Justice Buller began his charge.
After a few civil remarks on the state of the county as regarded crime generally, and brief references to some of the other cases, he came to the all-absorbing topic. And now the reporters, who had sat listlessly under the infliction of the previous remarks, woke to sudden life, and every word of his lordship was caught and taken down as eagerly as if it had dropped from the lips of Shakespeare.
And this is what he said:
‘And now I come to what is by far the gravest case in the calendar – one of the gravest cases that has ever come before me in my judicial experience. The prisoner, Eleanor Owen, is accused of the most serious crime, short of treason, known to our law. Gentlemen, it is not for you to try whether she is guilty. You have to hear the witnesses who will be sent in before you on behalf of the Crown, and if you are satisfied that they are speaking the truth, and the effect of their evidence on your minds is such as, if uncontradicted, to raise a fair presumption of the prisoner’s guilt, then it is your duty to find a true bill against her. From the depositions taken by the magistrates, which have been put before me, I do not anticipate that you will have much hesitation in coming to your decision. The case is entirely one of what is called circumstantial evidence, as such cases most generally are, and must be from the nature of things. Doubtless there are difficulties in the case – many and grave difficulties – with which it will be the duty of this tribunal to deal when the prisoner comes, if she does come, before us. The fact that the prisoner is charged with the deliberate murder of her friend – I may almost say her benefactress – with whom she had been living on terms of intimacy for a considerable time, and for no motive that has yet been suggested except a low and mercenary one, is calculated to arouse a natural repulsion in the mind, and to indispose it to believe that the charge is well-founded. But, gentlemen, these things, as they come before you, are matters of evidence. If the witnesses you are about to hear satisfy you that there is a primâ facie case made out against Eleanor Owen, that there are grounds for suspicion which she ought fairly to be called upon to answer and explain away if she can, then it is your duty not to hesitate, but to bring in a true bill for murder. And I must tell you, gentlemen, that so far as my reading of the depositions has guided me, this is not a case in which the crime admits of being reduced to any lesser charge. There are none of the elements present which may, and often do, justify a jury in reducing the charge of murder to that of manslaughter. There is no question, so far as I have been able to discover, of sudden provocation, of accident, or anything of that sort. Whoever committed this crime must, if you believe the evidence, have done so knowingly, designedly, and with premeditation, and therefore your finding, if you find against the prisoner must be one of wilful murder. Gentlemen, I leave you to your deliberations.’
With these words his Lordship dismissed the grand jury; and the barristers, in their wigs and gowns, some of them with briefs and a good many with none, came streaming into the well of the court, filling up the seats specially reserved for them, and overflowing into those occupied by their colleagues of the ‘lower branch.’ It seems rather hard on the Bar that some mysterious rule of etiquette, which they themselves probably do not understand, should forbid them to enter the assize court till this particular stage in the proceedings. Or can it be that this rule had its origin in the wisdom of their remote predecessors, devising artful means to escape the infliction of a tedious charge without appearing disrespectful to the Bench?
A lull followed. The judge, accustomed to have the eyes of men upon him, calmly betook himself to letter-writing. The high-sheriff, not so accustomed, fidgeted in his seat, looked round and counted the javelin-men in court, wondered how long the grand jury would be, and remembered, let us hope with remorse, the time when he was a grand juryman himself and wasted the time of the county by unnecessary questions to the witnesses. The fact is that the grand jury is played out. Everything for which they originally existed is now done by somebody else. Every case that comes before them now has already been investigated once by the committing magistrates. Their duty is simply to accuse the prisoner, nothing more; and it would be quite sufficient if they would just read the depositions and sign the indictment. But man, brief man, placed on a grand jury, and shut into a room without the interference of a legal authority, delights to show himself off by vain and superfluous inquiry. And hence it was that more than half an hour elapsed before the foreman was seen returning into the court with a trumpery indictment for larceny.
The interval had been usefully employed by the clerk of arraigns in compiling a petty jury, something in this fashion:
The Clerk of Arraigns (taking up a ticket, rather larger than a visiting-card, from a heap before him): ‘John Henry Mullerall!’ (To his clerk, a humble person in plebeian attire, who is popularly believed to know a great deal more about the procedure than the judge and the whole court put together): ‘Did he answer?’ (The clerk hasn’t heard him.) ‘John – Henry’ (very loudly) ‘Mull – Oh! I see it’s Muggle’ – (at the top of his voice) ‘Mugglewrath!’ (testily) ‘Are you there?’
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