He sent round Henry Adolphus every day to inquire how Patty was—whether she was progressing favourably or otherwise—he also sent his own family physician to see her.
In addition to all this, he had handbills printed, offering a hundred pounds reward “to any person or persons who would give such information as would lead to the conviction of the murderer of Mr. Philip Jamblin.”
Notwithstanding all this, no one was arrested.
It is most extraordinary that so many crimes of this nature should remain undetected; and it is still more extraordinary how soon public interest ceases in cases of this sort. When we consider the number of murders which are known to have been committed, the perpetrators of which are at the present time at large, and who may, for aught we know, be seated by our side in trains, in omnibuses, or places of public resort, the reflection cannot fail to appal the most apathetic and unimpressionable of her Majesty’s subjects.
No lesson can be more powerful to teach man the fallibility of his own judgment than the success so frequently attending the efforts on the part of guilt to baffle and mislead. How frequently have we seen a chain of circumstances, pointing apparently with irresistible force to some particular conclusion, suddenly disjoined and scattered by the eliciting of a new fact, by which the pursuit is led away in a totally different direction?
Providence, in its wisdom, has seen fit to limit man’s mental vision, and has made many things mysterious to him. It has allowed the hand of the assassin to cut short many a virtuous and valuable life, and permitted the crime to go, in this world at least, undetected and unpunished, and has even permitted the criminal to pass through life without “compunctious visitings” one qualm of conscience. Mocking, as it were, the wisdom of man, it has suffered life to be taken away in the broad glare of noon, in the middle of the crowded city, in the heart of a skilfully-trained police, without the faintest clue to the murderer.
On the other hand, it has given to the criminal the silence of midnight, and the solitude of the forest and plain, and every aid, as it were, for concealment and escape, and suddenly, without even an effort, human justice has laid a denouncing finger on the guilty head, and pointed it out to the world where most unsuspected and unsought.
One slays his victim almost in the face of the ministers of justice, and escapes without haste and rapid flight; another adopts measures of precaution, and exhausts ingenuity in devising places of concealment, and is detected with his victim’s warm blood on his hands.
How fruitless are the most elaborate devices for concealment when the hand of heaven is raised to expose the guilt!
Among the many unavenged murders and failures of justice in the great city of London, around the history of which hang so many mysteries in its many phases of life, where frequently the helpless children of hard poverty fall victims to the lust of the wealthy, the death of the young unfortunate girl, Eliza Grimwood, occupies a prominent place.