The Weekly Machen
Below, we have a rare example of a courtroom drama as reported by Arthur Machen. Rather than a dry retelling of the case, Machen focuses on the symbolism and inner reality of the judicial ritual. Here is a fine example of Machen poetically and stylistically transcending the limits of traditional journalism. For the curious, the saga of the doomed man ended in a manner unsuspected by Machen or the court.
The Last Dread Sentence
The Closing Scenes at the Old Bailey
by
Arthur Machen
March 16, 1911
Steinie Morrison, found guilty of the murder of Leon Beron on Clapham Common, was sentenced to death at the Old Bailey late last night.
“Until your body be dead, and may the Lord have mercy upon your soul.”
“I decline that mercy; I don’t believe there is a God at all.”
And they closed about him, as he spoke, their hands surged him, and with those words upon his lips he passed down from our view.
I suppose it is a long time since I first heard of the “black cap.” As a child one read of it in Dickens; one heard one’s elders talk of the judge putting on the black cap; the newspapers retailed the phrase, over and over again. But though I have thrilled at the horror of the term, never till last night have I any conception of the horror of the reality. And, having seen it, I think I know the reason.
The books and the papers and one’s elders all spoke of it as a solemn and awful vestment. So it is, but it is also grotesque; and here is the true horror.
The judge in his robes of scarlet and white and black, enters solemnly in procession, and takes his seat to one side of the central throne, beneath the hanging sword. The jury delivers their verdict; the prisoner is asked whether he can show any cause why sentence should not be pronounced against him.
And the poor, doomed man utters wild things beside the point, poor feeble nothings of alleged evidence that would never matter much. The judge pauses and listens, and then makes a gesture. And his frock-coated attendant puts on top of the formal grey wig a limp square of black stuff, that hangs in deep, dismal points over the judge’s head.
And then those awful words have to be uttered—I will not say with what anguish behind them—and, as I have said, I never knew before that the terrible and the grotesque could so meet together; nay, that the sheer grimness of that black and grey, and scarlet and white should fitly symbolise the unnatural horror of murder.
“The Judge assumed the Black Cap.” You who have read of it, can have no notion of the ghastly terror of that moment. The ends of dangling black, the sorrow-stricken face, the broken, hesitating voice of a man telling his brother that he must die violently by a deliberated death; one can but say, alas, alas!
One is struck by the eddies and swirls of minor issues that appear in the case as it nears its end. A policeman enters the witness-box to testify that murder had been mentioned to Morrison before Morrison had mentioned murder: and we are involved in a discussion as to whether this policeman is connected with another and a rebellious policeman.
But the hours creep on; the judge announces that, after consultation with the jury, it has been determined that the court will not rise again till the verdict has been given.
The Judge’s Summing-up
It has been a dark and bitter day of storms without. From the beginning hidden electric lights have given a false show of sunshine to the white walls above the panelled oak, and as the evening darkens these are increased. There is a dim, steady glow over the scarlet-robed justice, over the serried ranks of the bar, over the spectators in the gallery and at the back of the court, and over that pale, fatal figure standing at the front of the great dock.
And at seven o’clock the judge begins to sum up.
It is, I am afraid, an impertinence in me to comment upon a solemn judicial delivery such as this; I only hope it may not be, technically, a contempt of court. But however this may be, I must say that I have never listened to words so pathetic or so affecting as some passages in Mr. Justice Darling’s summing up.
Again and again did the judge enforce the old maxim that everything doubtful must be resolved in the prisoner’s favour; again and again did he take the points that told most heavily against Morrison, and show that their blackness was not without possible relief. He had—it seemed probable—fabricated an alibi that was false? Yes; but he was not an Englishman; and those who administered justice in India told how a naïve, perfectly innocent, would suborn false witness to make assurance doubly sure.
And there were many most suspicious circumstances? True, indeed; but let the jury take care. They were to pronounce not on suspicions, but on proof; and a thousand suspicions must not be added together—to make one proof of guilt.
At eight the summing-up was over. The jury passed out; the judge disappeared. The audience broke up into chatting groups; the gangways were full of questioning, doubtful faces. I noticed the noise; a little while before, the silence had been so still that the sound of a Pressman sharpening his pencil could be heard all over the court.
And then the jury return, and the judge, attended by the chaplain in gown, cassock and bands, enters. The verdict is Guilty, and the clerk asks the usual question of the prisoner.
He stammers something about the money in his possession. The judge pauses a moment, and then the gesture, and the black cap.
The prisoner goes down below, with that denial of eternal justice upon his lips.
There is a ringing proclamation concerning the court of “Oyer and terminer,” and to the sound of it judge and high officers and all the assemblage break up and dissolve into confusion, like to the sundering of a troubled and dreadful dream.
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