Street to at least one of those, with whom he came in contact in his
later years. After he had left New Zealand and returned to Australia,
he was walking in a street in Melbourne with a friend when they passed
a lady dressed in black, carrying a baby in her arms. The baby looked
at the two men and laughed. Butler frowned and walked rapidly away. His
companion chaffed him, and asked whether it was the widow or the baby
that he was afraid of. Butler was silent, but after a time asked his
companion to come into some gardens and sit down on one of the seats, as
he had something serious to say to him. For a while Butler sat silent.
Then he asked the other if he had ever been in Dunedin. "Yes," was the
reply. "Look here," said Butler, "you are the only man I ever made any
kind of confidant of. You are a good scholar, though I could teach you
a lot." After this gracious compliment he went on: "I was once tried in
Dunedin on the charge of killing a man, woman and child, and although
innocent, the crime was nearly brought home to me. It was my own ability
that pulled me through. Had I employed a professional advocate, I should
not have been here to-day talking to you." After describing the murder,
Butler said: "Trying to fire the house was unnecessary, and killing
the baby was unnecessary and cruel. I respect no man's life, for no man
respects mine. A lot of men I have never injured have tried to put a
rope round my neck more than once. I hate society in general, and one
or two individuals in particular. The man who did that murder in Dunedin
has, if anything, my sympathy, but it seems to me he need not have
killed that child." His companion was about to speak. Butler stopped
him. "Now, don't ever ask me such a silly question as that," he said.
"What?" asked his friend. "You were about to ask me if I did that deed,"
replied Butler, "and you know perfectly well that, guilty or innocent,
that question would only be answered in one way." "I was about to ask
nothing of the kind," said the other, "for you have already told me that
you were innocent." "Good!" said Butler, "then let that be the end of
the subject, and never refer to it again, except, perhaps, in your own
mind, when you can, if you like, remember that I said the killing of the
child was unnecessary and cruel."
Having developed to the jury his theory of why the crime was committed,
Butler told them that, as far as he was concerned, there were four
points against him on which the Crown relied to prove his guilt.
Firstly, there was the fact of his being in the neighbourhood of the
crime on the Sunday morning; that, he said, applied to scores of other
people besides himself. Then there was his alleged disturbed appearance
and guilty demeanour. The evidence of that was, he contended, doubtful
in any case, and referable to another cause; as also his leaving Dunedin
in the way and at the time he did. He scouted the idea that murderers
are compelled by some invisible force to betray their guilt. "The doings
of men," he urged, "and their success are regulated by the amount
of judgment that they possess, and, without impugning or denying the
existence of Providence, I say this is a law that holds good in all
cases, whether for evil or good. Murderers, if they have the sense and
ability and discretion to cover up their crime, will escape, do escape,
and have escaped. Many people, when they have gravely shaken their heads
and said 'Murder will out,' consider they have done a great deal and
gone a long way towards settling the question. Well, this, like many
other stock formulas of Old World wisdom, is not true. How many murders
are there that the world has never heard of, and never will? How many a
murdered man, for instance, lies among the gum-trees of Victoria, or
in the old abandoned mining-shafts on the diggings, who is missed by
nobody, perhaps, but a pining wife at home, or helpless children, or
an old mother? But who were their murderers? Where are they? God knows,
perhaps, but nobody else, and nobody ever will." The fact, he said, that
he was alleged to have walked up Cumberland Street on the Sunday morning
and looked in the direction of the Dewars' house was, unless the causes
of superstition and a vague and incomplete reasoning were to be accepted
as proof, evidence rather of his innocence than his guilt. He had
removed the soles of his boots, he said, in order to ease his feet in
walking; the outer soles had become worn and ragged, and in lumps under
his feet. He denied that he had told Bain, the detective, that he would
break out as a desperate tiger let loose on the community; what he had
said was that he was tired of living the life of a prairie dog or a
tiger in the jungle.
Butler was more successful when he came to deal with the bloodstains on
his clothes. These, he said, were caused by the blood from the scratches
on his hands, which had been observed at the time of his arrest. The
doctors had rejected this theory, and said that the spots of blood
had been impelled from the axe or from the heads of the victims as the
murderer struck the fatal blow. Butler put on the clothes in court, and
was successful in showing that the position and appearance of certain
of the blood spots was not compatible with such a theory. "I think,"
he said, "I am fairly warranted in saying that the evidence of these
gentlemen is, not to put too fine a point on it, worth just nothing at
all."
Butler's concluding words to the jury were brief but emphatic: "I stand
in a terrible position. So do you. See that in your way of disposing of
me you deliver yourselves of your responsibilities."
In the exercise of his forbearance towards an undefended prisoner, Mr.
Haggitt did not address the jury for the Crown. At four o'clock the
judge commenced his summing-up. Mr. Justice Williams impressed on
the jury that they must be satisfied, before they could convict the
prisoner, that the circumstances of the crime and the prisoner's conduct
were inconsistent with any other reasonable hypothesis than his guilt.
There was little or no evidence that robbery was the motive of the
crime. The circumstance of the prisoner being out all Saturday night and
in the neighbourhood of the crime on Sunday morning only amounted to
the fact that he had an opportunity shared by a great number of other
persons of committing the murder. The evidence of his agitation and
demeanour at the time of his arrest must be accepted with caution. The
evidence of the blood spots was of crucial importance; there was nothing
save this to connect him directly with the crime. The jury must be
satisfied that the blood on the clothes corresponded with the blood
marks which, in all probability, would be found on the person who
committed the murder. In regard to the medical testimony some caution
must be exercised. Where medical gentlemen had made observations, seen
with their own eyes, the direct inference might be highly trustworthy,
but, when they proceeded to draw further inferences, they might be in
danger of looking at facts through the spectacles of theory; "we know
that people do that in other things besides science--politics, religion,
and so forth." Taking the Crown evidence, at its strongest, there was
a missing link; did the evidence of the bloodstains supply it? These
bloodstains were almost invisible. Could a person be reasonably asked to
explain how they came where they did? Could they be accounted for in no
other reasonable way than that the clothes had been worn by the murderer
of the Dewars?
In spite of a summing-up distinctly favourable to the prisoner, the jury
were out three hours. According to one account of their proceedings,
told to the writer, there was at first a majority of the jurymen in
favour of conviction. But it was Saturday night; if they could not come
to a decision they were in danger of being locked up over Sunday. For
this reason the gentleman who held an obstinate and unshaken belief that
the crime was the work of a homicidal maniac found an unexpected ally in
a prominent member of a church choir who was down to sing a solo in his
church on Sunday, and was anxious not to lose such an opportunity for
distinction. Whatever the cause, after three hours' deliberation the
jury returned a verdict of "Not Guilty." Later in the Session Butler
pleaded guilty to the burglary at Mr. Stamper's house, and was sentenced
to eighteen years' imprisonment. The severity of this sentence was not,
the judge said, intended to mark the strong suspicion under which Butler
laboured of being a murderer as well as a burglar.
The ends of justice had been served by Butler's acquittal. But in the
light of after events, it is perhaps unfortunate that the jury did not
stretch a point and so save the life of Mr. Munday of Toowong. Butler
underwent his term of imprisonment in Littleton Jail. There his
reputation was most unenviable. He is described by a fellow prisoner as
ill-tempered, malicious, destructive, but cowardly and treacherous. He
seems to have done little or no work; he looked after the choir and the
library, but was not above breaking up the one and smashing the other,
if the fit seized him.
III
HIS DECLINE AND FALL
In 1896 Butler was released from prison. The news of his release was
described as falling like a bombshell among the peaceful inhabitants
of Dunedin. In the colony of Victoria, where Butler had commenced his
career, it was received with an apprehension that was justified by
subsequent events. It was believed that on his release the New Zealand
authorities had shipped Butler off to Rio. But it was not long before he
made his way once more to Australia. From the moment of his arrival
in Melbourne he was shadowed by the police. One or two mysterious
occurrences soon led to his arrest. On June 5 he was sentenced to twelve
months' imprisonment under the Criminal Influx Act, which makes it a
penal offence for any convict to enter Victoria for three years
after his release from prison. Not content with this, the authorities
determined to put Butler on trial on two charges of burglary and one of
highway robbery, committed since his return to the colony. To one charge
of burglary, that of breaking into a hairdresser's shop and stealing a
wig, some razors and a little money, Butler pleaded guilty.
But the charge of highway robbery, which bore a singular resemblance
to the final catastrophe in Queensland, he resisted to the utmost, and
showed that his experience in the Supreme Court at Dunedin had not been
lost on him. At half-past six one evening in a suburb of Melbourne an
elderly gentleman found himself confronted by a bearded man, wearing a
long overcoat and a boxer hat and flourishing a revolver, who told him
abruptly to "turn out his pockets." The old man did ashe was told. The
robber then asked for his watch and chain, saying "Business must
be done." The old gentleman mildly urged that this was a dangerous
business. On being assured that the watch was a gold one, the robber
appeared willing to risk the danger, and departed thoroughly satisfied.
The old gentleman afterwards identified Butler as the man who had taken
his watch. Another elderly man swore that he had seen Butler at the time
of the robbery in the possession of a fine gold watch, which he said had
been sent him from home. But the watch had not been found in Butler's
possession.
On June 18 Butler was put on his trial in the Melbourne Criminal
Court before Mr. Justice Holroyd, charged with robbery under arms. His
appearance in the dock aroused very considerable interest. "It was the
general verdict," wrote one newspaper, "that his intellectual head and
forehead compared not unfavourably with those of the judge." He
was decently dressed and wore pince-nez, which he used in the best
professional manner as he referred to the various documents that lay in
front of him. He went into the witness-box and stated that the evening
of the crime he had spent according to his custom in the Public Library.
For an hour and a half he addressed the jury. He disputed the
possibility of his identification by his alleged victim. He was "an old
gentleman of sedentary pursuits and not cast in the heroic mould." Such
a man would be naturally alarmed and confused at meeting suddenly an
armed robber. Now, under these circumstances, could his recognition of
a man whose face was hidden by a beard, his head by a boxer hat, and his
body by a long overcoat, be considered trustworthy? And such recognition
occurring in the course of a chance encounter in the darkness, that
fruitful mother of error? The elderly gentleman had described his
moustache as a slight one, but the jury could see that it was full and
overhanging. He complained that he had been put up for identification
singly, not with other men, according to the usual custom; the police
had said to the prosecutor: "We have here a man that we think robbed
you, and, if he is not the man, we shall be disappointed," to which
the prosecutor had replied: "Yes, and if he is not the man, I shall be
disappointed too." For the elderly person who had stated that he had
seen a gold watch in Butler's possession the latter had nothing but
scorn. He was a "lean and slippered pantaloon in Shakespeare's last
stage"; and he, Butler, would have been a lunatic to have confided in
such a man.
The jury acquitted Butler, adding as a rider to their verdict that there
was not sufficient evidence of identification. The third charge against
Butler was not proceeded with. He was put up to receive sentence for the
burglary at the hairdresser's shop. Butler handed to the judge a written
statement which Mr. Justice Holroyd described as a narrative that
might have been taken from those sensational newspapers written for
nursery-maids, and from which, he said, he could not find that Butler
had ever done one good thing in the whole course of his life. Of that
life of fifty years Butler had spent thirty-five in prison. The judge
expressed his regret that a man of Butler's knowledge, information,
vanity, and utter recklessness of what evil will do, could not be put
away somewhere for the rest of his life, and sentenced him to fifteen
years' imprisonment with hard labour. "An iniquitous and brutal
sentence!" exclaimed the prisoner. After a brief altercation with the
judge, who said that he could hardly express the scorn he felt for such
a man, Butler was removed. The judge subsequently reduced the sentence
to one of ten years. Chance or destiny would seem implacable in their
pursuit of Mr. William Munday of Toowong.
Butler after his trial admitted that it was he who had robbed the old
gentleman of his watch, and described to the police the house in which
it was hidden. When the police went there to search they found that the
house had been pulled down, but among the debris they discovered a brown
paper parcel containing the old gentleman's gold watch and chain, a
five-chambered revolver, a keen-edged butcher's knife, and a mask.
Butler served his term of imprisonment in Victoria, "an unmitigated
nuisance" to his custodians. On his release in 1904, he made, as in
Dunedin, an attempt to earn a living by his pen. He contributed some
articles to a Melbourne evening paper on the inconveniences of prison
discipline, but he was quite unfitted for any sustained effort as a
journalist. According to his own account, with the little money he had
left he made his way to Sydney, thence to Brisbane. He was half-starved,
bewildered, despairing; in his own words, "if a psychological camera
could have been turned on me it would have shown me like a bird
fascinated by a serpent, fascinated and bewildered by the fate in front,
behind, and around me." Months of suffering and privation passed, months
of tramping hundreds of miles with occasional breakdowns, months of
hunger and sickness; "my actions had become those of a fool; my mind and
will had become a remnant guided or misguided by unreasoning impulse."
It was under the influence of such an impulse that on March 23 Butler
had met and shot Mr. Munday at Toowong. On May 24 he was arraigned at
Brisbane before the Supreme Court of Queensland. But the Butler who
stood in the dock of the Brisbane Criminal Court was very different
from the Butler who had successfully defended himself at Dunedin and
Melbourne. The spirit had gone out of him; it was rather as a suppliant,
represented by counsel, that he faced the charge of murder. His attitude
was one of humble and appropriate penitence. In a weak and nervous voice
he told the story of his hardships since his release from his Victorian
prison; he would only urge that the shooting of Mr. Munday was
accidental, caused by Munday picking up a stone and attacking him. When
about to be sentenced to death he expressed great sorrow and contrition
for his crime, for the poor wife and children of his unfortunate victim.
His life, he said, was a poor thing, but he would gladly give it fifty
times over.
The sentence of death was confirmed by the Executive on June 30. To
a Freethought advocate who visited him shortly before his execution,
Butler wrote a final confession of faith: "I shall have to find my way
across the harbour bar without the aid of any pilot. In these matters
I have for many years carried an exempt flag, and, as it has not been
carried through caprice or ignorance, I am compelled to carry it to the
last. There is an impassable bar of what I honestly believe to be the
inexorable logic of philosophy and facts, history and experience of the
nature of the world, the human race and myself, between me and the
views of the communion of any religious organisation. So instead of the
'depart Christian soul' of the priest, I only hope for the comfort and
satisfaction of the last friendly good-bye of any who cares to give it."
From this positive affirmation of unbelief Butler wilted somewhat at the
approach of death. The day before his execution he spent half an hour
playing hymns on the church organ in the prison; and on the scaffold,
where his agitation rendered him almost speechless, he expressed his
sorrow for what he had done, and the hope that, if there were a heaven,
mercy would be shown him.
M. Derues
The last word on Derues has been said by M. Georges Claretie in his
excellent monograph, "Derues L'Empoisonneur," Paris. 1907. There is a
full account of the case in Vol. V. of Fouquier, "Causes Celebres."
I
THE CLIMBING LITTLE GROCER
M. Etienne Saint-Faust de Lamotte, a provincial nobleman of ancient
lineage and moderate health, ex-equerry to the King, desired in
the year 1774 to dispose of a property in the country, the estate of
Buisson-Souef near Villeneuve-le-Roi, which he had purchased some ten
years before out of money acquired by a prudent marriage.
With an eye to the main chance M. de Lamotte had in 1760 ran away with
the daughter of a wealthy citizen of Rheims, who was then staying with
her sister in Paris. They lived together in the country for some time,
and a son was born to them, whom the father legitimised by subsequently
marrying the mother. For a few years M. and Mme. de Lamotte dwelt
happily together at Buisson-Souef. But as their boy grew up they became
anxious to leave the country and return to Paris, where M. de Lamotte
hoped to be able to obtain for his son some position about the Court of
Louis XVI. And so it was that in May, 1775, M. de Lamotte gave a
power of attorney to his wife in order that she might go to Paris
and negotiate for the sale of Buisson-Souef. The legal side of the
transaction was placed in the hands of one Jolly, a proctor at the
Chatelet in Paris.
Now the proctor Jolly had a client with a great desire to acquire a
place in the country, M. Derues de Cyrano de Bury, lord of Candeville,
Herchies, and other places. Here was the very man to comply with
the requirements of the de Lamottes, and such a pleasing, ready,
accommodating gentleman into the bargain! Very delicate to all
appearances, strangely pale, slight, fragile in build, with his
beardless chin and feminine cast of feature, there was something
cat-like in the soft insinuating smile of this seemingly most amiable,
candid and pious of men. Always cheerful and optimistic, it was quite
a pleasure to do business with M. Derues de Cyrano de Bury. The
de Lamottes after one or two interviews were delighted with their
prospective purchaser. Everything was speedily settled. M. Derues and
his wife, a lady belonging to the distinguished family of Nicolai,
visited Buisson-Souef. They were enchanted with what they saw, and their
hosts were hardly less enchanted with their visitors. By the end of
December, 1775, the purchase was concluded. M. Derues was to give
130,000 livres (about L20,000) for the estate, the payments to be made
by instalments, the first of 12,000 livres to be paid on the actual
signing of the contract of sale, which, it was agreed, was to be
concluded not later than the first of June, 1776. In the meantime, as an
earnest of good faith, M. Derues gave Mme. de Lamotte a bill for 4,200
livres to fall due on April 1, 1776.
What could be more satisfactory? That M. Derues was a substantial person
there could be no doubt. Through his wife he was entitled to a sum of
250,000 livres as her share of the property of a wealthy kinsman, one
Despeignes-Duplessis, a country gentleman, who some four years before
had been found murdered in his house under mysterious circumstances.
The liquidation of the Duplessis inheritance, as soon as the law's delay
could be overcome, would place the Derues in a position of affluence
fitting a Cyrano de Bury and a Nicolai.
At this time M. Derues was in reality far from affluent. In point of
fact he was insolvent. Nor was his lineage, nor that of his wife, in any
way distinguished. He had no right to call himself de Cyrano de Bury or
Lord of Candeville. His wife's name was Nicolais, not Nicolai--a very
important difference from the genealogical point of view. The Duplessis
inheritance, though certainly existent, would seem to have had little
more chance of realisation than the mythical Crawford millions of Madame
Humbert. And yet, crippled with debt, without a penny in the world,
this daring grocer of the Rue Beaubourg, for such was M. Derues'
present condition in life, could cheerfully and confidently engage in
a transaction as considerable as the purchase of a large estate for
130,000 livres! The origin of so enterprising a gentleman is worthy of
attention.
Antoine Francois Derues was born at Chartres in 1744; his father was a
corn merchant. His parents died when he was three years old. For some
time after his birth he was assumed to be a girl; it was not until
he was twelve years old that an operation determined his sex to be
masculine. Apprenticed by his relatives to a grocer, Derues succeeded
so well in the business that he was able in 1770 to set up on his
own account in Paris, and in 1772 he married. Among the grocer's
many friends and acquaintances this marriage created something of a
sensation, for Derues let it be known that the lady of his choice was of
noble birth and an heiress. The first statement was untrue. The lady
was one Marie Louise Nicolais, daughter of a non-commissioned artillery
officer, turned coachbuilder. But by suppressing the S at the end of her
name, which Derues was careful also to erase in his marriage contract,
the ambitious grocer was able to describe his wife as connected with
the noble house of Nicolai, one of the most distinguished of the great
French families.
There was more truth in the statement that Mme. Derues was an heiress. A
kinsman of her mother, Beraud by name, had become the heir to a certain
Marquis Desprez. Beraud was the son of a small merchant. His mother
had married a second time, the husband being the Marquis Desprez, and
through her Beraud had inherited the Marquis' property. According to the
custom of the time, Beraud, on coming into his inheritance, took a
title from one of his estates and called himself thenceforth the lord of
Despeignes-Duplessis. A rude, solitary, brutal man, devoted to sport,
he lived alone in his castle of Candeville, hated by his neighbours, a
terror to poachers. One day he was found lying dead in his bedroom; he
had been shot in the chest; the assassin had escaped through an open
window.