CHAPTER XXXV.
THE ST. NEOTS CASE.
This is the last trial for murder that I presided over. The object is not to show the horrible details of the deed, but my mode of dealing with the facts, for it is in the elimination of the false from the true that the work of a Judge must consist, otherwise his office is a useless form. I shall give this case, therefore, more in detail than I otherwise should.
The case was that of Horsford, in the year 1898, at Huntingdon Assizes. I say now, long after the event, the murderer was not improperly described by the Daily News as the greatest monster of our criminal annals, and yet even in that case some kind-hearted people said I had gone quite to the limits of a Judge's rights in summing up the case. Let me say a word about circumstantial evidence. Some writers have spoken of it as a kind of "dangerous innovation in our criminal procedure." It is actually almost the only evidence that is obtainable in all great crimes, and it is the best and most reliable.
You may draw wrong impressions from it, I grant, but so you may from the evidence of witnesses where it is doubtful; but you cannot fail to draw the right ones where the facts are not doubtful. If it is capable of a wrong inference, a Judge should be absolutely positive in his direction to the jury not to draw it.
I have witnessed many great trials for murder, but do not remember one where there was an eye-witness to the deed. How is it possible, then, to bring home the charge to the culprit unless you rely on circumstantial evidence? Circumstantial evidence is the evidence of circumstances—facts that speak for themselves and that cannot be contradicted. Circumstances have no motive to deceive, while human testimony is too often the product of every kind of motive.
The history of this case is extremely simple. The accused, Walter Horsford, aged thirty-six, was a farmer of Spaldwick. The person murdered, Annie Holmes, was a widow whose age was thirty-eight years. She had resided for several months at St. Neots, where she died on the night of January 7. She had been married, and lost her husband thirteen years ago. On his death he left two children, Annie and Percy. The latter was sixteen years of age and the girl fourteen. The prisoner was a cousin of the deceased woman. While she lived at Stonely the man had been in the habit of visiting her, and had become an intimate member of the family.
In the month of October the prisoner was married to a young woman named Bessie ——. The widow with her two children, and a third, which it would be idle affectation to suggest was the offspring of her late husband, went to reside at St. Neots in a cottage rented at about £8 a year. The prisoner wrote to Annie Holmes on at least two occasions.
Towards the close of the year Annie Holmes suspected herself to be pregnant. She was anxious not to bring another child into the world, and had some communication with the prisoner on the subject.
On January 5 he wrote to her that he would come and make some arrangement. The woman was deceived as to her condition, but that made no difference with regard to the crime. The letter went on to state: "You must remember I paid you for what I done…. Don't write any more letters, for I don't want Bessie to know."
On December 28 he purchased from a chemist to whom he was a stranger, and who lived at Thrapston, a quantity of poison, alleging that he wanted to poison rats. Prisoner called in a gentleman as a reference to his respectability, as the chemist had refused to sell him the poison without. At last a small parcel was supplied. It was entered in a book with the prisoner's name, and he signed the book, as did also the gentleman who was his introducer. The poison was strychnine, arsenic, prussic acid, and carbolic acid. No less than 90 grains of strychnine were supplied. He had written to say he would come over on the Friday which followed January 5. There is no reason to suppose he did not fulfil his promise. On the Friday the woman was suffering from neuralgia. In the evening, however, she was in her usual health and spirits, and did her ironing up to eight o'clock. She went to bed between half-past nine and ten, and took with her a tumbler of water. In ten minutes the little girl and her brother went upstairs. They went to the mother, who was in bed with her child. The tumbler was nearly empty. The mother asked for a "sweet," which the little girl gave. After this Annie got into bed; the mother began to twitch her arms and legs, and seemed in great pain. Dr. Turner was sent for, as she got worse. His assistant, Dr. Anderson, came, and, watching the patient, noticed that the symptoms were those of strychnine poisoning. She was dying. Before he could get to the surgery and return with an antidote the woman was dead. She who had been well at half-past nine was dead before eleven!
The police were communicated with, and a constable searched the house. Turning up the valances of the bed, he found a piece of paper crumpled up; this was sent to an analyst on the following day. An inquest was held and a post-mortem directed.
Horsford at the inquest swore that he had never written to the deceased or visited her.
On the evening of Saturday the 8th, after the post-mortem, Mrs. Hensman and another woman found between the mattress and the bed a packet of papers. These were also submitted for analysis. One of them contained 35 grains of strychnine; another had crystals of strychnine upon it. There was writing on one of the packets, and it was the handwriting of the prisoner; it said, "Take in a little water; it is quite harmless. Will come over in a day or two." On another packet was written: "One dose; take as told," also in the prisoner's handwriting.
The body had been buried and was exhumed. Three grains of strychnine were found by the county analyst in such parts of the stomach as were submitted to him. Dr. Stevenson took other parts to London, and the conclusion he came to was that at least 10 grains must have been in the body at the time of death, while 1/2 grain has been known to be fatal.
There was a singular circumstance in the defence of this case, one which I have never heard before or since, and that was a complaint that the counsel for the prisoner was "twitted" by the Crown because he had not called evidence for the defence. The jury were solemnly asked to remember that if one jot or tittle of evidence had been put forward, or a single document put in by him, the prisoner's counsel, he would lose the last word on behalf of the prisoner! Of course, counsel's last word may be of more value than some evidence; but the smallest "jot or tittle" of evidence, or any document whatever that even tends to prove the innocence of the accused, is of more value than a thousand last words of the most powerful speaker I have ever listened to. And I would go further and say that evidence in favour of a prisoner should never be kept back for the sake of the last word. It is the bounden duty of counsel to produce it, especially where evidence is so strong that no speech could save the prisoner. Neither side should keep back evidence in a prisoner's favour. I said to the jury,—
"We are assembled in the presence of God to fulfil one of the most solemn obligations it is possible to fulfil, and I will to the best of my ability assist you to arrive at an honest and just conclusion.
"The law is that if a man deliberately or designedly administers, or causes to be administered, a fatal poison to procure abortion, whether the woman be pregnant or not, and she dies of it, the crime is wilful murder.
"You have been asked to form a bad opinion of this deceased woman, but she had brought up her children respectably on her slender means, and there was no evidence that she was a loose woman. It more than pained me when I heard the learned counsel—instructed by the prisoner—cross-examine that poor little girl, left an orphan by the death of the mother, with a view to creating an impression that the poor dead creature was a person of shameless character.
"Again, counsel has commented in unkind terms on the deceased woman, and said the prisoner had no motive in committing this crime on a woman whom he valued at half a crown.
"He might not, it is true, care half a crown for her. It is not a question as to what he valued the woman at; we are not trying that at all; but it showed there was a motive.
"I have not admitted a statement which the woman made while in her dying state, because she may not fully have realized her condition. Probably you will have no doubt that, by whomsoever this fatal dose was administered, there is only known to medical science one poison which will produce the symptoms of this woman's dying agonies. One thing is surprising at this stage—that immediately after death the door of the house was not locked, and while the body was upon the bed a paper of no importance was found, and that afterwards several relatives went in. The object of the cross-examination was to show that some evil-disposed person had entered the house and placed things there without any motive. But whoever may have gone into that house, there was one person who did not go—one who, above all others, owed deceased some respect—and that is the prisoner; and unless you can wipe out the half-crown letter from your mind, you would have expected a man on those intimate terms with the poor woman to have gone and made some inquiries concerning her death. He did not go; he was at the Falcon Hotel at Huntingdon, and a telegram was sent telling him to fail not to be at the inquest.
"At the inquest he told a deliberate lie, for he swore he had never written to the woman, or sent her anything, or been on familiar terms with her. He had written to her, and if his letter did not prove familiar terms, there was no meaning in language.
"With regard to the prisoner's alleged handwriting on the packets and papers found under the woman's bed and elsewhere, I must point out to you that here is one on which is written, 'Take in a little water; it is quite harmless. Will come over in a day or two.'
"This was written on a buff paper, which Dr. Stevenson said must have contained 35 grains of strychnine, sufficient to kill thirty-five persons, and the direction written was, 'One dose; take as told.'
"These inscriptions were sworn to by experts as being in the prisoner's handwriting."
Here I pointed out the alleged resemblances in the characters of the letters, so that the jury might judge if the prisoner wrote them.
"If the prisoner wrote the words 'take as told,' you must ask yourselves the meaning of it.
"Also, you will ask whether it was not a little strange that the death occurred on that very Friday night when he said he would go over and see her. Again, the word 'harmless' is of the gravest character, seeing that within the folds of that paper were 35 grains of a deadly powder, which even for rat-powder would be mixed with something else.
"Again, as to motive, upon which so much stress has been laid by the defendant's counsel. If the prisoner had no motive, who else had? Is there a human being on earth who had ill-will towards her, or anything to gain by her death? The learned counsel carefully avoided suggesting any one; nor could he suggest that any one in the neighbourhood wrote the same handwriting as the prisoner. I will dismiss the theory that some one had imitated the prisoner's writing in order to do him an injury, and ask if you can see any reason for any one else giving the woman the powder.
"There is one fact beyond all dispute: in December the prisoner bought a shilling's worth of strychnine. He said he bought it for rats, but no one on the farm had been called to prove it. What has been done with the rest of the powder?
"Where was he on that Friday? His counsel said he could not prove an alibi. But if he was at Spaldwick after saying he was going to St. Neots to see this poor woman, he could have proved it.
"The prisoner's counsel said that the accused did not speak of the woman's murder after the inquest, and said it was not necessary; he did not understand the 'familiar jargon' of the Law Courts.
"The familiar jargon of the Law Courts, gentlemen, is not quite the phrase to use with reference to our judicial proceedings. The Law Courts are the bulwark of our liberties, our life, and our property. Our welfare would be jeopardized, indeed, if you dismiss what takes place in them as 'familiar jargon.'
"The question is whether the charge has been so reasonably brought home to the prisoner as to lead you in your consciences to believe that he is guilty. If so, it is your duty to God, your duty to society, and your duty to yourselves, to say so."
Such was the summing up that was arraigned by the humanitarian partisans of the prisoner. If a Judge may not deal with the fallacies of a defence by placing before the jury the true trend of the evidence, what other business has he on the Bench? And it was for thus clearly defining the issue that some one suggested a petition for a reprieve, on the ground that the evidence was purely circumstantial, and that my "summing up was against the weight of the evidence." Truly a strange thing that circumstances by themselves shall have no weight.
But there was another strange incident in this remarkable trial: the jury thanked me for the pains I had taken in the case. I told them I looked for no thanks, but was grateful, nevertheless.
I have learnt that the jury, on retiring, deposited every one on a slip of paper the word "Guilty" without any previous consultation—a sufficient indication of their opinion of the weight of the evidence.
This was the last case of any importance which I tried on circuit, and if any trial could show the value of circumstantial evidence, it was this one. It left the identity of the prisoner and the conclusion of fact demonstrable almost to mathematical certainty.
A supposed eye-witness might have said: "I saw him write the paper, and I saw him administer the poison." It would not have added to the weight of the evidence. The witness might have lied.