The Cambria freeman. [volume] (Ebensburg, Pa.) 1867-1938, 1880-03-12

/ teen years W nen elgnb OF nine, neT uncle
/ correcting her, she was heard to say, ooh,
| good uncle, kill me not" At this time the
child disappeared and could not be found.
/ The uncle, arrested on suspicion, was bailed
and told to find the child. Fearing what
might happen to him if he failed, he brought
another child, very like the true one, into
court. The cheat was discovered, and the
man hanged. But the child had only run
away into another county, and been taken in
/ by hospitable strangers, and, at sixteen years
of age, came back and claimed her property.
| Now, proof, as defined by the lawyers, is
/ only a presumption of the highest order
/ Cunning is but a sinister or crooked wisdom,
/ while human nature in the court room often
| turns out to be singular and fallible element
/ IN the attempted equation Of justice. We
/ cannot be surprised, therefore, that so many
I innocent persons have suffered, and upon
/ the whole, the wonder is that so many of the
/ guilty are punished. Yet, appearances may
| be very strong against man, and yet he be
innocent. In 1927 Thomas Gill was convict
I ed in England of stealing two oxen. He had
just finished his apprenticeship to butcher,
and, after paying a visit to his uncle in the
country in order to save expense, was trav-
cling on foot back to London. About three
o'clock in the morning, he met man, riding
on a pony and driving two oxen, who offered
Gill five shillings to drive them to London,
and agreeing to meet him on Westminster
bridge. The young man, willing to earn an
honest penny, agreed, and was arrested
shortly after, with the cattle in his possession,
by the owner in hot pursuit, Arrested, he
gave false name to conceal his situation
from his friends. He was pardoned as he
was on the point OF being transported for
life. The simple fact was, that the real
thief, hotly pursued, had taken this cruel way
to rid himself 0 f the cattle and the crime.
In France, a young man was in the service
Of an old woman and had a key to her house.
She was found murdered with piece of his
cravat near her, and a lock OF his hair clench-
ed in her hand. He was arrested and exc
cuted But he was innocent. An intimate
friend, who afterward confessed, managed
to get an impression of the key, picked up
one Of his old cravats about the house, and,
combing the young mans queue, had scarce
ly distracted hair enough to make the lock
found in .he dead woman's clutch. Sad as
it sounds and is, the history of the law shows
list of cases where the innocent have died
justice These legal disasters have had for
their basis not so much an unfair or heartless
trial as failure to weigh wisely the peculiar
circumstantlal evidence involved. But, on
the other hand, justice oftentimes seems aid
ed either by good luck or the Divine wrath
of the gods themselves, in detecting crimi-
nails. In 1880 the body of man was discov-
cred in England who had been murdered %
years before. His widow identified his Ie-
mains from the skull, his shoes and a carpen-
ters rule found with the bones The muir
derer was then found and executed. In 1913
a Cornish peasant was found murdered, and
his body dragged under a hedge. 1t was
/ shrewdly surmised by the detectives that the
murderer was a stranger in those parts, since
a native would have been very likely to have
+ concealed the body in some aband oned coal
mine, many Of which were in the same field
From this slight clew mainly, they arrested
an Irish soldier whose regiment had lately
come there and on him they found the dead
mans purse. He was executed. Three
rufians, numbering poor Italian boy to sell
his body, were largely convicted by their
giving away some white mice which the re
was every reason to believe had belonged to
the unfortunate child. A sailor was manl Y
convicted as an accOmplice in a brutal mur-
der in London bawdy-house from the fact
that the victims hands were tied behind him
with what is known as a sailors knot
Where a man was shot by ball. the wad on
the ball was shown to be half OF a certain
ballad, the other part of which was found in
the prisoners pocket. Convicted. A man
assaied by a robber struck him in the face
- -, =.
corresponded with the wards or DIVISIONS OF
the key. Convicted.
In 1892 in England, a man and woman
from within a certain house gave the alarm
that some one had entered and murdered an
inmate The dew on the grass outside the
house was found to be undisturbed. The
living inmates were convicted. In 1916, in
England, man was tried for the murder of
another where the struggle had been severe
Impressions were found, in the clay, of man
who had worn breeches OF striped corduroy
patched with the same material but the
patches were not set on straight, the ribs OF
the patch meeting the hollOws of the origina
corduroy The accused was shown to have
his breeches patched thus and this greatly
aided his conviction. Dew and snow have
often helped to track the murderer, and
many a man has perished on the gaIlows the
popularity OF whose shoes, or the curiou:
way in which nails arc set In them, aided
conviction. A man arrested in his bed, whC
claimed to have been there all night, was
found with wet, muddy stocking on. The
night was wet and the ground outside soft
Convicted and executed. One of Kaulbach':
illustrations Of Goethe's Reineke Fuchs show
us the fox numbering the hare. 1t is SOLITARY
place, a field and close by shrine with it
cross. But curiously enough, the artist ha
put eyes into every head Of the full wheat
which bends in the breeze, and every fiowe
at hand is made in likeness of q dim, human
face, which beholds the deed with horror
, The fact thus symbolized is that nature, il
ali its attributes of weight size, color ant
condition is, after all, the head detective o
! crime, and every secret murder leaves it
, mark behind it, which rightly interpreted o
men, metes out detection and punishment t
the criminal Murder will out" because
on most subtle ways, the Circumstance o
| murder being accurate, when wisely inter
preted, confess and denote with unerrin
: finger, and dead men do tell tales" with
2 hundred tongues. That the guilty sometime
2 evade detection does not prove the contrary
D Perhaps the old story Of the murderer, Eu
S gene Aram, whose horrorsi have passed int
: English literature assisted by the genius o
t Hoods shadowy poem of that name, best i
] lustrates what has been said of the curiosite