there is not much chance of detection, and still less probability of conviction when you are detected, it seems so easy to get rid in this manner of any one who may stand in your way. Thomas Winslow, after he was discharged upon the indictment, was again taken into custody upon another charge of poisoning. It is said that three other members of Mrs. James’s family have died within the last year from the effects of antimony. He is described as a small, thin, under sized man, of mean appearance. His head is small, his hair dark. There is intelligence in his face, but yet more cunning than intelligence. His forehead is low, his under lip projects. He is about forty years of age. It is said that he was very “fidgetty” during his trial.
Of course it may well be, that the effect produced upon the minds of the spectators, who had an opportunity of watching the demeanour of the witnesses, may be different from that derived from a mere perusal of the printed reports of the evidence. Few persons who merely read the evidence, will doubt that the Liverpool jury might have weighed the matter a little more carefully before bringing in a verdict of Not Guilty, in the case of Thomas Winslow, indicted for the murder of Ann James, by poison.
JUSTICE’S JUSTICE.
Surely Dogberry resides in the green county of Hertford. Perhaps he is mayor of St. Albans. The peculiarity about the Dogberry system of administering justice consists in this, that it proceeds upon reasonably correct inferences from imperfect or muddled premises. It is right as half a story is right. It holds water like an Irish bull. Granted that all that was passing in the justice’s mind were true, and that nothing else were true, the Dogberry decisions would do well enough. Here is a case in point. Quite recently a little girl about twelve years of age named Ruth Harrison was charged with an assault upon Elizabeth Kirby, a child about five years old. The whole affair was a squabble amongst children. The first witness called was a certain Mrs. Elizabeth Biggs, who deposed that about five o’clock in the evening she was sitting in her house in Sopwell Lane, in the good town of St. Albans, when she heard some children crying. The good woman went out, when a little girl named Jane Lambeth told her that a little girl named Ruth Harrison had been beating a still smaller girl named Elizabeth Kirby. Jane was eight years old. Ruth was about twelve years old. Elizabeth was five years old. Hereupon the truculent, excited, and incautious Ruth made the admission in the presence of the witness that she had slapped Elizabeth, and, so far from feeling any repentance for her offence, she was prepared to do it again. Jane was present. Jane stated to the Worshipful the Mayor of St. Albans, and to his two yoke-fellows of justice, that about six p.m. on the previous afternoon she, Jenny, being engaged in her own lawful affairs, was in Sopwell Lane. She there witnessed the outrage which was the subject of contention before the Court. Ruth had hit Bessy a crack with her fist upon the back. Jane then went in-doors, but on coming out, she was greatly pained at witnessing a repetition of the offence. Ruth being called upon for her defence, in effect pleaded son assault demesne, and molliter manus. It appeared that Ruth, just before the commission of the offence, was engaged in the lawful and praiseworthy occupation of collecting dung in a basket. Bessy, being of malicious mind, and intending to obstruct her, Ruth, in the course of her business, came up and kicked her basket about. In point of fact, Bessy was the original assailant. Whereupon, Ruth, being moved to anger, “hit her twice with her hand,”—it is to be presumed, slapped her. There was no evidence forthcoming to show that Ruth’s statement was untrue in any respect, or at all over-coloured. Hereupon his Worship the Mayor, admitting that the case was a trivial one—in which respect he was perfectly right—decided that, as an assault had been committed, the prisoner must pay a fine of sixpence, with ten shillings costs. In default of payment, she must be imprisoned for ten days. Ruth’s mother hoped the Mayor would send the child to prison at once, for work was so bad, that it would be impossible for her to pay the amount. The Mayor, in mercy, informed her that fourteen days were allowed her to pay the fine, but at the expiration of that period the child must go to prison if it was unpaid. The fourteen days have not yet run out, but it is to be hoped, in the name of common humanity and common sense, that some one in St. Albans has paid the fine, and liberated the child from the danger of being sent to prison. Her whole life would, in all probability, be vitiated if she were sent to a gaol. She would be marked for ridicule and contempt amongst children of her own age, and it is not very likely that she would ever lose the style and title of a gaol-bird. It is a very serious thing to send a child to prison, and to give a wrong bias to a whole life. Reformatories and Industrial Schools are admirable institutions, but they are intended for a very different class of children. If a child within the appointed limits of age has been guilty of any offence which brings him or her within the grasp of the law—and it is clear that the parents are unable to give the child such a training as will cause it to abstain from crime—the Reformatory is a place of refuge, rather than of punishment. So of the Industrial School, where the child is proved to be a mere vagrant—a little Bedouin of the streets. The Industrial School may, and probably will, prove its salvation. It is strange that these grown men who, as a mayor and magistrates, must be presumed to be persons of ordinary intelligence, could have arrived at such a decision. Supposing one school-boy to hit another a box on the ear, would they really treat that as an offence against the criminal law? Where offenders are of a certain age, punishment is best left in the hands of the schoolmaster or parent.
THE WISE MEN OF THE EAST.
