MURDER IN! DREAM.

NOTE TO SCENES FROM A SILENT WORLD," NO. V. BY A PRISON VISITOR. 'BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE,' AUGUST 1889.

TO THE EDITOR OF BLACK WOOD'S MAGAZINE.'

SIR,-In an article appearing in Blackwood's Magazine' for August, entitled "Scenes from a Silent World," an account is given of a recent trial for murder, which (unintentionally, of course) gives a very erroneous idea of the case. The criminal's name is thinly disguised as "James Wheeler," but it is quite impossible for any one acquainted with the actual tragedy to mistake the reference.

The theory suggested by the writer is, that the unhappy criminal, being by occupation a butcher's assistant, was asleep in bed with his wife whilst the latter was eating her supper. That she was using for that purpose the knife which her husband used in his occupation as a butcher. That "sho put it down for a few minutes beside her, in such a position that it rested against the hand of the sleeping man." That "the touch of the instrument which he constantly used in the slaughter of animals engendered in his brain the dream that he was engaged in his usual duties." That he grasped it unconsciously, and with " vague movement" gave "a butcher's stroke" to the living creaturebeside him, "without awaking for a single moment." That the eldest child, sleeping on the floor, a boy "of fourteen or fifteen," was aroused by moans, and found his mother dying, leaning back upon the knife "as if she had fallen against it." That he drew the knife away from under her shoulder. That the unhappy man's conduct and language subsequently (I paraphrase here) were consistent with, and indicative of, innocence.

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My own knowledge of this remarkable trial is derived from personal presence and close attention during the whole of it; and it may be of interest to your readers-at any rate, to the writer of an article with the tone of which, in other respects, I have much sympathy-to hear a little more of the real details of this case.

In the first place, the singular and fanciful theory of a "dreamcrime" (as the article styles it) was not the theory put forward at the trial on behalf of the prisoner. The defence was, that the woman must have put the knife behind her; that it stuck, blade upwards, jammed in the boards and bedding of the bedstead; and that she then accidentally fell or threw herself upon it. No other theory was suggested or hinted at, though the prisoner was defended hy as able and eloquent an advocate as can be found at the bar. Nor was it ever suggested that the knife "rested against the hand of the sleeping man." There was not, indeed, a particle of evidence to support such a suggestion. Incidentally it may be remarked that the ordinary occupation of the man was not that of a butcher, but of a workman at the gasworks. He did Occasionally slaughter sheep as assistant to a butcher, using the fatal knife for that purpose; but it may be remarked that the knife was (apparently) commonly used in the household for ordinary purposes. I should myself attach little importance to this distinction, if it were

not now suggested that the mere "touch of the instrument which he constantly used . . . engendered in his brain the dream that he was engaged in his usual duties." Such a suggestion does appear to me to want all the support which "constant use" and "usual duty" can give it.

In the second place, the writer of the article assumes as undoubted facts, matters which were left in the gravest doubt. The eldest son (who was, by the way, sixteen years old, and not "fourteen or fifteen ") did, no doubt, himself pull the fatal knife out of his mother's back; but he swore at the trial in the most positive way that he had not done so, and that he had never touched or seen the knife, or touched his mother at all. All that he said he had noticed was a little blood coming from the mouth. It was well known to the prosecution that this statement was untrue, but the rules of evidence prevented it from being shown to the jury that he had previously stated otherwise. It was not until after conviction and sentence that the unhappy lad actually telegraphed to the Home Office the statement that he himself had drawn the knife from the body of his mother. Under these circumstances, it is plain that the account given by this lad and the younger children of the awful event and its discovery can scarcely be accepted wholesale and implicitly. The avowed theory of the prosecution was that the children, as well as some of the neighbours, were engaged in an endeavour to conceal the true facts of the case. It may be mentioned, as bearing upon this theory, that a middle-aged woman was tried with the prisoner as being an accessory after the fact, was convicted, and was sentenced to five years' penal servitude. To this fact the article in question makes no reference. I have, I think, said enough to show that it must not be assumed in this case that the unhappy criminal was asleep all the evening-certainly not that he was asleep when his wife received her death-wound. It is a remarkable and significant fact that the youngest child-some nine years old-was sent out to purchase bread and cheese at ten o'clock that night-necessarily within half an hour of the time of her mother's death, and probably less. It is a still more remarkable fact that she stated to the woman from whom she bought the bread that her mother was very ill." This last fact never became known to the jury, because the little girl in the box said that her mother was quite well both when she went out and when she returned, and again the rules of evidence prevented her previous statement from being proved. It can hardly be suggested that these rules of evidence operated to the prisoner's prejudice.

With regard to the criminal's language and conduct immediately after his wife's death, space will not permit me to enter into detail. It is sufficient to say that it was relied on by the prosecution as strongly indicative of guilt, and that the writer of the article has been misinformed as to most of the particulars on which he lays stress, as I could easily satisfy him.

I will only add one word. The article speaks of the "humane and gentle nature of the unhappy man." It was proved in evidence that he had, only a few weeks before the awful event, thrown at his wife in a fit of passion the very knife by which she afterwards met her death, with such force that it stuck in the door out of which she was flying to escape his rage.

Let not my motive in writing these lines be misunderstood. The wretched man is dead, and his unhappy children are not in a station of life where their feelings are likely to be affected by articles and letters in magazines. But it seems to me of the highest importance, especially at the present day, that the public should not be invited to believe in a miscarriage of justice by the propounding of a fanciful theory which has no foundation in fact. It seems to me even more important that the erroneous basis of this theory should be pointed out, because it is accompanied by scarcely concealed disapproval of the judge who tried the case, and fortified by a criticism of his summing-up which should not, I think, have been presented to the public on imperfect and hearsay information. Of those who followed the case from beginning to end, I much question if there was one who doubted that justice had been done, and done in the manner we have been taught to expect from an English jury and an English judge.-I am, Sir, yours obediently,

F.

TO THE EDITOR OF BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE.'

SIR,-I beg leave to reply to the letter signed "F." which you have received, respecting the case of J. W. recorded by me in the instalment of "Scenes from a Silent World" which appeared in your August number. I would wish at the outset to express my sense of the courtesy and fairness manifested by your correspondent towards the writer, with whom he is at variance; but I must emphatically deny that he has any certain ground for his assertion that I "have given a very erroneous idea of the case." It was one which, as he knows, was enveloped in mystery from first to last, and I had a perfect right to bring forward the solution of it most in accordance with the facts known to me. No motive for the supposed crime existed. No evidence of premeditation or of recent ill-feeling between husband and wife could be given; and it was impossible that the man's suggested guilt could be proved excepting by his own confession, which was never obtained, in spite of the most strenuous efforts to wring it from him. I believe myself to be in possession of some aspects of the case not perhaps known or fully estimated by your correspondent; while I was perfectly acquainted with all the facts he enumerates, excepting the one circumstance of the little girl going out in the evening. I did not. allude to the false evidence of the neighbour Mrs N. which brought her to penal servitude, because I did not consider it to have any real bearing on the merits of the case. An ignorant woman of a low order of intelligence, accustomed to the habitual disregard of truth which unhappily obtains anong persons of her class, being anxious to prove the prisoner's innocence, simply sought to support it by lies-a very frequent occurrence in our courts of justice. As it happens, in the third of my "Scenes from a Silent World," which appeared in your May number, I speak in some detail of the common practice of perjury among witnesses in that rank of life.

"F." considers me to have been mistaken in stating that J. W. was a man of gentle and humane nature. In reply, I quote as follows from a newspaper, very accurate in its details of the case: "A singular circumstance in connection with the case is the exceedingly large number

of persons who have confidently expressed their belief in the innocence of W., and this conviction was unanimously held by the fellow-workmen of the convict, who unite in bearing testimony to the gentle bearing of the unhappy man. He was, they say, remarkably kind and quiet, and was never known to act in a violent manner." The fact that many weeks previously W., in a fit of drunken passion, flung a knife at his wife, is certainly no proof that he would deliberately murder her, considering the extreme frequency of such matrimonial occurrences in the households of the poor, enacted as often by the wives as by the husbands.

The important point in "F.'s" letter is, however, his endeavour to disprove the dream theory, which I cannot admit to be in the slightest degree fanciful or incredible. That theory is founded on the accused man's own statements and demeanour; and, in the opinion of a person of most sound and sober judgment, who was in daily intercourse with the prisoner up to the hour of his death, it is the most reasonable explanation of the mystery. I was quite aware that it was not the theory of the defence, which was a matter of surprise and regret to me, but it may be accounted for by the fact that the circumstances in the prisoner's conduct which most powerfully suggested it, occurred during the period between the trial and the execution. This man, J. W., had a religious faith, and it was one of terror. He believed in a future judgment, and in a God Who had power to cast the impenitent sinner into hell, and Who was, therefore, more to be feared than those who could only kill the body. To that awful Judge he prayed continually in the condemned cell, that He would enable him to recollect what had occurred between the moment that he fell into a drunken sleep at seven o'clock, until he awoke after ten to find his wife dead at his side, with her half-eaten supper in her hand. To the incessant exhortations and entreaties addressed to him that he would confess the crime, he made the same unvarying answer-that his mind was a perfect blank as to that fatal period. He had not the faintest recollection of it in any shape If he did take action at all, of which he was perfectly unconscious, it was done in his sleep, presumably under the influence of a dream. The strongest proof that in this he was telling the truth came at the last moment of his life. W. was told that his hour was come; the executioner entered and pinioned him; he had, as it proved, precisely four minutes to live. The hangman, knowing the widespread belief in his innocence outside the prison, and the dangerous excitement it was causing, said to him, "If you have anything to saysay five words now, and nothing more. The five words he wished to draw forth were, of course, "I did commit the murder." Instead of these, the dying man answered that he could say nothing but what he had already told the chaplain-that he had no recollection whatever of the event. He knew when he said this that he was already in the very jaws of death, while in this world he had nothing to gain or to lose any more; and he must have been a bolder man than J. W. was who could have plunged with a lie upon his lips into that dread eternity where he believed an endless punishment awaited crime.

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"F." adverts to my brief remarks with regard to the judge, of whom it is by no means my place to speak critically or disrespectfully. I

have not the slightest doubt that he performed his painful duty with the conscientiousness which we may thankfully feel is the characteristic of all Englishmen placed in his high position. But there are differences of temperament even among her Majesty's judges; and those whose duties oblige them to attend our criminal courts cannot but be aware that the fate of prisoners depends, in large measure, on the greater or less severity of the view taken of their cases by the powerful functionary whose duty it is to instruct the jury. Humanur est errare.-İ remain, Sir, faithfully yours,

THE WRITER OF "SCENES FROM A SILENT WORLD."

LEPERS AT THE CAPE: WANTED, A FATHER DAMIEN.
CORRESPONDENCE AND EDITORIAL COMMENTS.

THE exposure of the horrors of the Robben Island Lepers in our last issue has been promptly followed by such a general outburst of sympathy with the sufferers, and of indignation at their treatment, as has rarely been elicited by any magazine article. With scarcely an exception, the entire press has taken up the case of the Cape Lepers, and demanded that the reproach which their present miserable condition offers to our national character for humanity should be at once effaced. While attempts have been made to minimise in some of its details the terrible picture drawn by our correspondent, his statement has received ample corroboration, from persons of sufficient authority, of the truth of its worst features. It is, however, satisfactory to learn that almost simultaneously with the appearance of our article, a Report has been published by the Cape Leper Committee, and that its adoption has been moved in the Colonial Parliament. A correspondent of the 'British Medical Journal,' September 14, writes as follows:

"The anonymous writer of the article on the 'Lepers at the Cape,' in this month's number of 'Blackwood's Magazine,' has certainly brought before the public notice something of the lives of misery of those afflicted with leprosy in one of our colonies, of whose progress and rapid civilisation Englishmen are wont to be so proud. The article is written in a markedly emotional and pathetic tone; but the point of importance is, how much of the description is true when its adventitious details are removed, and whether a state of things such as represented is allowed to exist uninterrupted by the Colonial Government.

"On the whole, the account-judging by what I saw when I visited the island a few months ago is correct. The rotten, tumbling-down wooden sheds are low, and have little or no light-which, taken by itself, may be an advantage, in that it hides something of what might be seen within; but, nevertheless, it is also a drawback, as it prevents the medical man from being able to examine with anything like accuracy a patient lying in one of the beds. I found the floor of earth, full of holes, and in places saturated with