The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1875-09-25 00:00:00

THE MURDER OF MR. HIND.

Mr. Henry Hind, an Englishman, who accompanied
Garibaldi to Naples, and attempted to establish an Eng-
lish newspaper there, but afterwards devoted himself
to floriculture, was found dead at the beginning of last
March under circumstances which left no doubt that
he had been murdered. Suspicion naturally fell on
his gardener, Carmine Paesano, a rather tall and
robust fellow, 24 years of age, a native of Naples, the
only person who was in the deceased's house on the
night of the murder. He was accordingly put on his
trial in the Assize Court on the 10th inst., Signor
Ferri being the presiding judge, and the case concluded
on Friday last, when the prisoner was convicted and
sentenced to sixteen years' hard labour, to be followed
by five years' police surveillance. The case exalted
great interest, and many English residents and
visitors attended the trial, and the British Consul
(says the Correspondent of The Times), by direction
of his Government, secured shorthand notes of the
proceedings.—The Times, in a leader, makes the follow-
ing comments on the trial
The issue of the affair will be regarded with very mixed
feelings by those acquainted with the facts. The verdict
which the Jury have returned seems to have been in accord-
ance with the whole evidence adduced, whereas the sen-
tence seems strangely out of agreement with the verdict
itself, and with the facts upon which the verdict was based.
The progress of the case has been watched with the
utmost interest and with an almost personal concern
by English residents throughout Italy. They felt no
reasonable doubt that their unfortunate countryman had
been murdered, and the particulars already known to
them er brought out during the course of the trial pointed
almost conclusively to Paesano as the murderer. But delays
of justice and failures of justice are by no means un-
known in Italy, and in Mr. Hind's case there were sup-
posed to be more than usually strong reasons for dreading
them. It is satisfactory that these fears have not been justi
fled by the event. It is much less satisfactory that the con-
viction which has been obtained has been followed by what
Englishmen cannot but regard as a wholly disproportionate
punishment.
The more carefully we look into the ascertained facts of
the case, the more unreasonable will the sentence appear. It
seems, from the account which we publish in another
column, that Mr. Henry Hind, the victim of the tragedy
which has been inquired into at Naples during the past week,
bad come to the city in 1860 as a member of the well-known
English Garibaldian Legion for some time after that body
had been disbanded Mr. Hind was in very great pecuniary
difficulties. After one or two vain efforts to earn his living
in other line of work, he had settled down finally and with
much better success to the business of a professed
gardener—an occupation which he continued to fol-
low during the rest of his life. He was, it appears,
thoroughly competent for his work, so much so,
Indeed, that he found himself able to undersell his Neapolitan
-.ls. He had received a warning in consequence from one
of the secret societies with which Naples abounds, but he
had paid no attention to the notice, and had continued to
dispose of his fruit and flowers at his own price in spite of
it. We must mention, too, a fact the importance of which
will presently be seen—that a few days before his death he
had received news that in consequence of the death of a re-
lative in England he had succeeded to a property of about
£3OO a year. Monday, the Ist of March, of the present
year, was the last day on which Mr. Hind was seen alive.
When his disappearance was known the premises were
searched by the police, and for some time without success.
On the Thursday following, however, his body was at length
found in one of his ponds, with the skull fractured in two
places, and with a rope lastened round the neck. The
suspicions of the police were at once directed to Mr. Hind's
man, Carmine Paesano, who somewhat tardily had given
notice of his master's disappearance. This man had been
directing the search in every direction except one ; but this
happened to be that in which the body was at length dia.
covered, and in which he had asserted that it was quite im-
possible that it could be found. It seems that on the night
on which Mr. Hind bad disappeared, and on which, if
at all, he had been murdered, Paesano had been the
only person in Mr. Hind's house, and that he had carefully
sent away two boys who might have been wit-
nesses of the deed, and, further, had on the next
day cautioned one of them not to say anything
about Mr. Hind's disappearance. This important piece of
information was freely volunteered by the boy in his first
horror on the discovery of Mr. Hind's body, though he after-
wards retracted what he had said, and declared that it had
been forced from him by the police. For some time after
the discovery of Mr. Hind's body the idea seems to have been
current at Naples that the case was one, not of murder, but
of suicide. But the presumption, to any one who considered
the circumstances, must always have been strong against this
notion. Mr. Hind had struggled bravely for many years with
the real difficulties of his position ; it was not very likely that
when he had just learnt he was placed in circumstances of
comparative affluence lie should have made away with him-
self. But the state in which the body was found was
not less conclusive against the possibility of suicide.
Some other facts were before long brought to light, all
pointing in the direction of murder, and tending, too, to fix
the deed upon Paesano. From the first moment of the
search for Mr. Hind's body, Paesano had kept on repeating,
most needlessly, that he had always been on the best terms
with his employer—a statement suspicious in itself, and still
more so when it was found to be totally untrue. But more
direct evidence was not wanting as to the effect that a
murder had been committed. The neighbours had heard
during the early part of Monday night the noise of a violent
struggle and half-stifled cries for help from Mr. Hind's
apartment. It is significant of the state of Neo-
politan public opinion that this evidence, the bear-
ing and importance of which must have been clear
to those who were in possession of t was obtained
by the police with great difficulty, and only in answer
to direct questioning on their part. Final, it was shown
that Paesano had a key which enabled him to enter Mr.
Hind's apartment, and also that he had been in the habit
defrauding his employer by collecting debts without his
knowledge and not accounting for the proceeds. Such was
the evidence, almost wholly circumstantial, but forming
altogether a very strong chain, connected in all ts parts,
which seemed to show conclusively that Mr. Hind had met
with foul play, and that Paesano was at least a chief accom-
plice in what had been done. It does not even now appear
certain whether Paesano had been selected as a fit tool by the
secret trade union society whose commands Mr. Hind had dis-
regarded, or whether, as is, perhaps, more probable, he had
been prompted by motives of personal revenge, with the
added wish to screen himself from the discovery of the
frauds he had been practising upon his employer. There
can, anyhow, be no reasonable ground" for questioning the
verdict of the Jury fixing Paesano with the guilt of murder
—a verdict which, we must add, is in great part due to the
zeal and energy of the British Consul, Mr. Calvert, who used
his utmost efforts both to discover the facts of the case and
to urge on the native authorities, whose efforts in grave
criminal questions have been found before now to stand in
need of a wholesome pressure from without.
When we turn from the verdict to the sentence which has
been passed in consequence of it, we are simply bewildered
and are quite unapie to understand it. We are aware that
in Italy, as in France, there is a strong dislike felt for capital
punishment. Capital punishment retains its place in the
, Statute-book, but practically it is seldom carried out.
"Extenuating circumstances" are tacked on by Juries
without any other reason than the milder consequences
which a verdict so modified will carry with it. We can under-
stand the feeling which prompts this, though we do not
share it. Possibly, too, there may have been in the case
before us some doubt felt or admitted whether the fatal
blow had been struck or the fatal noose tightened be
Faesano's own hands. But, in whatever light Paesano's part
can be looked at, there can be and there was no doubt what-
ever that he had been engaged as one at least of the princi-
pals, if not as the sole agent. It is new to us to find that even
in Italy a crime of this magnitude can be purged by a period
of imprisonment, and that a convicted murderer is to be
allowed once more to rejoin the society of his fellow-men
after the merely temporaey inconvenience of a limited term
of punishment and of five years of subsequent surveillance by
the police. Those who demand most loudly the abolition of
capital sentences have never ventured among ourselves to
push their theory to such conclusions. Imprisonment for
life, without the hope of release, is the least penalty
we can accept as equal to the crime of blood-guilti-
ness, and we wait with some impatience to learn why, in the
ease on which we have been commenting, a much milder
sentence has been inflicted, and one which we cannot but
regard as wholly incommensurate with the offence of which,
on the most certain evidence, the prisoner has been pro-
nounced guilty by the voice of his own countrymen. We
are willink.to make every allowance for the unsettled state
of Italy, and for the short time which has passed since
her Southern Provinces have been brought under a decent
government. Nor can we claim for our own country-
man a fuller and more adequate vengeance than
would have followed the same deed if it had been
done upoil a native Italian. If capital punishment,
though still admissible by law, is abolished by public senti-
ment in Italy, we can affect no surprise that Mr Hind's case
should not have been made an exception to the mistaken
rule. What does surprise us is that the term of imprison-
ment to which Paesano has been sentenced should have been
for years, and not for life ; not do we think that this con-
clusion of an affair of exceptional notoriety will tend to re-
assure those who have felt and expressed doubts about the
due administration of criminal justice in Italy.