THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 20, 1886.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIII, Issue 7773, 20 October 1886, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 20, 1886.

The celebrated Timaru poisoning case has terminated in the conviction of the male and the acquittal of the female prisoner. The result is what was pretty generally expected by those who had perused the evidence adduced. In the course of the trial it gradually became clear that, however much she had compromised herself, there was no proof forthcoming sufficient to sheet guilt home to Miss Houston; and the address of the Attorney-General showed that there did not appear grounds which would warrant him to ask the jury to record a conviction against her. Looking also to the Judge's charge to the jury the same opinion seems to have been held by the Bench, and the verdict on her case might therefore have been easily anticipated. Whether this will remove all suspicion of her complicity in what is admittedly one of the most coldblooded attempts to murder is, however, very doubtful. The part that she took on the occasion of Hall's arrest, when she frantically endeavoured to aid in preventing the phial which Hall had in his pocket from falling into the hands of the law officer, was strong presumptive evidence that she was not wholly ignorant of the murderous design that had been proceeding. The way in which Superintendent Broham narrated this incident showed that she was far from being a disinterested spectator, and that her action was prompted by the impulse to assist Hall in making away with what could not fail to prove a strongly-corroborative proof of his guilt. This point, it is true, was not urgently insisted on against her by the counsel for the prosecution; and this circumstance tends to raise the suspicion that there may be something in the background of this complicated tragedy which has yet to be brought to light. Should it turn out otherwise, society will doubtless experience a welcome sense of relief ; but, in the meantime, it is difficult to resist the feeling that the mystery attaching to this painful affair has not yet been all unravelled. With regard to the male prisoner, Hall, husband of the woman selected as the victim of the most heartless design which history has to record, the universal sense of the community will accord with the sentence which has been passed upon him. It is, indeed, difficult to believe that any man should be so devoid of feeling as to deliberately plot the destruction of his wife under circumstances which usually induce an excess of tenderness in the heart of even the roughest barbarian. To contemplate the possibility of a human being, trained under all the ennobling influences of civilisation, patiently studying and adapting the means for destroying the wife of his bosom at the very time that he was privileged to gaze upon the infant whom she had just presented to him as the pledge of their mutual affection, gives such a shock to our common humanity that one is tempted to find an escape from the reality of so unnatural an occurrence by instinctively treating it with absolute scepticism. But unfortunately for the credit of human nature, there is in this unprecedented instance no such escape available. The hard facts which bristle around the culprit force one to the conclusion that a deed of so unparalelled atrocity was meditated by him, and that its consummation was only prevented by those means of scientific detection which nature, as if in abhorrence of such utterly unnatural conduct, has placed within the reach of enlightened humanity. Reluctant, therefore, as all must be to believe that the prisoner Hall, or any other person entitled to be called a man, could be guilty of the diabolical crime he was charged with, they are yet constrained to recognise the justice of the verdict returned against him, and of the punishment, to

many minds worse than death, which the law has meted out to him. Even his counnel, who so ably pled his cause, may be held as acquiescing in this conclusion. His abstaining from the production of witnesses for the defence, and especially of his declining to avail himself oE the evidence of Mrs. Hall, who with a wife's instincts would naturally place the most favourable construction on all her husband's actions, he showed that in his estimation the attempt to rescue the accused from the proofs of guilt that environed him was hopeless. All that legal experience and acumen could do to save the prisoner from the avenging hand of justice was felt, as it proved, to be futile j and the sentence of imprisonment for life wound up the protracted trial of a case which has unusually excited public interest, and which will be recorded as in many respects the most extraordinary in the annals of crime. On a review of the evidence evolved in the course of this singular trial, it is not difficult to detect the motive which incited the culprit to embark on the infamous career which has ju3t had bo melancholy a termination. The impelling cause was obviously the desire to obtain the command of money. The embarrassed state of his affairs had, as it appeared, previously tempted him to enter upon the seductive pathway of crime; and his moral nature, thus debased, seems to have been whetted with an unnatural craving to eclipse the deeds of darkness he had already perpetrated. The system of forgery to which he had committed himself seems to have suggested the process of poisoning to which he studiously subjected the partner of his life. No more appalling instance of the progress of crime can possibly be cited. And the lesson which it reads to all who may be in the least disposed to yield to the temptation of trying to effect their escape from embarrassing circumstances by resorting to unprincipled devices is one of the most impressive which history presents. Here is a man, skilled in the methods of business, possessed of considerable culture, and daily meeting with his associates as a pattern of rectitude, risking his reputation for honour, and even for humanity, as also life itself, because his pride or some worse feeling would not allow him to stoop to a recognition of his misfortune. This is an exemplification of the state of mind in which a great multitude of human misdeeds have their origin. But it is an exemplification with a vengeance ; and the startling rapidity with which it exhibits the disposition to evil developing itself constitutes it a warning which society would do well to ponder. In the long dreary years of incarceration to which in this instance the initiation of crime has eventually conducted the culprit abundant opportunity for meditation on the ease with which a virtuous resolution could have prevented so tragic a career, and it is to be hoped, not without at least a partial recovery of the moral loss he" has sustained. But his fate also suggests not less scope and occasion for reflection to all who may be in danger of entering upon a course similar to that which has terminated in rendering him notorious as having committed the blackest of crimes.