The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1866-12-22 00:00:00

The correspondent of the Daily News gives the fol-
lowing interesting particulars of this remarkable
trial :

PARIS, Friday Evening.

_ s -
I never remember, even in France, any ease of • capita
conviction on such unsatisfactory evidence as that Just re-
corded by the aasize court of Niort against Martin Beau.
. I am by no means so sure that the country jury
which tried Bean, finding • great squire in the parish where
the prisoner lived, the cure, the judge, the public prosecutor,
and all the authorities against him, did nut make a com-
promise with their judgment, not to say With their con-
sciences, and say "guilty. because that was the verdict ex.
period of them by their betters, while the extenuating
clicumstances "expressed a doubt in their minds whether
the charge was incontrovertibly proved. This is a shocking
mode of administering Pistice. but one not tincom in
this country. And, unhappily, the terrible rigour of the law
against any discussion of a judgment, the alealated infalli-
bility of In ebb., imaw, deprives a nom unjustly convicted of
recourse to that invaluable, though riot duly constituted,
court of appeal, the tribunal of public opinion. The news-
papers scarcely ever venture to hint • doubt that a verdict
may be • brat one : and even barrinters, knowing that they
are liable to be suspended, or eVen diebarred (or any public
disapproval of In rheas jag,. epe,ak among themselves with
bated breath when they criticise' a verdict And yet there
are many not., ions cases of the condemnation of innocent
men in Franc The n-cent one of the woolal4 there, fewt.l
guilty, on her own confeasion, 'with extenuating circulni•
lances," of a niurder of which she was afterwards conclu-
sively proved guiltless, is fresh in every mind, and was cited
by NI. Cachets(' in the case of Martin Reau. That woman
was goaded into confession of a crime she never committed
by ill-treatment in prison. and the real murderer was after-
wards found and convicted. The accusation against Martin
Beau was that he had poisoned his brother, his two wives,
and his son, in order to inherit their property The first et
these alleged murders dated as far back as thirteen years,
and the last several mouths before the prisoner's arrest
The only relevant evidence fur the prosecution COnsisted of err-
tificates by medical scientific witnesses that they found the
poison cilled corrosive sublimate in all four of the bodies, or
rather the decomposed residue of the bodies exhiened But
there was not an atom of proof that this poison was ad-
ministered by the prisoner, or that he ever had any poison
of that or any other description in his possession. The
whole country was scoured, but no chemist, rhumba, cr
giocer could he found to depose that he had ever, in the
long space of 13 years, sold him any. one witnees dci
suggest that as he often dealt in melee he might !Me liii
mercurial ointment to cure the fare,: but no nee ventured
to swear that he ever Mice hail any. No doubt it was •
suspicious and most remarkable circumstance, assuming that
most doubtful of all kinds of evidence, the evidence nf ex-
perts, to be true, that corrosive sublimate should have 'vet,
found in the four bodies of the relatives in whose death the
prisoner had a small pecuniary interest. But there was grant-
tifie evidence the other way. A professor of the %deal
College of straabourg—a far more eminent man than the
country practitioner who pereisted that he had found the
poison, question the correetnese of the texts. 'there was
evidence of expert against expert ; but assuming that for
the prosecution to have been the most weighty, and that
there was really poison in the bodies, there was 1.10 evidence
at all that it was administered by the prisoner. lie ens a
wealthy peasant fernier,. a man of coarse, blunt manners,
addicted to liquorish grtanis conversation, not a model of
taste or purity, but still sorry respectable man of his class.
The squire who denounced him, the Count de Meranville,
upon whom a most heavy responsibility rests if Beau he
really innocent, wrote to him, "My dear Reim," a few
months before his anent. The public protecator said that
the prisoner had committed three murders with impunity,
and that then, "God's patience got tired, and after the
!earth public rumour declared against him." This was not
not true. The accnatitton did not originate even trom that
uneertain accusineboard, public rumour. It originates' with
Count de Nieramille, the lord of the chateaus and the ugly
circumstance in that this count was on bad terms with the
prisoner because he refused to eell him a field At his own
price, and because the prisoner, by his influence in the com-
mune, diverted as ninny ae forty votes from the squire at an
election for the council-general. it WfLe two days after this
electien, end about six months after the last of the sup-
posed niurders, that Martin Reau was arrested on an in-
formation laid by Count de Meranville. Ile said hhnself,
just as an English peasant might have said fifty years agt.
that he had no chance because the squire Bald the parson
were against him. The parent, of both hie twice, gave evi-
dence that they lived happily with him, and they us.be ilieved the accusation, though Count de Meran vine *led to
argue them into the belief of it. Moreover, metilcal men
attended the brother suid the two wives, ant °edified that
their deaths took place from natural causes. The eon
alleged to be poisoned was a child 18 months old, living
with his grandfather at the time of his death, and there
was no proof that the prisoner ever administered anything
to him.
In another communication the above correspondent
says :

-
When noticing yesterday the cue of Martin Reati, for the
purpose of throwing doubts upon the justice of this convic-
tion, I omitted to notice one circumstanee justly calculated
to creates prejudice against him While in prison, nod on-
dergoing what M. Lachand describel an n reality solitary
confinement, though Mit so ternied, lie wet circumvented by
one of those wretched creatures known in French gaol-Mang
as • mouton. The term means an Informer who, in the hope of
obtaining some relaxation of the punishment due to his own
crimes, Ingratiates himself with prisoners awaiting trial, in
order to worm out their secrets, for the information of the
public prosecutor. A miscreant of this mms, named Benedetto,
an Italian, condemned to death in his own country, and an
o d gaol bird in France, got hold of Beau In prison. and gave
him advice about his line of defence. The result of the con-
versation between them was that Watt wrote a letter, which
he confided to Benedetto, stating that two persons whom he
named were very bad fellows: that the people he was accused
of poisoning really died of poison, they might very likely be
the guilty parties, and that he would payl,ooid. if the offence
could he brought home to them. Benedetto, instead of de-
livelipg the letter to the party to whom It was addressed,
gave it up to his employers, the police. No doubt wa hon-
ourable man,. even to save his life, would net have written
such • tette But it stands ooncesied that Reim man of a
coarse, gross, selfish, vulgar nature. It does not at all follow
that he was guilty of murder bi-cause when accused, and
assuming from the tact of the accusation that a [carder
might have been committed, he offered money for proof that
°thee parties were guilty. The fact Upon which I nsisted
remains in its full force, that Martin Rean was convicted of
poisoning four relatives on nothing more than disputed
scientific evidence that poison wee found 1p their bodies,
there being no evidence whatever that he eve/. had a grain of
poison in hie possession.