Gleanings from Dark Annals

From the most direct to the most circumstantial, there are almost as many gradations of evidence as there are of crime; nor is the latter kind less valuable than the former (as it would certainly appear to be at first sight), since what it lacks in the way of identification is compensated for in its freedom from personal spite.

There can, at least, be no malice in a chain of undesigned coincidences, whereas nothing is easier than the swearing away a man’s life falsely. Moreover, it is not to be expected, in very serious cases, that direct evidence should be forthcoming. Murder especially demands solitude and night as sentinels of its dreadful work. Its appearance without those attendants, red-handed and defiant, is rare, although there are a few examples of it on record.

Robert Irvine, who murdered his two pupils at Edinburgh in 1717, perpetrated the deed in broad daylight and in the open fields, and was distinctly seen by persons walking on the Castle Hill, within half a mile of the spot. A few years before, Alexander Balfour shot his rival, a pedagogue, sitting in the school-room among his pupils. Nor in this case did the murderer meet with his desert, for after condemnation, he escaped in his sister’s clothes from prison.

The most extraordinary instance of openness, however, in this worst of crimes occurred in 1712. One William Johnson, who had been a butcher a corn-dealer, a publican, and mate to a surgeon at Gibraltar, and eventually had given up all these professions for that of a highwayman, was greatly attached to one Jane Hunsden, who turned her less diversified talents toward coining only.

Being put upon her trial at the Old Bailey, a second time, for this offense, Johnson wished to address her in the dock; and on Mr.… Read More