Twenty Minutes too late.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 1517, 29 January 1886, Page 3

Twenty Minutes too late.

I am an old man now. «rd have retired from the profession ; but at the time the incident I am about to relate occumd I had just entered it, and wa* going circuit for the second time.

Through the kindness of a wellknown member of the circuit, who had conceived a liking for me. I was entrusted with two or three briefs on my first j' urrey ; and. in consequence of one ot these, I became known to an old gentleman, named Dowding, living in Gloucester. The case in which I was concerned for him was a suit to recover a debt contracted by his son, who was then under a?e; and though the amount sought to be recovered was not large, yet, if he had beeD condemned to pay it, it would have led to the prosecution of similar claims by other tradesmen, which would have rnined him.

Thouch there is a ways a natural t j ndencv on the part of a jury of t r adesman to give effect to the claim of a brother-tradesman, I was fortunate enough to get a verdict in favour of mv client.

A case of this kind is not one to be remembered long, even by a newlyfledged barrister, and though accompanied as it was by the kindly congratulations of some of the members of the circuit on my speech ; until I returned to Gloucester I had forgotten all about Mr. Dowding. Having a relative at Longhope I went there the day before the ass'tes began, and did not reach Gloucester till late, and beirg tired, I went straight to the lodgings I had engaged wirh the intention of going to bed early.

My lodcirgs wrre the same as I had occupied at the preceding assizes; and, *hen I reached them, I found a white haired old rran waiting f>»r me there, whom I had some difficulty at fi r st in recognising as my old client, Mr. Dowding. The poor man began to cry as soon as be saw me, and this, with hi? evident feebleness—for he failed in hiseveral attempts to rise his chair to m»'et me —excited my sympathv for his distr'-sj so strongly that ray fatigue was forgott« n, and I frit eager to hear what 1 a i caused it.

W iihiMg to come to the point as loon as possible. I sai i: " I am afraid eon is in some wav the cause of vour distress "

" les, my dear young friend, he is ; but my poor boy is innocent of the cime they charge him with. lam sure ; 1 trust in God le is." " You « em to K«ve a doubt yourself on that p)ir t. What is the charge ? Is he in mien? and do v u want me to d^f«xd him r "

"That is what I Lave come here to tsk y >u »o do." " Very well. What is he charged

frith?"

" A meat dreadful crime, for which, if he is c..r victed, he will certainly be executed.''

Here he br>ke down acain, and burit into A terrible fit of crying and a;btmg, during which 1 could understand little of what he t r ied to say. beyoa 1 the words, mother, sisters brckea-heaited, shame, disgrace and so on.

Seeing that he Feiii in his hand a roll of p:»per, I thought it probable that tfiM would cive me the information I wanted ; I therefore took it from h'rn, and opened it. " Yes," said he, •' You will find it all there. I made him write it, and gire it me, t hat it mav be ready for you when vou arrived. Here is also an order which will admit you to his cell as early as you like in the morning "

" Thank you. How do yoa purpose to get home r '

I shall walk. I fed better, now that I haTe seen you " I went with him to the street-door, shook hands, and then went back to m? room to read his sou's statement. Thus it ran:

"On the evening of the 21-t I ra°t Esther Leversedge at th>* corner of Copley's Line, and we walked down by the farm and across the fiielda to her house. " I hid often met her before, but had never gone h me with her, on seconnt of her fa'her, who had a bad name in the neighbourh >od, owing to Ins illness aid bad disposition.

"Till tht« evening, I had resolutely refused her invitations to set foot in her house, but when we reached it, she assured me bo positively that h* r father was out, and wou'd rot return till iate, that 1 let myself be persuaded to go in and sit down a little,while. " When L entered, I fully intended to stay only a few minutes ; but the lime fl-w so rapidly that if wis between ten and eleven o'clock when I got up to go. " 1 *ra« saying good-bye to E-ther, when we hoard the garden wicket fall to, and sKe directly said it was her lather.

•She wiit as fearful of the consequences if he saw me there as what I was, or at least she seemed to be. Tbere was no way of leaving the house without meeting him; and, if I had had time to think, J should have left bv this way, and m*t him in the open air; but before I could think for myself, Esther had pened the back door, and Dushed me into the wood- > oase, telling me that her father was sure to go to b«d directly, and then the would let me out.

14 As soon as I was left alone, I felt angry and vexed that I had suffered myself to be shut in; but being there, I thought it would only be staying a few minutes, and then I could get away without exposing her to her father's anger. " There was a heap of faggots in the shed, and I got up to the top of these to be more out of (he way, in case he should come there for anything. " A minute or two afterwards, he came in with a light, pulled a tub from one corner, and then took a pail and went outside, and brought it back full of water.

" He had a smock frock, very white and clean, which he stripped off. and laid on the wood, and underneath this he wore a dark fustian coat. He first poured the water into a tub, and then took off his coat, and put tha 4 : in the water too, and began washing it. " From where I was crouching, I could distinctly see that the water became red as be washed; and the stain on his hands, which I thought was dirt, changed a bright red before being wpshed off altogether.

" Terrified by what I saw, and knowing that I had no right to be where I was, I tried to draw back further into the darkness, and in doing this I made a slight noise, which caused him to look up. He saw me directly, and the surprise seemed to deprive him of his faculties for an instant; but this was only momentary, for before I cou'd offer any explan ation. he caught up a hatchet used in chopping the wood, and began climbing towards me with such a sava:e expression in his face that I knew he m( ant to murder me. " I shouted for Esther, knowing I could expect help from no other person, there being no cottage near, and she rushed iu and caught her father by the arm. He tried all he could to shake her eff, by means of b'ows and force, but she held so tightly, that, if she had caught hia right arm instead of his left, 1 should have had time to come to her assistn r co; as it was, I could not approach him without the certainty of being cut down. I thought her prayers had - ni»*«tftct upon him, and I tried to increase tins by promising not to say a word of what I had seen. " Hh considered for a minute, and then threw the hatchet into a corner, and told me to come down.

"I did as he bad me, supposing he meant to let me so; but the moment I put mv foot on the ground he struck Hfveral blows on the face, and then he dragged me into his daughter's bedroom, and locked me in, and left me there about half an hour. '• When he came to fetch me out. he had hi" hat on and his white smockfrock. He told me to come with him.

" Mv face was a'l bloody, and being ir. TV ''rvk all this time, it had run > ! wu on the front of my clothes without mv knowing it.

" I thought he was going to take me to tt.y father ; and being afraid of frightening my mother and pi«t«»rp, I begged him to let me at least wa*h mv face and hands, which he refused with manv oaths ; and. taking hold of ine

bv the arm. he made me go with him across the tit-Ms to the London road " After walking slong this road in the direction ot Gloucester for fi ur or five hundred yards, came to a i art of it which had or. one fide a narrowiwh strip of land, on which a few treis grew and a little underwood. ' Leversedge walked in here, still holding me by the arm, and searched about for a few minutes ; I was horrified to snd what he was looking for was a dead body. '* The dress showed that it was thp body of a labouring man, apparently a wagoner, for there was a long whip lying uear him such a " they use. I could s*e the white face and half closed ejep, which reflected the moonMght, hut 1 could not recognise it, though I felt sure I had seen it before.

" Leaving the body where it lay, Leversedge went on with me iu the direction of Gloucester, and 1 now began to form an idea ot what he intended to do with me. " Just after we cot into the city, we came up with a earner's wag -on. The hors- s were standing still, and a crowd had collected round it, and I heard the people wondering what had become of the driver

" pushed me into the midst of them, ami said . Y"U will never j»ee the driver any more but We is his murderer 1'

" The people shrunk awnv from us, but I was recognised directly. I protented as earnestly that I was innocent, and charted inv accuser with having lommitted the murder himself, but he in a jeering way cal'ed the attention of those present to the appearance of my clothes, and contrasted them with his own, so that none seemed to believe what I said, and one of them fetched the constable, who locked me up I WHS taken before the justices, and they committed me to prison, to take my trial at the assizes for murder of tbe waggoner.

Before going 'to see the prisoner in the morning, I called on his father, and was surprised to find that he had refused the services of any local attorney to prepare the evidence for the defence, thinking it would only be necessary to give me his son's statement to enable me to plead his cause successfully. I next visited the prison, to hear what tbe son bad to say. He was a quiet, good-looking fellow, with an

appearance calculated to make a favourable impression on a jury. He insisted in asserting that every word he had written was true, and as he had nothing to add, I lost- very little time in conversing with him. On reading the depositions I found that, omitting unimportant details, Leversedge's evidence was this: That he bad been drinking at the public-house with a friend and the landlord till about half past ten o'clock, when his friend wished him good night, and went away, leading him talking to the landlord at the door ; that he himself left a few minutes afterwards, and had got within a quarter of a mile of the turnpike g*te, through which hehad to pass to get to his cottage, when he heard a cry for help. There was a rosd waggon at some istance be/ore him, and he thought some accident had happened to the driver, and ran along the road till he overtook it, when he found there was no driver with the wagon. Ifo had seen nothing in the road, but he directly turned round, aud went back, to look more carefully, first stepping tho horses. On reaching a place by the roadside, called Turnpike Folly, he sa-v a man run out of the Folly, and among the trees he saw the dead body of the driver of the road-waggon ; that he ran after the man, and caught him, and this man was Henry Dowding. Such was the substance of his deposition, which was supported by the evidence of the landlord of the publichouse, and the man who had been drinking with them. Without thisconfirmatory testimony, the bad character ofLeversedge would have prevented this statement from being accepted with confidence by the jury ; but when to this was added the evidence of the witnesses who spoke to the state of their clothes at the time when he brought Dowding into Gloucester, it became pretty certain that there could be only one termination to the trial, and that Dowiing, whether guilty or innocent, would be condemned.

I was myself disposed to accept the prisoner'* statemen, in spite of its improbabilities, but it was clear that the only chance of getting a jury to do so was by producing Esther Lerersedge in court, and her giving evidence in support of it I turned over the depositions again and again, but I could not find hers amongst them ; and on inquiring about the omission, I learned that her attendance at the examination before the justices had not been enforced, and, consequently, she had not given evidence at ail. I sent for the constable into whose custody Dowdiog had beeu given, and according to him, nobody who had seen the tw<> men on the night of the murder, had any doubt about the prisoner's guilt. lie owed money to nearly every tradesman in the town, and he knew, a< will ns anybody else, that the earner was in the habit of bringing inuiiey from London to people in Gloucester ; it w;tf therefore natural that he should try to g»;t it by robbery aud violence.

I ilirect this official to provide for the attendance of Esther Leversedge at the trial, promising him a reasonable remuneration for hi? trouble and expend.

Tnc trial was not likely to come on before the afternoon of the succeeding day ; tut tlio durat'on of a trial can never be reckoned upnu with any degree of certainty, and it so happened that Dowding's case was called on three or four hours sooner than was

expected. 1 had heard nothing of Eshter Lever-t-eJiie, and I was about to make an application for the postponement of the trial till the next assizes, on account of the absence of the only person who could give evidence in favour of the prisoner, when I caught sight of the constable I had sent in search of her.

lie nodded in reply to my look, and at the same moment a slip of paper was placed in my hand, on which was written, " I have got her." The trial w>nt on, and a* it proceeded, it was not ditfieult to see that the evidence for the pros cution was tel'ing fenrfu'ly the prisoner, in the o; iniors of the jurymen. I cro<s examined Leversedge with such severity that even the judge seemed to think I was abusing the privileges of cou is d, but the fellow had had too long to think over his tale to he shaken in it now.

The case for the prosecution was soon closed, and thai for the defence but a vev little while. A! 1 that I had to was the statement trade by the prisoner previous to his committal, the notori uisly bad character of the principal witness, and tbe greater probability that a m;in of his strength and ferocity v.*>is the murderer than that the crime should have been committed by a comparatively weak youth like the prisoner at the bar, without accomplices, and without, so lar as had been ascertained, even a weapon. Theru was the usual stir and excitement in the court when an interesting witness is called, as Esther Leversedge took her place in the witness-box. I thiuk I was never more surprised at the personal appearance of anybody. She was a bold, coarse-looking woman, cons'derably older than the prisoner, who as I have said, was of a very prepossessing appearance, and with that degree of refinement in the expression of his countenance which indicated a man of some education,

When called upon to give her evidence, she declared she had none to give. I questioned her on the prisoner's statement, but she utterly denied that she had met him on the night in ques ion, or, in short, that there was one word of truth in what he had said r«BDecting her. I was completely astounded at finding that [ had only called a witness to strengthen the case against my client, and I lo at him annoyed and angry that he should have deceived me with such falsehoods; but there was such intense astonishment in his face, that I wanted no further evidence to prove to me that his tale was true.

Ry a gesture, I called the attentiou of the jury to this, and after asking the witness a few more questions, with the view of eliciting from her that she made these denials out of regard for or through fear of her father, and failing to get satisfactory answers, I dismissed her.

1 need not describe the remainder of what took place. The summing-up of the judge showed that he was not entrely without doubt; but when the jury had given a verdict of Guilty, he told them, previous to passing condemnation, that he eoncu.red in their verdict, and ordered the accused for execution with the formalities.

The grief of poor oi l 1) iwding was the most painful I ever saw. I tried to comfort him by assuring him that I believ-'d his sou was innocent, and advised him to draw up s petition to the king that ho would exercise his prerogative in his favour. 1 solicited the influence of members of the bar, who were ready enough to use it on receiving my assurance that 1 had no doubt of the prisoner's innocence.

Altogether, T felt tolerably sure that a reprieve would arrive before the day fixed for the execution. Day after day passed on until that fixed for the execution arrived ; but still no reprieve and no refusal to grant one had been received.

I endeavoured in every possible way to delfry the execution to a later hour, and succeeded to a certain extent.

The formalities immediately preceding it were performed as slowly as possible ; the prisoner was allowed an unusually long period in prayer, and even when on the scaffold he might have prolonged his life f)r some minutes by addressing the spectators ; but he was worn out by the excitement he had undergone, and was incapable of spenkini'. When the last act had been accomplished, 1 went with the sheriff and the chaplain to drink a glass of wine, being great'y depressed at what had taken place. There were several officialb, and a feiv of the principal persons belonging to the couuty in the room, who were discussing the arguments for and against my client's guilt. I was leaving with the sheriff, when the governor came to him with a letter addressed to the sheriff of the county ot Gloucester. The manner in which it was addressed, and its appearance, shewed it wis an official letter. I looked over him as he opened it with an a'ix ety which cannot he conceived —it wcsa reprieve for Henry Dowding. I looked at my watch : he had been har ging just twenty minues. It turned out that the reprieve had be<n addie-sed to the Sheriff at Herefon'ih re instead of Gloucestershire, and was not received by him till some hour* later than he might have received it, in consequence of its having been dropped into the pest-ctlice letterb. x after the letters for that night's post had been removed. As Boon es he had read it, he sent it by a who travelled as fast as horses ctu'd go, but failed to reach Gloucester with it till it was twenty ruiuutes too late. There is no doubt in mv own mind but that Henry Dowdirig was an innocent man.