Ellen Macdonnell was examined to the same effect; as were Mary Bruce, Terence Doughty, Peter Macdermot, Daniel Manning, John M'Hugh, Christopher Suggon, Henry Pritchard, Bridget Grogan, and several other witnesses.
No evidence as to facts were offered.
Mr. Justice James Parke said, it was then his duty to state to the jury the evidence that had been laid before them on the present trial, and to accompany it with such remarks as the circumstances of the extraordinary case suggested to his mind. The offence with which the prisoner stood charged was that of wilful murder, the indictment stating, that, with her hands about the neck of the deceased, she so grasped or squeezed the throat of the said Margaret Duffy, as by choking, suffocation, or strangulation, to occasion her death. If they were satisfied that the deceased came to her death in consequence of suffocation or strangulation, the particular mode in which that crime happened to be perpetrated was immaterial. It was immaterial, for example, whether the prisoner did it with her own hands, or was present when the crime was committed by some other person. He meant by being present, was in such a situation that she could see the act done, and was near enough to interfere for its prevention. If they believed that she committed the crime with her own hands, they would, of course, find her guilty; or if they thought that she was present, aiding and abetting at the time it was committed, they were by their oaths bound to find a verdict of guilty. If, upon a candid and dispassionate consideration of the evidence, they arrived at the conclusion that the evidence was not sufficient to sustain either of those charges, the prisoner was entitled to a verdict of acquittal. Before he proceeded to recapitulate to them the substance of the evidence which had been offered for their consideration, he could not refrain from earnestly requesting them to dismiss from their minds anything they might have heard or read on the subject. He begged that they would use their best endeavours to free their minds from all prejudice, and approach the solemn duty which they had to perform with minds as much as possible freed from any prepossession whatsoever, and decide solely upon the evidence that day offered in Court. The evidence given on the trial was of the description called circumstantial, or indirect testimony; but it often happened, that some of the very greatest crimes were detected, exposed, and the offenders convicted upon indirect evidence. No doubt direct testimony was the most satisfactory, for that gave the Jury the advantage of hearing the facts sworn to in the plainest manner by eye-witnesses; and when their veracity could be relied upon, nothing, of course, could be better than testimony of this nature. It happened, however, that in some cases circumstantial evidence led the mind as directly to a conclusion as direct evidence; for facts were in such cases positively sworn to by such a number of witnesses as could seldom be obtained to testify directly, and were free from the suspicion of being actuated by a bad motive to give evidence against the party accused. The first point to which they would direct their attention was, did they believe the witnesses examined had spoken the truth? Secondly, could they reconcile the facts sworn to, with no other supposition, than that the prisoner at the bar was guilty of the crime of which she stood accused? If it was impossible for them to reconcile it with any other supposition in the ordinary course of human affairs, then were they bound to pronounce a verdict of guilty. There was another point of view in which they might consider the evidence—namely, that though the prisoner neither committed the murder, nor was present at its commission, yet that she might have spirited away the child with a view to its being deprived of life, and have delivered her over to others for that purpose. Should they take such a view as that of the evidence, the prisoner would be undoubtedly entitled to their acquittal; for then she would be in the eye of the law an accessory before the fact, and, as such, she could not be found guilty under the present indictment. He had further to call their attention to that which was the duty of jurors, in all cases, which was, to give the prisoner the benefit of any reasonable doubt which, upon a careful review of the evidence, presented itself to their minds; she was entitled to the full benefit of that doubt, and, if it existed, to be discharged from their bar; that there was, as they must fully remember, no direct evidence against the prisoner, proving that she actually committed the murder with her own hands—nay, it had been shown that she was of a humane disposition, and affectionate in her conduct towards children. Neither did it appear that she was under the influence of any feelings leading to the commission of a crime of that nature; but, unfortunately, the experience they had had in that court enabled them to assign a motive of no very ordinary character—that of selling the human body to those who wanted it for dissection; or, as might possibly be the case with the prisoner, of delivering over the unfortunate child to those who would put an end to her existence for purposes of that nature. When he should have restated to them the evidence, they would say whether or not the prisoner had been actuated by such a motive. His lordship then recapitulated, most minutely, the whole of the evidence. When he got to the end of the first part, he observed, that he presumed they would not have much difficulty in saying whether or not the child died a natural death, or lost her life through violent means. If they were of opinion that she had been murdered, then they would consider whether or not the circumstantial evidence brought home the guilt of the offence to the prisoner then at the bar. There certainly was no direct positive proof, yet the prisoner was seen with the child at a time near to that at which she was murdered. Again, some child was seen with her still nearer to the important moment; and in the absence of all proof that she had in the interval taken up another child, the jury would say how far there was proof upon which to convict her. The learned Judge then proceeded to enumerate the leading facts of this point of the evidence, and to detail the conduct of the prisoner upon being taxed with the crime, observing, that doubtless the natural and proper course for all persons accused of such a crime was, if innocent, at once to explain the whole matter, by a full and candid statement of the truth; at the same time, it was by no means uncommon for ill-educated persons, when wrongfully charged with an offence, to endeavour to get rid of it by some false statement. He then proceeded to the evidence of the surgeons, and having thus gone through the whole case for the prosecution, he repeated, that if the jury could not reconcile that body of evidence with any other supposition than that she was not entirely innocent, they were bound to find the prisoner guilty. It was, he then said, the opinion of some of the surgeons, that considerable violence had been used, such a degree of violence as a female would not be likely to inflict. It was, therefore, probable that some other person was engaged in the atrocious transaction, and it was for them to say whether they considered the man and woman, whom the boy Newton swore to have rushed from the privy, to be the murderers. Finally, he had to tell them, that if they could reconcile the facts to any possible supposition but that the prisoner was a principal—that is, was either the actual murderer, or present, aiding and abetting—then they must acquit her. Again, even though they might suppose her an accessory before the fact, she was still entitled to an acquittal, in a word, if they entertained any reasonable doubt whatever that she was according to the legal definition a principal, they could not find her guilty.
The Jury retired a few minutes to six o'clock, and did not return till half-past seven. In the mean time the prisoner was removed from the bar, maintaining her self-possession to the last. When the jury returned into Court, at the end of nearly two hours, the accused woman was again placed at the bar; in the interval she had become much paler than during the trial, and she was then attended by two men, one at each side, as well as by the female attendant of the prison.
Mr. Justice James Park and Mr. Baron Boland, who with the other Judge had retired, then appeared on the bench, and a verdict of not guilty was returned.
The prisoner was removed in custody.
On considering the actions which were committed by such men as Bishop and his colleagues, we cannot regard them in any other light than as human monsters, divested of every gentle feeling, and so immersed in brutality, as to hold no fellowship with their kindred. Revolting, however, as the spectacle must be which has been exhibited in this country by the atrocious acts of the London Burkers, doubly must our feelings be harrowed when the same spectacle is held before us, in which females are the principal actors, and who appear in many instances to have exceeded the other sex in the atrocity and cruelty of their acts. In the case of Calkin, although a jury has acquitted her of the crime with which she was charged, yet of the question of her actual guilt very little doubt remains in the mind of the public in general; and the universal regret is, that a delinquent of her stamp should have escaped the fate, so justly her due, through any of the technicalities or constructions of the law. It may be that the perpetration of the crime could not be brought so home to her as to warrant the jury in bringing in their verdict of guilty; and therefore Mercy and Humanity stepped in to give her the full benefit of the doubts. But to the cool and impartial observer, the evidence against her must have appeared as conclusive and confirmatory of her guilt, as the intricate and, in many instances, inconsistent evidence which was adduced against Bishop and Williams. Her life has, however, been spared for the present; but from the criminal practices to which she has been long addicted, and her well-known connexion with the resurrectionists, it may be safely prognosticated, that the laws of the country will, ere long, claim her as one of their victims.
In point of atrocity, however, there is scarcely any act connected with the horrid practices of the resurrectionists which exceeds, in its cold-blooded ferocity, the murder committed by Mrs. Ross, alias Cook, alias Reardon, on the body of Mrs. Walsh, a woman of nearly eighty-five years of age. For some time she had been missing from her accustomed haunts; and some suspicion having been excited that she had come to an untimely end, a warrant for the apprehension of Mrs. Cook was issued; and on the 29th of October, she, with her husband, and their son (a lad about twelve years of age) were brought before Mr. Norton, by Lea, the officer of Lambeth-street Office, charged on suspicion of the Wilful Murder of Caroline Walsh.
The prisoners, who had been kept apart during the day, were then examined separately, and their accounts were of so conflicting a nature, as to add considerably to the suspicion of their having improperly disposed of the old woman. The boy said, that on the Friday night on which the missing female slept at his father's and mother's room, in Goodman's-yard, Goodman's-fields, they had had bread and cheese for supper; and they all, including the old woman, after partaking of it, went to bed at eight o'clock. The mother said, that their supper consisted of tea, bread and butter, and cold meat, and they went to bed at nine o'clock; while the father said they did not go to bed until eleven o'clock, and had had some hot meat for supper. There was also a great discrepancy in their account of the departure of the old woman from the house on the Saturday morning.