The Dock and the Scaffold / The Manchester Tragedy and the Cruise of the Jacknell

by T. D. Sullivan

We, the undersigned members of the metropolitan and provincial Press, having had long experience in courts of justice, and full opportunity of observing the demeanour of prisoners and witnesses in cases of criminal procedure, beg humbly to submit that, having heard the evidence adduced before the Special Commission, on the capital charge preferred against Thomas Maguire, private in the Royal Marines, we conscientiously believe that the said Thomas Maguire is innocent of the crime of which he has been convicted, and that his conviction has resulted from mistaken identity. We, therefore, pray that you will be pleased to advise her Majesty to grant her most gracious pardon to the said Thomas Maguire.

This was a startling event; it was a proceeding utterly without precedent. Nothing but the most extraordinary circumstances could have called it forth. The blunder of the jury must have been open, glaring, painfully notorious, indeed, when such an astonishing course was adopted by the whole staff of the English Press.

It was most embarrassing. For what had those newspaper reporters seen or heard that the jurors had not seen and heard?—and yet the jurors said Maguire was guilty. What had those reporters seen or heard that the judges had not seen and heard?—and yet the judges said they "fully concurred in the verdict of the jury." The reporters were not sworn on the Evangelists of God to give a true deliverance—but the jurors were. The reporters were not sworn to administer justice—were not dressed in ermine—were not bound to be men of legal ability, judicial calmness, wisdom, and impartiality—but the judges were. Yet the unsworn reporters told the government Maguire was an innocent man; while judge and jury told the government—swore to it—that he was a guilty murderer!

What was the government to do? Was it to act on the verdict of newspaper reporters who had happened to be present at this trial, and not on the verdict of the jury who had been solemnly sworn in the case? Behind the reporters' verdict lay the huge sustaining power of almost universal conviction, mysteriously felt and owned, though as yet nowhere expressed. Everyone who had calmly and dispassionately weighed the evidence, arrived at conclusions identical with those of the Press jury, and utterly opposed to those of the sworn jury. The ministers themselves—it was a terribly embarassing truth to own—felt that the reporters were as surely right as the jurors were surely wrong. But what were they to do? What a frightful imputation would public admission of that fact cast upon the twelve sworn jurors—upon the two judges? What a damning imputation on their judgment or their impartiality! Was it to be admitted that newspaper reporters could be right in a case so awful, where twelve sworn jurors and two judges were wrong?

And then, look at the consequences. The five men were convicted in the one verdict. There were not five separate verdicts, but one indivisible verdict. If the (jurors') verdict were publicly vitiated—if the government confessed or admitted that verdict to be false—it was not one man, but five men, who were affected by it. To be sure the reporters' jury, in their verdict, did not include Allen, O'Brien, Larkin, and Shore; but was it to be conveyed by implication that omission from the reporters' verdict of acquittal was more fatal to a man than inclusion in the verdict of guilty by a sworn jury? Might not twenty, or thirty, or forty men, quite as intelligent as the reporters, be soon forthcoming to testify as forcibly of Allen, O'Brien, Larkin, and Shore, as the Press-men had testified of Maguire? Was it only reporters whose judgment could set aside the verdict of sworn jurors, endorsed by ermined judges? But, in any event, the five men were convicted by the one verdict. To cut that, loosed all—not necessarily in law, perhaps, but inevitably as regarded public conscience and universal judgment; for there was not in all the records of English jurisprudence a precedent for executing men on a verdict acknowledged to have been one of blunder or perjury. Clearly, if the jurors were to be told by the government that, in a case where life and death hung on the issue, they had been so blinded by excitement, passion, or prejudice, that they declared to be a guilty murderer a man whose innocence was patent even to unofficial lookers-on in court, the moral value of such a verdict was gone—ruined for ever; and to hang anyone on such a verdict—on that identical verdict, thus blasted and abandoned—would, it was pointed out, be murder, for all its technical legality; neither more nor less, morally, than cool, deliberate, cold-blooded murder.

Everybody saw this; but everyone in England saw also the awkward difficulty of the case. For, to let Allen, O'Brien, Larkin, and Shore go free of death, in the face of their admitted complicity in the rescue, would baulk the national demand for vengeance. It was necessary that some one should be executed. Here were men who, though they almost certainly had had no hand in causing, even accidentally, the death of Brett, dared to boast of their participation in the affray in the course of which that lamentable event unhappily occurred—that rescue which had so painfully wounded and humiliated English national pride. If these men were saved from execution, owing to any foolish scruples about hanging a possibly—nay, probably—innocent man along with them, a shout of rage would ascend from that virtuous nation amongst whom Charlotte Winsor, the professional infant-murderess, walks a free woman, notwithstanding a jury's verdict of wilful murder and a judge's sentence of death.

So, for a time it seemed that, notwithstanding the verdict of the reporters, the government would act upon the verdict of the jury, and assume it to be correct. No doubt Maguire might be innocent, but it was his misfortune to be included in an indivisible verdict with other men, who, though perhaps as guiltless as he of wilful murder, were surely guilty of riot and rescue, aggravated by the utterance of the most bitter reflections on the British Constitution, which all men know to be the "envy of surrounding nations." If they were not guilty of the crime laid against them on the trial, they were guilty of something else—they had outraged British pride. It was necessary they should die; and as Maguire's verdict was not separate from theirs, he must die too, rather than that they should escape.

But after a while the idea gained ground in England that this would be rather too monstrous a proceeding. Maguire's utter innocence of any participation whatsoever in the rescue was too notorious. The character of the witnesses on whose evidence he was convicted became known: some were thieves, pickpockets, or gaol-birds of some other denomination; others were persons palpably confused by panic, excitement, passion, or prejudice. True, these same witnesses were those who likewise swore against Allen, Larkin, O'Brien and Shore. Indeed, a greater number swore against Maguire than against some of the others. Nevertheless, the overwhelming notoriety of the jury's blunder or perjury, in at least his case, became daily more and more an obstacle to his execution; and eventually, on the 21st of November, it was announced that his conviction had been cancelled, by the only means existing under the perfect laws of Great Britain—namely, a "free pardon" for a crime never committed. The prison doors were opened for Maguire; the sworn jurors were plainly told in effect that their blunder or perjury had well-nigh done the murder of at least one innocent man. The judges were in like manner told that shorthand-writers had been more clear-headed or dispassionate to weigh evidence and judge guilt than they. The indivisible verdict had been openly proclaimed worthless.

The news was received with a sense of relief in Ireland, where the wholesale recklessness of the swearing, and the transparent falseness of the verdict had, from the first, created intense indignation and resentment. Everyone knew and saw that, whatever might have been the participation of those men in the rescue of Colonel Kelly, they had not had a fair trial; nay, that their so-called trial was an outrage on all law and justice; that witnesses, jurors and judges, were in the full fierce heat of excitement, panic, and passion—much more ready to swear evidence, to find verdicts, and to pass sentences against innocent men than they themselves were, perhaps, conscious of while labouring under such influences. The public and official recognition of the falseness and injustice of the Manchester verdict was therefore hailed with intense satisfaction.