RUNNING THE GAUNTLET.
My life at Newgate was an ordeal such as I hope no reader of this will ever undergo. Day by day I saw the world slipping from under my feet, and the net drawing its deadly folds closer around me. Soon we all were forced to realize there was no escape for any of us.
Of course, we were all guilty and deserved punishment—I need not say we did not think so then—but the evidence was most weak, and had our trial taken place in America under the too liberal construction of our laws, undoubtedly we all would have escaped. But in England there is no court of criminal appeal, as with us, and when once the jury gives a verdict, that ends the matter. The result is that if judges are prejudiced, or want a man convicted, as in our case, he never escapes. The jury is always selected from the shopkeeping class, and they are horribly subservient to the aristocratic classes. They don't care for evidence—they simply watch the judge. If he smiles, the prisoner is innocent. If he frowns, then, of course, guilty.
With us when a man is charged with an offense against the laws he engages a lawyer—one is sufficient and quite costly enough. In England they are divided into three classes, viz.: solicitors, barristers and Queen's Counsels.
The solicitor takes the case and transacts all the business connected with it. A barrister is the lawyer who is employed by the solicitor to conduct the case in court and make the pleadings. He never comes in contact with the client, but takes the brief and all instructions from the solicitor. The Queen's Counsel is a lawyer of a higher rank, and whenever his serene lordship takes a brief he must, to keep up his dignity, "be supported" by a barrister. So my reader will perhaps understand the raison d'etre of the proverb, "The lawyers own England." As no solicitor can plead in court, so no Queen's Counsel will come in direct contact with a client, and must be "supported" by a barrister. Ergo, any unfortunate having a case in court must fee two, if not three legal sharks to represent him, if represented at all.
We employed as solicitor a Mr. David Howell of 105 Cheapside, and a thoroughgoing, unprincipled rascal he proved to be. He was a small, spare, undersized man, with little beady eyes, light complexion, red hair, and stubby beard, and when he spoke it was with a thin reedy voice. From first to last he managed our case in exactly the way the prosecution would have desired. He bled us freely, and altogether we paid him nearly $10,000, and our defense by our eight lawyers—four Queen's Counsels and four barristers—was about the lamest and most idiotic possible.
We early came to the unanimous conclusion that in our country Howell would have had to face a jury for robbing us, and that but one of our eight lawyers had ability enough to appear in a police court here to conduct a hearing before an ordinary magistrate.
I do not propose to enter into the details of our preliminary hearings before the Lord Mayor at the Mansion House, or of the trial. Both the hearings and trial were sensational in the highest degree, and attracted universal attention all over the English-speaking world. Full-page pictures of the trial appeared in all the illustrated journals of Europe and America, and our portraits were on sale everywhere.
After many hearings before Sir Sidney Waterlaw, we were finally committed for trial.
Editorial from the London Times of Aug. 13, 1873: