“It appeared to him, that the case, on the part of the prosecution, would be complete when these facts were established in evidence; but he was to be told, that though the highest authority in this country could not practise this on the humblest individual, yet that, by the laws of Spain, it could be perpetrated in the island of Trinidad. He would venture to assert, that if it were written in characters impossible to be misunderstood, that if it were the acknowledged law of Trinidad, it could be no justification of a British governor. Nothing could vindicate such a person, but the law of imperious necessity, to which all must submit. It was his duty to impress upon the minds of the people of that colony, the great advantages they would derive from the benign influence of British jurisprudence; and that in consequence of being received within the pale of this government, torture would be for ever banished from the island. It was not sufficient for him, therefore, to establish this sort of apology; it was required of him to show, that he complied with the institutions, under circumstances of irresistible necessity. This governor ought to have been aware that the torture was not known in England; and that it never would be, never could be tolerated in this country.
“The trial by rack was utterly unknown to the law of England, though once, when the Dukes of Exeter and Suffolk, and other ministers of Henry VI. had laid a design to introduce the civil law into this kingdom, as the rule of government, for a beginning thereof they erected a rack for torture, which was called in derision the Duke of Exeter’s daughter, and still remained in the Tower of London, where it was occasionally used as an engine of state, not of law, more than once in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. But when, upon the assassination of Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, by Felton, it was proposed in the Privy Council to put the assassin to the rack, in order to discover his accomplices, the judges, being consulted, declared unanimously, to their own honour, and the honour of the English law, that no such proceeding was allowable by the laws of England.
“Such was the effect of the observations of the elegant and learned author of the Commentaries of the Law of England on this subject; and as the strongest method of showing the horror of the practice, he gave this question in the form of an arithmetical problem:—‘The strength of the muscles and the sensibility of the nerves being given, it was required to know what degree of pain would be necessary to make any particular individual confess his guilt.’
“But what were they to say to this man, who, so far from having found torture in practice under the former governors, had attached to himself all the infamy of having invented this instrument of cruelty? Like the Duke of Exeter’s Daughter, it never had existence until the defendant cursed the island with its production. He had incontestible evidence to show this ingenuity of tyranny in a British governor; and the moment he produced the sanguinary order, the man was left absolutely without defence. The date of this transaction was removed at some distance. It was directed that a commission should conduct the affairs of the government, and among the persons appointed to this important situation was Colonel Fullarton. In the exercise of his duties in that situation, he attained the knowledge of these facts; and with this information he thought it incumbent on him to bring this defendant before the jury; and with the defendant the victim of this enormity would also be produced.”
Louisa Calderon was then called. She appeared about eighteen years of age, of a very interesting countenance, being a Mulatto or Creole, and of a very genteel appearance. She was dressed in white, with a turban of white muslin, tied on in the custom of the country. Her person was slender and graceful. She spoke English but very indifferently; and was examined by Mr. Adam, through the medium of a Spanish interpreter.
She deposed that she resided in the island of Trinidad in the year 1798; and lived in the house of Don Pedro Ruiz, and remembered the robbery. She and her mother were taken up on suspicion, and brought before Governor Picton, who committed them to prison, under the escort of three soldiers. She was put into close confinement; and before she was taken there the governor said, “If she did not confess who had stolen the money, the hangman would have to deal with her.”
She was afterwards carried to the room where the torture was prepared. Her left hand was tied up to the ceiling by a rope, with a pulley; her right hand was tied behind, so that her right foot and hand came in contact, while the extremity of her left foot rested on the wooden spike. A drawing representing the exact situation, with the negro holding the rope by which she was suspended, was then shown to her; when she gave a shudder, expressive of horror, which nothing but the most painful recollection of her situation could have excited; on which Mr. Garrow expressed his concern that his Lordship was not in a position to witness this accidental, but conclusive, evidence of the fact.
The remainder of the witness’s evidence corroborated the statement of Mr. Garrow. She remained upon the spike three quarters of an hour, and the next day twenty-two minutes. She swooned away each time before she was taken down, and was then put into irons, called the “grillos,” which were long pieces of iron, with two rings for the feet, fastened to the wall, and in this situation she remained during eight months. The effect produced by the torture was excruciating pain; her wrists and ankles were much swollen, and the former bore the marks of the barbarity employed towards her to the present day.
Don Rafael Shandoz, an alguazil in the island, bore testimony to his having seen the girl immediately after the application of the torture. The apartment, in which she was afterwards confined, was like a garret, with sloping sides, and the grillos were so placed that, by the lowness of the room, she could by no means raise herself up, during the eight months of her confinement. There was no advocate appointed to attend on her behalf, and no surgeon to assist her. No one but a negro, belonging to Ballot, the gaoler, to pull the rope. The witness had been four or five