[-63-]
CHAPTER VII
IN THE LOWER COURTS
(1895)
THERE is very little cause for complaint of the "law's
delay" nowadays in the English courts - either the higher courts or the
lower, to which the appeals of the common people, chiefly, are made, and in
which they constitute the majority of those who are arraigned for misdemeanors.
The impartiality of the administration of justice, while not infallible even
here, is at any rate very general. Being human, and therefore not faultless,
there are occasions, even in English courts, where justice miscarries, and where
influence intervenes to avert punishment or to secure a mitigation of the
sentence; the Maybrick case, the sentence and subsequent liberation of Dr.
Jameson, being two notable instances of this. Nevertheless, it must be
acknowledged that if justice is not to be had in the English courts, it is not
to be obtained anywhere. When the criminal is a man of high station he has been
known to receive mysterious information of his threatened arrest which gave him
opportunity to flee the country; but this departure was equivalent to perpetual
banishment. The indictment hangs over his head so long as he lives, and should
he set his foot upon English soil, after his name has once been entered upon the
criminal records, his arrest is swift and certain. The cities of Europe have
many such fugitives, dragging out their lives in exile, and with no hope that a
friendly revolution or relaxation of police vigilance or any sort of political
influence will enable [-64-] them to return finally
to their native land; for which they never cease to long. In cases coming within
the provisions of extradition the same vigilance is apparent, and with it, a
tirelessness that nothing can baffle or discourage. The search for Jabez
Balfour, the absconding and embezzling head of the Liberator Company, is an
illustration of this determined effort to bring the criminal to justice.
There is little of the reprehensible abuse of rejecting
jurors upon any and every trivial ground, which in the United States interrupts
the progress of trials, prolonging them outrageously, for days and even weeks.
The professional juror, the man who haunts the courts that he may be summoned
for jury service, apparently does not exist in England. Judges are chosen
because of their fitness for office-an appointment in which politics does not
figure-and the office is held during good behavior for life, or until the
incumbent himself, for any reason sees fit to resign.
The office of justice of the peace has been brought into
contempt everywhere in the United States by the charlatans that have filled it
and have thrived upon what they call "perquisites;" in Great Britain
the position is one of honor and responsibility, and the man who holds it so
respects his dignity that he seldom or never fails to avail himself of the
"J. P.", which he scrupulously appends to his signature.
An incident occurred, soon after my arrival in London, which
sufficiently illustrates the promptness with which the law intervenes for the
protection of society. A criminal who had been a soldier in the British army in
India, in a fit of jealousy quarrelled with an unfortunate woman who refused to
give him a shilling for which he had asked her, and he murdered her in the most
brutal manner. There were no mitigating circumstances, and while the man was
given every opportunity in the way of defense, [-65-]
he was found guilty of murder and condemned to death. The sentence was carried
out in less than six weeks after the murder had been committed. Equal dispatch
was shown in a subsequent case. A poor old man, who lived alone in his house at
Musgrove Hill, was found one morning lying in the kitchen with his skull
crushed. He was a retired tradesman, and it was believed that he had a
considerable sum of money concealed on the premises and when the murder was
discovered it had disappeared. In their search the police found a child's toy
lantern with a wick of flannelette. Two well known criminals, who had been
recently released from prison were discovered missing from their homes in the
East End, their families being unusually well supplied with money. A comparison
of the lantern wick with a little gown worn by a child of one of the men proved
to be a sufficient clue. The murderers were pursued and captured, with only a
few pence remaining in their pockets of several hundred pounds, which it was
known they had secured. One of them confessed, narrowly escaping being murdered
by his accomplice who assaulted him savagely upon the witness stand. These two
men were also given the fullest hearing, but they were executed within a very
few months after the commission of their crime.
There is a great class of sentimentalists - who oppose
capital punishment and advocate imprisonment for life as a substitute. In the
United States where the pardoning power is vested in the Governor, individually,
upon whom enormous pressure is consequently brought to bear, and where this
peculiar function becomes involved in politics, as in the case of the Chicago
anarchists, imprisonment for life may become the merest travesty of justice.
There are men who have been so sentenced and have died within prison walls, but
it goes without saying that at least one-fourth of these remained in prison
because they [-66-] were unable to command social
or political influence to secure pardon. Considering its enormously over-crowded
population murders are amazingly infrequent in Great Britain, and it cannot be
denied that the inevitable consequence of taking life, the unerring retribution
that overtakes the murderer, has been effective in bringing about this state of
affairs. The admirable government, the respect for the law and the wholesome
fear of its penalties, among the would-be criminal classes, are reflected in
public safety, in a degree of security for life and property that does not exist
in the same measure outside of the United Kingdom.
There is no extravagant multiplication of statutes; it is not
believed that mere law-making will promote order or abate evil; it is realized
that disregard of a single law tends to the general contempt for all law, and
consequently there is a disposition to enforce those already existent, rather
than encourage the eternal amendment of the old and the enactment of new laws.
When the death sentence is passed the condemned man is
virtually dead to the world; there are no visits of sympathy and condolence, and
no presentation of bouquets by morbid women. While his health and comfort are
humanely regarded, he passes virtually beyond the pale of existence, and the
sentence of the court is carried out with due respect for decency and order. It
cannot be denied, however, that, except in the most aggravated and unmistakable
cases, there is a growing reluctance to enforce the death penalty which the
Judge still pronounces wearing his black cap; it is an inevitable reaction from
the days of legal slaughter, when murder and sheep-stealing were punished by a
common penalty.
At the same time, with all its dignity and its almost
universal justice, one occasionally perceives in the lower courts - the justice
courts largely - that peculiar incon-[-67-]sistent
freedom and familiarity which seem to pervade all English institutions, social,
civil and religious. It may be the remnant of strange, half-sentimental custom,
vested in tradition, whose origin has been well-nigh forgotten, but which
furnishes tenable ground for surviving exceptions to ordinary rules.
The most singular illustration of this is the amount of
controversy which is permitted between the prisoner in the dock and the counsel
and even the judge upon the bench.
English court rooms are very small, and tickets of admission
are necessary for the more important trials, so that, without being required to
attend in person, the public has cognizance of all that is said and done by the
full publication of the proceedings in detail. The Judge's witticisms, with
laughter and "hear, hear" in parenthesis, the sharp retorts of the
prisoner, the caustic comments of the learned counsel, are all printed, and in
this land where rigid formality is the rule, a far greater degree of personality
is permitted than is common in the United States. The practice does not prevail
in the higher as in the lower courts. The following colloquy between a coroner
and a juror which appeared in one of the London newspapers illustrates the
unrestrained free speech of the lower classes:
At the Stepney Temple a juror complained to Mr. W. E. B-, the
East London coroner, a man of considerable authority, on being summoned twice in
two years to serve on a jury. "I have lost a sovereign by coming here
today," he complained.
THE CORONER.-What are you?
THE JUROR.-I am a ship's rat-catcher. I ought to have been at
the docks this morning to get my account signed, and now I shall have to wait
eight months for my money. The ship sailed at ten o'clock.
[-68-] THE CORONER.-Why did you
not go before you came here?
THE JUROR.-How could I get back here by a quarter to eleven
from the Royal Albert Docks? Gentlemen won't get up for me at six o'clock in the
morning.
THE CORONER.-I often get up at six o'clock.
THE JUROR.-Superintendents of ships don't get up at six
o'clock, and I don't believe you do.
THE CORONER (sarcastically)..-Thank you! I have already held
four inquests before coming here.
THE JUROR.-Yes, and you get paid for it!
THE CORONER.-Yes; by salary.
THE JUROR.-I lose my salary by coming here, it is very hard
that my children should go without a Sunday dinner on that account.
THE CORONER.-I admit it is very hard.
THE JUROR.-Sympathy without help is like pudding without fat.
THE CORONER.-I have already told you that the county council
for each county is responsible for the payment of jurors, and the London county
council have refused to pay.
THE JUROR.-I hope I shall never come here again. If I am sent
for I shall not come.
THE CORONER.-Wait until that time arrives.
The dialogue closed by the rat-catcher, apparently mollified,
asking the coroner if he had any rats at his house "that wanted
catching."
The inquiry was answered in the negative with a frank comment
made by the coroner on the rat-catcher's occupation.
The changed position of the woman
defendant or plaintiff in the English courts is one of the most remarkable
evidences of the gradual growth of justice. Formerly, the woman whose name for
any cause came before the public [-69-] in a legal
proceeding, either through her fault or her misfortune, no matter what her
wrongs may have been, or how just her claims for reparation, was already half
condemned by public opinion; to appear in the courts was "indelicate"
and "unfeminine" - that shibboleth of ignorant and cruel conservatism
which once forced her to suffer in silence rather than seek either defense or
redress. That day has passed, and the English courts within the last decade
furnish evidence of reform that cannot be disputed. Once a man might beat his
wife with "a stick no thicker than his thumb," and he was justified by
the law since the wife was virtually his chattel which self-interest, it was
argued, forbade that he should maim or render useless to him. To-day, if he beat
her at all, the chances are that he will receive a wholesome term of
imprisonment with still more salutary hard labor. A heart-rending case was
brought to public notice where an effort had been made to induce a wretched
charwoman to send her children to the workhouse. By the hardest and most
incessant toil the utmost that she could earn was three shillings (75 cents) a
week. When she went out to work she was forced to lock the children in the one
crowded room which was their home; she could not afford to pay anyone to look
after them, and one day in her absence, the youngest was burned to death. After
the harrowing circumstances had been narrated by the witnesses, the jury gave
her a considerable sum, other funds were subscribed, more lucrative employment
was found for her, and the poor creature was enabled to keep her family
together.
Twenty years ago very little consideration would have been
shown the natural and praiseworthy maternal instinct; the children would have
been sent to the workhouse by the board of guardians who would have considered
themselves competent to act with superior wisdom in the matter, and the mother
would have been dismissed [-70-] as a person of
deficient intelligence to whose prejudices no importance could possibly be
attached.
One of the most notable trials which had been held for many
years in which a woman was the plaintiff, occurred in March, 1887, and damages
were awarded in the extraordinary sum of £12,000. To make it the more
remarkable the defendant was a wealthy and distinguished West End physician,
with a large practice amongst the English gentry and nobility. In his
professional capacity he had made the gravest charge against the character of a
woman who had been his patient and to whom he was connected by marriage. The
physician took his wife into his confidence, upon the pretext that he wished her
to decide for herself whether their acquaintance with the accused woman should
continue, and her visits to their house be permitted. The husband was absent and
his wife, for some private reason refused to disclose his whereabouts, even to
insure the vindication of her own reputation. He had contributed nothing to the
support of his family who had been dependent upon a wealthy brother of the
physician. He had made them an allowance of £400 per annum, the mother being in
ill health and unable to work for herself or her children. When the accusations
of the physician reached the ears of the brother the allowance was stopped
immediately, and the woman and her family were plunged into the deepest poverty
and distress - a fact which had weight with the judge and jury. The physician
retained the ablest counsel in England, and the case was argued stubbornly and
at great length on both sides. But neither the high social position nor the
great influence of the defendant, both in professional and in exclusive
fashionable circles, could save him. The only fear expressed at the time was
that in the excess of its zeal, the jury might have gone too far, and have
awarded excessive damages, giving grounds for an appeal. Justice [-71-] however,
was done, and the plaintiff received the reparation she sought.
The London press in its comment on the verdict pointed out
that, through the very nature of his office, the physician was admitted into the
household upon terms of peculiar intimacy; its secrets became known to him, and
he held in his hand the peace and happiness of hundreds innocent of offences
committed by those to whom they were related or connected, and it was necessary
to punish betrayal of professional confidence with extreme severity. It is true,
of course, that the woman whom the court endeavored to compensate for the loss
and pain and humiliation she had been made to suffer would remain under a stigma
for the remainder of her life, however innocent, no matter what the court
decided. But it was an immense advance to have been made within half a century
that the simple justice of her cause, the wrong that she had suffered, weighed
in the balance against wealth, position and professional influence, should have
appealed to a jury with irresistible force.