Clergymen of mild manners and susceptible hearts went round canvassing their parishioners for signatures to petitions. Legal gentlemen, whose practice did not yet correspond to their own opinion of their deserts, rushed into print with gratuitous opinions on the evidence and the various points in the case. Newspaper reporters, sensitively alive to the first symptoms of a ‘boom,’ wrote up the tragic situation with graphic pens. They described the youth and beauty of the prisoner, her gentle bringing up, her desolate condition. Even her relations with the counsel for the defence, of which some inkling had transpired, were freely glanced at, and the reader was invited to sympathize with the despair of the lover as well as of the beloved.
Then the illustrated journals took it up. They had already given pictures of the scene of the crime, of the deceased, and of other characters, including the prisoner. But they now threw away the blocks representing Eleanor, and which had originally done service in America, where they represented a female temperance lecturer of moderate attractiveness, and came out with full-page illustrations, taken in one case from the portrait of the most charming actress on the Parisian stage, and all calculated to feed the growing flame of sympathy with the victim of what was now boldly referred to as a ‘miscarriage of justice.’
The sporting fraternity, too, rallied round Eleanor almost to a man. A tremendous number of wagers had been made as to her fate, and those whose success was involved in her escape neglected no means of bringing about the desired end. And as public sentiment has not yet sunk quite so low as to tolerate petitions and meetings against clemency, the natural effect of all this was to make it appear that the suffrages of the whole community were on one side.
Even the jurymen began to repent their verdict. Several of them allowed themselves to be interviewed by pressmen, and went so far as to state that they had given their verdict with much misgiving, and hoped that a commutation of sentence would follow.
Petitions flowed in upon the Home Secretary. Meetings were held, not only in Porthstone and the neighbouring towns, but all over the country. Finally the excitement culminated in a monster meeting in London itself, in one of the largest public halls of the Metropolis, at which the chair was taken by a nobleman, and the speakers included a canon of the Church of England, a Roman cardinal, a leading light of the Wesleyan denomination, a major-general (on half-pay), and an ex-colonial judge.
The office of Home Secretary happened to be held at this time by an experienced member of the legal profession, and it is well known that trained lawyers are far more cautious in condemning, and usually milder in punishing, than laymen. The Home Secretary wavered. He sent for the judge who had presided at the trial, and Sir Daniel Buller, who had had time to recover from his little pique against the prisoner’s counsel, infused his own doubt into the Home Secretary’s mind.
At last the Minister issued a decision. It was a thorough specimen of the not-guilty-but-don’t-do-it-again order of judgment. It stated that the Home Secretary saw no reason to doubt the substantial guilt of Eleanor Owen, but that as, in his opinion, the evidence was of an imperfect character, and failed to throw a clear light upon all the circumstances of the case, including the motive for the crime, he had advised her Majesty to commute the sentence to one of imprisonment for life.
The very day that this unsatisfactory announcement appeared, thirteen judges sat side by side at the Royal Law Courts to consider the point reserved.
Charles Prescott represented the prisoner. If the judges felt any surprise at this change of sides they were careful not to express it. Young Mr. Pollard appeared on behalf of the Crown, but he was led by the great Appleby, Q.C., and, as a matter of fact, was not allowed to open his lips once during the proceedings.
Prescott’s argument was long and elaborate. A crowded bar were present to hear the celebrated case, and the feeling was universal among them that he had never shone so conspicuously on any former occasion. He took up the history of the law of murder from its earliest stages, and along with it he traced the gradual evolution of circumstantial evidence. He showed with what suspicion and reluctance the latter had been gradually admitted into our courts, and how succeeding judges had been careful to fence it in and restrain its application. Then he turned to the particular rule of law which Tressamer had relied on in the Assize Court, and repeated and emphasized the arguments made use of by him. He wound up with an impressive appeal to the judges to lean in the prisoner’s favour, reminding them of the old maxim that a statute must be construed in favour of life, and asking them to apply the same principle in expounding the common law.