A GRIM LIBRARY

Greymouth Evening Star, 28 October 1933, Page 10

A GRIM LIBRARY

RECORDS OF THE OLD BAILEY ’ “ . . until you are dead.” The words of the death sentence trail away; the prisoner in the dock is led below; the crowded court room clears swiftly. Justice is satisfied. One thing alone remains to be done. Shorthand notes of the long trial must be typed and sent to the printer, so that the world may know of the work of the Old Bailey, London. In 'the ismall library of the famous court overlooking a busy street you may see these records of bygone trials. The plainly bound volumes will take you far into the past. You will read of famous trials and of infamous criminals, of patriots, martyrs, and black traitors. But one thing is; that human nature has changed very little, although, happily, the British legal system to-day is more humane than it was in the past. The trial of Henry Francis de la Motte, for “treason against our most Gracious Sovereign Lord King George the Third,” is reported in great detail. and it gives an insight into those times. Judging from the space devoted to the trial it must have lasted for at least a week, and at its conclusion Lord Justice Buller told the prisoner what he thought of him, and informed him that “in no other country but this England of ours” would he have had so fair and “generous” a trial. Then Lord Buller ordered that the prisoner be “hanged by the neck, but not until dead; and that while he still lived his entrails be cut out and burned before his face; his head be then removed from his shoulders, and his body divided into four portions.” De la Motto’s trial occurred during an interesting session, for it is recorded: “The remainder of the session, comprising no fewer than 16 capital crimes, shall now be proceeded with.” I The printer in those days apparently realised the value of advertising, for at the end of this volume he writes: “A small number of copies of reports of this trial can be bought from the printer. Although printed on smooth paper and on 24 pages, the price is only one shilling.”

HANGED FOR. THEFT

: In those times men and women wer< hanged for the theft of goods of mon than the value of 40/-, but the penal ties for-having stolen goods below thai value were considerably out of proper tiou. The records of one session show that six people—four men and two wo men—were executed for the theft oi goods coming under the capital clause and that three women and one man were sentenced to be whipped and it serve terms varying from one to six months in prison for lesser thefts. One woman. Sarah Phillips, was tried for having stolen goods valued at 12/6, but the jury found that the property was worth only lOd. She was whipped and sent to prison. .Robbery with violence was a most prevalent crime to- ! ward the early nineteenth century. Yet the penalty for this offence, no matter what value of property was stolen, was death. Eighteen persons w ei e executed following the Autumn sessions of 1788 for this offence, the value of the stolen goods ranging from -id in one case to 33/- in another. Identification parades seem to be a very old police practice, for in 1774 Thomas Woodman and Edward Bat-

ten, charged with having stolen tw r o pairs of trousers and one shirt, of a total value of 22/-,' were “exhibited in the prison yard before the prosecutor.” This man identified them at the time, but he wilted under examination in the court, and the learned judge impressed upon the jury that it must be certain of the evidence of identification before it would convict. The jury was not certain and the accused were acquitted. A very early case in which an alibi figured, but failed to save the neck of the accused, Was in 1782, when a man brought a friend to swear* that be had been with him at a time when he was alleged to have been burgling a public house. The jury heard the witness, but was not impressed, whereupon the accused offered to bring his mother to support his alibi. When the mother entered the box she swore that her son was all kinds of a liar and rogue, and his alibi collapsed. JURY GOES TO PRISON.

In the vestibule of the Old Bailey is a fine bronze tablet commemorating the action of a jury which went to prison because its members refused to convict men in whose innocence they believed. The men were William Penn and William Mead, charged with having preached to an unlawful assembly in Gracechurch Street. In his summing up the judge ordered the jury to convict, but the jurymen acquitted the accused, and were promptly sent to gaol themselves. Little were these courageous men to know that one of the men they saved would go down as the founder of Pennsylvania.

I Compared with the terrible sentence so casually passed on De la Motte, the punishment of the Gallagher gang of Irish Nationalists in 1883—still remembered by old servants: at the court • —was comparatively light. Thomas Gallagher, Alfred Whitehead, Henry | Wilson. William Ansburgh, John Curtin, and Bernard Gallagher were all charged with conspiracy to depose Her Majesty the Queen. Evidence showed that the accused had procured large quantities of explosives, and were responsible for the destruction of a considerable amount of property. They were also alleged to have had plans well in hand for the blowing up of the Tower of London and the Houses of Parliament. Ansburgh and Bernard Gallagher were acquitted, but the rest received penal servitude for life. If these men were fortunate that their crimes had not been committed earlier, so was Thomas Peterson Goud-1 ie. a bank clerk, of Liverpool. Al-1 though forgery, even for a few pounds, I meant death at one time, Goudie, charged with having received sums I amounting to £17,800, was sentenced 1 to penal servitude for 10 years. An employee of a bank, he admitted having got into debt through gambling and having forged cheques against wealthy clients, which he destroyed subsequently.