The Sun.
London, England, 1861-09-26 00:00:00

that passed after the detective was employed can
affect the charge of falsifying the register. But
there is another point. When the interviews re-
ferred to took place Mr. Cooke was in friendly com-
munication with Mr. Hill. I hold in my hand a
note addressed by Mr. Cooke to Mr. Hill, in which
the writer requests Mr. Hill to oblige him by calling
at his office at a particular time, concluding with
" Dear Sir, yours very truly, G. F. Cooke." It is
monstrous then, that an attempt should be made to
give evidence of conversations which passed, I may
say, between client and attorney, in order to pre-
judice a man on a criminal charge. A more wicked
thing I never heard of in my life. (A laugh.)
Mr. Atty—l think we cannot allow the question
to be put.
The question was then withdrawn.
Did Mr. Hill tell you how he had disposed of the
child ?--He did.

Tell us what he said—He said that he went up to
London a few days after the birth of the child—
Mi. Philbrick—l object to this altogether. Let
me ask the witness—Was Mr. Cooke acting as soli-
citor in the matter ?

Witness—l don't know; he was instructing me.
Mr. Philbrick—lt was in his office that you talked
with Mr. Hill P—lt was.

Mr. Philbrick—Then, as I said before, I object to

altogether.

Mr. Bloxam, the clerk, addressing the witness,
asked—Did you see the prisoner by yourself, or
was Mr. Cooke present P—He was present.
Mr. Cooke—l was not acting as solicitor for the
prisoner.

Mr. Philbrick—But a fortnight after you called
him "Dear sir," and signed yourself "Yours very
truly, G. F. Cooke." (A laugh.)
Examination continued--I took the prisoner into
custody on the 14th Sept. ; the warrant was granted
on the 24th June. I took him at No. 6, Trinity-
square, Southwark, London. He had engaged apart-
ments there. At that time Mrs. Hill was living at
No. 15 in the same square. When I took the pri-
soner he had a pair of false whiskers and a false
moustache in his hat. I recovered the child from
Mrs. Andrews on the 13th June.

Cross-examined by Mr. Philbriek—Who em.
ployed you P—Mr. Cooke.
For whom was employed by Mr. Cooke; that
is all I know.

Did Mr. Hill give you any information to enable
you to trace the child ?—He professed to do so, and
he did to a certain extent. Some of his information
turned out accurate, and some inaccurate.

Did you pursue yoar investigation partly on the
information he gave you ?—I did.
Dil he appear desirous that the child should be
traced ?-11e appeared so.

Mr. Cooke, in order to complete the evidence
here proposed to produce and read a letter ad•
dressed by the prisoner to his wife ; but

Mr. Philbrick objected on the ground that written
communications between husband and Wife were
protected.
r p
The Chairman—ls the letter material to the case .
Mr. Cooke—lt states that the child is dead, and
that the prisoner paid for its funeral. (A laugh.)
The Chairman—My opinion is that the letter may
be read.

This declaration of the chairman was received
with some applause, whereupon
Mr. Philbrick asked to be protected from exhibi-
tions of public feeling, which in a court of justice
were disgraceful. _ _

The Chairman said that interruptions by the
audience had a tendency to impede the administra-
tion of justice, and, as they all wished that only the
guilty should be convicted and punished, he was
sure they would see the propriety of hearing in
perfect silence the evidence which might be given.
Mr. Philbrick, argued that it was a cardinal prin-
ciple of law in criminal jurisprudence that husband
and wife could not be called either for or against
each other, and quoted " Taylor on Evidence" to
show that written communications were equally
protected by law with verbal evidence.
The magistrates having decided that the letter
should not be read,
Mr. Cooke said he had closed the case for the
prosecution, and expressed his belief that he had
produced sufficient evidence to justify the committal
of the prisoner.
On being asked whether he had anything to say
in answer to the charge, the prisoner in a low tone
replied—l will leave it to my counsel.
Mr. Philbrick then addressed the magistrates.
It was now his duty, he said, to make some obser-
vations on the part of Mr. Hill in answer to the
cl•.arge preferred against him. The extraordinary
public interest which had attached to the circum-
stances of this case, the romantic details with which
the newspapers had teemed, and the excitement
which even the presence of a court of justice had
been unable to restrain, conspired to render the per-
formance of that duty a task of no ordinary diffi-
culty. There could be no doubt that the prosecution
had been instituted from motives of personal revenge
and malignity towards Mr. Hill, and the course
which had been adopted in conducting the case that
day—first seeking to divulge confidential commu-
nications between attorney and client, and then at-
tempting to produce in evidence communications
between husband and wife—clearly proved that
those motives were of the strongest and most violent
kind. No one could hesitate to believe that it was
the wife and her advisers who had instituted and
who were conducting this prosecution. The contest
was a contest between the husband and wife,
although strenuous efforts had been made to give it
a different complexion. The charge against Mr.
Hill was that he had falsified the register of births
for the Rugby district, and in order to prove that
allegation the prosecution, in defiance of the rules
of evidence, had imported a great deal of irrelevant
matter into the case with the view of showing an
alleged motive. It was said that, a child having been
b Irn to him by his wife, Mr. Hill wilfully falsified
the register of births for the purpose of concealing
the existence of the child, and thereby securing to
himself some pecuniary benefit under a certain trust.
What were the facts P Under the trusts of the mar-
riage settlement Mr. Hill had a life interest, of
which no children, however numerous, could de-
prive him, in the whole of the fund ; so that any in-
terest which he might have in concealing the birth
of a child must be some ulterior interest to arise
after his death. ' If there were no children of the
marriage,, and the wife survived, the property was
to go to-her absolutely; wheFeas if Mr. Hill out-
lived her' he was to take half of the fund and the
Other half was to go to her next of kin. There re-
mined the very materiaPfact that the. right of Mr.
Hill, in case fie eurvived, to take half of the set-
tled fund was subject to an absolute power of ap-.
pointment on the part of the wife. If she sur-
vived she had the fund absolutely, while, if Mr. Hill
survived, by a single stroke of her pen she could
prevent him from touching one penny without her
consent. It followed that all attempts tcr suppress
the child must be useless. Mr. Hill must have known
that unless his wife consented to the suppression of
the child—unless she became a partner in his guilt
—he would never get a single shilling of the set-
tled property. Thus the prosecution recoiled with
a fearful rebound upon the wife and her advisers,
because if Mr. Hill were to profit by the suppres-
sion of the child he could only do so, under the
terms of the marriage settlement, with the full
knowledge and consent of his wife. It was worthy
of remark that the £14,000 a year of the first pub-
lished accounts had dwindled down to £14,000 in
bulk. The tact was, however, that the capital did
not amount to £14,000, for the stamp on the mar-
riage settlement would not cover a larger sum than
£B,OOO. But he had shown that Mr. Hill could
have no pecuniary motive without full complicity
on the part of his wife. A noticeable circumstance
was that, though both young persons, seven years
elapsed after their marriage before there was any
hope of issue. At length Mrs. Hill became preg-
nant, and then it was said that she came over from
the Continent to London to be confined. That state-
ment was not quite accurate, because she went, not
to London, but to Ireland, to visit Mr. Hill's friends.
It was surprising that a young woman, about to
give birth to her first-born, instead of staying
among the friends of her husband in Ireland, where
she was known and where she might xeckon upon
every attention in the hour of peril,, 'should have
hurried off to London under circumstances of such
pressure that she was obliged to leave the train
before it arrived at its destination, and to take re-
fuge in a small publichouse in a country town.
Not a single friend or acquaintance had' been
called to prove that she ever said she was in
the familYwaY• Not a word was ever heard of
this child. Suddenly, and without any assignable
reason, she left her home in Ireland, and the only
conclusion to which an impartial man could come
was that she had some purpose of secrecy to serve.
He did not intend to follow Mr. Hill into London