“There,” said the deputy-governor, looking at a full-length bust, “that is Courvoisier, who was executed for the murder of his master, Lord William Russell. The counsel who defended him—the late Mr. Charles Phillips—declared, as he went into court, that he would get him off, and it was likely enough he would have succeeded had it not been for one circumstance.”
“And what was that, pray?”
As Phillips was addressing the jury in a most powerful speech, a cab drove up in the court-yard, and a woman, who was the landlady of a hotel in the neighbourhood of Leicester-square, brought into court some of Lord William Russell’s family plate, which Courvoisier had tied up in a bundle, and left at her house to be called for.
This was fatal to the prisoner. Charles Phillips saw all chance of an acquittal was over. He dashed down his brief, and said no more.
The judge summed up, and the jury returned a verdict of guilty, upon which Mr. Phillips impudently declared they were right, as Courvoisier confessed to him that he committed the murder, just before he entered the court.
Phillips never got over this, and retired from the bar, accepting an appointment offered him by Government.
Upon examining Courvoisier’s bust we found the man had a low brow, and the lower part of the face was coarse, or, it might be said, brutal, the neck was full and protruding under the ears.
The upper lip of most of the group of busts was thick, which might possibly be caused by the process of hanging. Some of them had their eyes open, and others shut.
We saw the bust of Lani, who was executed for the murder of a woman of the town in the vicinity of the Haymarket; the wretch strangled her in bed, with his bony, powerful hands, which were preternaturally large, his countenance was brutal in the extreme, and he was a most diabolical, merciless wretch.
Another bust was that of Mullins, executed for the murder of an old lady at Stepney.