THE TRIAL AND CONVICTION OF THE LARCHGROVE-LANE MURDERER――THE PLEA OF
WITCHCRAFT.
The day at length arrived upon which Giles Chudley was to be tried,
and there were many who believed he would get off. The court was
crowded to excess, and when the prisoner entered the dock those who
had known him in an earlier day were astounded at the miserable
appearance he presented.
His features were lined, thin, and haggard, and he was but a shadow of
his former self. Nevertheless, he strove to bear up bravely under the
terrible ordeal.
To use a common but expressive phrase, “you might have heard a pin
drop” when the counsel for the prosecution rose to open the case.
He did so in a fair, impartial, and masterly manner, neither stepping
to the right nor the left, to dwell unnecessarily on the leading
facts, either for or against the prisoner.
Whatever opinion we may form of wrangling attorneys, third orand
fourth-rate barristers, who, in many cases, are so particularly
pertinacious and obtrusive in inquiries at our police-courts, there
can be but one in respect to a leading counsel, whose business it is
to conduct the prosecution, or who is retained for the defence upon
the trial of a prisoner for a capital offence. The arguments on both
sides are pretty generally fine specimens of calm and subtle reasoning
of cultivated intellects.
And we have no reason to complain of the judges of our land. If there
is one thing Englishmen have to be proud of, it is the wisdom and
honesty of their judges.
We need not go over the case again. It will suffice to declare that as
it was presented before the judge and jury at the assizes, it was much
stronger and more compact and complete than when heard before the
bench of magistrates. There were two additional witnesses whose
testimony corroborated those who had already been heard in respect to
the prisoner’s identity.
Mr. Slapperton instructed counsel, and he was greatly hurt at the
latter not entering more fully into his favourite plea of mistaken
identity; but the gentleman retained for the defence had too good a
knowledge of law to allow himself to be dictated to by a provincial
attorney.
Two men were brought from London as witnesses for the defence.
They swore positively that the prisoner was in their company in the
metropolis on the night the murder was committed.
They were two unprincipled scoundrels who had been produced by Alf
Purvis and Laura Stanbridge to perjure themselves, in the hope that
they might save the prisoner from the dreadful fate that awaited him.
Nobody in court believed one word they said, and their testimony was
rather prejudicial than otherwise; but Mr. Slapperton would insist
upon their being called.
Many of my readers will remember that a similar coarse was adopted in
the Muller case.
Two women swore that he was in their company on the evening upon which
Mr. Briggs was murdered.
There was not a shadow of truth in their statement, and, as in
Chudley’s case, nobody believed them.
The counsel for the defence, seeing that the question of Chudley’s
identity was fairly established, had no other course left open to him
than to strive, by every means in his power, to reduce the crime to
manslaughter.
He argued, therefore, that a quarrel had taken place in the lane
between the prisoner and the murdered man; that the latter had struck
him several blows with his riding whip (the prisoner’s cut lip and the
loss of two of his teeth established this fact), and that, after this
assault, Chudley caught hold of a hedgestake, with which he defended
himself.
This, under all the circumstances, was the best defence that could
have been made, and it caused the jury to deliberate one hour and a
half before they delivered their verdict.
It is possible it would have had the desired effect had it not been
for the murdered man’s throat being cut.
At the expiration of the time already mentioned the jury returned into
the box.
Upon being asked by the clerk, “How say you, gentlemen? Do you find
the prisoner guilty or not guilty?”
“We find him guilty,” answered the foreman. “Guilty of wilful murder.”
“And that is the verdict of you all?”
“It is.”
The prisoner was asked if he had anything to say before sentence was
passed upon him, when to the surprise of those assembled in court he
entered into a long rambling statement, which, to say the truth, was
little else than a specimen of ignorance, stupidity, and bigotry.
He said that he was not guilty of wilful murder――that a “cunning
woman,” whom he declared to be a witch, had cast her spells upon him,
and that she, and she alone, was answerable for the crime that had
been committed.
The gist of his argument was that he was bewitched, and was therefore
in no way a free agent.
He, however, admitted that he had slain his young master, who was, as
well as himself, under the spell of the person whom he was pleased to
call a witch.
The judge said that it was difficult to conceive that at the present
period such gross ignorance could exist. He besought the wretched man
to prepare for the fate that awaited him, and passed sentence in the
usual manner, which Chudley listened to with the utmost composure.
No one had anticipated that Chudley would put forth such a miserable
plea in the vain endeavour to cover his guilt.
But it is in vain for us to endeavour to conceal the fact that the
belief in the supernatural exists still to a large extent in the
country towns and villages of England.
Our ancestors, even up to the commencement of the eighteenth century,
were strong believers in the existence of witchcraft, and it is not
surprising that they were so, for it is a fact our ancient law-books
are full of decisions and trials upon the subject.
All histories refer to the exploits of these instruments of darkness,
and the testimony of all ages, not merely of the rude and barbarous,
but of the most enlightened and polished, give accounts of these
strange performances.
We have the attestation of thousands of eye and ear witnesses, and
those not of the easily-deceived judges only, but of wise and grave
discerners.
Standing accounts had been kept of well-attested relations.
Laws in most nations have been enacted against practices in
witchcraft. Those among the Jews and our own cases have been
determined by judges, who, as regards other legal matters, are
revered, and their names handed down to us as legal oracles and sages,
and to all appearance upon the clearest and most decisive evidence,
and thousands in our own nation as well as others have suffered death
for their vile compacts.
Those who are labouring, either as individuals or in social
institutions, to raise the level and improve the tone of life among
the mass of the people, are repeatedly confronted by disheartening
evidence that gross superstition and ignorant credulity still exist
amongst us to a lamentable extent.
Even comfortable farmers with their wives and children, small
shopkeepers in the country towns, and working men and women in large
towns, are to be found among the dupes of fortune-tellers and
witch-finders.
Whether, through the agency of School Boards, education will reach
down deeper into society than it does at present the next generation
must show; but nothing less than mental improvement, whether by
school, by healthy literature, or other agencies, will cure the evil.
It is a few years over the century and a half since the last execution
for the “crime of witchcraft” took place in these islands.
Caithness was the scene of this legal murder, and the victim was a
miserable old woman, who was done to death by order and warrant of
David Ross, sheriff of the shire.
It was the last tragedy of something like four thousand, for this is
the computation of those who were sacrificed to Caledonian
superstition between the Act of Queen Mary “Anentis Witchcraftes” in
1563, and the final brutality perpetrated in 1722.
We are assured, indeed, that the glamour of the ancient necromancy has
not yet died out among our northern neighbours. Just before the
rebellion of ’45 the Dissenters published an Act of Presbytery,
formally denouncing the repeal of the penal statutes against
witchcraft as “contrary to the express law of God,” and the reason of
all the misfortunes that afflicted the nation.
It is curious, by the way, to note how prominent priests and preachers
have been in battling the magicians, and with what particular ferocity
of spirit they urged the crusade.
While the Popes invoked the tortures of the Inquisition and
promulgated the famous _Malleus Maleficiarum_, or “Hammer for
Witches,” the clergy after as well as before the Reformation took
their cue from the persecuting Pontiffs.
Even in the United States they led the merciless war against the
children of Satan, and pious fanatics, like Cotton Mather and the
minister of Salem, were guilty, with the best intent, of barbarities
unspeakable.
We find it boldly stated by the author of the “Waverley Anecdotes,”
that the doctrine urged by the Dissenting Presbytery in the time of
the Young Pretender is still taught from the same pulpits, and
believed in by the far larger number of their adherents.
This appears very startling. But it is quite explicit, as is the
further allegation that a belief in witches prevails even at the
present enlightened period among the lower orders in Scotland,
“whatever may be their religious persuasion.”
This is a strange and scarcely credible character of a canny, shrewd,
and hardheaded race. However, the land of Ossian has been an eerie
place from remote ages. In this region of mists and mountains the very
atmosphere favours _diablerie_, and fosters the supernatural.
Shakespeare’s terrible trio will keep Scotland and sorcery linked in
deathless association long after the lingering faith of the credulous
shall have died out like the credulities that have waxed, waned, and
faded ever since mankind had intelligence enough to colour with poetry
the harsh and bare realities of life.
Scotchmen claim King David as a compatriot; they have as good a right
to the Witch of Endor. Probably, if the truth were known, they are not
singular in their superstitious conservatism. It is not yet a hundred
years since a witch was burnt at Glarus, in Switzerland.
In the year of the great French Revolution a judicial execution for
witchcraft took place in the Grand Duchy of Posen.
Here in England we did better and worse. We stopped hanging witches
half-a-dozen years sooner than the Scotchmen.
But it is only sixteen years ago since we drowned a reputed wizard in
a pond at Hedingham, in Essex.
It has been our aim throughout this work to give the reader a faithful
view of certain flections of society as they exist at the present
time.
Superstition is still rife in the land, and Chudley’s plea is but an
average sample of the ignorance and bigotry which still exist.
As a proof of this, we cite the following case which was heard only a
few weeks ago at the East Dereham Petty Sessions:――
A young man named William Bulwer, of Etling-green, was charged with
assaulting Christiana Martins, a young girl living near the
Etling-green toll-bar.
The complainant said that Bulwer came to the toll-house, abused her
with language of the foulest description, and struck her with a stick,
without any provocation from her. Defendant, called upon to account
for his conduct, told the magistrates that complainant’s mother, Mrs.
Martins, was a witch, that she had charmed him so that he got no sleep
from her for three nights.
He went on, “One night, at half-past eleven o’clock, I got up because
I could not sleep, and went out and found a ‘walking toad’ under a
clod that had been dug up with a three-pronged fork. That is why I
could not rest; she put this toad there to charm me, and I got no rest
night nor day till I found this ‘walking toad’ under the turf. I got
the toad out and put it in a cloth, and took it upstairs and showed it
to my mother, who threw it into the pit in the garden.”
The witness further informed the bench that the witch “went round this
here ‘walking toad’ after she had buried it, and I could not sleep.”
Her daughter he believed to be as bad as the mother, and hence his
natural indignation, loss of temper, and act of violence. Their
worships appear to have been taken seriously aback by this
extraordinary story.
The chairman asked the police superintendent if he knew the witness
and could answer for his sanity. Superintendent Symonds answered that
he could do so with perfect confidence.
Mr. Bulwer may be a thoroughly rational being in all other matters
save witchcraft, and he even here is quite coherent from his own point
of view and according to his lights. It was in grim earnestness of
conviction that he denounced as “bad enough to do anything” the witch
who had the wickedness “to go and put the walking toad in the hole,
like that, for a man which never did nothing to her.”
We have no doubt, moreover, that the defendant expressed his sincere
opinion when he declared that Miss Martins’ mother was “not fit to
live,” because she “looks at lots of people, and she will do some one
harm.”
Clearly Mr. Bulwer sees in Mrs. Martins a sorceress endowed with the
awful gift of the evil eye, a baleful glance from which is potent
enough to sour the milk or spoil the butter, to blight an infant from
beauty and health into a puny changeling, and even to sow the seeds of
slow decay in the robust frame of manhood.
Mr. Bulwer very properly resents the disposition of this enchantress
to exercise her diabolical spells upon him, and if he were allowed to
take the law into his own hands we should in all likelihood find him
adopting an old-fashioned and summary mode of self-protection.
It will hardly cure a rooted belief, such as that by which this yokel
is possessed, to fine him twelve and sixpence for assaulting a witch’s
daughter.
Moreover, the magisterial decision, besides displaying an irritating
indifference to the danger in which he stands, must seem doubly harsh
to this young man, since it was imposed in face of his offer to bring
the “walking toad” into court as evidence for the defence.
The brick which proved the house Jack Cade lived in was not more
conclusive testimony.
This case of witchcraft at Etling-green will appear the more
remarkable if we just apply a brief comparison.
The last execution for witchcraft in England was that of a Mrs. Hicks
and her daughter, aged nine, who were hanged at Huntingdon in 1716 for
selling their souls to the devil, and raising a storm by pulling off
their stockings and raising a lather of soap.
This was the sort of diabolism those weird sisters used to work, and
such was the machinery they used.
Thus, in the two most frightful cases of witch-torturing in
Scotland――those of Janet Comphat and Bettie Laing――the overt act was
of a kind to raise more than a doubt of the sanity of those who
believed it.
The Pittenweem witch, Beatrix Laing, after many a Walpurgis and much
riding of broomsticks with impunity, ordered nails from a blacksmith
named Patrick Mourton.
Being otherwise occupied, he refused to make them, whereupon she went
off muttering. A week afterwards the honest blacksmith, passing the
old woman’s door with another man, saw a vessel with water outside the
threshold.
In this vessel there was a burning coal, and the dreadful portent
striking the terrified Mourton with an impression that it was a charm
being wrought against him, he concluded, in the vein of William
Bulwer, that the witch was not fit to live.
So he gave information, and Beatrix Laing, having been first tortured
with the boots, the capsie-claws, the pilniewinks, and other
instruments conducive to confession, was ultimately, by the ministers
and magistrates, delivered over to the rabble, who had “three hours’
sport” before they finally tormented the life out of her.
When we read of a parish, gathered, with the connivance of its clergy,
to press a wrenched old woman to death under a door, and then drive
loaded waggons backward and forward over her body, on the suspicion
that she has been, by demoniac arts, causing the crops to fail, the
kine to perish, and the fair and happy to pine and die, it seems that
the Christian Englishman of the First George was quite another being
from his descendant of the Victoria era.
But this case of Martins v. Bulwer shows that there are good folk
among us yet who believe in witchcraft, and would, if they had their
way, make short work of its professors.
It was noticed that the sixty or seventy persons who lynched the
suspected wizard in Essex, in 1863, were all of the small tradesmen
class, not a single agricultural labourer being concerned in the
tragedy.
Perhaps it is too soon to expect that a superstition which was gravely
treated by a British monarch only two centuries earlier, and which
fired judges like Sir Matthew Hale and jurists like Sir Thomas Browne
to hang scores of women whose only crime was being old, ugly,
eccentric, or morose, should have entirely disappeared from the masses
of the population.
Nevertheless its existence, especially as William Bulwer betrayed it,
is well worth the study of those social reformers who wish, as their
cant has it, to exalt the people before correcting their ignorance.
That witchcraft in this country was believed in, and punishable by
death, is borne out by our judicial statistics.
Barrington estimates that the judicial murders for witchcraft in
England was thirty thousand in two hundred years.
Matthew Hopkins, the “witch finder,” caused the judicial murder of
about one hundred persons in Essex, Norfolk, and Suffolk, in 1645-7.
Sir Mathew Hale burnt two persons for witchcraft in 1664.
Northamptonshire and Huntingdonshire preserved the superstition about
witchcraft later than any other counties. Seventeen or eighteen
persons were burnt at St. Osyths, in Essex, about 1676; and two
pretended witches were executed at Northampton, 1705, and five others
seven years afterwards.
In 1716 Mrs. Hicks and her daughter, aged nine, as already stated,
were hanged at Huntingdon for the same offence.
Credulity in witchcraft abounds in the country districts of England.
On the 4th of September, 1863, a poor old paralysed Frenchman died in
consequence of being ducked as a wizard at Castle Hedingham, in Essex,
and similar cases have occurred since that date.