get a situation here in London; and I think you had better not bring all your things, only the most particular ones, the best you has. You will not want many things till we are married, has you will have some made or bought for you by me before we are married, but bring a few of your best things only, and, above all things, bring all your letters and papers, leave nothing of importance behind, has all little things you have I want to see, And I shall, of corse, go to Brighton for a time after we are married, if not before; but I shall see you on Monday morning. You must bring the certificate of your birth with you, has it must be taken to the office on Monday next, before the quarter’s premium is paid, aud I wish it to be done nest Monday morning. I will take lodgings for you and me when you come up on Monday. You need not go to Mrs. Walker’s at all; keep with me and I will manage it all comfortable enough for you; don’t bring all your things, you understand, and only the best bring with you, and if you can borrow a little money of your father, do so for a few days when I can give it you to send him back, you understand, has money is short with me till about this day week, Thursday. But I want to see you, dearest, and get your life assured, and get many things settled before then; and we will both go down and see your father and mother and friends, and surprise them, in about a week or eight days after we are married; but I am now, even now, has much has husband to you, dear girl, do has I tell you, and I am, with love, ever and ever to you. Do not forget to bring your birth certificate, as you cannot assure your life without it. I hope you will let me have answer by return of post, my most beloved girl, and one on Monday as well, to meet you at the station, London Bridge on Monday. I am your dear and most affectionate, W. G. YOUNGMAN.” — Kind remembrance to your frieuds. You might bring a little of your home-made butter, and some things with you, only do not say I told you, you understand, it will be for your good, my dearest girl, I am now waiting to see you. “16, Manor Place, London, July 21, 1860. My dearest Mary. — I received your letter this morning. I am very much hurt to find you say you will not have your life assured, after I have troubled, and you had promised me faithfully to have it done, and to be my own dear wife on Monday next, but Tuesday will do has well has Monday, my dear girl, only your father, and mother, or any one must not know it. You promised me faithfully, over and over again, and I expect you will keep your promise that you would be mine, and that your frieuds would not know it till we were married. But now, dearest Mary, if you will only let Mrs. James Bone write to the Assurance Office at once, and go with me to have your life assured on Monday morning next, I will settle with you, and after that his done your friends may know that we are going to be married. I will arrange all things, so you and myself can go down to your house, if possible, the same day we are married, so you need not bring any of your things up with you. Keep to your promise, my dear girl, and your friends shall know we are married the same day that we are, next Tuesday week, but I must have you first assure your life, has I have a great wish for you to do so, and cannot believe you love me unless you do, so cannot certainly think you do love me now. I sent this in haste that Mrs. James Bone may have time to write to them to-day, so the letter will get in London on Monday morning, first post, if not, and you come, bring the letter with you, and the certificate of your birth. Now, I am in earnest; I am keeping my word; you have promised me, now if you love me do this. I am, your affectionate lover, ever till death, WILLIAM GODFREY YOUNGMAN — For your own sake, dearest girl, do has I say. Adieu.” “16, Manor Place, Newington, Saturday night, July 28th, 1860, My beloved Polly. — I have posted one letter to you this afternoon, but I find I shall not have to go to Brighton to-morrow, as X have had a letter from them with what I wanted inside of it; so, my dear girl, I have quite settled my business now, and I am quite ready to see you now, therefore I send this letter to you. I will take this to London Bridge station to-morrow morning, by a quarter past 6 o’clock, and get the guard to take it to Wadhurst station, to give it to the porter there, who will get a man to take it to your place. I can only give the guard something, so you can give the man who brings this a small sum. I shall expect to see you, my dearest girl, on Monday morning, by the first train. I will await your coming at London Bridge station. I know the time the train arrives, a quarter to ten o’clock. I have promised to go to my uncle’s to-morrow, so I cannot come down, but I will go back home with you on Monday night, or first thing Tuesday, so return here again Tuesday night to be ready to go anywhere on Wednesday; but you know all I have told you, and I now expect you will come up on Monday morning, when I shall be able to manage things has I wish to do, Excuse more, my dearest Mary. I shall now go to bed to be up early in the morning to take this letter. Bring or bum all your letters, my dear girl; do not forget, and, with kind love to you and respects to all, I now sum up, waiting to see you Monday morning, a quarter to 10 o’clock. Believe me ever your loving, affectionate, WILLIAM GODFREY YOUNGMAN. — You know all I have told you, therefore come, dearest girl; come, I am anxious now to see you. Adieu for the present.” The form of proposal was then put in, and the answer to question 13 “Has any member of your family died of consumption?” was “No” — The policy of assurance was also put in, it was for 100l. effected by William Godfrey Youngman, of 16, Manor-place, Newington, retired tailor, on the life of Mary Wells Streeter, of Hunter’s hall, Wadhurst, Sussex, commencing on 25th July, and renewable quarterly. The receipt for the first quarter’s premium 10s. 1d. was produced and read. GUILTY — DEATH THE END
THE CASE OF MR. OSCAR SLATER SPECIAL INVESTIGATION BY SIR A. CONAN DOYLE Due to the success of the Sherlock Holmes stories, many people wrote letters to Conan Doyle over the years, asking him for help with real life crimes. The two most famous examples were George Edalji and Oliver Slater. Conan Doyle’s involvement in both these cases led to the establishment of the Court of Criminal Appeal in both England and Scotland. In 1908 a wealthy 82-year-old woman named Marion Gilchrist, was bludgeoned to death at her home in Glasgow. Her body was discovered by a downstairs neighbour and a maid. Oscar Slater, a petty criminal known to police as an illegal gambling-den operator had been staying in Glasgow for only 6 weeks, near the Gilchrist residence, before he boarded an ocean liner for New York. When he found out he had been accused of Gilchrist’s murder Slater returned to Glasgow to clear his name. However, his trial, characterized by Conan Doyle as a great injustice, left Slater imprisoned for nearly two decades on sketchy evidence. Conan Doyle believed the actual murderer was a member of the victim’s family and known to the police. However because of that person’s political and social connections a cover-up was necessary and Slater became the perfect scapegoat for the crime.
Oscar Slater, 1908
CONTENTS THE CASE OF OSCAR SLATER UNTO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE LORD PENTLAND, HIS MAJESTY’S SECRETARY OF STATE FOR SCOTLAND MEMORIAL ON BEHALF OF OSCAR SLATER
THE CASE OF OSCAR SLATER IT is impossible to read and weigh the facts in connection with the conviction of Oscar Slater in May, 1909, at the High Court in Edinburgh, without feeling deeply dissatisfied with the proceedings, and morally certain that justice was not done. Under the circumstances of Scotch law I am not clear how far any remedy exists, but it will, in my opinion, be a serious scandal if the man be allowed upon such evidence to spend his life in a convict prison. The verdict which led to his condemnation to death, was given by a jury of fifteen, who voted: Nine for “Guilty,” five for “ Non-proven,” and one for “ Not Guilty.” Under English law, this division of opinion would naturally have given cause for a new trial. In Scotland the man was condemned to death, he was only reprieved two days before his execution, and he is now working out a life sentence in Peterhead convict establishment. How far the verdict was a just one, the reader may judge for himself when he has perused a connected story of the case. There lived in Glasgow in the year 1908, an old maiden lady named Miss Marion Gilchrist. She had lived for thirty years in the one flat, which was on the first floor in 15, Queen’s Terrace. The flat above hers was vacant, and the only immediate neighbours were a family named Adams, living on the ground floor below, their house having a separate door which was close alongside the flat entrance. The old lady had one servant, named Helen Lambie, who was a girl twenty-one years of age. This girl had been with Miss Gilchrist for three or four years. By all accounts Miss Gilchrist was a most estimable person, leading a quiet and uneventful life. She was comfortably off, and she had one singular characteristic for a lady of her age and surroundings, in that she had made a collection of jewelry of considerable value. These jewels, which took the form of brooches, rings, pendants, etc., were bought at different times, extending over a considerable number of years, from a reputable jeweller. I lay stress upon the fact, as some wild rumour was circulated at the time that the old lady might herself be a criminal receiver. Such an idea could not be entertained. She seldom wore her jewelry save in single pieces, and as her life was a retired one, it is difficult to see how anyone outside a very small circle could have known of her hoard. The value of this treasure was about three thousand pounds. It was a fearful joy which she snatched from its possession, for she more than once expressed apprehension that she might be attacked and robbed. Her fears had the practical result that she attached two patent locks to her front door, and that she arranged with the Adams family underneath that in case of alarm she would signal to them by knocking upon the floor. It was the household practice that Lambie, the maid, should go out and get an evening paper for her mistress about seven o’clock each day. After bringing the paper she then usually went out again upon the necessary shopping. This routine was followed upon the night of December 21st She left her mistress seated by the fire in the dining-room reading a magazine. Lambie took the keys with her, shut the flat door, closed the hall door downstairs, and was gone about ten minutes upon her errand. It is the events of those ten minutes which form the tragedy and the mystery which were so soon to engage the attention of the public. According to the girl’s evidence, it was a minute or two before seven when she went out. At about seven, Mr. Arthur Adams and his two sisters were in their dining-room immediately below the room in which the old lady had been left. Suddenly they heard “ a noise from above, then a very heavy fall, and then three sharp knocks.” They were alarmed at the sound, and the young man at once set off to see if all was right. He ran out of his hall door, through the hall door of the flats, which was open, and so up to the first floor, where he found Miss Gilchrist’s door shut. He rang three times without an answer. From within, however, he heard a sound which he compared to the breaking of sticks. He imagined therefore that the servant girl was within, and that she was engaged in her household duties. After waiting for a minute or two, he seems to have convinced himself that all was right. He therefore descended again and returned to his sisters, who persuaded him to go up once more to the flat. This he did and rang for the fourth time. As he was standing with his hand upon the bell, straining his ears and hearing nothing, someone approached up the stairs from below. It was the young servant-maid, Helen Lambie, returning from her errand. The two held council for a moment. Young Adams described the noise which had been heard. Lambie said that the pulleys of the clothes-lines in the kitchen must have given way. It was a singular explanation, since the kitchen was not above the dining-room of the Adams, and one would not expect any great noise from the fall of a cord which suspended sheets or towels. However, it was a moment of agitation, and the girl may have said the first explanation which came into her head. She then put her keys into the two safety locks and opened the door. At this point there is a curious little discrepancy of evidence. Lambie is prepared to swear that she remained upon the mat beside young Adams. Adams is equally positive that she walked several paces down the hall. This inside hall was lit by a gas, which turned half up, and shining through a coloured shade, gave a sufficient, but not a brilliant light. Says Adams: “I stood at the door on the threshold, half in and half out, and just when the girl had got past the clock to go into the kitchen, a well-dressed man appeared. I did not suspect him, and she said nothing; and he came up to me quite pleasantly. I did not suspect anything wrong for the minute. I thought the man was going to speak to me, till he got past me, and then I suspected something wrong, and by that time the girl ran into the kitchen and put the gas up and said it was all right, meaning her pulleys. I said: ‘Where is your mistress?’ and she went into the dining-room. She said: ‘Oh! come here!’ I just went in and saw this horrible spectacle.” The spectacle in question was the poor old lady lying upon the floor close by the chair in which the servant had last seen her. Her feet were towards the door, her head towards the fireplace. She lay upon a hearth-rug, but a skin rug had been thrown across her head. Her injuries were frightful, nearly every bone of her face and skull being smashed. In spite of her dreadful wounds she lingered for a few minutes, but died without showing any sign of consciousness. The murderer when he had first appeared had emerged from one of the two bedrooms at the back of the hall, the larger, or spare bedroom, not the old lady’s room. On passing Adams upon the doormat, which he had done with the utmost coolness, he had at once rushed down the stair. It was a dark and drizzly evening, and it seems that he made his way along one or two quiet streets until he was lost in the more crowded thoroughfares. He had left no weapon nor possession of any sort in the old lady’s flat, save a box of matches with which he had lit the gas in the bedroom from which he had come. In this bedroom a number of articles of value, including a watch, lay upon the dressing-table, but none of them had been touched. A box containing papers had been forced open, and these papers were found scattered upon the floor. If he were really in search of the jewels, he was badly informed, for these were kept among the dresses in the old lady’s wardrobe. Later, a single crescent diamond brooch, an article worth perhaps forty or fifty pounds, was found to be missing. Nothing else was taken from the flat. It is remarkable that though the furniture round where the body lay was spattered with blood, and one would have imagined that the murderer’s hands must have been stained, no mark was seen upon the half-consumed match with which he had lit the gas, nor upon the match box, the box containing papers, nor any other thing which he may have touched in the bedroom. We come now to the all-important question of the description of the man seen at such close quarters by Adams and Lambie. Adams was short-sighted and had not his spectacles with him. His evidence at the trial ran thus: “He was a man a little taller and a little broader than I am, not a well-built man but well featured and clean-shaven, and I cannot exactly swear to his moustache, but if he had any it was very little. He was rather a commercial traveller type, or perhaps a clerk, and I did not know but what he might be one of her friends. He had on dark trousers and a light overcoat. I could not say if it were fawn or grey. I do not recollect what sort of hat he had. He seemed gentlemanly and well- dressed. He had nothing in his hand so far as I could tell. I did not notice anything about his way of walking.” Helen Lambie, the other spectator, could give no information about the face (which rather bears out Adams’ view as to her position), and could only say that he wore a round cloth hat, a three-quarter length overcoat of a grey colour, and that he had some peculiarity in his walk. As the distance traversed by the murderer within sight of Lambie could be crossed in four steps, and as these steps were taken under circumstances of peculiar agitation, it is difficult to think that any importance could be attached to this last item in the description. It is impossible to avoid some comment upon the actions of Helen Lambie during the incidents just narrated, which can only be explained by supposing that from the time she saw Adams waiting outside her door, her whole reasoning faculty had deserted her. First, she explained the great noise heard below: “The ceiling was like to crack,” said Adams, by the fall of a clothes-line and its pulleys of attachment, which could not possibly, one would imagine, have produced any such effect. She then declares that she remained upon the mat, while Adams is convinced that she went right down the hall. On the appearance of the stranger she did not gasp out: “ Who are you? “ or any other sign of amazement, but allowed Adams to suppose by her silence that the man might be someone who had a right to be there. Finally, instead of rushing at once to see if her mistress was safe, she went into the kitchen, still apparently under the obsession of the pulleys. She informed Adams that they were all right, as if it mattered to any human being; thence she went into the spare bedroom, where she must have seen that robbery had been committed, since an open box lay in the middle of the floor. She gave no alarm however, and it was only when Adams called out: “ Where is your mistress? “ that she finally went into the room of the murder. It must be admitted that this seems strange conduct, and only explicable, if it can be said to be explicable, by great want of intelligence and grasp of the situation. On Tuesday, December 22nd, the morning after the murder, the Glasgow police circulated a description of the murderer, founded upon the joint impressions of Adams and of Lambie. It ran thus: “A man between 25 and 30 years of age, five foot eight or nine inches in height, slim build, dark hair, clean-shaven, dressed in light grey overcoat and dark cloth cap.” Four days later, however, upon Christmas Day, the police found themselves in a position to give a more detailed description: “ The man wanted is about 28 or 30 years of age, tall and thin, with his face shaved clear of all hair, while a distinctive feature is that his nose is slightly turned to one side. The witness thinks the twist is to the right side. He wore one of the popular tweed hats known as Donegal hats, and a fawn coloured overcoat which might have been a waterproof, also dark trousers and brown boots.” The material from which these further points were gathered, came from a young girl of fifteen, in humble life, named Mary Barrow- man. According to this new evidence, the witness was passing the scene of the murder shortly after seven o’clock upon the fatal night. She saw a man run hurriedly down the steps, and he passed her under a lamp-post. The incandescent light shone clearly upon him. He ran on, knocking against the witness in his haste, and disappeared round a corner. On hearing later of the murder, she connected this incident with it. Her general recollections of the man were as given in the description, and the grey coat and cloth cap of the first two witnesses were given up in favour of the fawn coat and round Donegal hat of the young girl. Since she had seen no peculiarity in his walk, and they had seen none in his nose, there is really nothing the same in the two descriptions save the “ clean-shaven,” the “ slim build “ and the approximate age. It was on the evening of Christmas Day that the police came at last upon a definite clue. It was brought to their notice that a German Jew of the assumed name of Oscar Slater had been endeavouring to dispose of the pawn ticket of a crescent diamond brooch of about the same value as the missing one. Also, that in a general way, he bore a resemblance to the published description. Still more hopeful did this clue appear when, upon raiding the lodgings in which this man and his mistress lived, it was found that they had left Glasgow that very night by the nine o’clock train, with tickets (over this point there was some clash of evidence) either for Liverpool or London. Three days later, the Glasgow police learned that the couple had actually sailed upon December 26th upon the Lusitania for New York under the name of Mr. and Mrs. Otto Sando. It must be ad mitted that in all these proceedings the Glasgow police showed considerable deliberation. The original information had been given at the Central Police Office shortly after six o’clock, and a detective was actually making enquiries at Slater’s flat at seven-thirty, yet no watch was kept upon his movements, and he was allowed to leave between eight and nine, untraced and unquestioned. Even stranger was the Liverpool departure. He was known to have got away in the southbound train upon the Friday evening. A great liner sails from Liverpool upon the Saturday. One would have imagined that early on the Saturday morning steps would have been taken to block his method of escape. However, as a fact, it was not done, and as it proved it is as well for the cause of justice, since it had the effect that two judicial processes were needed, an American and a Scottish, which enables an interesting comparison to be made between the evidence of the principal witnesses. Oscar Slater was at once arrested upon arriving at New York, and his seven trunks of baggage were impounded and sealed. On the face of it there was a good case against him, for he had undoubtedly pawned a diamond brooch, and he had subsequently fled under a false name for America. The Glasgow police had reason to think that they had got their man. Two officers, accompanied by the witnesses to identity — Adams, Lambie and Barrowman — set off at once to carry through the extradition proceedings and bring the suspect back to be tried for his offence. In the New York Court they first set eyes upon the prisoner, and each of them, in terms which will be afterwards described, expressed the opinion that he was at any rate exceedingly like the person they had seen in Glasgow. Their actual identification of him was vitiated by the fact that Adams and Barrowman had been shown his photographs before attending the Court, and also that he was led past them, an obvious prisoner, whilst they were waiting in the corridor. Still, however much one may discount the actual identification, it cannot be denied that each witness saw a close resemblance between the man before them and the man whom they had seen in Glasgow. So far at every stage the case against the accused was becoming more menacing. Any doubt as to extradition was speedily set at rest by the prisoner’s announcement that he was prepared, without compulsion, to return to Scotland and to stand his trial. One may well refuse to give him any excessive credit for this surrender, since he may have been persuaded that things were going against him, but still the fact remains (and it was never, so far as I can trace, mentioned at his subsequent trial), that he gave himself up of his own free will to justice. On February 21st Oscar Slater was back in Glasgow once more, and on May 3rd his trial took place at the High Court in Edinburgh. But already the very bottom of the case had dropped out. The starting link of what had seemed an imposing chain, had suddenly broken. It will be remembered that the original suspicion of Slater was founded upon the fact that he had pawned a crescent diamond brooch. The ticket was found upon him, and the brooch recovered. It was not the one which was missing from the room of the murdered woman, and it had belonged for years to Slater, who had repeatedly pawned it before. This was shown beyond all cavil or dispute. The case of the police might well seem desperate after this, since if Slater were indeed guilty, it would mean that by pure chance they had pursued the right man. The coincidence involved in such a supposition would seem to pass the limits of all probability. Apart from this crushing fact, several of the other points of the prosecution had already shown themselves to be worthless. It had seemed at first that Slater’s departure had been sudden and unpremeditated — the flight of a guilty man. It was quickly proved that this was not so. In the Bohemian clubs which he frequented — he was by profession a peddling jeweller and a man of disreputable, though not criminal habits — it had for weeks before the date of the crime been known that he purported to go to some business associates in America. A correspondence, which was produced, showed the arrangements which had been made, long before the crime, for his emigration, though it should be added that the actual determination of the date and taking of the ticket were subsequent to the tragedy. This hurrying-up of the departure certainly deserves close scrutiny. According to the evidence of his mistress and of the servant, Slater had received two letters upon the morning of December 21st. Neither of these were produced at the trial. One was said to be from a Mr. Rogers, a friend of Slater’s in London, telling him that Slater’s wife was bothering him for money. The second was said to be from one Devoto, a former partner of Slater’s asking him to join him in San Francisco. Even if the letters had been destroyed, one would imagine that these statements as to the letters could be disproved or corroborated by either the Crown or the defence. They are of considerable importance, as giving the alleged reasons why Slater hurried up a departure which had been previously announced as for January. I cannot find, however, that in the actual trial anything definite was ascertained upon the matter. Another point had already been scored against the prosecution in that the seven trunks which contained the whole effects of the prisoner, yielded nothing of real importance. There were a felt hat and two cloth ones, but none which correspond with the Donegal of the original description. A light- coloured waterproof coat was among the outfit. If the weapon with which the deed was done was carried off in the pocket of the assassin’s overcoat — and it is difficult to say how else he could have carried it, then the pocket must, one would suppose, be crusted with blood, since the crime was a most sanguinary one. No such marks were discovered, nor were the police fortunate as to the weapon. It is true that a hammer was found in the trunk, but it was clearly shown to have been purchased in one of those cheap half-crown sets of tools which are tied upon a card, was an extremely light and fragile instrument, and utterly incapable in the eyes of commonsense of inflicting those terrific injuries which had shattered the old lady’s skull. It is said by the prosecution to bear some marks of having been scraped or cleaned, but this was vigorously denied by the defence, and the police do not appear to have pushed the matter to the obvious test of removing the metal work, when they must, had this been indeed the weapon, have certainly found some soakage of blood into the wood under the edges of the iron cheeks or head. But a glance at a facsimile of this puny weapon would convince an impartial person that any task beyond fixing a tin-tack, or cracking a small bit of coal, would be above its strength. It may fairly be said that before the trial had begun, the three important points of the pawned jewel, the supposed flight, and the evidence from clothing and weapon, had each either broken down completely, or become exceedingly attenuated. Let us see now what there was upon the other side. The evidence for the prosecution really resolved itself into two sets of witnesses for identification. The first set were those who had actually seen the murderer, and included Adams, Helen Lambie, and the girl Barrowman. The second set consisted of twelve people who had, at various dates, seen a man frequenting the street in which Miss Gilchrist lived, and loitering in a suspicious manner before the house. All of these, some with confidence, but most of them with reserve, were prepared to identify the prisoner with this unknown man. What the police never could produce, however, was the essential thing, and that was the least connecting link between Slater and Miss Gilchrist, or any explanation how a foreigner in Glasgow could even know of the existence, to say nothing of the wealth, of a retired old lady, who had few acquaintances and seldom left her guarded flat. It is notorious that nothing is more tricky than evidence of identification. In the Beck case there were, if I remember right, some ten witnesses who had seen the real criminal under normal circumstances, and yet they were all prepared to swear to the wrong man. In the case of Oscar Slater, the first three witnesses saw their man under conditions of excitement, while the second group saw the loiterer in the street under various lights, and in a fashion which was always more or less casual. It is right, therefore, that in assigning its due weight to this evidence, one should examine it with some care. We shall first take the three people who actually saw the murderer. There seems to have been some discrepancy between them from the first, since, as has already been pointed out, the description published from the data of Adams and Lambie, was modified after Barrowman had given her information. Adams and Lambie said: “A man between twenty-five and thirty years of age, 5 feet 8 or 9 inches in height, slim build, dark hair, clean shaven, dressed in light grey overcoat and dark cloth cap.” After collaboration with Barrowman the description became: “ Twenty-eight or thirty years of age, tall and thin, clean shaven, his nose slightly turned to one side. Wore one of the popular round tweed hats known as Donegal hats, and a fawn-coloured overcoat which might have been a waterproof, also dark trousers and brown boots.” Apart from the additions in the second description there are, it will be observed, two actual discrepancies in the shape of the hat and the colour of the coat. As to how far either of these descriptions tallies with Slater, it may be stated here that the accused was thirty-seven years of age, that he was above the medium height, that his nose was not twisted, but was depressed at the end, as if it had at some time been broken, and finally that eight witnesses were called upon to prove that, on the date of the murder, the accused wore a short but noticeable moustache. I have before me a verbatim stenographic report of the proceedings in New York and also in Edinburgh, furnished by the kindness of Shaughnessy & Co., solicitors, of Glasgow, who are still contending for the interests of their unfortunate client. I will here compare the terms of the identification in the two Courts: Helen Lambie, New York, January 26th, 1909. Q. “Do you see the man here you saw there? “ A. “ One is very suspicious, if anything.” Q. “Describe him.” A. “ The clothes he had on that night he hasn’t got on to-day — but his face I could not tell. I never saw his face.” (Having described a peculiarity of walk, she was asked): Q. “ Is that man in the room? “ A. “ Yes, he is, sir.” Q. “Point him out.” A. “ I would not like to say “ (After some pressure and argument she pointed to Slater, who had been led past her in the corridor between two officers, when both she and Barrowman had exclaimed: “ That is the man,” or “ I could nearly swear that is the man.”) Q. “ Didn’t you say you did not see the man’s face? “ A. “ Neither I did. I saw the walk.” The reader must bear in mind that Lambie’s only chance of seeing the man’s walk was in the four steps or so down the passage. It was never at any time shown that there was any marked peculiarity about Slater’s walk. Now take Helen Lambie’s identification in Edinburgh, May 9th, 1909. Q. “ How did you identify him in America?” A. “ By his walk and height, his dark hair and the side of his face.” Q . “ You were not quite sure of him at first in America?” A. “ Yes, I was quite sure.” Q. “ Why did you say you were only suspicions? “ A. “It was a mistake.” Q. “What did you mean in America by saying that you never saw his face if, in point of fact, you did see it so as to help you to recognise it? What did you mean? “ A. “Nothing.” On further cross-examination she declared that when she said that she had never seen the man’s face she meant that she had never seen the “ broad of it” but had seen it sideways. Here it will be observed that Helen Lambie’s evidence had greatly stiffened during the three months between the New York and the Edinburgh proceedings. In so aggressively positive a frame of mind was she on the later occasion, that, on being shown Slater’s overcoat and asked if it resembled the murderer’s, she answered twice over: “ That is the coat,”although it had not yet been unrolled, and though it was not light grey, which was the colour in her own original description. It should not be forgotten in dealing with the evidence of Lambie and Adams that they are utterly disagreed as to so easily fixed a thing as their own proceedings after the hall door was opened, Adams swearing that Lambie walked to nearly the end of the hall, and Lambie that she remained upon the doormat. Without deciding which was right, it is clear that the incident must shake one’s confidence in one or other of them as a witness. In the case of Adams the evidence was given with moderation, and was substantially the same in America and in Scotland. “ I couldn’t say positively. This man (indicating Slater) is not at all unlike him.” Q. “ Did you notice a crooked nose? “ A. “No.” Q. “ Anything remarkable about his walk? “ A. “No.” Q. “ You don’t swear this is the man you saw? “ A. “ No, sir. He resembles the man, that is all that I can say.” In reply to the same general questions in Edinburgh, he said: “ I would not like to swear he is the man. I am a little near-sighted. He resembles the man closely.” Barrowman, the girl of fifteen, had met the man presumed to be the murderer in the street, and taken one passing glance at him ‘under a gas lamp on a wet December’s night — difficult circumstances for an identification. She used these words in New York: “That man here is something like him,” which she afterwards amended to “ very like him.” She admitted that a picture of the man she was expected to identify had been shown to her before she came into the Court. Her one point by which she claimed to recognise the man was the crooked nose. This crooked nose was not much more apparent to others than the peculiarity of walk which so greatly impressed Helen Lambie that, after seeing half a dozen steps of it, she could identify it with confidence. In Edinburgh Barrowman, like Lambie, was very much more certain than in New York. The further they got from the event, the easier apparently did recognition become. “ Yes, that is the man who knocked against me that night,” she said. It is remarkable that both these females, Lambie and Barrowman, swore that though they were thrown together in this journey out to New York, and actually shared the same cabin, they never once talked of the object of their mission or compared notes as to the man they were about to identify. For girls of the respective ages of fifteen and twenty-one this certainly furnishes a unique example of self- restraint. These, then, are the three identifications by the only people who saw the murderer. Had the diamond brooch clue been authentic, and these identifications come upon the top of it, they would undoubtedly have been strongly corroborative. But when the brooch has been shown to be a complete mistake, I really do not understand how anyone could accept such half-hearted recognitions as being enough to establish the identity and guilt of the prisoner. There remains the so-called identification by twelve witnesses who had seen a man loitering in the street during the weeks before the crime had been committed. I have said a “so-called” identification, for the proceedings were farcical as a real test of recognition. The witnesses had seen portraits of the accused. They were well aware that he was a foreigner, and then they were asked to pick out his swarthy Jewish physiognomy from among nine Glasgow policemen to two railway officials. Naturally they did it without hesitation, since this man was more like the dark individual whom they had seen and described than the others could be. Read their own descriptions, however, of the man they had seen, with the details of his clothing, and they will be found in many respects to differ from each other on one hand, and in many from Slater on the other. Here is a synopsis of their impressions: Mrs. McHaffie.—” Dark. Moustached, light overcoat, not waterproof, check trousers, spats. Black bowler hat. Nose normal.” Miss M. McHaffie.—”Seen at same time and same description. Was only prepared at first to say there was some resemblance, but 4 had been thinking it over, and concluded that he was the man.’” Miss A. M. McHaffie.—”Same as before. Had heard the man speak and noticed nothing in his accent. (Prisoner has a strong German accent.) “ Madge McHaffie (belongs to the same family).—”Dark, moustached, nose normal. Check trousers, fawn overcoat and spats. Black bowler hat. ‘ The prisoner was fairly like the man.’” In connection with the identification of these four witnesses it is to be observed that neither check trousers, nor spats were found in the prisoner’s luggage. As the murderer was described as being dressed in dark trousers, there was no possible reason why these clothes, if Slater owned them, should have been destroyed. Constable Brien. “Claimed to know the prisoner by sight. Says he was the man he saw loitering. Light coat and a hat. It was a week before the crime, and he was loitering eighty yards from the scene of it. He picked him out among five constables as the man He had seen.” Constable Walker.—” Had seen the loiterer across the street, never nearer, and after dark in December. Thought at first he was someone else whom he knew. Had heard that the man he had to identify was of foreign appearance. Picked him out from a number of detectives. The man seen had a moustache.” Euphemia Cunningham.—” Very dark, sallow, heavy featured. Clean shaven. Nose normal. Dark tweed coat. Green cap with peak.” W. Campbell.—” Had been with the previous witness. Corroborated. ‘There was a. general resemblance between the prisoner and the man, but he could not positively identify him.’” Alex Gillies.—” Sallow, dark haired and clean shaven. Fawn coat. Cap. ‘ The prisoner resembled him, but witness could not say he was the same man.’” R. B. Bryson.—”Black coat and vest. Black bowler hat. No overcoat. Black moustache with droop. Sallow, foreign. (This witness had seen the man the night before the murder. He appeared to be looking up at Miss Gilchrist’s windows.) “ A. Nairn.—”Broad shoulders, long neck. Dark hair. Motor cap. Light overcoat to knees. Never saw the man’s face. ‘Oh! I will not swear in fact, but I am certain he is the man I saw — but I will not swear.’” Mrs. Liddell.—” Peculiar nose. Clear complexion, not sallow. Dark, clean shaven, brown tweed cap. Brown tweed coat with hemmed edge. Delicate man ‘rather drawn together.’ She believed that prisoner was the man. Saw him in the street immediately before the murder.” These are the twelve witnesses as to the identify of the mysterious stranger. In the first place there is no evidence whatever that this lounger in the street had really anything to do with the murder. It is just as probable that he had some vulgar amour, and was waiting for his girl to run out to him. What could a man who was planning murder hope to gain by standing nights beforehand eighty and a hundred yards away from the place in the darkness? But supposing that we waive this point and examine the plain question as to whether Slater was the same man as the loiterer, we find ourselves faced by a mass of difficulties and contradictions. Two of the most precise witnesses were Nairn and Bryson who saw the stranger upon the Sunday night preceding the murder. Upon that night Slater had an unshaken alibi, vouched for not only by the girl, Antoine, with whom he lived, and their servant, Schmalz, but by an acquaintance, Samuel Reid, who had been with him from six to ten-thirty. This positive evidence, which was quite unshaken in cross examination, must completely destroy the surmises of the stranger and Slater. Then come the four witnesses of the McHaffie family who are all strong upon check trousers and spats, articles of dress which were never traced to the prisoner. Finally, apart from the discrepancies about the moustache, there is a mixture of bowler hats, green caps, brown caps, and motor caps which leave a most confused and indefinite impression in the mind. Evidence of this kind might be of some value if supplementary to some strong ascertained fact, but to attempt to build upon such an identification alone is to construct the whole case upon shifting sand. The reader has already a grasp of the facts, but some fresh details came out at the trial which may be enumerated here. They have to be lightly touched upon within the limits of such an argument as this, but those who desire a fuller summary will find it in an account of the trial published by Hodge of Edinburgh, and ably edited by William Roughead, W.S. On this book and on the verbatim precognitions and shorthand account of the American proceedings, I base my own examination of case. First, as to Slater’s movements upon the day of the crime. He began the day, according to the account of himself and the women, by the receipt of the two letters already referred to, which caused him to hasten his journey to America. The whole day seems to have been occupied by preparations for his impending departure. He gave his servant Schmalz notice as from next Saturday. Before five (as was shown by the postmark upon the envelope), he wrote to a post office in London, where he had some money on deposit. At 6.12 a telegram was sent in his name and presumably by him from the Central Station to Dent, London, for his watch, which was being repaired. According to the evidence of two witnesses he was seen in a billiard room at 6.20. The murder, it will be remembered, was done at seven. He remained about ten minutes in the billiard room, and left some time between 6.30 and 6.40. Rathman, one of these witnesses, deposed that he had at the time a moustache about a quarter of an inch long, which was so noticeable that no one could take him for a clean-shaven man. Antoine, his mistress, and Schmalz, the servant, both deposed that Slater dined at home at 7 o’clock. The evidence of the girl is no doubt suspect, but there was no possible reason why the dismissed servant Schmalz should perjure herself for the sake of her ex- employer. The distance between Slater’s flat and that of Miss Gilchrist is about a quarter of a mile. From the billiard room to Slater’s flat is about a mile. He had to go for the hammer and bring it back, unless he had it jutting out of his pocket all day. But unless the evidence of the two women is entirely set aside, enough has been said to show that there was no time for the commission by him of such a crime and the hiding of the traces which it would leave behind it. At 9.45 that night, Slater was engaged in his usual occupation of trying to raise the wind at some small gambling club. The club-master saw no discomposure about his dress (which was the same as, according to the Crown, he had done this bloody crime in), and swore that he was then wearing a short moustache “like stubble,” thus corroborating Rathman. It will be remembered that Lambie and Barrowman both swore that the murderer was clean shaven. On December 24th, three days after the murder, Slater was shown at Cook’s Office, bargaining for a berth in the “Lusitania” for his so-called wife and himself. He made no secret that he was going by that ship, but gave his real name and address and declared finally that he would take his berth in Liverpool, which he did. Among other confidants as tor the ship was a barber, the last person one would think to whom secrets would be confided. Certainly, if this were a flight, it is hard to say what an open departure would be. In Liverpool he took his passage under the assumed name of Otto Sando. This he did, according to his own account, because he had reason to fear pursuit from his real wife, and wished to cover his traces. This may or may not be the truth, but it is undoubtedly the fact that Slater, who was a disreputable, rolling- stone of a man, had already assumed several aliases in the course of his career. It is to be noted that there was nothing at all secret about his departure from Glasgow, and that he carried off all his luggage with him in a perfectly open manner. The reader is now in possession of the main facts, save those which are either unessential, or redundant. It will be observed that save for the identifications, the value of which can be estimated, there is really no single point of connection between the crime and the alleged criminal. It may be argued that the existence of the hammer is such a point; but what household in the land is devoid of a hammer? It is to be remembered that if Slater committed the murder with this hammer, he must have taken it with him in order to commit the crime, since it could be no use to him in forcing an entrance. But what man in his senses, planning a deliberate murder, would take with him a weapon which was light, frail, and so long that it must project from any pocket? The nearest lump of stone upon the road would serve his purpose better than that. Again, it must in its blood-soaked condition have been in his pocket when he came away from the crime. The Crown never attempted to prove either blood-stains in a pocket, or the fact that any clothes had been burned. If Slater destroyed clothes, he would naturally have destroyed the hammer, too. Even one of the two medical witnesses of the prosecution was driven to say that he should not have expected such a weapon to cause such wounds. It may well be that in this summary of the evidence, I may seem to have stated the case entirely from the point of view of the defence. In reply, I would only ask the reader to take the trouble to read the extended evidence. (“ Trial of Oscar Slater “ Hodge & Co., Edinburgh.) If he will do so, he will realise that without a conscious mental effort towards special pleading, there is no other way in which the story can be told. The facts are on one side. The conjectures, the unsatisfactory identifications, the damaging flaws, and the very strong prejudices upon the other. Now for the trial itself. The case was opened for the Crown by the Lord-Advocate, in a speech which faithfully represented the excited feeling of the time. It was vigorous to the point of being passionate, and its effect upon the jury was reflected in their ultimate verdict. The Lord-Advocate spoke, as I understand, without notes, a procedure which may well add to eloquence while subtracting from accuracy. It is to this fact that one must attribute a most fatal misstatement which could not fail, coming under such circumstances from so high an authority, to make a deep impression upon his hearers. For some reason, this misstatement does not appear to have been corrected at the moment by either the Judge or the defending counsel. It was the one really damaging allegation — so damaging that had I myself been upon the jury and believed it to be true, I should have recorded my verdict against the prisoner, and yet this one fatal point had no substance at all in fact. In this incident alone, there seems to me to be good ground for a revision of the sentence, or a reference of the facts to some Court or Committee of Appeal. Here is the extract from the Lord-Advocate’s speech to which I allude: “At this time he had given his name to Cook’s people in Glasgow as Oscar Slater. On December 25th, the day he was to go back to Cook’s Office — his name and his description and all the rest of it appear in the Glasgow papers, and he sees that the last thing in the world that he ought to do, if he studies his own safety, is to go back to Cook’s Office as Oscar Slater. He accordingly proceeds to pack up all his goods and effects upon the 25th. So far as we know, he never leaves the house from the time he sees the paper, until a little after six o’clock, when he goes down to the Central Station.” Here the allegation is clearly made and it is repeated later that Oscar Slater’s name was in the paper, and that, subsequently to that, he fled. Such a flight would clearly be an admission of guilt. The point is of enormous even vital importance. And yet on examination of the dates, it will be found that there is absolutely no foundation for it. It was not until the evening of the 25th that even the police heard of the existence of Slater, and it was nearly a week later that his name appeared in the papers, he being already far out upon the Atlantic. What did appear upon the 25th was the description of the murderer, already quoted: “with his face shaved clean of all hair,” &c., Slater at that time having a marked moustache. Why should he take such a description to himself, or why should he forbear to carry out a journey which he had already prepared for? The point goes for absolutely nothing when examined, and yet if the minds of the jury were at all befogged as to the dates, the definite assertion of the Lord- Advocate, twice repeated, that Slater’s name had been published before his flight, was bound to have a most grave and prejudiced effect. Some of the Lord-Advocate’s other statements are certainly surprising. Thus he says: “The prisoner is hopelessly unable to produce a single witness who says that he was anywhere else than at the scene of the murder that night.” Let us test this assertion. Here is the evidence of Schmalz, the servant, verbatim. I may repeat that this woman was under no known obligations to Slater and had just received notice from him. The evidence of the mistress that Slater dined in the flat at seven on the night of the murder I pass, but I do not understand why Schmalz’s positive corroboration should be treated by the Lord-Advocate as non-existent. The prisoner might well be “hopeless” if his witnesses were to be treated so. Could anything be more positive than this? Q. “Did he usually come home to dinner? “ A. “Yes, always. Seven o’clock was the usual hour.” Q. “Was it sometimes nearly eight? A. “ It was my fault. Mr. Slater was in.” Q. “ But owing to your fault was it about eight before it was served? “ A. “ No. Mr. Slater was in after seven, and was waiting for dinner.” This seems very definite. The murder was committed about seven. The murderer may have regained the street about ten minutes or quarter past seven. It was some distance to Slater’s flat. If he had done the murder he could hardly have reached it before half-past seven at the earliest. Yet Schmalz says he was in at seven, and so does Antoine. The evidence of the woman may be good or bad, but it is difficult to understand how anyone could state that the prisoner was “ hopelessly unable to produce, etc.” What evidence could he give, save that of everyone who lived with him? For the rest, the Lord-Advocate had an easy task in showing that Slater was a worthless fellow, that he lived with and possibly on a woman of easy virtue, that he had several times changed^ his name, and that generally he was an unsatisfactory Bohemian. No actual criminal record was shown against him. Early in his speech, the Lord-Advocate remarked that he would show later how Slater may have come to know that Miss Gilchrist owned the jewels. No further reference appears to have been made to the matter, and his promise was therefore never fulfilled, though it is clearly of the utmost importance. Later, he stated that from the appearance of the wounds, they Must have been done by a small hammer. There is no “ must” in the matter, for it is clear that many other weapons, a burglar’s jemmy, for example, would have produced the same effect. He then makes the good point that the prisoner dealt in precious stones, and could therefore dispose of the proceeds of such a robbery. The criminal, he added, was clearly someone who had no acquaintance with the inside of the house, and did not know where the jewels were kept. “ That answers to the prisoner.” It also, of course, answers to practically every man in Scotland. The Lord-Advocate then gave a summary of the evidence as to the man seen by various witnesses in the street. “ Gentlemen, if that was the prisoner, how do you Account for his presence there? “ Of course, the whole point lies in the italicised phrase. There was, it must be admitted, a consensus of opinion among the witnesses that the prisoner was the man. But what was it compared to the consensus of opinion which wrongfully condemned Beck to penal servitude? The counsel laid considerable stress upon the fact that Mrs. Liddell (one of the Adams family) had seen a man only a few minutes before the murder, loitering in the street, and identified him as Slater. The dress of the man seen in the street was very different from that given as the murderer’s. He had a heavy tweed mixture coat of a brownish hue, and a brown peaked cap. The original identification by Mrs. Liddell was conveyed in the words: “ One, slightly,” when she was asked if any of a group at the police station resembled the man she had seen. Afterwards, like every other female witness, she became more positive. She declared that she had the clearest recollection of the man’s face, and yet refused to commit herself as to whether he was shaven or moustached. We have then the recognitions of Lambie, Adams and Barrowman, with their limitations and developments, which have been already discussed. Then comes the question of the so-called “flight” and the change of name upon the steamer. Had the prisoner been a man who had never before changed his name, this incident would be more striking. But the short glimpse we obtain of his previous life show several changes of name, and it has not been suggested that each of them was the consequence of a crime. He seems to have been in debt in Glasgow and he also appears to have had reasons for getting away from the pursuit of an ill-used wife. The Lord-Advocate said that the change of name “could not be explained consistently with innocence.” That may be true enough, but the change can surely be explained on some cause less grave than murder. Finally, after showing very truly that Slater was a great liar and that not a word he said need be believed unless there were corroboration, the Lord-Advocate wound up with the words: “ My submission to you is that this guilt has been brought fairly home to him, that no shadow of doubt exists, that there is no reasonable doubt that he was the perpetrator of this foul murder.” The verdict showed that the jury, under the spell of the Lord-Advocate’s eloquence, shared this view, but, viewing it in colder blood, it is difficult to see upon what grounds he made so confident an assertion. Mr. M’Clure, who conducted the defence, spoke truly when, in opening his speech, he declared that “ he had to fight a most unfair fight against public prejudice, roused with a fury I do not remember to have seen in any other case.” Still he fought this fight bravely and with scrupulous moderation. His appeals were all to reason and never to emotion. He showed how clearly the prisoner had expressed his intention of going to America, weeks before the murder, and how every preparation had been made. On the day after the murder he had told witnesses that he was going to America and had discussed the advantages of various lines, finally telling one of them the particular boat in which he did eventually travel, curious proceedings for a fugitive from justice. Mr. M’Clure described the movements of the prisoner on the night of the murder, after the crime had been committed, showing that he was wearing the very clothes in which the theory of the prosecution made him do the deed, as if such a deed could be done without leaving its traces. He showed incidentally (it is a small point, but a human one) that one of the last actions of Slater in Glasgow was to take great trouble to get an English five-pound note in order to send it as a Christmas present to his parents in Germany. A man who could do this was not all bad. Finally, Mr. M’Clure exposed very clearly the many discrepancies as to identification and warned the jury solemnly as to the dangers which have been so often proved to lurk in this class of evidence. Altogether, it was a broad, comprehensive reply, though where so many points were involved, it is natural that some few may have been overlooked. One does not, for example, find the counsel as insistent as one might expect upon such points as, the failure of the Crown to show how Slater could have known anything at all about the existence of Miss Gilchrist and her jewels, how he got into the flat, and what became of the brooch which, according to their theory, he had carried off. It is ungracious to suggest any additions to so earnest a defence, and no doubt one who is dependent upon printed accounts of the matter may miss points which were actually made, but not placed upon record. Only on one point must Mr. M’Clure’s judgment be questioned, and that is on the most difficult one, which a criminal counsel has ever to decide. He did not place his man in the box. This should very properly be taken as a sign of weakness. I have no means of saying what considerations led Mr. M’Clure to this determination. It certainly told against his client. In the masterly memorial for reprieve drawn up by Slater’s solicitor, the late Mr. Spiers, it is stated with the full inner knowledge which that solicitor had, that Slater was all along anxious to give evidence on his own behalf. “ He was advised by his counsel not to do so, but not from any knowledge of guilt. He had undergone the strain of a four days’ trial. He speaks rather broken English, although quite intelligible — with a foreign accent, and be had been in custody since January.” It must be admitted that these reasons are very unconvincing. It is much more probable that the counsel decided that the purely negative evidence which his client could give upon the crime would be dearly paid for by the long recital of sordid amours and blackguard experiences which would be drawn from him on cross-examination and have the most damning effect upon the minds of a respectable Edinburgh jury. And yet, perhaps, counsel did not sufficiently consider the prejudice which is excited — and rightly excited — against the prisoner who shuns the box. Some of this prejudice might have been removed if it had been made more clear that Slater had volunteered to come over and stand his trial of his own free will, without waiting for the verdict of the extradition proceedings. There remains the summing up of Lord Guthrie. His Lordship threw out the surmise that the assassin may well have gone to the flat without any intention of murder. This is certainly possible, but in the highest degree improbable. He commented with great severity upon Slater’s general character. In his summing-up of the case, he recapitulated the familiar facts in an impartial fashion, concluding with the words, “ I suppose that you all think that the prisoner possibly is the murderer. You may very likely all think that he probably is the murderer. That, however, will not entitle you to convict him. The Crown have undertaken to prove that he is the murderer. That is the question you have to consider. If you think there is no reasonable doubt about it, you will convict him; if you think there is, you will acquit him.” In an hour and ten minutes the jury had made up their mind. By a majority they found the prisoner guilty. Out of fifteen, nine, as was afterwards shown, were for guilty, five for non-proven, and one for not guilty. By English law, a new trial would have been needed, ending, possibly, as in the Gardiner case, in the complete acquittal of the prisoner. By Scotch law the majority verdict held good. “I know nothing about the affair, absolutely nothing,” cried the prisoner in a frenzy of despair. “I never heard the name. I know nothing about the affair. I do not know how I could be connected with the affair. I know nothing about it. I came from America on my own account. I can say no more.” Sentence of death was then passed. The verdict was, it is said, a complete surprise to most of those in the Court, and certainly is surprising when examined after the event. I do not see how any reasonable man can carefully weigh the evidence and not admit that when the unfortunate prisoner cried, “ I know nothing about it,” he was possibly, and even probably, speaking the literal truth. Consider the monstrous coincidence which is involved in his guilt, the coincidence that the police owing to their mistake over the brooch, by pure chance started out in pursuit of the right man. Which is A Priori the more probable: That such an unheard-of million-to-one coincidence should have occurred, Or, that the police, having committed themselves to the theory that he was the murderer, refused to admit that they were wrong when the bottom fell out of the original case, and persevered in the hope that vague identifications of a queer- looking foreigner would justify their original action? Outside these identifications, I must repeat once again there is nothing to couple Slater with the murder, or to show that he ever knew, or could have known that such a person as Miss Gilchrist existed. The admirable memorial for a reprieve drawn up by the solicitors for the defence, and reproduced at the end of this pamphlet, was signed by 20,000 members of the public, and had the effect of changing the death sentence to one of penal servitude for life. The sentence was passed on May 6th. For twenty days the man was left in doubt, and the written reprieve only arrived on May 26th within twenty-four hours of the time for the execution. On July 8th Slater was conveyed to the Peterhead Convict prison. There he has now been for three years, and there he still remains. I cannot help in my own mind comparing the case of Oscar Slater with another, which I had occasion to examine — that of George Edalji. I must admit that they are not of the same class. George Edalji was a youth of exemplary character. Oscar Slater was .a blackguard. George Edalji was physically incapable of the crime for which he suffered three years’ imprisonment (years for which he has not received, after his innocence was established, one shilling of compensation from the nation). Oscar Slater might conceivably have committed the murder, but the balance of proof and probability seems entirely against it. Thus, one cannot feel the same burning sense of injustice over the matter. And yet I trust for the sake of our character not only for justice, but for intelligence, that the judgment may in some way be reconsidered and the man’s present punishment allowed to atone for those irregularities of life which helped to make his conviction possible. Before leaving the case it is interesting to see how far this curious crime may be reconstructed and whether any possible light can be thrown upon it. Using second-hand material one cannot hope to do more than indicate certain possibilities which may already have been considered and tested by the police. The trouble, however, with all police prosecutions is that, having once got what they imagine to be their man, they are not very open to any line of investigation which might lead to other conclusions. Everything which will not fit into the official theory is liable to be excluded. One might make a few isolated comments on the case which may at least give rise to some interesting trains of thought. One question which has to be asked was whether the assassin was after the jewels at all. It might be urged that the type of man described by the spectators was by no means that of the ordinary thief. When he reached the bedroom and lit the gas, he did not at once seize the watch and rings which were lying openly exposed upon the dressing-table. He did not pick up a half-sovereign which was lying on the dining-room table. His attention was given to a wooden box, the lid of which he wrenched open. (This, I think, was “ the breaking of sticks” heard by Adams.) The papers in it were strewed on the ground. Were the papers his object, and the final abstraction of one diamond brooch a mere blind? Personally, I can only point out the possibility of such a solution. On the other hand, it might be urged, if the thief’s action seems inconsequential, that Adams had rung and that he already found himself in a desperate situation. It might be said also that save a will it would be difficult to imagine any paper which would account for such an enterprise, while the jewels, on the other hand, were an obvious mark for whoever knew of their existence. Presuming that the assassin was indeed after the jewels, it is very instructive to note his knowledge of their location, and also its limitations. Why did he go straight into the spare bedroom where the jewels were actually kept? The same question may be asked with equal force if we consider that he was after the papers. Why the spare bedroom? Any knowledge gathered from outside (by a watcher in the back-yard for example) would go to the length of ascertaining which was the old lady’s room. One would expect a robber who had gained his information thus, to go straight to that chamber. But this man did not do so. He went straight to the unlikely room in which both jewels and papers actually were. Is not this remarkably suggestive? Does it not pre-suppose a previous acquaintance with the inside of the flat and the ways of its owner? But now note the limitations of the knowledge. If it were the jewels he was after, he knew what room they were in, but not in what part of the room. A fuller knowledge would have told him they were kept in the wardrobe. And yet he searched a box. If he was after papers, his information was complete ; but if he was indeed after the jewels, then we can say that he had the knowledge of one who is conversant, but not intimately conversant, with the household arrangements. To this we may add that he would seem to have shown ignorance of the habits of the inmates, or he would surely have chosen Lambie’s afternoon or evening out for his attempt, and not have done it at a time when the girl was bound to be back within a very few minutes. What men had ever visited the house? The number must have been very limited. What friends? what tradesmen? what plumbers? Who brought back the jewels after they had been stored with the jewellers when the old lady went every year to the country? One is averse to throw out vague suspicions which may give pain to innocent people, and yet it is clear that there are lines of inquiry here which should be followed up, however negative the results. How did the murderer get in if Lambie is correct in thinking that she shut the doors? I cannot get away from the conclusion that he had duplicate keys. In that case all becomes comprehensible, for the old lady — whose faculties were quite normal — would hear the lock go and would not be alarmed, thinking that Lambie had returned before her time. Thus, she would only know her danger when the murderer rushed into the room, and would hardly have time to rise, receive the first blow, and fall, as she was found, beside the chair, upon which she had been sitting. That is intelligible. But if he had not the keys, consider the difficulties. If the old lady had opened the flat door her body would have been found in the passage. Therefore, the police were driven to the hypothesis that the old lady heard the ring, opened the lower stair door from above (as can be done in all Scotch flats), opened the flat door, never looked over the lighted stair to see who was coming up, but returned to her chair and her magazine, leaving the door open, and a free entrance to the murderer. This is possible, but is it not in the highest degree improbable? Miss Gilchrist was nervous of robbery and would not neglect obvious precautions. The ring came immediately after the maid’s departure. She could hardly have thought that it was her returning, the less so as the girl had the keys and would not need to ring. If she went as far as the hall door to open it, she only had to take another step to see who was ascending the stair. Would she not have taken it if it were only to say: “ What, have you forgotten your keys? “ That a nervous old lady should throw open both doors, never look to see who her visitor was, and return to her dining-room is very hard to believe. And look at it from the murderer’s point of view. He had planned out his proceedings. It is notorious that it is the easiest thing in the world to open the lower door of a Scotch flat. The blade of any penknife will do that. If he was to depend upon ringing to get at his victim, it was evidently better for him to ring at the upper door, as otherwise the chance would seem very great that she would look down, see him coming up the stair, and shut herself in. On the other hand, if he were at the upper door and she answered it, he had only to push his way in. Therefore, the latter would be his course if he rang at all. And yet the police theory is that though he rang, he rang from below. It is not what he would do, and if he did do it, it would be most unlikely that he would get in. How could he suppose that the old lady would do so incredible a thing as leave her door open and return to her reading? If she waited, she might even up to the last instant have shut the door in his face. If one weighs all these reasons, one can hardly fail, I think, to come to the conclusion that the murderer had keys, and that the old lady never rose from her chair until the last instant, because, hearing the keys in the door, she took it for granted that the maid had come back. But if he had keys, how did he get the mould, and how did he get them made? There is a line of inquiry there. The only conceivable alternatives are, that the murderer was actually concealed in the flat when Lambie came put, and of that there is no evidence whatever, or that the visitor was some one whom the old lady knew, in which case he would naturally have been admitted. There are still one or two singular points which invite comment. One of these, which I have incidentally mentioned, is that neither the match, the match-box, nor the box opened in the bedroom showed any marks of blood. Yet the crime had been an extraordinarily bloody one. This is certainly very singular. An explanation given by Dr. Adams who was the first medical man to view the body is worthy of attention. He considered that the wounds might have been inflicted by prods downwards from the leg of a chair, in which case the seat of the chair would preserve the clothes and to some extent the hands of the murderer from bloodstains. The condition of one of the chairs seemed to him to favour this supposition. The explanation is ingenious, but I must confess that I cannot understand how such wounds could be inflicted by such an instrument. There were in particular a number of spindle-shaped cuts with a bridge of skin between them which are very suggestive. My first choice as to the weapon which inflicted these would be a burglar’s jemmy, which is bifurcated at one end, while the blow which pushed the poor woman’s eye into her brain would represent a thrust from the other end. Failing a jemmy, I should choose a hammer, but a very different one from the toy thing from a half-crown card of tools which was exhibited in Court. Surely commonsense would say that such an instrument could burst an eye-ball, but could not possibly drive it deep into the brain, since the short head could not penetrate nearly so far. The hammer, which I would reconstruct from the injuries would be what they call, I believe, a plasterer’s hammer, short in the handle, long and strong in the head, with a broad fork behind. But how such a weapon could be used without the user bearing marks of it, is more than I can say. It has never been explained why a rug was laid over the murdered woman. The murderer, as his conduct before Lambie and Adams showed, was a perfectly cool person. It is at least possible that he used the rug as a shield between him and his victim while he battered her with his weapon. His clothes, if not his hands, would in this way be preserved. I have said that it is of the first importance to trace who knew of the existence of the jewels, since this might greatly help the solution of the problem. In connection with this there is a passage in Lambie’s evidence in New York which is of some importance. I give it from the stenographer’s report, condensing in places: Q. “Do you know in Glasgow a man named ? “ A. “ Yes, sir.” Q. “What is his business?” A. “A book-maker.” Q. “ When did you first meet him? “ A. “ At a dance.” Q. “ What sort of dance? “ A. “A New Year’s dance.” (That would be New Year of igo8.) Q. “ When did you meet him after that? “ A. “In the beginning of June.” Q. “Where?” A. “In Glasgow.” Q. “ At a street corner? “ A. “No, he came up to the house at Prince’s Street.” Q. “ Miss Gilchrist’s house? “ A. “Yes, sir.” Q. “That was the first time since the dance? “ A. “Yes, sir.” Q. “ Do you deny that you had a meeting with him by a letter received from him at a corner of a street in Glasgow? “ A. “I got a letter.” Q. “ To meet him at a street corner? “ A. “ Yes.” Q. “The first meeting after the dance?” A. “ Yes.” Q. “ And you met him there? “ A. “ Yes.” Q. “ And you went out with him? “ A. “ No, I did not go out with him.” Q. “ You went somewhere with him, didn’t you? “ A. “ Yes, I made an appointment for Sun day.” Q. “Did you know anything about the man?” A. “Yes, I did, sir.” Q. “ What did you know about him? “ A. “ I didn’t know much.” Q. “ How many times did he visit you at Miss Gilchrist’s house? “ A. “Once.” Q. “ Quite sure of that? “ A. “ Quite sure.” Q. “ Didn’t he come and take tea with you there in her apartment? “ A. “That was at the Coast.” Q. “ Then he came to see you at Miss Gil- Christ’s summer place? “ A. “Yes.” Q. “How many times?” A. “Once.” Q. “ Did he meet Miss Gilchrist then? “ A. “Yes, sir.” Q. “You introduced him?” A. “Yes, sir.” Q. “ Did she wear this diamond brooch? “ A. “I don’t remember.” Q. “ When did you next see him? “ A. “ The first week in September.” Q. “In Glasgow?” A. “Yes, sir.” Q. “By appointment?” A. “Yes.” Q. “When next?” A. “I have not met him since.” Q. “ And you say he only called once at the country place?” A. “Once, sir.” Q. “ In your Glasgow deposition you say: ‘ He visited me at Girvan and was entertained at tea with me on Saturday night, and at dinner on Sunday with Miss Gilchrist and me.’” A. “Yes, sir.” Q. “ Then you did see him more than once in the country.” A. “Once.” He read the extract again as above. Q. “Was that true?” A. “Yes.” Q. “ Then you invited this man to tea at Miss Gilchrist’s summer house? “ A. “Yes.” Q. “ On Saturday night? “ A. “Yes.” Q. “ And on Sunday night? “ A. “ He wasn’t there.” Q. “ On Sunday you invited him there to dinner with Miss Gilchrist and yourself, didn’t you? “ A. “Yes, sir. I didn’t invite him.” Q. “Who invited him.” A. “ Miss Gilchrist.” Q. “Had you introduced him?” A. “Yes, sir.” Q. “ He was your friend, wasn’t he? “ A. “Yes, sir.” Q. “ She knew nothing about him? “ A. “No.” Q. “ She took him to the house on your recommendation? “ A. “Yes.” Q. “Did she wear her diamonds at this dinner party? “ A. “I don’t remember.” Q. “You told him that she was a rich woman? “ A. “Yes.” Q. “ Did you tell him that she had a great many jewels?” A. “Yes.” Q. “Have your suspicions ever turned towards this man? “ A. “Never.” Q. “ Do you know of any other man who would be as familiar with those premises, the wealth of the old lady, her jewelry, and the way to get into the premises as that man? “ A. “No, sir.” Q. “Was the man you met in the hallway this man? “ A. “No, sir.” This is a condensation of a very interesting and searching piece of the cross-examination which reveals several things. One is Lambie’s qualities as a witness. Another is the very curious picture of the old lady, the bookmaker and the servant-maid all sitting at dinner together. The last and most important is the fact, that a knowledge of the jewels had got out. Against the man himself there is no possible allegation. The matter was looked into by the police, and their conclusions were absolute, and were shared by those responsible for the defence. But is it to be believed that during the months which elapsed between this man acquiring this curious knowledge, and the actual crime, never once chanced to repeat to any friend, who in turn repeated it to another, the strange story of the lonely old woman and her hoard? This he would do in full innocence. It was a most natural thing to do. But, for almost the first time in the case we seem to catch some glimpse of the relation between possible cause and effect, some connection between the dead woman on one side, and outsiders on the other who had the means of knowing something of her remarkable situation. There is just one other piece of Lambie’s cross-examination, this time from the Edinburgh trial, which I would desire to quote. It did not appear in America, just as the American extract already given did not appear in Edinburgh. For the first time they come out together: Q. “Did Miss Gilchrist use to have a dog? “ A. “Yes, an Irish terrier.” Q. “What happened to it?” A. “ It got poisoned.” Q. “ When was it poisoned? “ A. “I think on the 7th or 8th of September.” Q. “ Was that thought to be done by some one?” A. “I did not think it, for I thought it might have eaten something, but Miss Gil- Christ thought it was poisoned by some one.” Q. “ To kill the watch-dog — was that the idea?” A. “ She did not say.” The reader should be reminded that Slater did not arrive in Glasgow until the end of October of that year. His previous residences in the town were as far back as 1901 and 1905. If the dog were indeed poisoned in anticipation of the crime, he, at least, could have had nothing to do with it. There is one other piece of evidence which may, or may not have been of importance. It is that of Miss Brown, the schoolmistress. This lady was in court, but seems to have been called by neither side for the reason that her evidence was helpful to neither the prosecution nor the defence. She deposed that on the night of the murder, about ten minutes past seven, she saw two men running away from the scene. One of these men closely corresponded to the original description of the murderer before it was modified by Barrowman. This one was of medium build, dark hair and clean shaven, with three-quarter length grey overcoat, dark tweed cap, and both hands in his pockets. Here we have the actual assassin described to the life, and had Miss Brown declared that this man was the prisoner, she would have been a formidable addition to the witnesses for prosecution. Miss Brown, however identified Oscar Slater (after the usual absurd fashion of such identifications) as the second man, whom she describes, as of “Dark glossy hair, navy blue overcoat with velvet collar, dark trousers, black boots, something in his hand which seemed clumsier than a walking stick.” One would imagine that this object in his hand would naturally be his hat, since she describes the man as bare-headed. All that can be said of this incident is that if the second man was Slater, then he certainly was not the actual murderer whose dress corresponds closely to the first, and in no particular to the second. To the Northern eye, all swarthy foreigners bear a resemblance, and that there was a swarthy man, whether foreign or not, concerned in this affair would seem to be beyond question. That there should have been two confederates, one of whom had planned the crime while the other carried it out, is a perfectly feasible supposition. Miss Brown’s story does not necessarily contradict that of Barrowman, as one would imagine that the second man would join the murderer at some little distance from the scene of the crime. However, as there was no cross-examination upon the story, it is difficult to know what weight to attach to it. Let me say in conclusion that I have had no desire in anything said in this argument, to hurt the feelings or usurp the functions of anyone, whether of the police or the criminal court, who had to do with the case. It is difficult to discuss matters from a detached point of view without giving offence. I am well aware that it is easier to theorise at a distance than to work a case out in practice whether as detective or as counsel. I leave the matter now with the hope that, even after many days, some sudden flash may be sent which will throw a light upon as brutal and callous a crime as has ever been recorded in those black annals in which the criminologist finds the materials for his study. Meanwhile it is on the conscience of the authorities, and in the last resort on that of the community that this verdict obtained under the circumstances which I have indicated, shall now be reconsidered. Arthur Conan Doyle. Windlesham, Crowborough. COPY OF MEMORIAL FOR REPRIEVE
UNTO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE LORD PENTLAND, HIS MAJESTY’S SECRETARY OF STATE FOR SCOTLAND MEMORIAL ON BEHALF OF OSCAR SLATER THIS Memorial is humbly presented on behalf of Oscar Slater presently a Prisoner in the Prison of Glasgow, who was, in the High Court of Justiciary at Edinburgh, on Thursday, the sixth day of May, Nineteen hundred and nine, found guilty of the charge of murdering Miss Marion Gilchrist in her house in West Princes Street, Glasgow, and sentenced to death. The Prisoner is a Jew, and was born in Germany. He is 37 years of age. The Jury returned a verdict of “ Guilty “ by a majority of nine to six, and the legal advisers of the condemned man hold a very strong opinion that the verdict of the majority of the Jury was not in accordance with the evidence led, and that this evidence was quite insufficient to identify the Prisoner with the murderer, and so to establish the Prisoner’s guilt. This view, they believe, is shared by the general public of all classes in Scotland, and by the Glasgow press (vide leading article in The Glasgow Herald of 7th May, 1909, sent herewith). Your Memorialist has endeavoured in this paper to deal with the matter as briefly and with as little argument as possible; but in view of the fact that the trial of the Prisoner occupied four days, it is inevitable that the Memorial should extend to some length. It is common ground that the late Miss Gilchrist, a lady of about 82 years of age, resided alone with her domestic servant, Nellie Lambie, a girl of about 21 years of age. According to the evidence of Lambie, the latter left Miss Gilchrist alone in the house at seven o’clock on the evening of 21st December, 1908, and went to purchase an evening paper. Lambie deponed that she securely shut the house door behind her, and also the door at the close, or street entry; that she was only absent about ten minutes; that on returning about ten minutes past seven o’clock she found the close door open; that upon ascending the stair she found Mr. Adams, a gentleman who resides in the flat below, standing at Miss Gilchrist’s house door; that Adams informed her that he had gone up to Miss Gilchrist’s door because he had heard knocking on the floor of Miss Gilchrist’s house, and had rung the bell, but that he could obtain no admittance; that the lobby was lighted by one gas jet turned half up, but giving a good light; that Lambie thereupon opened the house door with her keys; that upon the door being opened a man came through the lobby or hall of Miss Gilchrist’s house, passed Lambie and Adams, went downstairs, and disappeared; and that, upon Lambie and Adams entering the house, they found Miss Gilchrist lying on the dining-room floor dead, her head having been smashed. Upon the Wednesday following the murder (23rd December, 1908), the Glasgow Police were informed by a message girl named Mary Barrowman (about 15 years of age), that she had seen a man wearing a Donegal hat and a light coat running out of the close which leads from the street to Miss Gilchrist’s house shortly after seven o’clock on the night of the murder; that the man passed her, running at top speed; that she noticed that he was dark, and clean shaven, and that his nose was twisted towards the right side. The servant Lambie had also informed the Police that a gold crescent brooch, set in diamonds, had disappeared from Miss Gilchrist’s house on the night of the murder, and that this was all of Miss Gilchrist’s property that she missed. These statements were published in the Glasgow newspapers on Friday, 25th December, 1908, and following upon this the witness Allan Maclean, a member of a club to which Slater be- longed, informed the Police that Slater’s appearance somewhat corresponded with the description advertised, and that he had been trying to sell a pawn ticket for a diamond brooch. Following up this clue, the Police went to Slater’s house at 69, St. George’s Road, Glasgow, on the night of Friday, 25th December, and learned that he and Miss Andree Antoine, with whom he had been cohabiting, had left Glasgow that night with their belongings. The Police thereafter ascertained that Slater had sailed on the “ Lusitania “ for New York from Liverpool on Saturday, 26th December, and cabled to the Authorities at New York to detain and search him on his arrival. This was done, and the pawn ticket, which he had been trying to sell, was found upon him, but turned out to be a pawn ticket for a brooch which belonged to Miss Antoine, had never belonged to Miss Gilchrist, and had been pawned a considerable time before the murder. Proceedings, however, were instituted for Slater’s extradition. The witnesses Lambie, Adams, and Barrowman gave evidence in America, purporting to identify him as the man seen leaving Miss Gilchrist’s house, and Slater was (he states of his own consent) extradited, and brought back to Scotland for trial. An advertisement was published by the Authorities in Glasgow offering a reward of £200 for information which would lead to the arrest of the murderer. The only evidence against Slater, which might be called direct evidence, was the evidence of the persons who saw a man walk out of the lobby or hall in Miss Gilchrist’s house on the night of the murder (Lambie and Adams), or leaving the close leading therefrom, or running along the street (Barrowman). At the trials Lambie professed to identify Slater, as the man whom she had seen leaving the house, by the side of his face. It was put to her, however, and clearly proved, that when she gave evidence in New York in the extradition proceedings she stated in Court there that she did not see the man’s face, and professed to identify him by his walk. When Slater’s own coat, the one found in his luggage, was shown to her at the trial, she at once remarked, even before it was unrolled, that it was not like the coat the man in the lobby wore — it was the coat. It was obviously impossible that she knew it to be the same coat. Lord Guthrie referred to this in his charge to the jury as a typical example of the nature of her evidence. With regard to the positive nature of her evidence generally, it is interesting to note that her first answer in America, when asked if she saw the man, was, “ One is very suspicious, if any thing,” She stated that, when she saw Slater in the Central Police Office at Glasgow, she recognised him in his “own coat” It was proved that he was not then wearing his own coat, but one with which he had been dressed for identification purposes. The witness only saw the man who was leaving the house for a moment or two. Adams and she contradicted each other as to where she was when the man walked across the lobby. Adams deponed that she was by the lobby clock and walking towards the kitchen. If so, she must practically have had her back to the man. She says she was on the threshold of the door. In any event, her view was momentary. The witness Adams, who deponed that he had a better view of the man in the house than Lambie, stated at the trial that he, standing at the threshold, saw the man’s face as he approached, that their eyes met, and that the man walked slowly towards him, face to face, but Adams would not go further than to say that Slater resembled the man very much. He is superior to Lambie and Barrowman in years, education and intelligence. Your Memorialist begs to emphasise the fact that this witness had a much better view of the man than any of the other witnesses. The witness Barrowman stated at the trial that the man ran out of the close and rushed past her at top speed, brushing against her, and that he had his hat pulled well down over his forehead. The witness is a message girl, about 15 years of age. She also stated that the man had on brown boots, a Donegal hat, and a fawn coat, and that he was dark and clean shaven, and that his nose had a twist to the right. She professed to have noticed all these things as he rushed past her at top speed. At the trial this witness stated in cross-examination (1) that she was proceeding in the opposite direction from the man, to deliver a parcel, but that she turned and went some distance after him; that she thought he was probably going to catch a tram- car; but she could not explain why she should go out of her way to turn and follow a man running for a car in a busy city like Glasgow; and (2) that, although the girl Lambie and she had occupied the same cabin on the voyage to America, which lasted about twelve days, she had not once discussed the appearance of the man, and that no one had warned her not to do so. These two statements do not impress your Memorialist as bearing the stamp of truth. This girl started the description of the twisted nose. She is the only witness who refers to it. Her view of the man’s face must necessarily have been momentary. Slater’s nose cannot properly be described as “twisted to the right.” It has a noticeable prominence in the centre. * All of these three witnesses had, as has been said, only a momentary view of the man, and it was proved that before Barrowman professed to identify Slater in New York she was shown his photograph, and that both she and Lambie, before attempting to identify him in New York, saw him being brought into Court by a Court official, wearing a badge. In her New York evidence she first said, “ He is something like the man I saw.” At the trial she stated that he was the man. These facts very much reduce, if they do not altogether vitiate, the value of the evidence of these identifying witnesses. Another witness, Mrs. Liddell, who is a married sister of the witness Adams, stated that, at five minutes to seven on the evening of the murder, she saw a dark, clean-shaven man leaning against a railing at the street entry to Miss Gilchrist’s house, but that this man wore a heavy brown tweed coat and a brown cap. It is to be observed that Constable Neil, who passed the house at ten minutes to seven, saw no one there; and Lambie, who left the house promptly at seven, or, as she said in America, “perhaps a few minutes before seven,” saw no one there. Further, Mrs. Liddell did not observe where the man went to; according to her he merely glided away; and although she was in Miss Gilchrist’s house that night and saw the body, and would naturally be greatly concerned over the murder, she did not recollect having seen this man until the Wednesday after the murder. Even taking her evidence as absolutely true and reliable, it provides an excellent object-lesson on the difficulty and responsibility of convicting on such evidence as this, because the man she saw was obviously dressed differently from the man seen by the other three witnesses. Her evidence does not, to any appreciable extent, further the case against Slater, as she stated that she thought this man was Slater, but admitted that she might be in error. The other witness is a girl named Annie Armour, a ticket clerk in the Subway Station at Kelvinbridge, who says that between 7.30 and 8 that evening a man, whom she identified as Slater, rushed past her office without waiting for a ticket, and seemed excited. Lord Guthrie in his charge to the jury did not refer to this witness, and your Memorialist thinks advisedly. The mere question of time is sufficient to render her evidence valueless. She is sure the incident did not happen before 7.30. According to the other witnesses, the murderer must have run from the house by at least 7.15. It was proved that it would only take a man five or six minutes to run from the scene of the tragedy to this station, either by the most direct route or by the route which Barrowman’s evidence suggests he took. Then it is impossible to suppose that she could get anything like a good view, even of the side face, of a man who rushed past her in the way she described. All the witnesses who saw the man on the night of the murder (Monday) say that he was clean shaven. It was proved that on the next day or two after the murder Slater had a short, black, stubbly moustache. These were the only witnesses called by the Crown to identify Slater with the murderer. Further circumstantial evidence, however, was led by the Crown to show that, on occasions before the day of the murder, Slater had been seen standing in or walking up and down West Princes Street — Mrs. M’Haffie, her daughters and niece, Campbell, Cunningham, Bryson, Nairn, and O’Brien and Walker (two policemen). It may be noted that Slater’s house was situated about three minutes’ walk from West Princes Street. These witnesses did not all agree in their evidence. Some said that Slater was the man they had seen; others, equally or perhaps better able to judge, only said that he was very like him. The Memorialist does not propose in this paper to deal at length with this part of the evidence, except to point out that two witnesses (Nairn and Bryson) say they saw Slater in West Princes Street on the Sunday evening previous to the murder. Against this there is the evidence that Slater on this day, as usual, spent all Sunday (day and evening) in his house. Three witnesses from Paris, London, and Dublin spoke to this. Coming from different places, they had no chance to concoct a story. At Slater’s trial it was suggested that there were various circumstances tending to create an atmosphere of suspicion around him; but it is submitted that all these were capable of explanation, and in no way pointing to Slater’s guilt as a murderer. Slater had written to Cameron that he could prove where he was on the evening of the murder “ by five people.” When this letter was written, he thought that the date of the murder was the Tuesday, the 22nd. The evidence of his witnesses was to the effect that on the evening of the murder he was in a billiard room until 6.30 p. m., after which he went home for dinner. It was shown that Slater dealt in diamonds. There was, however, no evidence of any dishonest dealing of any kind. The brooch said to have been missing from Miss Gilchrist’s house has not been traced. There was no evidence of any kind led to show that Slater ever knew, or even heard of, Miss Gilchrist or her house, and the Memorialist would emphasise the fact that it was the missing brooch that put the Police on the track of Slater. With reference to Slater’s departure for America on 25th December, 1908, it was proved that he had formed the intention, some weeks before the murder, of going to America. Cameron, Rattman, and Aumann proved this. Slater had, in fact, tried to get the last named to take over his flat. The letter from Jacobs, of 28th December, and the card bearing the words “ address till 30th December,” produced by the Crown, also corroborate the evidence of this intention of leaving, which is further corroborated by the evidence of Nichols, the barber, a Crown witness. On the morning of 21st December, 1908, Slater received two letters — one from London, stating that his wife was demanding his address, and the other from San Francisco, asking him to come over. These were spoken to by Schmalz, his servant girl, and Miss Antoine. Further corroboration of his intention to leave is (1) on the morning of 21st December he raised a further £30 from Mr. Liddell, pawnbroker, on his brooch, and on the same day tried to sell the ticket; (a) he wrote to the Post Office for payment of the money at his credit; (3) he wired to Dent, London, to send on his watch, which was being repaired, immediately; (4) on the Monday morning he gave notice to the servant girl that she would not be required after the following Saturday (these events all happened before the murder); (5) on the Tuesday morning he redeemed a pair of binoculars from another pawnbroker whose assistant, Kempton, proved this, and who stated that he was in no way excited; (6) on the 23rd and 24th December he made inquiries at Cook’s Shipping Offices regarding berths, and betrayed no signs of any excitement; on the 23rd he was, in the evening, in Johnston’s billiard room, which he used to frequent; and on the 24th he spent the afternoon about Glasgow with his friend Cameron, who gave evidence; (7) on Friday morning a Mrs. Freedman and her sister arrived from London to take over his flat, so that he and Miss Antoine left on Friday night. A rumour got abroad at the time to the effect that he booked to London and left the train at Liverpool. This rumour was published in the various newspapers, to Slater’s great prejudice, but nothing of the kind was proved at the trial. The Police were evidently misled by the fact that he went by a London train, but it was proved that there were two carriages in that train for Liverpool, and also that Slater’s luggage, consisting of nine boxes, was labelled to Liverpool. The Porter who labelled the luggage was called, and stated that Slater told him that he was going to Liverpool, and entered a Liverpool carriage. The point was also raised against Slater that he used various aliases. He had been staying apart from his wife for about four years, during which time he cohabited with Miss Antoine. She stated that Slater’s wife was a drunken woman, and caused him a deal of trouble. At one time he adopted the name of “George,” and when he came to Glasgow on the last occasion he took the name of “ Anderson.” On the voyage to America he took the name of Otto Sando, because his luggage was labelled O. S. At times he called himself a dentist. There was no evidence that he really was a dentist Miss Antoine explained that he adopted the title of dentist, as he required a designation of some sort, although he was a gambler. A great deal was published in the newspapers about a hammer that had been found in one of his boxes. This turned out to be an ordinary small domestic nail hammer, purchased on a card containing several other tools, the lot costing only 2s. 6d. He, of course, took the hammer to America with him with all the rest of his belongings. Nothing incriminating was found in any of his boxes. No evidence whatever was led to show how the murderer gained access to the house. It will be conceded that identification evidence, especially in a serious charge of this kind, must be examined very carefully, and should have little weight attached to it, unless it is very clear. To sum up, the only real evidence in the case is that of those who saw a man running away on the night of the murder; and, as has been pointed out, these witnesses had only a momentary glance at him. Adams does not positively identify the prisoner as the man. He says he closely resembles him. Lambie’s New York evidence has already been referred to, and her evidence at the trial cannot be reconciled with it. . Lambie and Barrowman both saw him in custody before trying to identify him in New York, and the latter, before identifying him, was shown his photograph. All the other identifying witnesses called to give evidence as to his having been seen in the vicinity on days previous to the murder were taken down to the General Police Office when Slater returned from America to identify him. They were shown into one room together, and then separately taken into a room in the Police Office, where Slater was amongst about a dozen men, none of whom were like him. (Cunningham says she could see that the other men were policemen in plain clothes.) All these witnesses knew that Slater had arrived from America, and was in the room. They had all read his description in the newspapers, or had seen his photograph. They all, therefore, looked for, and had no difficulty in pointing out, a dark, foreign- looking man, with a somewhat peculiarly shaped nose. It is submitted that this is not identification evidence in the proper sense at all. Had these people been able to pick out, as their man, from amongst several others, a man whose description they only knew from what they had previously seen of him, unassisted by description, and unassisted by a photograph, the value of their evidence would have been entirely different. Some Crown witnesses identified him as the man they had seen and talked to (Shipping Clerk, Porter, &c.), but they, of course, were able to do so. None of the identifying witnesses had ever spoken to him. Identification evidence is a class of evidence which the law distrusts. The most famous authority is the case of Adolf Beck. Beck was, in 1896, sentenced to seven years’ penal servitude, on the evidence of ten women, who swore positively that he was a man whom they had each met on two occasions, and spent some time with in their own houses, and who had defrauded them, and on the evidence of two policemen, who swore positively that Beck was the man who had been previously convicted of similar crimes, taken along with certain circumstantial evidence — that he was known to frequent a hotel on the notepaper of which one of the women had received a letter. Again, in 1904, Beck was convicted of similar crimes on similar evidence. It was subsequently demonstrated that Beck committed none of the crimes, but that a man bearing a general similarity to him was the criminal. In the report issued by the Commission appointed to investigate the matter, consisting of Lord Collins, Sir Spencer Walpole, and Sir John Edge, the following passage occurs:—”Evidence of identity, upon personal impression, however bona fide, is of all classes of evidence the least to be relied upon, and, unless supported by other evidence, an unsafe basis for the verdict of a Jury.” Now, the evidence in the Beck case was infinitely more overwhelming and consistent than in this case; and the report in the Beck case, and the report on which it followed, make it clear that on the evidence in this case the Jury had no right to bring in a verdict of “ Guilty.” A good deal was said by the learned Lord Advocate to the Jury about Slater’s immoral character. It was not disputed that he was a gambler. It was also admitted that he had cohabited for about four years with Madame Antoine, who was of doubtful virtue, and who gave evidence. Yet the learned Lord Advocate addressed the Jury to the effect that the prisoner “ had followed a life which descended to the very depth of human degradation, for, by the universal judgment of mankind, the man who lived upon the proceeds of prostitution has sunk to the lowest depth, and all moral sense in him had been destroyed.” This he cited as proof of the disappearance of an obstacle which had previously been in his way, viz: — Whether it was conceivable that such a man as Slater could commit such an inhumanly brutal crime. The only evidence on that point was that of Cameron, Slater’s friend, who, in cross-examination, said he had heard that Slater lived on the earnings of prostitution, but who did not say he knew. The Jury were distinctly told by the Lord Advocate, and by the prisoner’s Counsel, and by the Judge, to banish from their minds anything they had heard regarding the man’s character; but they had previously heard all about it, and the Memorialist feels strongly that they were evidently unable to do so. Public feeling is also very strong on the point that the question of Slater’s character should never have been brought before the Jury. The Memorialist thinks it is only fair to prisoner to point out that he was all along anxious to give evidence on his own behalf. He was advised by his Counsel not to do so, but not from any knowledge of guilt. He had undergone the strain of a four days’ trial. He speaks rather broken English — although quite intelligibly — with a foreign accent, and he had been in custody since January. Apart from what has been set forth above, your Memorialist begs to draw attention to the fact that on the Crown list of witnesses is the name of a witness, Miss Agnes Brown (No. 46). This lady is 30 years of age, and a very intelligent school teacher. Your Memorialist is informed that she told the Police and Procurator-Fiscal that on the night of the murder, about ten minutes past seven o’clock, two men in company rushed along West Princes Street from the direction of Miss Gilchrist’s house, and passed close to her at the corner of West Princes Street and West Cumberland Street; that one of them was dressed in a blue Melton coat with a dark velvet collar, black boots, and without a hat; that both men ran past the opening of West Cumberland Street, straight on along West Princes Street, crossed West Princes Street, and ran down Rupert Street, a street further west, and opening off the opposite side of West Princes Street Your Memorialist understands that, in the identification proceedings before referred to, this witness pointed out Slater as the man in the Melton coat, as she thought This witness’s evidence is thus in sharp contradiction on material points to that of the message girl Barrowman (who had only a momentary glance at the man), but upon whose evidence so much weight has evidently been laid, and who says that Slater was dressed in a light coat, a Donegal hat, and brown boots, was alone, and ran down West Cumberland Street Your Memorialist respectfully submits that this illustrates the danger of convicting a man upon the kind of evidence given in this case. Miss Brown was in attendance at the trial, but was not called as a witness. Even on the evidence led, the votes of two more jurymen in his favour would have liberated the prisoner. In England the probability is that a conviction would never have been obtained. Your Memorialist is authorised to state that Slater’s Counsel agree that the evidence did not justify the conviction. Your Memorialist, who has all along acted as Slater’s Solicitor since he was brought back from America after the Extradition Proceedings, and who has had very many interviews with Slater, begs respectfully to state his absolute belief in Slater’s innocence. May it therefore please the Right Honourable the Secretary of State for Scotland to take this Memorial into his most favourable consideration, and thereafter to advise his Most Gracious Majesty to exercise his royal prerogative to the effect of commuting the sentence passed upon the prisoner, or to do otherwise as in the circumstances may seem just. And your Memorialist will ever pray. EWING SPIERS, 190 West George Street, Glasgow, Oscar Slater’s Solicitor. Dated this seventeenth day of May, One thousand nine hundred and nine.
THE HOLOCAUST OF MANOR PLACE In the study of criminal psychology one is forced to the conclusion that the most dangerous of all types of mind is that of the inordinately selfish man. He is a man who has lost his sense of proportion. His own will and his own interest have blotted out for him the duty which he owes to the community. Impulsiveness, jealousy, vindictiveness are the fruitful parents of crime, but the insanity of selfishness is the most dangerous and also the most unlovely of them all. Sir Willoughby Patterne, the eternal type of all egoists, may be an amusing and harmless character as long as things go well with him, but let him be thwarted, let the thing which he desires be withheld from him, and the most monstrous results may follow. Huxley has said that a man in this life is for ever playing a game with an unseen opponent, who only makes his presence felt by exacting a penalty every time one makes a mistake in the game. The player who makes the mistake of selfishness may have a terrible forfeit to pay, but the unaccountable thing in the rules is that some, who are only spectators of his game, may have to help him in the paying. Read the Story of William Godfrey Youngman, and see how difficult it is to understand the rules under which these penalties are exacted. Learn also from it that selfishness is no harmless peccadillo, but that it is an evil root from which the most monstrous growths may spring. About forty miles to the south of London, and close to the rather passé watering-place of Tunbridge Wells, there lies the little townlet of Wadhurst. It is situated within the borders of Sussex at a point which is close to the confines of Kent. The country is a rich pastoral one and the farmers are a flourishing race, for they are near enough to the Metropolis to take advantage of its mighty appetite. Among these farmers there lived in the year 1860 one Streeter, the master of a small homestead and the father of a fair daughter, Mary Wells Streeter. Mary was a strong, robust girl, some twenty years of age, skilled in all country work, and with some knowledge also of the town, for she had friends up there, and above all she had one friend, a young man of twenty-five, whom she had met upon one of her occasional visits, and who had admired her so that he had actually come down to Wadhurst after her, and had spent a night under her father’s roof. The father had expressed no disapprobation of the suitor, a brisk, masterful young fellow, a little vague in his description of his own occupation and prospects, but an excellent fireside companion. And so it came about that the deep, town-bred William Godfrey Youngman became engaged to the simple, country-bred Mary Wells Streeter, William knowing all about Mary, but Mary very little about William. July the 29th of that year fell upon a Sunday, and Mary sat in the afternoon in the window of the farm-house parlour, with her bundle of love- letters upon her lap, reading them again and yet again. Outside was the little square of green lawn, fringed with the homely luxuriance of an English country garden, the high hollyhocks, the huge nodding sunflowers, the bushes of fuchsia, and the fragrant clumps of sweet William. Through the open lattice came the faint, delicate scent of the lilac and the long, low droning of the bees. The farmer had lain down to the plethoric sleep of the Sunday afternoon, and Mary had the room to herself. There were fifteen love-letters in all some shorter, some longer, some wholly delightful, some with scattered business allusions, which made her wrinkle her pretty brows. There was this matter of the insurance, for example, which had cost her lover so much anxiety until she had settled it. No doubt he knew more of the world than she, but still it was strange that she, so young and so hale, should be asked and again asked to prepare herself for death. Even in the flush of her love those scattered words struck a chill to her heart. ‘Dearest girl,’ he had written, ‘I have filled up the paper now, and took it to the life insurance office, and they will write to Mrs. James Boric today to get an answer on Saturday. So you can go to the office with me before two o’clock on Monday.’ And then again, only two days later, he had begun his letter: ‘You promised me faithfully over and over again, and I expect you to keep your promise, that you would be mine, and that your friends would not know it until we were married; but now, dearest Mary, if you will only let Mrs. James Bone write to the insurance office at once and go with me to have your life insured on Monday morning next!’ So ran the extracts from the letters, and they perplexed Mary as she read them. But it was all over now, and he should mingle business no longer with his love, for she had yielded to his whim, and the insurance for £100 had been duly effected. It had cost her a quarterly payment of 10s. 4d., but it had seemed to please him, and so she would think of it no more. There was a click of the garden-gate, and looking up she saw the porter from the station coming up the path with a note in his hand. Seeing her at the window he handed it in and departed, slyly smiling, a curious messenger of Cupid in his corduroys and clumping boots — a messenger of a grimmer god than Cupid, had he but known it. She had eagerly torn it open, and this was the message that she read: ‘16, Manor Place, Newington, S.E. Saturday night, July 28th. ‘My BELOVED POLLY, ‘I have posted one letter to you this afternoon, but I find that I shall not have to go to Brighton tomorrow as I have had a letter from there with what I wanted inside of it, so, my dear girl, I have quite settled my business now and I am quite ready to see you now, therefore I send this letter to you. I will send this to London Bridge Station tomorrow morning by 6:30 o’clock and get the guard to take it to Wadhurst Station, to give it to the porter there, who will take it to your place. I can only give the guard something, so you can give the man who brings this a small sum. I shall expect to see you, my dear girl, on Monday morning by the first train. I will await your coming at London Bridge Station. I know the time the train arrives — a quarter to ten o’clock. I have promised to go to my uncle’s tomorrow, so I cannot come down; but I will go with you home on Monday night or first thing Tuesday morning, and so return here again Tuesday night, to be ready to go anywhere on Wednesday; but you know all that I have told you, and I now expect that you will come up on Monday morning, when I shall be able to manage things as I expect to do. Excuse more now, my dearest Mary. I shall now go to bed to be up early tomorrow to take this letter. Bring or burn all your letters, my dear girl. Do not forget; and with kind love and respects to all I now sum up, awaiting to see you Monday morning a quarter to ten o’clock. Believe me, ever your loving, affectionate, WILLIAM GODFREY YOUNGMAN.’ A very pressing invitation this to a merry day in town; but there were certainly some curious phrases in it. What did he mean by saying that he would manage things as he expected to do? And why should she burn or bring her love-letters? There, at least, she was determined to disobey this masterful suitor who always ‘expected’ in so authoritative a fashion that she would do this or that. Her letters were much too precious to be disposed of in this off-hand fashion. She packed them back, sixteen of them now, into the little tin box in which she kept her simple treasures, and then ran to meet her father, whose step she heard upon the stairs, to tell him of her invitation and the treat which awaited her to-morrow. At a quarter to ten next morning William Godfrey Youngman was waiting upon the platform of London Bridge Station to meet the Wadhurst train which was bringing his sweetheart up to town. No observer glancing down the straggling line of loiterers would have picked him out as the man whose name and odious fame would before another day was passed be household words to all the three million dwellers in London. In person he was of a goodly height and build, but commonplace in his appearance, and with a character which was only saved from insignificance through the colossal selfishness, tainted with insanity, which made him conceive that all things should bend before his needs and will. So distorted was his outlook that it even seemed to him that if he wished people to be deceived they must be deceived, and that the weakest device or excuse, if it came from him, would pass unquestioned. He had been a journeyman tailor, as his father was before him, but aspiring beyond this, he had sought and obtained a situation as footman to Dr. Duncan, of Covent Garden. Here he had served with credit for some time, but had finally resigned his post and had returned to his father’s house, where for some time he had been living upon the hospitality of his hard-worked parents. He had talked vaguely of going into farming, and it was doubtless his short experience of Wadhurst with its sweet-smelling kine and Sussex breezes which had put the notion into his Cockney head. But now the train rolls in, and there at a third-class window is Mary Streeter with her pink country cheeks, the pinker at the sight of her waiting lover. He takes her bag and they walk down the platform together amongst the crinolined women and baggy-trousered men whose pictures make the London of this date more strange to us than that of last century. He lives at Walworth, in South London, and a straw-strewn omnibus outside the station conveys them almost to the door. It was eleven o’clock when they arrived at Manor Place, where Youngman’s family resided. The household arrangements at Manor Place were peculiar. The architect having not yet evolved the flat in England, the people had attained the same result in another fashion. The tenant of a two-storied house resided upon the ground-floor, and then sub-let his first and second floors to other families. Thus, in the present instance, Mr. James Bevan occupied the ground, Mr. and Mrs. Beard the first, and the Youngman family the second, of the various floors of No. 16. Manor Place. The ceilings were thin and the stairs were in common, so it may be imagined that each family took a lively interest in the doings of its neighbour. Thus Mr. and Mrs. Beard of the first floor were well aware that young Youngman had brought his sweetheart home, and were even able through half-closed doors to catch a glimpse of her, and to report that his manner towards her was affectionate. It was not a very large family to which he introduced her. The father departed to his tailoring at five o’clock every morning and returned at ten at night. There remained only the mother, a kindly, anxious, hard-working woman, and two younger sons aged eleven and seven. At eleven o’clock the boys were at school and the mother alone.She welcomed her country visitor, eyeing her meanwhile and summing her up as a mother would do when first she met the woman whom her son was likely to marry. They dined together, and then the two set forth to see something of the sights of London. No record has been left of what the amusements were to which this singular couple turned: he with a savage, unrelenting purpose in his heart; she wondering at his abstracted manner, and chattering country gossip with the shadow of death already gathering thickly over her. One little incident has survived. One Edward Spicer, a bluff, outspoken publican who kept the Green Dragon in Bermondsey Street, knew Mary Streeter and her father. The couple called together at the inn, and Mary presented her lover. We have no means of knowing what repellent look mine host may have observed in the young man’s face, or what malign trait he may have detected in his character, but he drew the girl aside and whispered that it was better for her to take a rope and hang herself in his skittle-alley than to marry such a man as that — a warning which seems to have met the same fate as most other warnings received by maidens of their lovers. In the evening they went to the theatre together to see one of Macready’s tragedies. How could she know as she sat in the crowded pit, with her silent lover at her side, that her own tragedy was far grimmer than any upon the stage? It was eleven o’clock before they were back once more at Manor Place. The hard-working tailor had now returned, and the household all supped together.Then they had to be divided for the night between the two bedrooms, which were all the family possessed. The mother, Mary, and the boy of seven occupied the front one. The father slept on his own board in the back one, and in a bed beside him lay the young man and the boy of eleven. So they settled down to sleep as commonplace a family as any in London, with little thought that within a day the attention of all the great city would be centred upon those two dingy rooms and upon the fates of their inmates. The father woke in the very early hours, and saw in the dim light of the dawn the tall figure of his son standing in white beside his bed. To some sleepy remark that he was stirring early the youth muttered an excuse and lay down once more. At five the tailor rose to his endless task, and at twenty minutes past he went down the stair and closed the hall door behind him. So passed away the only witness, and all that remains is conjecture and circumstantial evidence. No one will ever know the exact details of what occurred, and for the purpose of the chronicler it is as well, for such details will not bear to be too critically examined. The motives and mind of the murderer are of perennial interest to every student of human nature, but the vile record of his actual brutality may be allowed to pass away when the ends of justice have once been served by their recital. I have said that on the floor under the Youngman’s there lived a couple named Beard. At half-past five, a little after the time when the tailor had closed the hall door behind him, Mrs. Beard was disturbed by a sound which she took to be from children running up and down and playing. There was a light patter of feet on the floor above. But as she listened it struck her that there was something unusual in this romping at so early an hour, so she nudged her husband and asked him for his opinion. Then, as the two sat up in bed, straining their ears, there came from above them a gasping cry and the dull, soft thud of a falling body. Beard sprang out of bed and rushed upstairs until his head came upon the level of the Youngman’s landing. He saw enough to send him shrieking down to Mr. Bevan upon the ground-floor. ‘For God’s sake, come here! There is murder!’ he roared, fumbling with his shaking fingers at the handle of the landlord’s bedroom. His summons did not find the landlord entirely unprepared. That ill- boding thud had been loud enough to reach his ears. He sprang palpitating from his bed, and the two men in their nightdresses ascended the creaking staircase, their frightened faces lit up by the blaze of golden sunlight of a July morning. Again they do not seem to have got farther than the point from which they could see the landing. That confused huddle of white-clad figures littered over the passage, with those glaring smears and blotches, were more than their nerves could stand. They could count three lying there, stark dead upon the landing. And there was someone moving in the bedroom. It was coming towards them. With horror-dilated eyes they saw William Godfrey Youngman framed in the open doorway, his white nightdress brilliant with ghastly streaks and the sleeve hanging torn over his hand. ‘Mr. Beard,’ he cried, when he saw the two bloodless faces upon the stairs, ‘for God’s sake fetch a surgeon! I believe there is some alive yet!’ Then, as they turned and ran down stairs again, he called after them the singular explanation to which he ever afterwards adhered. ‘My mother has done all this,’ he cried; ‘she murdered my two brothers and my sweetheart, and I in self-defence believe that I have murdered her.’ The two men did not stop to discuss the question with him. They had both rushed to their rooms and huddled on some clothes. Then they ran out of the house in search of a surgeon and a policeman, leaving Youngman still standing on the stair repeating his strange explanation. How sweet the morning air must have seemed to them when they were once clear of the accursed house, and how the honest milkmen, with their swinging tins, must have stared at those two rushing and dishevelled figures. But they had not far to go. John Varney, of P Division, as solid and unimaginative as the law which he represents, was standing at the street corner, and he came clumping back with reassuring slowness and dignity. ‘Oh, policeman, here is a sight! What shall I do?’ cried Youngman, as he saw the glazed official hat coming up the stair. Constable Varney is not shaken by that horrid cluster of death. His advice is practical and to the point. ‘Go and dress yourself!’ said he. ‘I struck my mother; but it was in self defence,’ cried the other. ‘Would you not have done the same? It is the law.’ Constable Varney is not to be drawn into giving a legal opinion, but he is quite convinced that the best thing for Youngman to do is to put on some clothes. And now a crowd had begun to assemble in the street, and another policeman and an inspector had arrived. It was clear that, whether Youngman’s story was correct or not, he was a self-confessed homicide, and that the law must hold her grip of him. But when a dagger-shaped knife, splintered by the force of repeated blows, was found upon the floor, and Youngman had to confess that it belonged to him; when also it was observed that ferocious strength and energy were needed to produce the wounds inflicted, it became increasingly evident that, instead of being a mere victim of circumstances, this man was one of the criminals of a century. But all evidence must be circumstantial, for mother, sweetheart, brothers — the mouths of all were closed in the one indiscriminate butchery. The horror and the apparent purposelessness of the deed roused public excitement and indignation to the highest pitch. The miserable sum for which poor Mary was insured appeared to be the sole motive of the crime; the prisoner’s eagerness to have the business concluded, and his desire to have the letters destroyed in which he had urged it, forming the strongest evidence against him. At the same time, his calm assumption that things would be arranged as he wished them to be, and that the Argus Insurance Office would pay over the money to one who was neither husband nor relative of the deceased, pointed to an ignorance of the ways of business or a belief in his own powers of managing, which in either case resembled insanity. When in addition it came out at the trial that the family was sodden with lunacy upon both sides, that the wife’s mother and the husband’s brother were in asylums, and that the husband’s father had been in an asylum, but had become ‘tolerably sensible’ before his death, it is doubtful whether the case should not have been judged upon medical rather than upon criminal grounds. In these more scientific and more humanitarian days it is perhaps doubtful whether Youngman would have been hanged, but there was never any doubt as to his fate in 1860. The trial came off at the Central Criminal Court upon August 16th before Mr. Justice Williams. Few fresh details came out, save that the knife had been in prisoner’s possession for some time. He had exhibited it once in a bar, upon which a bystander, with the good British love of law and order, had remarked that that was not a fit knife for any man to carry. ‘Anybody,’ said Youngman, in reply, ‘has the right to carry such a knife if he thinks proper in his own defence.’ Perhaps the objector did not realize how near he may have been at that moment to getting its point between his ribs. Nothing serious against the prisoner’s previous character came out at the trial, and he adhered steadfastly to his own account of the tragedy. In summing up, however, Justice Williams pointed out that if the prisoner’s story were true it meant that he had disarmed his mother and got possession of the knife. What necessity was there, then, for him to kill her? and why should he deal her repeated wounds? This argument, and the fact that there were no stains upon the hands of the mother, prevailed with the jury, and sentence was duly passed upon the prisoner. Youngman had shown an unmoved demeanour in the dock, but he gave signs of an irritable, and occasionally of a violent, temper in prison. His father visited him, and the prisoner burst instantly into fierce reproaches against his treatment of his family — reproaches for which there seem to have been no justification. Another thing which appeared to have galled him to the quick was the remark of the publican, which first reached his ears at the trial, to the effect that Mary had better hang herself in the skittle-yard than marry such a man. His self-esteem, the strongest trait in his nature, was cruelly wounded by such a speech. ‘Only one thing I wish,’ he cried, furiously, ‘that I could get hold of this man Spicer, for I would strike his head off.’ The unnatural and bloodthirsty character of the threat is characteristic of the homicidal maniac. ‘Do you suppose,’ he added, with a fine touch of vanity, ‘that a man of my determination and spirit would have heard these words used in my presence without striking the man who used them to the ground?’ But in spite of exhortation and persuasion he carried his secret with him to the grave. He never varied from the story which he had probably concocted before the event. ‘Do not leave the world with a lie on your lips.’ said the chaplain, as they walked to the scaffold. ‘Well, if I wanted to tell a lie I would say that I did it.’ was his retort. He hoped to the end with his serene self-belief that the story which he had put forward could not fail eventually to be accepted. Even on the scaffold he was on the alert for a reprieve. It was on the 4th of September, a little more than a month after the commission of his crime, that he was led out in front of Horsemonger Gaol to suffer his punishment. A concourse of 30,000 people, many of whom had waited all night, raised a brutal howl at his appearance. It was remarked at the time that it was one of the very few instances of capital punishment in which no sympathizer or philanthropist of any sort could be found to raise a single voice against the death penalty. The man died quietly and coolly. ‘Thank you, Mr. Jessopp,’ said he to the chaplain, ‘for your great kindness. See my brother and take my love to him, and all at home.’ And so, with the snick of a bolt and the jar of a rope, ended one of the most sanguinary, and also one of the most unaccountable, incidents in English criminal annals. That the man was guilty seems to admit no doubt, and yet it must be confessed that circumstantial evidence can never be absolutely convincing, and that it is only the critical student of such cases who realizes how often a damning chain of evidence may, by some slight change, be made to bear an entirely different interpretation. TRANSCRIPT OF THE MANOR PLACE MURDER TRIAL Proceedings Of The Old Bailey, 13th August 1860 723. WILLIAM GODFREY YOUNGMAN (25), was indicted for the wilful murder of Mary Wells Streeter. He was also charged on the Coroner’s Inquisition with the like offence. MESSRS. CLERK and BEASLEY conducted the Prosecution. JAMES BEVAN. I am a carman, and reside at 16, Manor-place, Walworth — I am the landlord of the house — I occupy the ground floor — the house consists of a first and second floor — the first floor is immediately above my rooms — on 31st July last Mr. Beard occupied the first floor — that consists of a front and a back room — there was Mr. Beard, his wife, and one son — the floor above that was occupied by Mr. Youngman — I believe his name to be John — he is the father of the prisoner — his family consisted of his wife and two little boys — the second floor consisted of two rooms, a front and a back one — I had known at that time that the prisoner had been there for a few days; for a holiday, I understood — I had seen him backwards and forwards before 31st July — I believed him to be sleeping there — I remember the morning of 31st July — I was disturbed about ten minutes to 6, or something like that — I was then in bed, in the lower back room on the ground floor — I was disturbed by hearing a lumbering, as I supposed, on the top of the house; a lumbering, or heavy fell on the floor; a lumbering noise, as if something had fallen on the floor — the noise proceeded from the top of the house, as I supposed at the time, the second floor — as soon as I heard the noise I immediately jumped out of bed to hear and see what was amiss, and, before I could get to the door, Mr. Beard, who has the first floor, tapped at the door and said, “For God’s sake come up stairs, here is murder;” that was before I had got out of my room — I immediately proceeded up stairs to see what was amiss — I went on to the top landing, the landing of the seoond floor, and I turned my head and saw the little boy — there is a staircase that ends with a landing, and a door on each side of the landing — a door opens on to the landing from each room; the doors front each other on the landing — I saw the little boy lying dead on the top floor — I did not take very particular notice of him — I believe him to be the eldest boy — I did not see any one else about — I came down stairs and dressed as quickly as I could, to get assistance — as I was about to proceed for the officer the prisoner was standing on the first staircase — that was the first time I saw him that morning — it was directly I came down stairs and dressed; after I had dressed — I was then about to proceed for the officers — I should think not two minutes had been occupied by my dressing — on coming out of my room dressed I saw the prisoner standing three parts of the way on the first staircase; the staircase leading from the ground floor to the first floor — he was standing at that time looking downwards; looking down stairs — that staircase does not face the front door — the stairs, face the passage which leads to the door — at the bot-tom of the stairs there is a long passage, quite through the house, and the staircase is in the middle of the passage — he had got nothing on then, only his shirt — he told me his mother had done all this. COURT. Q. What were the words he used, as near as you can say? A. He said, “My mother has done all this; she has murdered my two brothers and my sweetheart, and I, in self-defence, believe I have murdered her.” MR. BEASLEY. Q. Was that all he said at the time? A. Yes — I then went for the police — I believe I heard the prisoner’s father go out that morning about half-past five. COURT. Q. You heard somebody go out? A. Yes; and believe it was he. Cross-examined by MR. BEST. Q. Had the Youngmans lived long in your house? A. On 24th March they came to lodge with me — I am not much at home in the day-time — I go out in the morning and come back in the evening, calling in sometimes in the course of the day — I do not know but what Youngman and his wife lived on pretty tolerable good terms — perhaps occasionally I heard them have a word or two, but not enough for me to interfere. COURT. Q. They had a word or two occasionally, but nothing particular? A. Nothing particular. MR. BEST. Q. Did they seem to be pretty well off in the money way? A. Well, the man always paid me his rent, and so far I had nothing more to do with him; he paid me regularly 4s. a week — I was awoke by a lumbering noise — the noise was like a heavy fall on the floor, as if something heavy had fallen — I do not know how far the distance is from the room where I was sleeping to the landing where I saw the body of the boy; I never measured it — I cannot tell you — the floor of the second floor was not so high as this Court — I lived on the ground floor — I never measured the distance between the ground floor and this third floor where these people were living — it is about three parts of the height of this Court, I should say — when I went up to the landing the first time I saw no live person there; I did not go up on to the top of the landing, as soon as I saw the boy’s body I turned down stairs — I saw the prisoner afterwards, not at that time, some portion of the way down stairs — I cannot say much as to his being collected and composed at the time — I should not think he was very collected at that time; I did not stop long enough to make any particular observation of the man. FREDERICK HENRY CAIGER. I am a surveyor — I made this plan of the premises. COURT. Q. Is it made to a scale? A. It is; I have not measured any heights, but I should say that from the floor of the ground floor to the floor of the second floor was about from twenty to twenty-one feet. MR. CLERK. Q. I see by the plan there is a door to each room opening on to the landing? A. Opening inwards to the rooms from the landing — I am speaking of the second floor — the doors are exactly opposite each other — the two doors, when closed, are 5ft. 10 1/2 in. from one another, across the landing — from that landing of 5ft. 10 1/2 in. there is a narrow landing 2ft. 6in. wide — that goes toward the head of the stairs — that goes from the landing that is between the two doors towards the head of the stairs — 2ft. 6in. is the width of each stair. SUSANNAH BEARD. I am the wife of Philip Beard — I live with my husband at 16 Manor-place — we occupy the first floor — I have one little boy about 11 years old — I occupy the back room as a sleeping-room — the little boy slept in the same room — on the morning of Tuesday, 31st July, I should think it was nearly 6 o’clock when I awoke — a noise above my head awoke me — it was a sort of scuffling on the boards — I thought it was the children playing when I first awoke — I awoke my husband, thinking it was late — I heard a sort of lumbering as if something fell on to the boards after that; that was not till after I awoke my husband — I could not say what it sounded like, falling — it appeared to be as if something heavy had fallen on the boards — I thought it was in the bed-room; it seemed over my head — I could not say whether what I heard fall fell on the landing or in the room — my husband went to the bed-room door and went up the stairs — he then called out the “Murder!” and came down — he afterwards went up again with Mr. Bevan, the landlord — after he came down the second time I went to the door of our room and saw the prisoner on the stairs between the first and second floors — he either said, “Mr. Beard” or, “Mrs. Beard, my mother has done all this, she has murdered my sweetheart and my two little brothers, and, in seltdefence, I believe I have murdered her” — while my husband was dressing the prisoner called out from the stairs, “Mr. Beard, for God’s sake fetch a surgeon, I believe there are some alive now” — when my husband was dressed he left the house — he and I went down stairs into the lower parlour — I locked my bed-room door, and locked my child in, and we went down below to the landlord’s room, and my husband directly went for a doctor — I did not see the body of the young woman at all — I had seen a young woman come to the house on the previous day, Monday, 30th July; I think it was pretty well 11 o’clock in the morning when she came — she came with the prisoner — I saw them again about 7 in the evening, going out, as I thought for a walk; they went as if they were going to the Walworth-road — I afterwards saw them return about 10 o’clock; they returned together, by themselves — I saw them come down stairs again about five minutes afterwards, that is I saw them outside the door as if they had come down stairs — I saw them come into the house again about a quarter of an hour afterwards; that would be about a quarter past 10. Cross-examined. Q. Had you seen this young man before that day? A. Oh, yes; he had been staying at the house for a short time previously — he and the young woman seemed very friendly when they were at the door together at 10 o’clock — they seemed on affectionate terms with each other — when the prisoner addressed me on the stairs, and said, “This is my mother’s doing,” he seemed very much excited — on other occasions he was generally calm and quiet in his manner. PHILIP WILLIAM BEARD. I am a carpenter and joiner — I and my wife occupy the first floor at 16 Manor-place — I remember the prisoner coming to the house, but I cannot say exactly what time he came — I had seen him there some days before 31st July — I had seen him in the house — I remember Sunday the 29th — I had some conversation with the prisoner that day in the yard — a little conversation passed on trivial affairs, and he told me that he had been a valet and footman, but that he had left that, and was going into the farming business — he did not say why he had left it — I did not see the young woman on the Monday night — on the Tuesday morning I was awoke by my wife early; it was about 5 minutes before 6, or something like that — after she had awoke me I heard a sort of rumbling noise on the stairs, it appeared to be on the landing over me, it was like children running about, or something like that, I had heard the noise frequently before — I was on my landing — it seemed to come from the top floor above me — when I came out of my room I heard a slight scream, when I got to the foot of the stain — I went up stairs — the first thing I saw was a spot of blood on the stairs, on the fourth stair from the top, I did not notice any on any other — I went a little higher, and the first thing I saw was the little boy lying on the landing — I thought he was dead, he had his throat cut, and was lying on his back with his head towards the stairs — I then went a little higher and there saw the female lying on the landing — I did not then know who she was — I found afterwards it was Mary Streeter — she was also lying dead, a little beyond the dead body of the boy — I did not observe any other body at that time — I was alarmed, and went down, and called up Mr. Bevan, the landlord — I then went up again with him, behind him; there was no one else with us; the inspector had not come at that time — when I had called the landlord I went up stairs and began to drees — I did not go up with him then, I went up to my own bed-room, I did not go up to the second floor then, not till the inspector came — he did not come till Mr. Bevan went for him — I did not go up any more till after the police had been — I went for a surgeon — I saw a policeman at the top of Manor-place, and I sent him down — I did not see anything more of the prisoner — he called me out of my bed-room after I had began to dress, he was then on the stain — he called me and said, “Mr. Beard, my mother has done it all, she has murdered my two little brothers and my sweetheart, and, in self-defence, I believe I have murdered her” — that was all he said then — I then went into my bed-room again, and finished dressing and he begged of me to go for a surgeon. Cross-examined. Q. Did he say to you, “For God’s sake go to a surgeon’s, I think there is some of them alive now?” A. Yes — I was about five minutes in my room dressing myself — I dressed as speedily as I possibly could — I do not know whether my wife was present at this conversation on the stain — she was present in one instance, I believe, I did not see her — I have not known the prisoner for any time — I only just saw him backwards and forwards in the house — I never had any particular conversation with him — I was not at home most of the day — I was always out at work from 6 in the morning till 8 or 9 at night — I had no opportunity of observing how Mr. Youngman and his wife lived towards each other. MR. CLERK. Q. Your wife used to be at home? A. Yes. JOHN YOUNGMAN. I am the father of the prisoner — I resided on the second-floor of the house, 16, Manor-place, Wai worth — I can’t say exactly how long I had been there — my wife, Elizabeth Youngman, also lived there, and my two sons, Thomas Neale Youngman, and Charles Youngman — Thomas was eleven years of age, and Charles seven — in the month of July the prisoner came to live with me — he had before that been at service at Dr. Duncan’s; that was the last place he had lived at — he was footman there — I do not recollect on what, day it was that he came to my lodgings, but I should suppose it was about a fortnight before the 31st July — he used to sleep in the back room, the same room that I slept in — Thomas, the eldest of the two boys, slept with him in the same bed — I slept on a bed made up on the shop-board — I am a tailor, but I work away from home along with a son who lives in the neighbourhood — my wife slept in the front room and the boy Charles with her — I am frequently away from home at my work, during the day; mostly all day — I go home to dinner very frequently; not at all times — I was away from morning till night, except sometimes when I went home to dinner — on Monday, 30th July, I came home about a quarter or twenty minutes after 10 at night, as near as I can bring it to mind — I did not see the young woman, Mary Streeter, at all that night — I saw my wife before I went to bed — the prisoner went, to bed that night as usual, in the room — I should think it wanted about twenty minutes to 11, at that time — I told him when he was ready I would put the light out, and he said he was all ready, and I put the light out and went to bed directly, and he at the same time — my boy, Thomas, was in bed when I got into bed; he was in the bed with the prisoner — I awoke in the morning, I consider, somewhere about 4 o’clock; I did not know the time because I had not a clock in my room; I imagine that was the time by the appearance of the morning — at that time I saw the prisoner at the foot of his bed — it was daylight; just the break of day — he was in the act of getting into bed — I supposed he had been to look at the clock — I believe the door of the room was not closed; it generally stood open, but I did not take that notice — I usually slept with the door about an inch open — I took no notice of it then — the door of the front room was always closed at night, to the best of my knowledge — I fell asleep again — I got up at 5 o’clock that morning — it was about twenty minutes after 5 when I left my room — I expected that the clock went 6, but in lien of that it was 5 I found when I got out — the prisoner and Thomas were in bed at that time — I went to my son John’s to work — I did not go into the front room before I left; the door of that room was closed — I was afterwards fetched from my son’s — I should think it was about twenty minutes after 6 — I came back to the house — I saw the body of the young woman, Mary Streeter — she was then dead — I had seen her before, three or four times, I believe — the first time I saw her I dare say might have been two years previous — she had not been in the habit of coming to our house then — I saw her two or three times since — I saw her once or twice in July; that was at Manor-place — I do not think I saw her more than once in Manor-place — I saw her once at my son John’s, along with William, and once at Manorplace with him — the prisoner had never said anything to me about his intended marriage — I understood it was to be the case, but he never acquainted me with it — a knife was shown to me on the morning of 31st July, by Lack the constable — this (produced) is it — I had seen that knife before that day — I saw it in my son John’s shop — it was in the prisoner’s possession — it was then quite whole, to the best of my knowledge; not broken as it is now — the prisoner was showing it to a man who was working at my son John’s, and the man said it was not a fit knife to carry — the prisoner said anybody had a right to carry such a knife, if they thought proper, for their own protection — I should think this was about nine days or a fortnight before 31st July — I never saw him use the knife for any purpose — I never saw him show it at home to my wife; not to my recollection — as soon as I got back to the house on the morning in question, I called out, “Where is William?” he was then brought down in to the passage by the police; he was in custody — he said, “This is all mother’s doings, father” — that was all he said — to the best of my knowledge the prisoner was not possessed of any property at this time; he had no money, except what he had from service — I believe he had been in Dr. Duncan’s service for half a year — he was out of employment for some time before he went there — I cannot say for how long — it was as long as a year — I learnt so from him. Q. Had he ever said anything to you about insuring the life of the young woman? A. I had heard it talked of; I don’t think he ever said anything about it to me — I am not certain he did not; I have heard it repeated and talked of at different times — I heard it talked about at my son John’s. COURT. Q. You say he never mentioned it to you; but did you hear him mention that he was about insuring the life? A. Oh, yes; at different times — I heard him mention it at my son John’s. MR. CLERK. Q. Do you know the prisoner’s handwriting? A. I think I should know it, but I am not sure; I am a very little writer myself — I saw the dead body of my wife and of my son Thomas, at the same time I saw the dead body of the young woman — I also saw the dead body of my youngest boy, Charles; I saw him last. Cross-examined. Q. You say this insurance was talked about at your son John’s; was that in the presence of several persons? A. Yes, openly — I should think that was something like nine days, or a fortnight, or a week before 31st July, and perhaps a day or two before, but I cannot bring it to mind — my wife’s maiden name was Golden — I knew her mother quite well — she was a lunatic at the latter part of her life — she died in Peckham Asylum — a brother of my own also died’a lunatic in Norwich Thorpe Asylum — none of my children have died in that way — my father, I believe, died tolerably sensible, but he had been in an asylum two or three times — I work for my son as a journeyman and receive journeyman’s wages — I receive a pound a week, on an average; I am sometimes short of work — I was not short at this time; I had plenty doing just then — my wife and I lived upon tolerably good terms; we used to have more words about the children than anything else; I thought that she talked to them a good deal more than there was any occasion for — we quarrelled occasionally about the children — I thought she interfered with them too much — she used to correct them more than I thought she had any occasion for — she did not correct them particularly severely, but she corrected Thomas more than I thought she ought, because I thought Charles was quite as much or more in fault than Thomas — my wife and I did not sleep together at all times — we had not slept together for the last week previous to William coming to the house — that was because I wished to get to bed always when I got home of a night; and not only that, my wife was troubled with an inward complaint — she had a cancer in the womb; that was the reason why we did not sleep together — I sometimes took my breakfast at my son John’s — I sometimes took my supper at home, not often — I supped at my son’s, and sometimes I had no supper at all — I always took my tea at my son’s when I was there — I did not go to any place of entertainment to spend my evenings, or to any public-house; and had not done so for a long time — I saw this knife when I was at my son John’s house — I do not remember the prisoner saying that it was a good sort of knife for eating meals with — I cannot say that I ever heard him say that — I have seen him take his meals in the house, but I never saw him use that knife at all — I did not sup in the house the night before 31st July — the front room was used for supper and meals; that was the room in which the family lived in the daytime — the point of this knife is broken off and the guard is also broken. MR. CLERK. Q. When was it that your wife’s mother died? A. 15 years ago, in October — I never visited her in the asylum but once — I can’t say whether she was there 12 mouths or 2 years — I think she was between sixty and seventy when she died — my wife had never been confined in any asylnm — I cannot say that I ever perceived any appearance of an unsound mind in her during our marriage — I never did — she was rather more kind to Charles than to Thomas — that has been a cause of difference, a cause of words between us — I have frequently told her that Charles was most in fault. JOHN VARNEY (Policeman, P 333). I remember Beard speaking to me on the morning of 31st July — I went by myself to 16, Manor-place, Walworth, about 6 o’clock — I went into the house and went up stairs on to the second floor landing — when I went up there I saw three dead bodies on the landing; the first was a boy about 10 or 11 years old; the next was a female lying on her face; and another female a little to the left of her — the prisoner came to the door; he said, “Oh! policeman, here is a sight; what shall I do?” — he made a step to come towards me on the landing — he was standing at the back room door when he said that — he was stepping out on to the landing, and I said,” Go back into the room and put on your clothes” — he was not dressed; he was in his night-shirt; I noticed the right sleeve of the shirt was torn, and the wristband was hanging on his hand — I noticed that when he was standing at the door — the wristband appeared to hang on the back of his hand — the inspector arrived just then — I then left the prisoner with him and went into the front room — the prisoner did not say anything to me before the inspector came, further than what I have stated; he said his mother had done all this — he said that at the time that he said “Here is a sight; what shall I do?” he said, “My mother has done all this;” and when in the back room he said, “I struck my mother, but it was in self-defence, and would not you have done the same? that is law.” Crosi-examined. Q. You told him to go into his room and dress himself? A. Yes — at that time he was only in his shirt — I am sure I saw the wristband hanging down — after my coming into the front room he took off his shirt to put another one on, and at that time I missed the wristband of it; I could not find it anywhere — I am quite sure it was on when I saw him first — I have the shirt here. JAMES DANN (Police Inspector, P). Shortly before 6 o’clock on the morning of 31st July I heard of what had taken place at Manor-place — I went to the house accompanied by a constable of the name of Lack — I went up the stall’s — I saw the prisoner standing on the landing on the second floor — we were both on the landing — he said, “This is my mother’s doing; she came to the bedside where my brother and I were sleeping; killed him, and made a stab at me, and I in my own defence wrenched the knife from her hand and killed her, if she is dead” — upon that, the constable Lack, pointing to the body of the young woman, said, “Was this young woman lying here when you killed your mother?” — the prisoner hesitated a little and then said, “I don’t know” — at that time there were three bodies on the landing — the boy, Thomas Neale Youngman, was lying on his back — his head was close to the edge of the top stair — his feet were in a direction away from the stairs; towards the wall of the house; the opposite wall — he was in his night-shirt — the right leg was a little drawn up — there was a great deal of blood where the body of the boy was lying — I then observed the position of the young woman, Mary Streeter — she was lying on the landing with her head inside the back room door — I should say that her head was about a foot or thirteen inches inside the doorway — her feet were towards the front room door — the body wag lying on the right side — she was in her night-dress — there was nothing on her feet; no slippers — there was a great deal of blood near where her head was lying — the blood had flowed from near her head under the door of the back room and under the foot of the bed in the back room; the Stream was about four feet six or seven inches in length — the breadth at the commencement was about fifteen inches, at the termination about six or seven — I then observed the body of the elder woman, Elizabeth Youngman — she was lying on the landing with her face downwards; on her stomach — her face was close to the thighs of the young woman; resting on the floor — the right shoulder of the elder woman rested on the legs of the young woman — the feet of Mrs. Youngman were inside the front room door — she was also in her night-dress; without slippers, or steckings, or anything on her feet — I observed a great deal of blood where she was lying — most of it was close to her head and throat; it had spread some distance; several inches away from her — there was a pool of blood where she was lying; where her bead was — I went into the front room and there saw the body of the youngest child — it was on a bed in the front room, outside the bed-clothes, quite dead — he was in his nightdress — he was lying move on the right side than any other position — the feet were towards the head of the bed; and the head towards the foot — there was a great deal of blood on the bed — it had soaked through the counterpane, blanket, and sheet; and into the bed — the blood was just underneath where the child was lying; underneath the child’s neck and shoulders — I observed the floor of that room — there was not any pool of blood anywhere on the floor in that room — I saw marks of blood in the room — some had been trodden into the room with a naked foot — the footmark was sufficiently distinct for me to be able to speak of its size — it appeared to be the foot of a grown-up person — I saw two footmarks of blood; both in the same direction — I mean that I saw two footsteps which had imprints of blood, which had left the marks of blood, both going in the same direction, from the door towards the bed where the child was lying — there was no smear of blood along the floor of that room — there was no other blood in the bed except that which I have mentioned as being underneath the head and shoulders of the child, and that which had soaked through the clothes — I examined the bed in the back room — there was an appearance of blood about that bed — there wen three or four drops of blood on the sheet, and some smears of blood on the sheet — it appeared to have been wiped off a person’s hands — there was no pool of blood about that bed — there was some blood that had run from the door under the foot of the bed, and there was some blood that bad been trampled about the floor of the room; but no pool of blood in any part — when I first came to the house the prisoner was not dressed; he was in his night-shirt — his bands and feet were bloody; his night-shirt was very much stained with blood also — I did not see any wound about any part of his person — I did not examine him particularly, but I stripped him, and I did not see any wound — I saw the weapon after it was found — the prisoner was taken into custody — I did not see any cut on him when he was taken into custody; he did not complain of any — on the evening of the same day I went down to Wadhurst, to the residence of Mr. Streeter the father of the deceased — I received from Mr. Streeter a number of letters, which I have here — I have fifteen in all — six of these letters were read before the Magistrate — these (produced) are the six given in evidence, and these (produced) are the nine — they are all here — on my return to town I saw a box at the police-station, in the possession of Superintendent Payne — I opened that box with a key which I found in the prisoner’s possession — I there found the paper which I now produce — it is a policy of assurance — I have a piece of the guard of the knife which has been produced — the prisoners brother John gave it to me. Cross-examined. Q. You have told us there were two footmarks leading into the front room? A. Two — the first I should say was about two feet inside the door; that is, as near as I can remember — the second was about two feet six inches further on; towards the bed — one was the right, and the other was the left foot — there were no more footsteps round the bed — there was too much blood just at the landing outside between the two doors, to trace any footmark there — when the prisoner had the conversation with Lack, myself, Lack, and Varney were present — when the question was put to him he was a little confused — he was not so all through — he was very little excited; not at all — he appeared confused when Lack put the question — he hesitated, as I have said — he was not confused during any other part of the time — he appeared to be quite collected. DAVID LACK (Policeman, P 132). On the morning of 31st July I went with Mr. Dann to 16, Manor-place, Walworth, a few minutes before 6 — I saw three bodies lying on the second landing — I found this knife — it was lying just between the two females; it was open as it is now, with the point and a piece of the guard broken off, and smeared with blood just the same as it is now — I picked it up — I saw the prisoner at this time — he spoke to me first — he pulled his right shirt-sleeve up and said, “Here is a job; my mother has done all this” — I said, “Where is your mother?” he pointed down to the elder female and said, “There she lies; I struck her in my own defence” — I said, “Was this young female lying here when you struck your mother?” — he hesitated for a moment and then said, “I do not know.” EDMUND PAYNE. I am superintendent of the P division of police — I obtained the box which was opened by inspector Dann at the house, 16, Manor- place — I found it in the back room on the top floor — I directed its removal to my office and went with it — when the prisoner was brought to the police-station on the morning of 31st July, I spoke to him about the knife which has been produced here — I said, “Do you know anything about that knife?” — Lack the constable had just shown the knife to me; I think that was in the presence of the prisoner — the prisoner’s reply was, “It is my knife; it is what I had to cut my bread and cheese with” — I think I asked how long he had had it, and he said, “A few days,” or “about a fortnight” — I did not expect at that time to be called as a witness, and I do not recollect distinctly whether it was in reply to me or of his own accord, but he said he had had it in his possession a few days or nearly a fortnight — I believe he used both expressions; first, “a few days,” and I believe he afterwards said, “Nearly a fortnight.” JOHN VARNEY (re-examined). When I saw the prisoner on that morning at the house in Manor-place, I asked him where the young woman slept the previous night, and he said, “In the front room” — he said she had slept with his mother and his little brother, and the elder boy slept with himself in the back room WILLIAM BARNARD BODDY. I am a surgeon, and practise at 3, Savillerow, Walworth — on the morning of Tuesday, 31st July, I was called to go to the house 16, Manor-place — that was, I should think, about 6 o’clock — Beard, the carpenter, the man who lives in the second floor, came to me — I went to the house immediately — I there found the bodies of four persons, who were dead — three were on the landing and the body of the little boy was on the bed in the front room — the bodies were all quite warm; as warm as if they had been alive; from animal heat — I examined the body of the young woman, Mary Wells Streeter, which was lying on the landing — I found a stab over her left breast which penetrated the cavity of the chest — there was also a wound on the throat; it was literally cut from ear to ear — that had been done with a very sharp and very strong instrument — the carotid artery and jugular vein on each side were divided; making a clean sweep through everything, down to the cervical vertebrae or bones of the neck — the wound had severed the windpipe and the gullet — such a wound would, I think, have caused instantaneous death; the cutting through the windpipe and the gullet would prevent a person from calling out; it would be quite impossible for a person to call out with such a wound — I think it must have required a strong arm to have inflicted that wound. COURT. Q. That must, of course, depend upon the instrument? A. It would depend upon the instrument. MR. CLERK. Q. What sort of person was the deceased? A. A young woman in good animal condition, I think — in no way emaciated, but healthy — she was anything but weak; I think she was healthy and strong — I then examined the body of the elder woman; she had three stabs altogether, two over the left shoulder-blade, one over the sternum or breast- bone, and a deep cut or stab behind the left side of the neck, which divided the carotid artery and jugular vein on the left side down to the cervical vertebra — that wound would have caused almost immediate death, perhaps not so instantaneous as with the other, who had her throat cut — I should not think it possible that the wounds either upon the young woman or the elder woman could have been inflicted by themselves, particularly upon the elder woman; it would be an impossibility — the elder woman seemed to be a person in tolerably good health, not particularly bulky or muscular, but tolerably healthy, I thought — she was not particularly strong certainly, rather inclined to be stout than thin — I did not discover any injury about the hands of either of the women — I then examined the body of the younger boy, Charles, who was lying on the bed in the front room — I discovered one wound over the chest-bone, and two small incised cuts on the left upper arm, and there was one deep plunging cut or stab through the back of the neck, which divided the bones of the neck and cut right through the spinal cord — that wpund would have caused immediate death — a part of the gullet and windpipe was likewise wounded in the sweep of the knife; that would have quite prevented the child from crying out — I then examined the body of the elder boy, which was lying on the stairs; he had two cuts, one on the right angle of the lower lip, and one cut all round the throat, merely dividing the cutis, not the skin positively, but the small enveloping membrane — there were six stabs altogether, one on the right side of the neck and half way between the ear and the right shoulder, one over the left breast, another over the left breast about an inch and a half below the former, and more to the left side, and three stabs on the left side over the ribs — the three first fingers of the right hand at the extremities were cut through to the bone; the third finger of the left hand was likewise cut at its extremity quite into the bone — those were all the wounds — the one that entered the chest was the cause of death — there wore two wounds on the chest; both were fatal wounds; one entered the pericardium, the enveloping membrane of the heart, that would be necessarily fatal, the other penetrated the lungs — both wounds entered the lungs, the top as well as the bottom plunge, and both would be fatal — if the child had grasped a sharp instrument, the hands would have presented exactly the appearance that I discovered, if the weapon had been drawn through the hands — I see the knife that has been produced; the marks I saw were just such as I should have expected to find from such an instrument — all the wounds upon all the four bodies were inflicted with a sharp instrument; it must have been a very sharp, powerful instrument — I have seen this knife before; the point of it is broken — I apprehend that it was originally a sharp pointed instrument; such an instrument as that, if the point had been sharp, might have inflicted all the wounds I saw upon all the bodies — there was no mark upon any of the bodies of a struggle having taken place during life, except upon that of the child that was lying near the stairs; his were the only hands that were wounded. Cross-examined, Q. If I understand you rightly the mother had one wound in the chest? A. Yes — if that wound had been inflicted first I think she would possibly have screamed; I think it is more than probable she would — she had four wounds — I think the mischief that was product on the boy’s hand was from an attempt in struggling to relieve himself from some injury that was being inflicted upon him; the cuts presented the appearance as if they were inflicted when struggling with some person, putting his hands up to prevent his throat being cut — if those wounds on the boy had been inflicted with great rapidity he would have died almost immediately — the two in the chest would have caused nearly instant death — I think he might have had time to scream out; death would not have followed so rapidly as that; there would have been some moments between the infliction of the wound and death — I have had very little experience in cases of cancer of the womb — I have never known it to create delirium; it produces a great deal of emaciation if it is of long continuance — it is an extremely painful disease — I should not think the pain would affect the brain; it might occasionally, but not as a general rule — it is not taken as a symptom or consequence of disease of the womb — supposing that Mrs. Youngman had been in a state of delirium I think she was strong enough to have inflicted these blows. MR. CLERK. Q. Had there been an attempt to cut the throat of the boy that was lying on the stairs? A. Yes. COURT. Q. That was the wound on the throat you have described? A. Yes, the superficial cut — that led me to suppose that there had been an attempt to cut the throat; the mark was very defined all round the throat — I did not distinguish much difference as to size and bulk between Mrs. Youngman and Mary Streeter; the elder woman was the fatter of the two I think — there was no appearance whatever of any struggle on the part of Mary Streeter. MARY ANN WOOTTON. I am in the service of Dr. Duncan, of Henriettastreet, Covent-garden — I know the prisoner; he was there a week before me — he left on 16th July last — he had been in Dr. Duncan’s service three months, I believe; during that time I have seen him writing frequently — he used to write letters and poetry — the date of the letter I am looking at is the 21st June; I believe it is the prisoner’s handwriting — this one of 18th Juue is his writing, and this of the 21st — I believe this letter of 13th July is in his handwriting; also these two on 16th, and this one of the 19th — to the best of my belief this one without a date is in his haudwriting — this letter of 21st is his, and also the one of the 28th. JAMES ANDREW DUNCAN. I am a physician, residing at Henrietta-street, Covent-garden — the prisoner was in my service as a footman; he came to me on 18th April last, and quitted on 16 th July — I was in the habit of seeing him frequently; it was the greater part of his duty to wait on me. Cross-examined. Q. Have you had any experience in cases of cancer? A. Yes: cancer in the womb is a most painful disease; it generally makes a patient very irritable — I should not set down delirium as one of its symptoms; it may come up as an accidental symptom — if there has been mania in a family and a disease is acting upon a person, it would be more likely to bring it on — I know a mania, described as homicidal mania, especially among women — one of the great features of that mania, is, that persons afflicted by it, most frequently attack those to whom they have the greatest affection — it generally occurs after confinement, where the mother, although she has the greatest affection for her child, cannot resist destroying it — I have read Dr. Taylor’s work on homicidal mania — I agree with him when he says that individuals are liable to be seized by a sudden impulse, when they will destroy persons to whom they are most strongly attached; but it is impossible to define what madness is; that is to say a person may have reason and know the wickedness of what he is going to commit, but yet be unable to resist the animal part of the functions, of the brain. MR. CLERE. Q. Does cancer in the womb, where it exists, produce emaciation of the body? A. Yes; that is how the patient dies, from being completely worn out. COURT. Q. Supposing a person not to be emaciated, does that indicate anything with respect to the state of the disease? A. That would show it was merely beginning, not advanced; that the disease had made but little progress — it might or it might not be attended with pain, then it would not necessarily follow the patient would be made more irritable — in my judgment if the disease had not got so far as to emaciate the patient, I don’t think the pain would be such as to bring on delirium — the patient might, possibly have taken opium as a remedy for it, which would perhaps cause it. EDWARD SPICE. I keep the Green Dragon public-house, Bermondsey-street, in the Borough — I knew the deceased Mary Streeter — on Monday, 23d July last, she came to my house on a visit; she came with the prisoner — she came in the afternoon and stayed there all night — on the next day, the 20th, the prisoner came, as near as I can recollect, about half-past 6 in the morning — Mary Streeter stayed four days at my house on a visit — she was an old friend of mine; I and her father Were brought up together — after partaking of breakfast on that morning, they went away together and returned again about 9 o’clock in the evening — he came down at half-past 5 the next morning — it rained on that day, and they stopped till 9 o’clock — on Thursday morning I called her out at 5 o’clock, and the prisoner came in about five minutes past 5 — I had some conversation with him about the girl — I spoke to her first in the tap-room — I saw what I did not like in the man, and said to her in his presence, “Mary, I would sooner see you take a rope and hang yourself in the skittle ground, than marry a man like that” — I said to the prisoner, “What means have you got to support my girl? “I called her my girl — he said, “I am independent” — I said, “What is your independency, was it left by a legacy? have you got anything to show me, any paper?” — his reply was, “In houses” — I then asked him if they were in the country or London? “Various places in London — he said — I said, “Well, you must be a rich man,” and said to deceased, “Now, Mary, take my advice, give him a total denial, have no more to do with him; go and seat yourself in my bar parlour, and I will take you home safe to your father” — the prisoner made no remark on that — he said he intended to take her either to Hastings or Brighton; I think it was Hastings he said. Cross-examined. Q. He did not say to reside there? A. He said he was going to take lodgings there to keep her independent — I said, You must have a good income to support a young woman like this” — he said, he was a retired tailor — I did not know anything about his being a valet. SAMUEL WELLS STREETER. I am a farmer in Essex — the deceased young woman was my daughter — the prisoner came to my house on Sunday, 8th July last, and stayed there one night; I had never seen him before — my daughter had never mentioned to me that he was paying his addresses to her — the prisoner had not mentioned it to me — when Inspector Dann came down to my house I gave him some letters that were locked up in my daughter’s writing-desk. Cross-examined. Q. I believe you had the misfortune to lose another of your daughters some time before? A. Yes; in May last — she was not married, she died of consumption — this girl had not been subject to any disease of the chest or anything of that kind. THOMAS TANNER. I am clerk in the office of the Argus Insurance Company — on 19th July last I saw the prisoner at that office (he had had a form previously) — he brought a form of application with him; I have it here (produced) — this is one of the forms issued by our office; the name of William Godfrey Youngman was signed in my presence by the prisoner — he wrote the answer to question No. 18, it is “William Godfrey Youngman, 16, Manor Place, Newington, London, retired from the business of a tailor” — that is written opposite the question “Name and place of residence” — before he signed it I asked him what he was — he said he was no trade — he came again on the following day, the 24th, accompanied by a young woman — she was examined by the medical officer, and a policy on her life was prepared — that is the policy (produced) — there is no attesting witness; that is the policy that was effected on that day — the premium was paid on 25th, 10s. 1d. for three months — the premiums are according to the wish of the parties; if they wish they can pay quarterly or half-yearly — in this case the prisoner expressed a wish to pay quarterly — I gave a receipt for the premium; I have it here, this is the first receipt — I believe the young woman paid the money. (The following letters from the prisoner to the deceased were read; the first was dated 18th June, from Henrietta-street, Covent-garden; it contained some allusions to his long silence, and expressed a desire to renew his former intimacy with the deceased; the second was dated 21st June, acknowledging a reply to his first letter, and expressing a wish to see her when she came to town. Editor’s note: Spelling errors in these letters are italicized.) “8, Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, July 13th, 1860. “My dearest Mary. — This comes with my kindest love to you, trusting you are well and happy; myself I am pretty well in health. Now, come to London, dear girl, on Monday next, the 23d, and stay till Mrs. Walker leaves her situation, then go back home again and come up again on Friday morning, 10th August, and I will come on 10th Augnst to meet you, and shall stay at the lodgings I shall take for you and myself. I shall engage furnished lodgings for a week only, when I shall be able to settle all things and go down to your father and stay with him a day or two. You can lodge somewhere on the Friday you come up, and I, at our lodgings, so be ready for Saturday morning, when we will be married at St. Martin’s, Charing Cross, on Saturday, August 11th next; I have published the banns of our marriage, last Wednesday, and it will be asked in church on Sunday next, and Sunday, 29th, for the third time. I gave warning to leave on Wednesday hist, 11th, can leave on 10th ef next mouth having a day’s wages less; now you will have quite money enough, my dear, till after we are married, when I shall have plenty, but not till then; but you need only wear your black clothes, my dear girl, at our wedding. I shall only wear black things and have no white gloves at all dearest; our coachman will stand as father for you, and I shall not require a bridesmaid unless you like, if so, our housemaid will come if she can, and we will go after we are married to Kew Gardens or somewhere, and breakfast before we are married, by ourselves. I think I want to assure your life when you come up on Monday week; it will be settled in the time you are here, two or three days; bring all your things when you come on 10th August; say to your mother you are going to stay with my Mends a fortnight and then look for a situation in the time. After we are married you can have all you wish for, so you will have enough money for the present time, as you do not want to boy anything; all the clothes you have will do for the present, till we are married, and on Wednesday, after we are man and wife for life, I shall take money enough to supply all your wants and wishes, so rest happy till then, my dearest girl. I will expect to see youthen in London on Monday week, to assure your life and buy you the wedding-ring to give you to keep till the day 1 put it on your finger; the 11th August next must be the day, I cannot wait another day longer than that my dearest girl Buy nothing except you want it very much indeed, as I will buy you all you want the Wednesday after we are married on a certainty, but at the same time remember all I have told you. I am now awaiting to hear from you again; say you will do as I write by return of post — I am, dearest Mary, your ever affectionate lover, W. G. YOUNGMAN. — Kind respects to all friends, remember, do not forget what I have said; be careful keep all your letters looked up, so your mother and no one can see them, and bring them when you come here.” “8, Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, July 16th, 1860. “My beloved Polly. — I received your kind and most welcome letter this morning, and was glad to hear you were enjoying good health, myself I am pretty well in health, bnt am anxious to see you again; indeed I long for the 23d, Monday, to come to see you. I suppose you will stay as you said before with Mrs. Walker, at Gloucester-terrace, till she leaves, which you said would be on 26th of this month, that would be on Thursday week, so you could stay three or four days there, and I shall be, of course, there with you once a day at least, I have made up my mind to get away from here this week, so I shall be with you next week when you come. Since I gave notice to leave here last Wednesday, our people have spoken to me in such a manner that has not suited me, and I am certain to give Mrs. Duncan a good talking to next time she goes on at me again, when I hope the Doctor will tell me to go at once, has then that is what I want, when I shall be paid my wages the same up to 11th August, when I shall go to my brother’s and be able to do many things I want to do before we are married, dearest girl. I know I shall have a job to get a holiday when I want it if I stay here longer than this week, so I am in hopes of getting off from here this week, to-day; tonight I want Mrs. Duncan or the Doctor to talk to me, then I shall he ready to talk to them, and so be sent off. You understand, I am a little sharp in this. Now, my dearest Polly, I have a form to be filled up to take to the Life Assurance Company’s office, that his, to answer all the written questions as asked on the printed forms, which is necessary should be done first. I know your name and address, but your occupation, I shall say you have (none) — you understand? But I want to know your place of birth, and date, and your certificate of birth is required to be taken to the office, just to let them see your right age; then, of course, I shall say single, and a spinster; then I want to know your father’s and mother’s ages, and also to know if you have ever been abroad; if so, where, and for what period of time; also, have you had the small-pox, or have you been vaccinated; have you ever had the gout, or spitting of blood, asthma, rupture, convulsions, fits of insanity, vertigo, habitual cough, disease of the lungs, complaint of the liver, or any other disease which tends to the shortening of life; let me know this, but I can say what I like, or you like, has any of these complaints, of corse, would be against your having your life assured. Then it’s asked, has any member of the family died of consumption; I think you said your sister died of that dreadful complaint; but I must say no to that answer. Then they want to know the name and residence of your medical attendant; you could say you had none, to that question; but the name and residence of an intimate friend is required to be referred to for general information, that is to say, they must have some one who knows you to write to, to ask they how long they have known you and your family, and are they healthy, and his your health been good, and his it so now, and to ask if any member of the family have died of any bad disorder, such as I have said; and you must tell the friend, whoever you get to do this for you, to make it out in the best manner he or she can, has you will also do; and let them say they are not a near relation, only a friend, if ever you are. You understand that, dearest girl, has all must be done in the best possible manner to have them assure your life, has they would not take you if they thought you were unhealthy, or any of your family had died of anything bad, or where any of them unhealthy, that would be, of corse, against it, so, when they write to your friend, let them give a good letter to them — he sure and manage that with them, and to answer the letter they send by return of post; so, when you come up on Monday next, all you will have to do will be to go with me to the Assurance Office, near the Bank of England, city, and see the, medical man there, then I can give you the money to pay the first premium upon your life, which will not be a large sum to assure 100l. in case you should die any death, which sum would be of use to your children or me, in that case, dearest girl; but it his a very good thing to do, and the duty of every mother, or wife, or father to assure their lives, if they can but spare a little to pay every quarter; see what distress often arises from friends not leaving any thing to their relations or dear friends when they die! You know the benefit of all this, therefore you will, of corse, just send me the information I require of you, that I may take and fill up the form to take to the office, so they can write to your friend has I tell you. Write has soon has you can, I am anxious to get on with it before you come next Monday to London. Now, I am, with love ever to you, your loving, affectiouate, WILLIAM GODFREY YOUNGMAN. — My kindest remembrance to your friends, and quick answer I hope to have, my most beloved girl; I am indeed anxious to get all these things settled, and look forward for the happy day when you will be mine for life. Adieu, dearest.” “16, Manor-place, Newington, London, S. “My most beloved Mary. — I received your affectionate note this morning, but I must say I am very much hurt to find you state in your note that you do not wish to have your life assured; why, my dearest girl, why do you alter your mind? I have been to the office, have told them to write to your friend, Mrs. James Bone, for the information they require, they did so yesterday, and expect her to send them answer by return of post; and I told them you would come with me on Monday for the policy, so let Mrs. James Bone write to them has they wish, and that you will go with me and assure your life on Monday next has you said you would before. Why can you go from your word? You will never lose anything by assuring your life; will not die any sooner, my dear girl And as regards your father and mother not liken you to do so, you can do has you like without them preventing. Now, say no more to them about it, but come and do has I wish you to do. I shall, indeed, never forgive you if you do not, has I, wish you to do so for a particular purpose, which I will tell you of. I will always pay for it, of corse, and you will never lose anything by it. I intend to get a house for you and myself near or in Brighton next week, as it will, of corse, be foolish for me to go there without you can go with me, even after you have assured your life; but if you will not do this, and will rather mind what your friends say to you about assuring your life, why I cannot think you would love me has I wish you would. You will never find any one to love you so again, and would you break my heart aud not do has I wish you in this little thing? Why do you not do has you said? Can you cease to love me? Will you now refuse to do this which is for the good of those you leave behind when you should DIE? Surely, my dearest girl, you will still love me and do this, or how can I think you do love me if you refuse? no, I cannot believe you love me. Now, my dearest girl, I have nearly settled the assurance, I have left my situation, I have look for a house for us to live in, and with your consent I have published the bans of our marriage, and you have consented to be mine next Monday week. Now, can you break my heart and act like-this? do has I tell you, dearest girl, and I will do anything you wish to be done, only do has you have agreed to do, let me assure your life on Monday next, and be mine own dear wife the following Monday has you promised me in your letter, and every thing you wish for shall be yours. I shall have money enough to supply more than our wants. Next Wednesday or Thursday come and be mine, and we will have all this settled, and we will go down and see all your friends in a few days after things are Bettled. I want you to go to Brighton to get a house, where I wish to live with you, my dearest Polly. Do you love me still 1 if so, do as I wish and keep your promise; be sure and bring the certificate of your birth with you on Monday, and let Mrs. James Bone answer the letter to the Assurance Company to-day, if she has not done so yesterday, so they will get answer on Monday morning before you and I go there. They will not keep you a moment, ray dear girl, only be mine and do this and be happy. You cannot do wrong in this, you will never have cause to regret; pray do has I wish, come and do this on Monday; come, come to me, and be mine, you will never want for a thing while you live, believe me. I cannot but be hurt, hurt, indeed, if you do not comply with my request; do make me happy, do this, it will be all for your good. Write again so I can have a letter on Monday before you come up. Oh, my dearest girl, I know you will not break my heart, I that love you more than life; be mine and never will you want for anything, I swear; but say not a word to your friends till we are married, then they shall be made glad, and we will have a jolly day near home; they will not be sorry for your having me, one that make a lady of you soon, and make you happy for life; one who loves you more thau his life, and can you not do has he wished you to do I say yes, dearest Mary. — I am,-with love to you, hoping you are well and happy, your ever affectionate lover, and ever more I am your best Friend, believe me; but I am hurt, pray heal me, say you will do has I wish, my dearest girl, I am your dearest W. G. YOUNGMAN.” “16, Manor Place, Newington, July 19, 1860. “My most beloved Mary. — I received your kind and most welcome letter this morning about 11 o’clock; I was expecting to get it by 8 o’clock, but you put Boro’ in the address too much, so it was sent to the Boro’ first, which caused it to be late; put the address only as above, dearest girl. I have filled up the paper now and took it to the Life Assurance Office, aud they will write to Mrs. James Bone to-day to get answer on Saturday, so you can go with me to the office before 2 o’clock on Monday; when you come up you will arrive in London about half-past 9 o’clock on Monday morning, that was the time I arrived last Monday week. Do not, my dearest girl, say anything to your mother about what you are going to do, only say you are coming to see me and stay with me and my friends till you get a situation here in London; and I think you had better not bring all your things, only the most particular ones, the best you has. You will not want many things till we are married, has you will have some made or bought for you by me before we are married, but bring a few of your best things only, and, above all things, bring all your letters and papers, leave nothing of importance behind, has all little things you have I want to see, And I shall, of corse, go to Brighton for a time after we are married, if not before; but I shall see you on Monday morning. You must bring the certificate of your birth with you, has it must be taken to the office on Monday next, before the quarter’s premium is paid, aud I wish it to be done nest Monday morning. I will take lodgings for you and me when you come up on Monday. You need not go to Mrs. Walker’s at all; keep with me and I will manage it all comfortable enough for you; don’t bring all your things, you understand, and only the best bring with you, and if you can borrow a little money of your father, do so for a few days when I can give it you to send him back, you understand, has money is short with me till about this day week, Thursday. But I want to see you, dearest, and get your life assured, and get many things settled before then; and we will both go down and see your father and mother and friends, and surprise them, in about a week or eight days after we are married; but I am now, even now, has much has husband to you, dear girl, do has I tell you, and I am, with love, ever and ever to you. Do not forget to bring your birth certificate, as you cannot assure your life without it. I hope you will let me have answer by return of post, my most beloved girl, and one on Monday as well, to meet you at the station, London Bridge on Monday. I am your dear and most affectionate, W. G. YOUNGMAN.” — Kind remembrance to your frieuds. You might bring a little of your home-made butter, and some things with you, only do not say I told you, you understand, it will be for your good, my dearest girl, I am now waiting to see you. “16, Manor Place, London, July 21, 1860. My dearest Mary. — I received your letter this morning. I am very much hurt to find you say you will not have your life assured, after I have troubled, and you had promised me faithfully to have it done, and to be my own dear wife on Monday next, but Tuesday will do has well has Monday, my dear girl, only your father, and mother, or any one must not know it. You promised me faithfully, over and over again, and I expect you will keep your promise that you would be mine, and that your frieuds would not know it till we were married. But now, dearest Mary, if you will only let Mrs. James Bone write to the Assurance Office at once, and go with me to have your life assured on Monday morning next, I will settle with you, and after that his done your friends may know that we are going to be married. I will arrange all things, so you and myself can go down to your house, if possible, the same day we are married, so you need not bring any of your things up with you. Keep to your promise, my dear girl, and your friends shall know we are married the same day that we are, next Tuesday week, but I must have you first assure your life, has I have a great wish for you to do so, and cannot believe you love me unless you do, so cannot certainly think you do love me now. I sent this in haste that Mrs. James Bone may have time to write to them to-day, so the letter will get in London on Monday morning, first post, if not, and you come, bring the letter with you, and the certificate of your birth. Now, I am in earnest; I am keeping my word; you have promised me, now if you love me do this. I am, your affectionate lover, ever till death, WILLIAM GODFREY YOUNGMAN — For your own sake, dearest girl, do has I say. Adieu.” “16, Manor Place, Newington, Saturday night, July 28th, 1860, My beloved Polly. — I have posted one letter to you this afternoon, but I find I shall not have to go to Brighton to-morrow, as X have had a letter from them with what I wanted inside of it; so, my dear girl, I have quite settled my business now, and I am quite ready to see you now, therefore I send this letter to you. I will take this to London Bridge station to-morrow morning, by a quarter past 6 o’clock, and get the guard to take it to Wadhurst station, to give it to the porter there, who will get a man to take it to your place. I can only give the guard something, so you can give the man who brings this a small sum. I shall expect to see you, my dearest girl, on Monday morning, by the first train. I will await your coming at London Bridge station. I know the time the train arrives, a quarter to ten o’clock. I have promised to go to my uncle’s to-morrow, so I cannot come down, but I will go back home with you on Monday night, or first thing Tuesday, so return here again Tuesday night to be ready to go anywhere on Wednesday; but you know all I have told you, and I now expect you will come up on Monday morning, when I shall be able to manage things has I wish to do, Excuse more, my dearest Mary. I shall now go to bed to be up early in the morning to take this letter. Bring or bum all your letters, my dear girl; do not forget, and, with kind love to you and respects to all, I now sum up, waiting to see you Monday morning, a quarter to 10 o’clock. Believe me ever your loving, affectionate, WILLIAM GODFREY YOUNGMAN. — You know all I have told you, therefore come, dearest girl; come, I am anxious now to see you. Adieu for the present.” The form of proposal was then put in, and the answer to question 13 “Has any member of your family died of consumption?” was “No” — The policy of assurance was also put in, it was for 100l. effected by William Godfrey Youngman, of 16, Manor-place, Newington, retired tailor, on the life of Mary Wells Streeter, of Hunter’s hall, Wadhurst, Sussex, commencing on 25th July, and renewable quarterly. The receipt for the first quarter’s premium 10s. 1d. was produced and read. GUILTY — DEATH THE END