The Sun.
London, England, 1857-01-10 00:00:00

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[PRICE 4D. STAMPED 55.

TILE INNOCENT CONVICTED.

Mr. J. Anderson Ruse, ex-Under-sheriff of
London, writes to a contemporary, as follows :
Sir,—Your correspondent, the Rev. John Davis,
the Ordinary of Newgate, has called public
attention, in your impression of the Bth inst., to
the case of John Markham, who, being innocent,
was yet convicted, and sentenced to four years
penal servitude, for aiding in uttering a forged
cheque ; and you have in your loader of this day
commented on the necessity of redress to him for

• the grievous wrongs he ha: sustained. As lam
well acquainted with the facts of this man's case,
perhaps you would afford me a small space to nar-
rate them, although no language, nor the most
vivid imagination, can picture the extent, the
depth, the horrors of the man's sufferings, as be
described them to me after his release.
He was walking in OXford-street on a Saturday in
April last, when a policeman touched him on the
shoulder, and finally took him to the station•house.
Being Saturday, he was detained in a cell there till
Monday, and was then taken before a magistrate.
Before he was finally committed for trial he was
remanded from time to time for six weeks ; one
month of the time of these remands he was
detained in the House of Correction, and the
remainder in Newgate. On his trial he was
most ably defended by Mr. Serjeant Ballan- '
tine, who, interested in the case and satisfied
of his client's innocence, exerted himself to the
utmost to procure his acquittal by a most eloquent
speech ; nevertheless he was convicted ; a witness,
certainly a most respectable and honest witness,
had positively sworn to his identity. The jury
relied on this testimony..; the witness was mistaken ;
the man was sentenced to font years' penal
servitude. I heard his trial ; I was satisfied he
had been unjustly convicted.
The execution of his sentence began ; be was two
months in Newgate picking oakum with the
convicts there, who in this prison are all in one
room together—three murderers at one time,
pirates who bad deliberately planned wholesale
massacres, to be accompanied by indescribable
atrocities ; burglars, garotters, thieves from their
birth, receivers, and putters up of robberies, and
the perpetrators of unmentionable crimes. The
amusement of this den of devilry is to narrate their
crimes, and to plan fresh ones. Now, John 111Ark-
ham was innocent, and be constantly asserted his
innocence ; in consequence he was persecuted and
tormented by his associates here with the most
virulent and relentless malignity. It is impossible
to narrate the constant outrages perpetrated on
"the countryman," as he was was called by these
felons.

To the regular criminal imprisonment in New-
gate has little terror ; he rather likes the opportu-
nity of telling boasting stories of crime to such an
audience, and at this amusementthe most criminal
shines the most, and is thought the highest of.
In the course of time Markham was removed to
Millbaak, where there is a separate confinement—
a dreadful system ; locked up in a gloomy, solitary
call at half-past sin the evening, to bed at 8, rise
at 6 in the morning. Can any one conceive the
horror of this man's thoughts T He had parted
with all his ready money and many of his things
for his defence ; he had a wife and child ; they
were utterly destitute ; she parted with every stick
of furniture and every rag of clothing during his
imprisonment, and many a day was without a meal
of victual; and now in agony unutterable he often
thought of her and how she was existing.

From Millbank Markham was moved to Penton-
ville, where he was three months in solitary con-
finement—solitary and separate even in chapel,
where each prisoner is enclosed in a wooden box,
so that he can see no one but the clergyman ; here
in the chapel, at the sound of a human voice, the
convicts are often affected, faint away, or shriek
out. " Why ?" I asked Markham. " Oh, they
think of home or something of that," he replied.
At this prison the prisoners wear a mask made of
cloth, very hot and very unpleasant.
At length the really guilty man was taken, and
admitted that Markham was totally innocent.
The touch of nature which makes all mankind kin
is not wanting even in crime ; this man sent
Markham's wife 5/. by a mode most elaborately
circuitous, to avoid being traced.
The Governor of the Pentonville Prison finally
broke it to Markham (in so thoughtful and consi-
derate a manner that it made the deepest inapres-
lion upon the unhappy man) that he was no longer
a prisoner ; that it was proved he was innocent ;
that he was now a free man, and might go as soon
as he liked., The Governor then sent a policeman
in plain clothes to inform Markham's wife of his
liberation, and gave him a sovereign.
Well, he is free. The delirious joy of unexpected
liberty passes away, and now he has no work, no
means of getting a living—character gone. Was
he not tried, convicted, and sentenced ! People
won't believe he was discharged from prison
because he was innocent ! I was much struck with
the justice of the following remark from your lead-
ing article, and the necessity of your recommenda-
tion being adopted—" He should be invited to
attend at the court where he had received his sen-
tence, and his innocence should be as emphatically
proclaimed by the presiding judge as his supposed
guilt had been on a former occasion."
By the exertions of the Ordinary of Newgate
another man, Martin by name, who had been con-
victed and sentenced to four years' penal servitude
for highway robbery, with violence, at Bethnal-
green, was proved to be innocent. I heard this
man tried and doubted his guilt. When undergoing
his sentence he came under the care of the Ordinary
of Newgate ; he believed him to be innocent. We
ransacked Bethnal-green for three days, and got
undoubted evidence that he was not guilty, and,
moreover, discovered who was the guilty man.
Martin also was pardoned, and not long since he
stood in my office an emaciated wreck of his former
self. Before he went to Millbank he said he didn't
know his own strength, and could work without
fatigue the longest day.