Nineteen Impressions/The Criminal

HE attitude of the public, freely expressed, was that of the outraged. Casual persons of benevolent aspect were heard to express regret that the methods of the Inquisition, as described by Poe, were no longer permissible in England. The cry for revenge was everywhere the dominant expression; none could doubt that mere death, "gentle, delicate death," was no punishment at all. Even convinced Calvinists, who could find sweet comfort in the thought that the man would burn eternally in hell, avowed, nevertheless, that they would like to see him burned first in this world. The undoubted evidence of scorched and shrinking nerves would afford greater satisfaction, one inferred, than the purely imaginative pleasure derived from the contemplation of a non-physical body being continually burnt and never consumed,—like asbestos in a gas-fire, perhaps. In this material life we naturally seek to reach a consummation; in this case a climax of agony; or, to prolong the punishment with some alternation of rest to emphasise the limit of torture. It was impossible to avoid the conclusion that monotony would in time produce indifference; even the monotony of an unimaginable number of degrees centigrade above boiling point.

The whole civilisation of Christendom, indeed, rang with a great cry for revenge. Journals of every creed and shade of opinion flouted law and justice, with comments on the untried case that hanged the man by suggestion a dozen times a week. Only one relatively obscure daily was hauled up for contempt of court and fined ten pounds—an example, doubtless, to advertise that in England, at least, justice could never be swayed by popular feeling.

The case touched the people so nearly. There was not an individual who had suffered at the hands of some criminal, or had known a friend or relation, however distant, who had so suffered, but was able to claim that he or she had a personal interest in the trial.

For this man was no common murderer, robber or seducer, he was the arch-criminal, the very creator of crime; the instigator of Heaven knew how many dastardly outrages upon life and property: the hidden source of evil that lay snug in the heart of civilisation and sent forth his trained emissaries throughout Christendom to kill and plunder. The number of deaths for which this man had been responsible was incalculable. Little wonder that the very churches cried "Crucify him!" Little wonder that he had to be protected night and day by a special military guard, to save him from the instant vengeance of the outraged.

Yet while so much was known of the man, such a perplexing confusion of minutiæ—the revolting detail of his dastardly life—there had been one strange reservation which added a touch of pique and mystery to the trial. No one could give reliable information concerning his personal appearance. He had been so hedged and guarded since his capture, so sheltered by regulation and restriction from the revengeful curious, that no member of the public had seen his face. And no sketch or photograph of him had been permitted during the magisterial proceedings, which had been brief, unannounced, and practically conducted in camera. The high authorities feared a great scandal. Even the English public was, for once, delirious. Our great boast of reserve and self-control was in danger of being overthrown by the terrible spectacle of mob-justice. Authority was determined that this man should have fair and open trial at the hands of twelve intelligent fellow-countrymen—his brothers in blood—directed by the keen, forensic mind of a judge of the High Court. No hint of savagery should stain the record of twentieth-century Britain; the instrument of justice should be as finely adjusted to the trial of this arch-criminal as to the trial of every other prisoner who had ever appeared, guarded and frowned upon, in the awful dock reserved for the hypothetically innocent.

Absurd in such a case, no doubt, was this large parade of justice; there was not a member of the whole community who would have hesitated to pass sentence upon the criminal without the production of one further tittle of evidence. It was said that he was a murderer of murderers, that his very emissaries had been foully put away by the man's own hand. It was said that a full indictment of his offences against the law would take a day in the recital. It was said that there was not a crime in the calendar which this man had not either instigated or committed in person.

There was no safety in Christendom while the man remained alive. He was a menace to the organised, peace-loving, police-protected community; a menace alike to patient labour, diligent middle class, intelligent ownership, and privileged aristocracy. …

A few people, cranks and nonentities, did not join in the great cry for revenge. But we were compelled to conceal our opinions like pro-Germans in Paris during the siege, or like pro-Boers in London during the celebrations that commemorated the relief of Mafeking. We realised that to air our opinions during the trial would serve no purpose; we were as little able to alter the opinion of Christendom at that time, as we were able to fill up the Atlantic by throwing sand into it.

Personally, I had not the least desire to turn evangel. I have long been a convert to the principle of the open mind, a principle which ex hypothesi forbids any attempt to set up a standard and maintain that there is none other—the essential preliminary for the serious propagandist.

Hemming (another convert) and I have worked out the philosophy of the open mind to our complete satisfaction, and the main position is easily grasped, namely, that in this world of mutually subversive propositions there can be no affirmation without denial; and as denial is inconsistent with the theory of the open mind, we do not affirm. The converse of this proposition is also true, a fact which strengthens our logic, but is not otherwise of immediate value to us.

This reference to the principle which Hemming and I have adopted is essential to the understanding of our attitude towards the greatest criminal in the world's history, this man who was said to be responsible for more deaths than Napoleon or the controllers of the American markets. (Nevertheless, his success as a robber was in no way comparable to these great exemplars, since he had been compelled, by adopting other methods, to rely upon cunning rather than upon force majeure.)

For while our major premiss debars us from subsequent affirmation, we are constantly stimulated to an active curiosity, and in this case our curiosity was chiefly, if not entirely, concerned with the appearance of the arch-criminal—the one feature which, as yet, had not been decided by popular opinion.

This curiosity was by no means easy to satisfy.

The accommodation provided by the galleries had been cut down to the narrowest limit, and although nominally the public was able to gain admission, we soon found that, as a matter of fact, nearly every seat was occupied by privileged persons, before the door to the public gallery was opened. On the first morning of the trial, only the first ten individuals of the hundreds who made up the long queue were admitted, and Hemming and I had a shrewd suspicion that all of them were plain-clothes policemen who had been stationed there Heaven knows how many weary hours before.

In view of the astonishing experience of Hemming and myself, it must ever remain subject for regret that this trial was for all intents and purposes conducted in camera. For instance, only six news reporters were officially admitted, though it is probable that the proprietors or editors of the chief journals were allowed to occupy some of the (illegally?) reserved seats. I say this is probable because there was a conspiracy of silence in the Press concerning the exclusion of the public (Hemming and I wrote several letters on the subject, but none of them was published), and it seems to me unlikely that in this country the Press would have forborne to comment on such an open scandal had not newspaper owners and editors been fully satisfied as to the propriety of the proceedings.

Our chief regret is that during the whole trial no sketches or photographs of the prisoner were published, for these would have furnished evidence which would either have corroborated or disproved the almost incredible testimony of Hemming and myself.

Our first defeat in no way discouraged us; we had been prepared to encounter difficulties. We now decided to work separately, and the method proposed for myself this first day, was to obtain an interview with some privileged spectator of the proceedings, preferably with some individual who was known to me personally.

I returned to the Old Bailey shortly before the Court closed, and found an immense crowd thronging the precincts of the building. I joined this crowd, and presently had the good fortune to see a man I knew come out of the Court—a certain Geoffrey Gatling, a very promising junior at the Criminal Bar.

I made no attempt to attract his attention in that place, but made my way down to Ludgate Hill, and so on to the Temple. I found Gatling had returned to his chambers when I arrived at Paper Buildings.

Gatling is of the type we instinctively associate with the legal profession; thin, narrow-faced, hawk-nosed, with rather close-set eyes and prominent chin—it is, also, the decaying type of America where the pseudo-Indian features that seemed to spring up in the white races as a result of the climatic and topographical conditions are now giving place to a more distinctive characteristic.

Gatling had thrown off his wig and gown when I entered his room, and was smoking a cigarette.

We talked for a few moments on indifferent subjects, and then Gatling said, "I suppose you want me to get you admission to the Court to-morrow? I can't do it, my dear fellow. It's quite doubtful whether I shall be able to get in myself."

"You were there to-day," I said, and in answer to his question, explained how I had obtained that knowledge. "But I didn't expect you would be able to get me in," I went on; "I merely came here to indulge my curiosity. Answer one question, and I'll leave you to your work."

"I am rather busy," remarked Gatling.

"Well, just tell me what the prisoner looks like," I said. "Describe his appearance. I have been having a tremendous argument with Hemming about it."

"It's a type," returned Gatling with a shrug. "If you are looking for some intellectual monstrosity, you'll be disappointed. He's simply a great hulking brute, with a low, narrow forehead, a button nose, and a huge jowl."

"Great Heavens!" I ejaculated, "you don't say so? Are you perfectly certain? The man who kept dark so long, and wove such subtle schemes?"

"My dear chap, of course I'm certain," replied Gatling with a touch of temper. "I had plenty of opportunity to study him to-day, I assure you."

I went home, a thoughtful man; thankful, nevertheless, that I was not bigoted, that I could accept this portrait of the criminal, a portrait so completely unlike the mental image I had framed. …

After dinner Hemming came in, and threw himself dejectedly into an arm-chair.

"No luck?" I asked.

"Oh! yes," he said, "I got hold of Gunston, the editor of the Daily Post; I thought he'd be there. You know the chap, don't you, a great square-faced block of a fellow?"

"And the criminal is …?" I began, intending to anticipate Hemming's description.

"Oh! the criminal," interrupted Hemming, "is a disappointment, a little rat-faced chap, the usual type of the city degenerate a weasel."

"What?" I shouted.

Hemming shrugged his shoulders. "Of course, you are surprised," he said, "I was. …"

"The criminal," I said, "pace Gatling, is a cross between a gorilla and a prize-fighter."

"Between a ferret and a gutter-snipe, according to Gunston," corrected Hemming.

"Which of them was lying, do you suppose?" I asked.

"We must get to the bottom of this," said Hemming.

We worked indefatigably all that week and accumulated many descriptions. Some of them agreed on broad lines, and the bulk of evidence was in favour of one of the two types indicated by Gatling and Gunston. Among the divergences, however, were some that deserve to be recorded. Deane-Elmer, that amateur scientist of many attainments—incidentally criminology—described the prisoner as probably an Armenian Jew; of brilliant intellect, but entirely lacking in any moral sense; he told me that the man's protuberant eyes and weak eyebrows were the most indicative marks of the criminal. Professor Molyneux was very vague in his description of the man's physiognomy, but told Hemming that the cranial index—85.6; remarkably brachycephalic—fully upheld the professor's theory as enunciated in his great monograph, "Craniology in Relation to Crime." Otho Jennings, the author of so many works published by the Rationalist Press, told me that the criminal was a fanatic and bore all the usual sign-marks—high, narrow forehead; pale blue eyes with a small, steady iris; thin-lipped mouth; well-cut features and high cheek-bones. Street, the poet, said that the man was like a cinquecento Christ, with sad, dark eyes and a sensitive mouth. …

"They can't all be lying," remarked Hemming when we met to collate this evidence.

"I must confess that the thing is beyond me," I replied. "But I thank Heaven, nevertheless, that we adopted the principle of the open mind."

The trial was being prolonged, most unnecessarily according to some critics, but the authorities were agreed that impartial justice must be administered; all the evidence was sifted meticulously by the counsel for the defence in his cross-examination of witnesses—and at the end of the first week Hemming proposed a scheme which should resolve our doubts.

The scheme was a risky one, and need not be described at length here; briefly, Hemming heavily bribed a news-agency reporter, occupied his place in Court for half an hour, and at great risk of imprisonment for contempt, concealed a small camera under the disguise. The reporter was a fat man with a large stomach, and the camera was hidden in this part of Hemming's anatomy, the lens appearing as a button. Three crowded days were spent by Hemming in perfecting the mechanical details; he collaborated with a theatrical costumier, who made up Hemming to resemble the agency man whose place he was taking. It was a bold scheme, and it worked to perfection.

I met Hemming outside the Court, and we went off at once to develop the three films he had been able to expose.

On the way I questioned Hemming as to his own impressions of the appearance of the criminal; but his answers were very vague. He said that he did not wish to prejudice me; that when the plates were developed I should be able to form my own opinion, and he wanted to see if it agreed with his own. The only approach to a description I received from him was that the criminal was "a very ordinary looking person, just like you and me."

The photographs had been taken about half-past eleven o'clock, and the light, fortunately, had been strong enough for Hemming to obtain good negatives.

I shall never forget our eagerness as we diligently rocked those three films and saw the little black specks springing up, evidence that Hemming had got some result.

After the fixing bath, we just brushed the films with water and hurried out to the light.

Hemming had been seated some distance from the dock, and there was a good deal of detail on each film; the faces of people in the gallery behind, the tops of counsels' wigs in the foreground; in the centre the dock with the figures of two policemen at the back of it. …

But there was no trace of the figure of the criminal.

Save for the two policemen the dock was empty.

Neither Hemming nor I can offer any explanation. He is quite certain that the criminal was in the dock when the film was exposed; he could see him if the camera could not.

The jury returned a verdict of guilty on the first count—one of murder—without leaving the box.

Only twelve signatures could be obtained to a petition to the Home Secretary, begging for a commutation of the sentence.

According to the newspaper reports, the man was hanged.

1912.