The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1869-01-23 00:00:00

THE CONVICT BISGROVE AND THE

CRIMINAL CLASSES.

The Rev. J. E. Dole, of Washford Pyne Rectory, North
Devon, has sent the following letter to The Times :
Great and widespread dissatisfaction is felt at the
escape from capital punishment of the convict Iffsgrove.
In that dissatisfaction I for one entirely concur. Al-
thi nigh of advanced Liberal opinions, and voting solely
on that side at the late elecii ~,, s, I must say that if
this encouragement to crime (for it is nothing less) be
a sample of what we are to expect under a Liberal
Government, we shall very soon cease to have con-
fidence in the wisdom of such an Administration.
Such an wet is both weak, unjust, and impolitic in the
most comprehensive sense. Its weakness is self-
evident, and as to the second count in the indictment,
is it not unjust to punish with death one man whose
death is infinitely less horrible in its features, and
with, it may be, many circumstances of extenuation,
and to visit another with a lesser sentence whose crime
is one of the most brutal on record and wholly wanting
in the smallest circumstance ,if provocation?
Again, is it not unjust to the poor wretch so foully
done to death? For co long as we are men and have
pa-lions and affecthms, some sentiment of fitting re-
triliution cannot lie wholly eliminated from the idea of
all human punishment. Is it not unjuet and impolitic,
both, to the criminal classes theninelves, in thus
weakening the checks which might help to enforce
that control over their brutal propensities which they
do not possess of themselves? Is it IBA impolitic and
unjust to the safety, comfort, and well-being of the
well-ordered part of the community that the restraint
which would be so strongly imposed on ungoverned
ruffianism by the constant and habitual conviction of
certain, inevitable, and impartial retribution at the
hands of the law, upon full proof and convietion,
should be no loasened, as it must be, by being seen to
be so partial and uncertain? What with the chances
of escaping detection, what with those involved in the
subtleties of legal artifice or quibble ; what with those
of escaping from durance vile, the criminal mind iv
already more than sufficiently sanguine of impunity
for its transgressions, without our giving it, by such
weak and ill-judged leniency, additional gronnils for a
conviction that hardens them in their course of vice and
crime. What is it that gives these human wolves such
a reckless contempt for law and its retributions?
cause they see that there is no rule, no certainty, no
consistency ; that what is death to-day is penal servi-
tude in a far worse case tomorrow. Who is the
parent that is at once hated, feared, and despised? He
who is severe to an excess, or lenient to an excess
without any rule or co i.istency, passing over in one
what he punishes severely in another partial and
unjust. With all our boasted forwardness in the race
of civilisation, it is scarcely too much to say that •
schoolboy of average good sense would meta out

punishment almost better than we see it adminietered.
Let punishment (apart always from circumstances of
extenuation), when the crane is thoroughly and with-
out question proven, be inevitable, inflexible, im-
partial, inexorable to the most absolute certainty, and
we should soon see the result in the decrease of these
horrible brutalities.

- - ----------
Apropos of this, it is but adducing a well known trait
of human nature to remark that although every
soldier's reason tells him of his dancer when he goes into
battle, each has a secret conviction and belief that he
shall escape. It is thus with the crminal classes. Added
to the other avenues of possible e,cape, they see that
punishment even on proof, is not certain, or, it may be,
very likely only in a mitigated degree.
It is scarcely too much to say that—take the present
instance—the presumptive impunity engendered by
the sight of this 'min's escaping the extreme penalty of
the law may be the indirect cause of a hundred
similar crimes. . . . .

.....
The punishment of death is said not to have a deter-
rent effect but untruly said so. It has perhaps no
deterrent effect on the man devoured by raging
jealousy and passion, or on him whose brain is mad-
dened by intemperance, or on whom morbid coustitu-
tional causes have so operated as to lea! him into these
or kindred crimes. For such there is often not sufficient
consideration evinced. It is reserved for a murderer
cold-blooded and abominably brutal beyond almost the
annals of murder to have this shown for him. And as
if this were not enough, his almost more brutal com-
panion who looked ou at the dreadful crime, and cared
not to stretch out a hand to interfere, is actually
pardoned altogether. " Killing no murder," indeed !
Wlll a premium be offered shortly for an unusually
recherche and hideous homicide. . .

•
........
In sharp contrast to the case of this man, and in
vindication of the contempt for legal retribution on the
part f the criminal elanses, let me adduce a case that
Is in my knowledge of sine, a member of a learned pro.
fession, a good, excellent, and most truly religious
man—one whom I have personally known well for
years, and, through friends, for a great number of
years beyond my personal knowledge. An injury was
inflicted by him under circumstances of the purest
accident, which resulted in death, though an injury
that Many other part would have probably been but a
small matter. As it happened, the femoral artery was
pierced, awl the victim, a man very advanced in years
(nearly eighty years of age), died by the Metnorrhage,
to the unutterable remorse and consternation of my
poor friend. Medical testimony proved that the blow
could not by any possibility have been inflicted but by
accident. Yet was his sentence the same as that of this
wretch Bisgrove —" penal servitude for life !" It is
true it was commuted afterwards to ten years when it
had been pn.ved on a second trial 011 the strongest
testimony that it was the most purely and entirely
accidental homicide; but why, in the name if all
justice, was lie not instantly set at liberty? As it was
he was at length liberated, when almost dying of
weakness and disease and the suffering, mental and
I bodily, to a man acutely sennitive to injustice, and by •
constitution delicate and unusually susceptible to
suffering and hardships. Ruined in life and broken in
health, confined almost constantly to his bed by
incurable ailments engendered by prison hardships,
1 he drags on existence on a wretched pittance of a few
shillings a week (his wife sharing with him the Kiva-
' anis of his lot), and with the ever-impending and
almost certain prospect of closing Ids days at last in the
parish workhouse. Yet was that for which all this
suffering and wrong was judleially inflicted but a
misfortune—a dire calamity that might happen to you
or me or any one—to the best of men. Let it be
remembered that I have given only the more apparent
hardships of this case—far deeper lie beneath.
such, then, is justice in Enghiaid in the Pith century.
To return. The disregard thus evinced of the sacredness
of human life in this matter of Bisgrove is but a sorry
business with whili to inaugurate a Liberal Adminis-
tration. It is but a sorry earnest of L beret policy to
be weak, short-sighted, and deficient in true humanity
—that humanity that would have felt for the poor
murdered victim, and not for the monster who in all
cold blood so cruelly murdered him.
Whatever may i.e the shortcomings of Conservatism
it could scarcely have so erred in all these points.