Known to the Police

by Thomas Holmes

I have given briefly the particulars of this gruesome affair because they lead up to the mental conditions of the murderess. It will be noticed that the murder was skilfully contrived beforehand; that the object to be gained was indulgence with a young man but little more than half her age; that within a few hours of killing her own boy she smilingly met the young man as if nothing had happened. All these things are extraordinary, but when to these some particulars regarding the murderess are added, the character of the whole affair becomes more extraordinary still. She was a governess, clever and exceedingly well educated, with scientific accomplishments. She was about thirty-six years of age, by no means soft or voluptuous in appearance, but with a hard, strong cast of face. She was doing well in a pecuniary sense, and her friends were also in good circumstances.

In considering the case, the first thing that strikes me is that when a woman of her character, standing and appearance gives birth to an illegitimate child, at an age when girlhood has long passed, there is an absolute departure from the normal, there is something wrong. I need not give any details of her trial, only to say the facts I have given were fully proved, and to add that she was found guilty, sentenced, and hanged.

It is of her bearing and demeanour that I wish to speak. Of course, she protested her innocence; any other person might be guilty, but it was absurd to hint that she was guilty. Yet she betrayed no indignation. To her it was Euclid over again, with quod erat faciendum, as the result of the problem. She was cool, alert, and fearless; she showed no emotion, no anxiety, no feeling. The killing of a sheep could not have been a matter of less importance to her than was the murder of her own child. Such was her demeanour at the inquest and at the police-court proceedings, and this attitude she maintained to the end.

In her private conversation with me she was clear, animated, and apparently calm and frank. I never saw the least symptoms of nervousness, and her eyes met mine as naturally and unconcernedly as if the charge she had to meet had not the remotest connection with herself. Her last words to me were: "When I am discharged, I shall invite myself to tea with Mrs. Holmes and yourself, for I am supported by the thought that you firmly believe in my innocence." I had never told her this, for I had not discussed her guilt or innocence. She had talked to me, and I had listened, putting a question occasionally to her. I could believe no other than that she was verily guilty, but I did not tell her so—I had no right to tell her so—but I listened and waited for an admission that would throw some little light upon the state of her mind, and give me a faint idea of the cause that led her to plan and execute the terrible deed. This she did, and I am persuaded that she took away the boy to furnish her with some excuse for spending the week-end at Brighton. I leave it to others to decide upon her sanity, though personally I am charitable enough to think she was insane. It is certain that she was animated with fierce passion; it is also certain that in other respects she was cold as an iceberg. For the death of her beautiful boy, whether she was guilty or innocent of it, never troubled her for a moment. Does a lust for blood accompany an excess of the other passion in a woman of her temperament and characteristics? This I do not know, but I have no doubt that wiser people do know. At any rate, with hands that had cruelly battered the life out of her own child, and while the blood of that child was still hot upon them, she welcomed her male friend. I profess that I find some comfort in the belief that she was insane. Had her insanity been just a little more obvious, she might have escaped the death penalty and ended her days in a criminal lunatic asylum.

But I do not think the question of her sanity was ever raised. He would have been a bold man that raised it, in the face of her accomplishments and self-control. Some day we shall, perhaps, apply different methods to test sanity than those now employed, and we shall look for other symptoms in diagnosis than those we look for now. The most dangerous madness is not that which is patent to everybody—the wild or vacant eyes, the inconsequent or violent speech, the manifest delusions, and the inability to conduct one's own affairs. These are simple enough; but the possessors of these characteristics are often harmless to the community. But when the madness is half madness, and is covered with a show of reason, it is then that danger is to be feared.

In the case I am now about to give insanity was just a little more apparent, though I do not think it was more real. But its manifestation was of sufficient magnitude to prevent capital punishment.

A young woman whose character was beyond reproach, and whose ability and business aptitude gave the greatest pleasure to her employer and his wife, was engaged as the manageress of a department in a drapery and millinery shop in North London. She had been in the situation for some months, and perfect confidence existed between the different parties. One hot Sunday afternoon she suddenly awoke from an afternoon nap with the conviction that she had been criminally assaulted by her employer. The fact that she was in her own room with the door fastened did not weigh with her at all. She declared that her employer was the guilty person. The fact that he and his wife spent the afternoon out of doors was nothing to her. Possessed with this extraordinary idea, she left London at once for a town on the South Coast, where her brother lived. Her brother appears to have accepted her statement without question or demur, and to him the delusion became as real as to his sister. He armed her with an exquisitely made and very formidable dagger, and provided himself with an equally dangerous pistol and cartridges. Thus armed, they came to London—he to take vengeance upon the man who had dishonoured his sister, she to point out the man, and to be ready with the dagger if the pistol failed to take effect. The brother did not fail, for he shot the man dead. Now that vengeance was satisfied, the couple were again harmless, for neither brother nor sister attempted to do any more injury. They were arrested, and gave up their arms willingly enough. They declared that they had done the deed, and that they intended to kill the man; that they procured the weapons and came to London for the express purpose. They claimed to be perfectly justified in their joint action. This attitude they maintained before the court, for when asked if they wished to put any questions to the witnesses, "Oh no!" was the reply. "Of what use would they be? We did it; we are glad that we did it. The consequences do not matter." There was quite a little dispute between the sister and brother. He declared that as he killed the man he alone was entitled to the glory and the punishment; but the sister declared that it was done at her request, and also that she was prepared to kill if her brother had failed. Both were found guilty, and both were committed to a criminal lunatic asylum. Yet they had every appearance of being thoroughly sane; their manner, their speech, their reasoning powers, and everything appertaining to them, savoured of clear reason, their delusion alone excepted. If that delusion had not been so manifest, undoubtedly they would have been hanged. There seems to me to be no point from which a line can be drawn to divide insanity from sanity. At present we have but clumsy, uncertain, and very speculative methods of deciding upon a prisoner's sanity—methods that must often result in the punishment, if not the death, of the prisoners who suffer from some kind of mental disease. I am inclined to believe that the more all traces of madness are hidden by clever murderers, the stronger is the probability of that madness existing, for the very essence of cunning is employed in hiding it. They will cheerfully contemplate the executioner's rope rather than be considered mad. The brother and sister to whom I have referred would have cheerfully accepted the death penalty in preference to committal to a lunatic asylum. In one of my conversations with the brother, I suddenly asked him: "Have any of your relations been detained in lunatic asylums?" He was quite ready for me, and he replied: "I am as sane as you are; and if you are ever placed in a similar situation to mine, I hope you will prove as sane as I have."

The more I think over the two cases—one woman found sane and hanged, the other declared insane and sent to a lunatic asylum—the more I am convinced that equal justice has not been done. Probably the madness in both women proceeded from the same cause, and it is clear that neither of them had the slightest compunction about shedding blood.

I will deal briefly with my next case, and of a truth there is not much to be said. He was a clerk about twenty-six years of age. He had married a decent young woman, for whom he had made no provision other than a loaded pistol. He had no home and no money, excepting a few pounds that he had embezzled, and with this he had paid the marriage expenses. With his last few shillings he hired a cab; drove, accompanied by his wife, from place to place, in pretence of finding a home for her; and, finally, while still in the cab, he did the deed for which he had prepared—he shot her. He made no attempt to escape; he offered no reason for his deed; he was quite satisfied with his action; and when before the court he was absolutely unconcerned. I had several conversations with him, and as he had publicly owned to the deed, there was no harm in my assumption of his guilt. I said to him: "Tell me why you did this cruel deed?" He said: "I don't consider it a cruel deed. What else could I do? You would have done the same." Argument, of course, was out of the question, but I did venture to express the hope that I might not have done what he had done, when he again replied: "You think so now; but if you had to do it, you would do it!" And this frame of mind he maintained to the end—for he was hanged.

I do not say that he ought not to have been hanged, for it is difficult to point out in what other way he could have been dealt with; but so long as insanity is considered a sufficient reason for preventing the death penalty, I do say that every possible means should be taken to test a prisoner's sanity before a final decision is arrived at; and, further, that the appearance of positive sanity is under such circumstances an indication of insanity. Every criminal, in addition to murderers, ought to be subjected to a careful and prolonged scrutiny and mental examination by experts. The cost would not be great, and I am fully sure the results would compensate if the expense was great. Prisons ought to become psychological observatories, and be made to furnish us with a vast amount of useful information. There are so many things we ought to know, and might know if we would only take pains to know. It might be that the information obtained would make us sad and excite our fear; it might be that our pity would be deeply stirred, and that we should have a whole army of human beings upon our hands, for whom we might feel hopeless and helpless. But we have these even now, and for them imprisonment or hanging is a ready and simple plan that suffices us! But ought they to suffice in these enlightened days? I think not. At any rate, we ought to gather knowledge. With knowledge will come power, and with power better methods of dealing with erring or afflicted humanity. For the days will surely come when the hangman's rope will be seldom in requisition; when all the unhealthy and demoralizing publicity attaching to a murder trial will be a thing of the past; when criminals will not be made into public heroes, because of the speculative and perhaps equal chances of life or death; when morbid and widespread sentiment will not be created by public appeals to the Home Secretary; and, perhaps best of all, when diseased minds will be no longer influenced by the unhealthy publicity of the details pertaining to a death sentence to commit the other crimes for which no motives have been apparent.