He was then asked what had become of two of them, since only one bottle of ink was discovered when the house was searched, and to this his answer was that he had given these to a little girl.
Throughout the trial Brinkley’s explanations of damning facts were never supported by any evidence, while for every statement of Parker there was abundant corroboration.
The scene in court on the opening day of the trial will probably never be forgotten by anyone present. A heavy thunderstorm passed over Guildford, and for some minutes such blackness filled the interior of the hall where the Assizes were held that it was barely possible to distinguish the faces of those who were trying a man for his life, excepting when they were lit up by the vivid flashes of lightning. Throughout the storm Mr. Muir continued, in clear incisive tones, which could be plainly heard across the noise of the thunder, to marshal the array of deadly facts, from which there could be no escape for the prisoner sitting motionless in the dock.
To the journalist nothing that means “copy” is sacred, and the representative of one leading London paper whispered to another sitting just behind the writer, “What a pity this couldn’t happen while the sentence of death was being passed!”
Mr. Frampton in his speech for the defence dwelt principally upon other possible explanations of evidence, which, as he urged, was entirely circumstantial in character, but he was unable to produce any witnesses to support the assertions of Brinkley.
After a trial which lasted four days, the judge (Sir John Bigham) summed up, and the jury, after a short retirement, found the prisoner guilty.
Until the end he protested his innocence.
The most sensational trial that has taken place in this country for many years was that of Robert Wood, a young artist, in 1907, on the charge of murdering a woman.
The story of the crime itself is a particularly sordid one, but the behaviour of the prisoner in court, and the excited state of public feeling upon the subject gave a profound psychological interest to the trial.
A woman had been found brutally murdered in her lodgings in a small house in Camden Town, and no trace could be found of the murderer.