Muswell Hill Murder. inspired with the hope that the Crown would allow Milsom to turn Queen's evidence. But this hope was doomed to disappointment. In the first place, Fowler promptly issued a confession of his own directly implicating Milsom in the actual murder. Then both the jemmies discovered were blood-stained, and lastly, the medical evidence showed that the knots in the ligatures, with which Mr. Smith had been bound, had been tied the one by a right-handed and the other by a left-handed man. The prisoners were prompt ly committed for trial, and were tried at the Old Bailey in May last before Sir Henry Hawkins. They were, of course, found guilty and sentenced to death. Two dramatic episodes occurred during the trial. When the jury retired to consider their verdict the judge left the court. The two prisoners were seated in the dock with a powerful warden between them. Fowler looked tired and exhausted, and some of the spectators with anti-police sympathies were covertly ridiculing the stories of the police as to his marvelous strength. The veracity of the police was, however, sud denly and strikingly vindicated. Fowler was observed to grin, gnash his teeth and foam at the mouth for an instant (symptoms, by the way, which have led very many ex perts to pronounce him to have been an epileptic criminal), and then bounding to his feet with the spring of a tiger, he hurled the warden out of his way and seized Milsom with a grasp which, unless immediately re laxed, would have terminated that wretched craven's life without the aid of the execu tioner. In a moment the court was in an uproar. Ladies screamed and fainted. Burly officers leaped into the dock, and soon nearly a dozen men had Fowler in hand. Milsom was torn from his grasp. But the desperate criminal hurled his assailants first to one side of the dock and then to the other, and it was not till after a struggle of about twenty minutes that he was over powered. The police critics have been very
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subdued since that remarkable scene, and no one who witnessed it will ever forget it. After the death sentence had been pro nounced Fowler created another sensation by declaring that he had been the perpe trator of a burglary for which two men, Watts and Hall, were then in custody, and have since been (properly) sentenced to fifteen years' penal servitude. The confes sion was proved to be false, and was prompted merely by a rough and not dis creditable desire on the convict's part, now that he was passing out of the region of human hope, to do a good turn to two "pals " in trouble. The chief interest of this episode is of a legal character. An ap plication was made at the trial of Watts and Hall to summon Fowler as a witness. Sir Henry Hawkins refused to accede to it. But the question indirectly raised by it — viz. the competency of a condemned convict as a witness — was brought to an issue a few days later in the case of Mrs. Dyer, a human fiend, who has recently been hanged for a series of baby-farming murders. Her daughter, Mrs. Palmer, was awaiting trial as an accessory before the fact to her crimes. A subpoena was served first on the chief warder of Newgate gaol, where Mrs. Dyer was confined, and secondly on the Home Secretary, with conduct money, requiring the production of Mrs. Dyer as a witness on Mrs. Palmer's trial a week after the date fixed for her execution. The Home Secre tary checkmated this move by intimating that the Crown did not intend to offer any evidence against Mrs. Palmer. But he also stated that Mrs. Dyer, being civilly dead, was legally incompetent as a witness. It is very doubtful, however, whether, since the abolition of forfeiture in 1870, this is sound English law. But the evidence of a condemned felon ought to be taken, if pos sible, on commission. The presence of a desperate scoundrel like Fowler in the wit ness-box is not a thing to be desired. The closing scene- in the lives of the Mus
