Part 18

We were far from being sorry to hear that the exit of the miscreants from a world to which they were a disgrace, was marked by shouts of execration from the assembled thousands. It was an honest feeling that prompted men to rejoice in the destruction of beings, from the deep damnation of whose iniquity even a Thurtell might have shrunk appalled. The most profligate among the lower orders of the English people abhor the crime of murder,--even the daring gangs of thieves by whom the metropolis is infested, though they live by daily robberies, invariably refrain from destroying life. Ours is not a blood-thirsty population; theft is unfortunately of common occurrence, and peculations of almost every description are continually practised amongst us; but happily murder is, comparatively, of very rare occurrence, and we have no doubt that all who witnessed the execution of these human boas rejoiced in their punishment. Nor ought mistaken pity nor affected sentiment to silence the expression of indignation to which we have referred. No man will say that the punishment of hanging was commensurate with the offences committed, according to their own confessions alone, by Bishop and Williams; but whilst we would not subject even such creatures to bodily torture, we cannot regret that the mental agony of their last moments was increased by the unequivocal tokens of detestation that assailed their ears on the scaffold. The great end of all punishment is example, to deter others; and surely the death of these cowardly murderers, signalized by the audibly-expressed hatred of all men, both good and bad, must operate as the most effectual warning that could possibly be devised, to prevent any other human being from imitating these atrocities, to die like them amid shouts of detestation, and to purchase an immortality of infamy.

We shall now proceed to the investigation of another part of this most horrid transaction, and we particularly allude to the acquittal of May, or, more properly speaking, to his being respited during his Majesty's pleasure. Connected, however, with this part of our subject, we will previously insert a sketch of the speech made by the Duke of Sussex to the Lord Mayor at the close of the trial,--which, although in some respects conferring high honour upon him, is not wholly borne out in its sentiments, by the result which afterwards took place.

After the trial had concluded, and the judges, nobility, and other visitors had retired to a private room, the Duke of Sussex (who had remained in Court the whole day, paying the most marked attention to the evidence) took occasion to express the gratification he had experienced at the manner in which the prosecution had been arranged and conducted. 'I have,' said his Royal Highness, addressing himself to the Lord Mayor, 'always made it a point of attending every trial of national interest that has occurred in the metropolis, and I have done so, not only from a desire to become acquainted, as far as I could, with the laws of my country and their practical application, but because in the station I fill, I feel it to be a sacred duty to take a personal interest in everything calculated to affect the character or the security of the people of this country. I have never, my Lord Mayor, been present at such inquiries without increasing the admiration with which I regard the criminal jurisprudence of England;--the most perfect, the most intelligent, and the most humane system that human ingenuity or wisdom ever devised. Upon the present occasion, whatever pain I may have felt at the sad necessity for taking away the lives of the wretched persons whose crimes have excited so powerfully the indignation of the public, I cannot help feeling proud of being the native of a country where such a sentiment of indignation has been universally evinced, and where such disinterested exertions have been made to expose and bring to justice the perpetrators of crimes happily, I trust, rare amongst us. In what other part of the world, indeed, could such a scene be witnessed as that which we have this day contemplated? The judges of our land, the learned in our law, nobility, magistrates, merchants, medical professors, and individuals of every rank in society, anxiously devoting themselves, and co-operating in the one common object of redressing, as far as human power can do so, an injury inflicted upon a pauper child, wandering friendless and unknown in a foreign land. Seeing this, I am indeed proud of being an Englishman, and prouder still to be a prince in such a country and of such a people.'

In the first place, however, taking the respite of May into our consideration, some very serious reflections present themselves to our mind, and we are induced to give publicity to them, with the sole view of preserving the purity of our courts of law, and, by pointing out their existing errors and defects, remove that stigma, which certain persons are too prone to attach to them. We dispute not the integrity or the principles of the jury who pronounced the verdict of guilty upon May, but having ourselves paid the closest attention to the evidence during the whole of the trial, we were always led to draw the conclusion, that neither the commission of the crime, nor any participation in it, was actually so definitely brought home to him, as to render his life a sacrifice to the laws. We never could discover the reason of the distrust of the testimony as given by two females, who clearly proved an alibi on the part of May, on the very night in which the murder, as stated in the indictment, was supposed to be committed. Their questionable mode of life might have had some influence in throwing discredit over their testimony in the opinion of the court; but we enter our protest decidedly against the deduction, that, because a female has been driven to prostitution for her support, her testimony is not to be believed on her oath. In some respects, indeed, the principle appears to be acted upon, that certain parts of the evidence of such witnesses may be received, whilst other parts are to be wholly rejected.

The stains of blood on the jacket of May, which was found in the lodgings of one of these women, was brought forward as corroborative of the participation of May in the act of murder, and it cannot be denied that it was a circumstance which had its weight in influencing the minds of the jury respecting the guilt of May. This woman in her evidence states the hours when May came to her lodgings, and which, if credited, would have gone a great way towards his entire exculpation; it was, however, impugned on the ground of _her profession_: and we cannot here conceal our censure at the manner in which these females were examined by Mr. Adolphus, who seemed to think that if he could extract from their own lips the confession that they lived by prostitution, it would follow as a natural conclusion that their evidence was unworthy of belief. It however, happened, that one of these women proved, and to the satisfaction of the court, the manner in which the blood came upon the jacket of May, which happened to issue from the wounded leg of a jackdaw; and Mr. Thomas himself mounted the witness-box, after the woman had given her evidence, and declared his belief, that in that particular the woman spoke the truth, for he was satisfied that the blood was too fresh to have been cast upon it previously to the committal of May. Thus one link in the chain of the evidence against May was broken; but our chief objection was upon the principle, that if credibility is to be attached to one part of the evidence of a witness, it should not be optional in the opposite party to reject any other part which is confirmatory of the innocence of the accused. We see no more cogent reason why the evidence of the woman respecting the cause of the stains of the blood should be believed, and if we may be allowed a mercantile expression, placed to the credit of May, than that her evidence ought not also to have been received touching the alibi. The question of immaculacy of character has little to do in the witness-box, for were that principle to be acted upon, we suspect that many witnesses, who are believed upon their oath, would never be put into it at all. It is a very probable case, that a poor unfortunate girl, whose only crime perhaps is her prostitution, may in her mind be impressed with the solemn obligations of an oath, and the consequences which would result to her, morally and religiously, from the infraction of it; but it by no means follows, that because a blustering counsel has extracted from her the confession of the mode of life by which she gains her livelihood, that her testimony is to be wholly rejected or only partially received, especially when the life of a human being is dependent upon it. Station in life ought not to form any distinction in the exercise of these principles; but we could allude to many instances in which the evidence of titled demireps has been received, without the smallest disposition being shown to call into question its truth and credibility. It happened, however, in the case of the evidence of these women,--that from the confession of both Bishop and Williams, and on which the highest authority of the nation was called upon to act, such evidence was in fact substantially true, and that May was not in the company of those two sanguinary wretches when the murder was committed. With great truth might May write the following doggrel rhymes, which were penned on the Sunday morning previously to the arrival of the respite:--

'James May is doomed to die, And is condemned most innocently; The God above he knows the same, And will send a mitigation for his pain.'

The paper on which the above rhymes were written, contained also some notes in the prisoner's hand-writing, which appeared to be private notes to assist the memory in some communications that he intended to make relative to the manner in which subjects are obtained at the hospitals, the conduct of watchmen, &c.

The evidence of May's guilt we never considered on the trial to be conclusive; and, in fact, so general was the opinion, that his acquittal was considered as put beyond a doubt. His subsequent escape from an ignominious death may, in reality, be ascribed to the joint statements of Bishop and Williams; and this leads us to the discussion of the justice of the punishment, which has been subsequently inflicted on May. We espouse his cause on the abstract principle of right and justice, and in accordance with that principle, we would punish the guilty, and pardon the innocent. The indictment against May stated, that, in conjunction with Bishop and Williams, he had murdered an Italian boy, of the name of Carlo Ferrari; and another count stated, that he had been an accomplice in the murder of some other person unknown. On this indictment he was found guilty, and sentenced to be executed. On the confession, however, of the murderers themselves, it appeared that May had no participation whatever in the crime, and that he was wholly ignorant of the manner in which the body of the boy had been procured, but supposed that it had been obtained by the usual method of exhumation. It was acknowledged that he assisted in the attempt to dispose of it, on the ground that he was enabled to obtain a higher price, and that, in the attempt to dispose of it at the King's College, he was apprehended, and finally committed to prison to take his trial as an accomplice in the murder. The sequel of that trial is already known; and his life was spared, it having been made evident to the competent authorities that he was neither a principal in the murder nor an accessory after it. The great question, then, is, and which involves a very important point in the administration of justice of this country, for what crime has May been sentenced to the severest punishment, with the exception of death, which our sanguinary code exhibits, namely, transportation for life? He was either guilty or innocent of the murder,--the most cogent and valid testimony was adduced in favour of the latter, and it was considered so conclusive, that a respite was granted. In the eye of the law he therefore stood assoilzed from the crime for which he was tried, and therefore not subject to any punishment. If it be urged that his participation in the attempt to dispose of the body of the murdered boy rendered him amenable to the laws, and, being taken in _delicto flagrante_, to the punishment attached to that act, we perfectly coincide in the proposition; but then, as the law now stands, the having a dead body in our possession is not a felony, but simply a misdemeanour, and punishable, as all other misdemeanours, by imprisonment, hard labour, or whipping. Of what crime then, we repeat it, has May been found guilty, to subject him to the punishment of transportation for life. The confessions of both Bishop and Williams distinctly negatived the fact that May had the slightest participation in any of the murders committed by them, and that he even did not know in what manner they had procured the body, in the attempted sale of which he gave his assistance. If the simple fact of rendering that assistance rendered him subject to punishment, how, then, comes it to pass, that no punishment has been inflicted on Shields, who, with the exception of negotiating with the purchasers of the body, was, setting the murder out of the question, as deeply implicated in the affair as May himself. The entire gist of this extraordinary business lies simply in the following question,--After the respite was sent to May, for the commission of what crime was he then detained in prison, for which he had been tried, or was yet to be tried? We know it may be urged that it is a rule, that if, through the royal clemency, the life of a criminal sentenced to death be spared, his punishment is commuted to transportation for life; but then these general cases do not apply to the individual one of May. The respited criminals still stand convicted of the crime for which, by the laws of their country, their lives became forfeit; and although the royal clemency steps in to prevent the sacrifice of human life, their offended country still demands their punishment, and the next severest to death itself is inflicted upon them. Those cases will not, however, apply to May. He was tried at the bar of his country for murder, and a jury of that country, on account of a long chain of circumstantial evidence, many of the links of which snapped in the attempt to force them to their utmost influence, found him guilty of the crime charged in the indictment;--he received the usual sentence of death, and, according to all human calculation, his hours on earth were numbered. As it has frequently happened in the cases of criminals sentenced to death, a subsequent investigation took place in regard to the guilt of May, or, indeed, to any participation on his part in the murder of the individual for which he was indicted. From the coincident testimony of the real murderers, it was most distinctly made to appear that May was wholly innocent, not only of any participation in the crime, but that he was actually ignorant of the manner in which the body of the boy had been procured. The judge himself who tried the prisoners fully coincided in the propriety of granting a respite to May, founded on the confessions of Bishop and Williams; and his innocence was at length so strongly confirmed, that his life was spared. But we now come to the great question,--On what condition?--That he should be transported for life. Here, then, in the most enlightened nation of the world, whose courts of judicature are held up as the pattern for all surrounding nations--whose laws are boasted of as being founded on mercy, clemency, and truth,--here we have the example of an individual tried, condemned--found innocent, and respited--but still punished with the next severest punishment after death which the criminal code of his country could inflict upon him! May could not be deemed, in the eye of the law, innocent and guilty at the same time; but if he was declared to be the former, he had a right to expect all the benefits and advantages of that innocence. There was no intermediate state of guilt; he was either guilty of the murder, or not guilty; and as his innocence was made manifest, he ought to have been placed in the same situation as he would have been had the verdict of Not Guilty been pronounced upon him by his Jury.

It was owing to these sentiments operating so powerfully on our mind, that we were led to analyze a little more closely than we might otherwise have done, the speech of the Duke of Sussex, in which he enlarges in such laudatory terms on the enviable superiority of our courts of law, and the manner in which justice is administered in them; and all this on an occasion in which a man, afterwards discovered to be innocent, is condemned to death, and who would certainly have suffered but for the concurrent testimony of his associates, on which his innocence was established.

We are aware that not one of our contemporaries has taken this view of the case of May; and until we are informed of the crime which May committed, and for which he was tried and convicted at the bar of his country, we shall always consider that his transportation is an indelible stain upon the judicature of this country, and that an irreparable injury has been done to the individual, for which no after redress can be sufficient.

The public mind, in the mean time, was by no means at rest respecting the identity of the body of Carlo Ferrari; and as it involved some very nice points connected with the manner in which the prosecution was got up, Mr. Corder, on the 8th of December, appeared at Bow-street, before Sir Richard Birnie and Mr. Minshull, attended by Joseph Paragalli and Andrew Colla, the two Italian witnesses who gave evidence on the trial of Bishop, Williams, and May, at the Old Bailey, on Friday, the 5th instant, and stated, that in consequence of the confessions made by Bishop and Williams, denying that the body found and sworn to was that of the Italian boy, the two witnesses now present were most anxious to remove an impression which had gone abroad, in consequence of the confessions referred to, and wished to reiterate their firm belief that the body of the boy brought to King's College for sale was that of Carlo Ferrari.

Paragalli and Colla then came forward and reasserted their former evidence.

Mr. Corder said that there were strong grounds for believing that the confessions of Bishop and Williams, so far as related to their statement that the body found in their possession was not that of the Italian boy, was wholly untrue; and in consequence of the denial put forth in their confessions, which appeared in some degree to cast discredit upon the whole prosecution, the parish of St. Paul, Covent Garden, had determined to publish a statement in a few days of the whole transaction, in order to relieve the public mind from the doubts occasioned by the confessions of Bishop and Williams. He was perfectly satisfied, that when that statement was submitted to the public, there would no longer be any doubt upon the subject, and that the body found in the possession of Bishop, Williams, and May, was not that of the drover's boy, but the body of Carlo Ferrari.

Mr. Minshull said he had no doubt but such was the fact, and expressed his desire that the public mind should be set at rest with respect to the identity of the body.

Mr. Corder said he would lose no time in drawing up the statement to which he had alluded.

He then retired, accompanied by the witnesses.

In a few days afterwards, Mr. Corder transmitted the following statement to the editor of the _Times_, but which still leaves the identity of the boy as mystical as before.

'SIR,

'Without travelling through a very long statement which has recently appeared in most of the public journals, purporting to be "the confession of the murderers," and signed "John Bishop," there are two points contained in it which appear to me to require some notice, and upon which the public have some right to be satisfied. The points are, first--"That the boy, supposed to be the Italian boy, was a Lincolnshire boy;" and second--"That the death of the deceased was caused by drowning him in the well, into which Bishop and Williams put him head-foremost, and where he remained about three-quarters of an hour." Upon the first point I beg to trouble you with one or two observations, and in reference to the second, I shall content myself with the written report, which the surgeons, who examined the body, both at and previous to the _post mortem_ examination, have been kind enough, at the request of the prosecutors, to furnish, and which will be open to the opinions of all medical and scientific men, as to the probable cause of the death of the deceased.