The Industrial Review, Social and Political. — 1877-10-06 (London, England)

THE PENGE MURDER.  THE literature of the Penge case is assuming alarming proportions. In pursuance of the new method of conducting some London journals—which seems to be an importation from New York—nearly every person who can contrive to put his or her ideas down on paper is allowed to challenge or to uphold the verdict at which the jury arrived after a long and anxious consideration of the case. Solicitors, barristers, authors, medical men—invariably describing themselves as in "large practice,"— and " gushing " ladies are allowed to appear before a portion of the public as a self-constituted jury to re-try the case; and it is impossible to contemplate without pity the condition to which the Home Secretary will be reduced if he attempts to master the mass of inconsistent and inconclusive arguments and appeals to which every day gives birth. Mr. Charles Reade "dare not" allow the case to go without full discussion. He finds a " fatal flaw" in the fact that the judge declined to give the jury a copy of the indictment, and seems to argue that the jury gave their verdict on the summing-up alone. "The country"—in other words, Mr. Reade—" will expect" that the point should be considered. "An old Oxford Man" appears to be under the impression that the " withholding " of the indictment "vitiates the whole proceedings." Mr. R. A. Proctor, the well-known astronomer, has been brought down from his contemplation of the stars to consider the "antecedent improbabilities" of the case against the convicts. In Mr. Proctor's view it was " antecedently improbable" that the four convicts would conspire together to kil their victim by slow starvation, and to this argument he, as its author, naturally attaches "enormous weight." " One of the Jury" has found himself so wanting in self-respect as to write to the papers in vindication of the solemn verdict to which he assented. This gentleman confesses that, although in the opinion of the Jury Alice Rhodes "was undoubtedly legally and morally guilty of murder," they would have found a " less severe" verdict against her if the summing-up had been adjourned until the next morning. With regard to the charge against Mrs. Staunton, the juryman says that the recommendation to mercy was only arrived at after considerable discussion, and it was based upon the fact of her being the mother of a young family, and that she was possibly acting under the coercion of her husband." The Jury, he adds, "paid great attention to the case, and I think the aim of every man was to arrive at a righteous and just conclusion; and I hold, on behalf of the Jury, that our verdict was found upon a reasonable and sound view of all the evidence put before us." It is scarcely necessary to say that the medical journals are rushing into the fray, and are applying the scalpel to the so-called scientific witnesses with the keenest zest. It is to be observed that in all the vast mass of correspondence that has appeared scarcely anything is said of the murder of Mrs. Harriet Staunton's child, and yet the circumstance will no doubt have great weight with the Home Secretary and his advisers. The result will probably be that the two men will be executed, and the two women will have their sentences commuted. Then we shall see, as in previous cases where "the public" have been excited by appeals to their feelings, a sudden cessation of all interest in the matter, and those who are now loudly protesting that Alice Rhodes and Elizabeth Staunton are " innocent " will acquiesce, illogically but quietly, in the decision which consigns them to, in all probability, a life-long imprisonment.  REcKITT's