TWO TRAGEDIES.
[The Daily Telegraph, speaking of the necessity for Justice sometimes "to strip the bandage from her eyes and look into the real merits of a case, mentions the following case as showing Sir Henry's unequalled knowledge of human nature and the sound equity of his decrees:—
"A young, respectable woman had been led away by a villain, who was already married, and under a promise of marriage had betrayed her. He induced her to elope with him, and suggested that she should tear a cheque out of her father's cheque-book and forge his name. So completely was she under his influence that she did so. He sent her to different banks to try and cash it, but it was not till she got to a local bank, where she was known, that this was accomplished. The cheque was for £200. But the seducer never obtained the money; the girl was apprehended before she reached him.
"Sir Henry openly expressed his strong sympathy for the unhappy girl, and ordered her to be bound over in her own recognizance of £20, to come up for judgment when called upon.">[
During the early years of my tenure of office as a criminal Judge I became, and still am, firmly impressed with the belief that to enable one filling that office to discharge the twofold duty attached to it—namely, that of trying the issue whether the crime imputed to the prisoner has been established by legal evidence, and if so, what punishment ought to be imposed upon the prisoner, assuming the presiding Judge to be the person to determine it—it is absolutely essential that he should keep the whole of the circumstances in his mind and carefully weigh every fact which either forms an element in the constitution of the offence itself or has a substantial bearing as affecting the aggravation or mitigation of the punishment; for it is not only essential that these matters should be known to and appreciated by the Judge who tried the case, but that they may be also presented for the information of the Home Secretary, who ought to be acquainted with them, so that he may form a satisfactory view of the whole of the circumstances surrounding the case.
A strange story that will ever stand out in my memory as one of the most dramatic of my life was that of a young lady who was a professional nurse at the General Hospital at Liverpool. She was young, clever, and, I believe, beautiful, as well as esteemed and loved by all who knew her.
She had become engaged to an engineer, and it had been arranged that she should pay a visit to her mother in Nottingham on a Friday, so as to acquaint her with their engagement, the intended husband having arranged to come on the following Monday.
The parents were poor, respectable people, and the girl herself was poor, so that she had no change of attire, but went in her professional nurse's dress. It was her intention, however, to buy an ordinary dress at Nottingham.
There was a dressmaker in that city whom her mother knew, and with whose children in their early days her daughter had played. Accordingly in the evening the nurse with a younger sister went to the cottage to make the necessary arrangements.
While she was there the son of the dressmaker came in, and was at once attracted by the beauty and the manner of the girl. As they had known one another in childhood, it was not surprising that they should talk with more familiarity than would have been the case had they been strangers.