Eight Weeks in the Summer of Victoria's Jubilee

by Bob Biderman

  And then McIntyre sat down. And the courtroom fell silent.

  It wasn’t that McIntyre failed to bring out some crucial points, Z thought. It just seemed to him that this man, this tired commercial lawyer, was simply going through the motions. There was nothing forceful in his speech, nothing that would make the jury sit up and listen. He said what he had to say – interrupted, of course, by the judge. And that was that. The jury would have to make up their minds based on reason and logic in a method not too dissimilar to analysing a contract. That is what McIntyre probably wished to see happen, Z suspected. But the problem was, it didn’t seem to work like that.

  Maggie sitting a few rows behind, had stopped taking notes. She found herself too horrified. She simply penned: ‘These men aren’t interested in justice, they only want to win. It could be cricket, it could be a footrace. It just so happens that a person’s life is at stake. But they’re not interested in that, they simply want to festoon their careers with peacock feathers and plaudits; to line their mantel-piece with trophies and nail hides onto their walls to remind them of their conquests…’

  CHAPTER 21

  Z UNFOLDED THE note that had been passed to him and quickly read the contents. ‘The prosecution hasn’t proved their case,’ it said. ‘No jury could possibly convict him.’ Then neatly refolding the slip of paper along the original creases and sticking it into his jacket pocket, he glanced over at the small man sitting near the defence table. Myers caught his eye and nodded.

  And then spoke the judge. This is how Z described the moment:

  ‘Mr Justice James Fitzjames Stephen, with his haggard face and his drooping jowls, cast a weary eye over his small domain and thought that life was simply a Biblical allegory destined to be repeated over again until the great sands of time swept all and sundry from this wicked world. Until that bitter-sweet moment, it was only the likes of him that kept the universe from collapsing into itself and so, understandably, his sense of duty was enormous. It was as if he was destined to carry the weight of Hercules on his stooping shoulders. But it was a burden, however onerous, that still fascinated him.’

  In a voice devoid of passion, yet resonating with the authority of Her Imperial Majesty, the Queen of half the earth, the judge intoned:

  ‘The cause of death of the deceased was one of wilful murder. There was no doubt that sometime between the hours of six and eleven on the morning in question the deceased woman was murdered by some person or persons. There were only two motives which could be put forward for the commission of the crime – passion and avarice. There was nothing taken from the deceased’s room because there was nothing to take and the circumstances did not seem to support the motive of avarice so it was more probable that passion was the motive for the crime and if that were so it would likely be the act of one man rather than two. As it was shown that the prisoner had not been acquainted with the deceased and her husband, if it was indeed the prisoner who committed the act it must have been under the influence of a sudden temptation, there being a window from which a view of the deceased’s room could be obtained from the stairs. However, the prisoner was a man of good character and was engaged to be married and these were circumstances which the jury should take into consideration in favour of the prisoner. The man Schmuss remained in London for several days after 28 June and then went to Birmingham for work, writing from there to London, and his conduct certainly did not look like that of a man who had committed a horrible murder. There was evidence that the prisoner had nitric acid, but that no one else had. The prisoner’s statement was a highly important part of the case and the witnesses Schmuss and Rosenbloom had been cross-examined as to its truth. One could hardly imagine that two men who were strangers to each other should walk down from the workshop and go into the deceased’s room for the purpose of committing an assault upon her and it was almost as difficult to imagine that they should go into the room of a woman as poor as themselves for the purpose of taking a few clothes, which after all they did not take, and why should they rob the prisoner? How could they reconcile the prisoner’s statement with the fact that the door was locked on the inside? The locking of the door was a circumstance of very great importance supposing the jury were of opinion that it was locked. The observations made on the part of the defence as to the improbability of the prisoner having committed the crime were of very great importance and should be carefully considered by the jury. However, if the jury came to the conclusion that the prisoner was the person who committed the offence, then the natural inference was that he attempted to commit suicide afterwards.’

  It was a summation that left Z aghast for it was not a summation at all, but an invitation for the jury to convict the prisoner, Israel Lipski, of wilful murder. And he wondered what Myers, whose face had turned quite ashen, now thought of the strategy the defence had set up to place the burden of proof upon the prosecution. There was a fatal flow in that approach, thought Z, a fatal flaw that Myers, had probably only just considered, and that was the Queen’s factotum who sat so smugly on his cushioned seat overlooking his surrogate realm. For say what they might, the last word belonged not to the defence but to the judge. Whatever assertions might have been spoken in the prisoners behalf, whatever doubts, whatever queries, were suddenly all wiped out, like dusting chalk marks from a classroom blackboard, by his terse, authoritative and commandingly sanctimonious summation.

  It was a quarter to five when the jury retired. Eight minutes later they returned. Eight minutes later; time enough to walk to the jury room, cast a vote and come back out again. Time enough to simply confirm what everyone knew by then was the predetermined outcome.

  The foreman rose and announced that the jury had reached a verdict. He announced it without anger, without pleasure, without joy, without malice. It was simply an announcement – simply that.

  The verdict he announced was that Israel Lipski was innocent and free to go and live his life and marry Kate Lyons whom he would take as his wife.

  That is what Maggie heard. That is what Maggie wanted to hear. That is what she would have written.

  But in the other universe which she was forced sometimes to recognize, that gruesome world which hardly conformed to romantic visions, the foreman stood and said what everyone (even Maggie) knew he would say: that the prisoner, Israel Lipski, was guilty as charged.

  The jury had done their duty and the judge, well satisfied, put a black cap on his head. He put a black cap on his head and said:

  ‘Israel Lipski, you stand convicted of the crime of wilful murder. By the law of England the punishment of that crime is death. I have only to say to you, prepare to die…’

  ‘Prepare to die.’ That is what the judge intoned. That is what he said. And Z looked up at the prisoner in the dock, the child, the boy, the refugee, the man, and thought – is he prepared?

  ‘And the sentence of the court is that you be taken from hence to a place of execution, that you be there hanged by the neck till you are dead, and that your body be buried within the precincts of the prison in which you shall have been last confined …’

  And finally. And finally. And finally, almost as an afterthought, he said, ‘May the Lord have mercy on your soul.’

  A hush fell over the courtroom, over the audience, as Israel Lipski was led from the chamber back to Newgate Prison where he would be placed in the cell for the condemned. It was a reverent hush; a quietness of finality like that which occurs in the great wastelands of Antarctica after a strange, exotic animal, washed up upon the shore, has expired.

  PART III

  Weeks 6-8: The Aftermath

  CHAPTER 22

  THEY WALKED TOGETHER along the gravel path in Victoria Park until they came to a bench overlooking a little flower garden. Sitting down, the two of them gazed out onto a sweet display of honeysuckle hues and fragrant foliage, transporting themselves somewhere else. For within this tranquil space they were no longer i
n the East End of London, but in another realm far away from all the tumult and the grime which existed outside the narrow boundaries of this tiny urban oasis for the working classes.

  Both had felt that unsteadiness of spirit which often comes in the wake of a great event for, like a mighty wave crashing from the sea, it is only in the aftermath that one sees the devastation. And so it was with them. Though they held a brief moment of hope that it would have turned out differently, that some brave soul on the jury might have questioned the basis of the shaky framework used to build that unfortunate young man’s gallows, there came a time when each of them knew the game was up. The consequence of the verdict, though, was just beginning to dawn on them.

  But was that it? Was there nothing to be done? And, if there was, how should they respond? It was here the two of them diverged. Maggie, for her part, had come to believe that the young man was innocent – not so much because of what she heard at the trial (for she didn’t really know what to make of that), but rather because she intuitively felt it to be so. She had stared into his face, into his eyes and had formed a curious bond with this soon-to-be executed child-like man (or man-like child). Somehow, she was convinced he was not an ordinary person, but someone very special. And she felt strangely connected to him on the basis of his ‘otherness’ – a quality, perhaps, they both shared. But beyond that nebulous emotion, and probably something she felt even stronger, was an inherent sense of outrage at the blatant disregard for the sacrosanct values of natural justice that came out in the process and procedure of the trial which she had witnessed.

  Z, on the other hand, didn’t know what he felt about Lipski’s actual guilt or innocence. And being a Jew, himself, he had no inherent faith in Christian justice, even though he had come to value it in theory. But he did believe that the case against Lipski had remained unproven. And even more, he felt that something else was also going on. He didn’t know exactly what, but it lingered like a vague, disturbing aftertaste. It had to do with something deeper and more essential than simply the question of how an impoverished young woman, six months pregnant, had come to be murdered on a hot summer’s morning of Jubilee June.

  So there they sat, each caught up in emotions of their own, yet bonded by a commonality, a unity of feeling that some great offence had occurred which they had witnessed and that, in effect, they had been ordained with a certain responsibility to rectify a wrong.

  In such a way like minds connect. Nothing really need be said. All is understood instinctively. A sense of powerlessness mixed with outrage can also be empowering. There was a force for decency, they believed in 1887. For it was just thirteen years till the 20th century, bright, new and beckoning. And only one hundred years after that till the glories of the millennium. Certainly they were living on the cusp of a New Age when all things would be possible. They breathed the air of hope for the crack and fissures within the stultifying Empires were there for all to witness. One only had to peer across the Channel at the senile confusion of the Hapsburgs, the creaking dissolution of the Ottomans, the frantic death throws of the Tsars, the renewed risings in the Balkans to see the dance of progress but also crumble and decay. And as the 20th Century approached, was it so outlandish to believe that upon the wreckage of the old, a new architecture would appear? Something good. Something better than before. For this they did believe. This they understood. Each in their own way, of course, but based on a faith that true principles of justice would prevail.

  Nothing needed to be said. Nothing needed to be spoken. But they both knew that something needed to be done. It wasn’t yet clear what that something was, but they knew that they were now employed by forces beyond themselves to act. How they would act precisely wasn’t clear, nor did it need to be. The only thing that was important was the idea that they were somehow responsible for saving Israel Lipski swinging from the gallows on Monday morning, the 15th of August, just two short weeks from then.

  Earlier in the day, Z had been at the British Museum doing some research on hanging. He hadn’t ever considered the idea before; it wasn’t something he was very interested in. He knew they happened occasionally but there were many ugly things in life. Why dwell on them? But now he needed to know what actually happened. This is what he found out:

  ‘…the inmate is ordinarily weighed the day before the execution, and a rehearsal is done using a sandbag of the same weight as the prisoner. This is to determine the length of “drop” necessary to ensure a quick death. If the rope is too long, the inmate could be decapitated, and if it is too short, the strangulation could take as long as 45 minutes. The rope, which should be 3/4-inch to 1 1/4-inch in diameter, must be boiled and stretched to eliminate spring or coiling. The knot should be lubricated with wax or soap to ensure a smooth sliding action. Immediately before the execution, the prisoner’s hands and legs are secured, he is blindfolded, and the noose is placed around the neck, with the knot behind the left ear. The execution takes place when a trap-door is opened and the prisoner falls through. The prisoner’s weight should cause a rapid fracture-dislocation of the neck. However, instantaneous death rarely occurs. If the inmate has strong neck muscles, is very light, if the “drop” is too short, or the noose has been wrongly positioned, the fracture-dislocation is not rapid and death results from slow asphyxiation. If this occurs the face becomes engorged, the tongue protrudes, the eyes pop, the body defecates, and violent movements of the limbs occur…’

  Was this what would happen to the young man with the bewildered look who had quite remarkably managed to keep his dignity over the two days of trial? Was this what would happen to the lad whose gaze had penetrated into Z’s dreadful nightmares? Could Z imagine Lipski dangling from a rope, his bloated face cyanic blue, his gentle eyes thrust demonically from their sockets, his tongue protruding starkly from a contorted mouth, as the body’s final defecation oozed down his legs, lingering on his rigid toes before dropping onto the arid ground beneath that corpse swinging silent in the summer heat of August?

  The flowers, they shimmered in the bright. The air was crisp and pure, oxygenated by the foliage in this piece of green protectiondom. Two conflicting emotions beset him – one of beauty, one of fear. The beauty was fading with the setting sun. The horror, though, had just begun.

  CHAPTER 23

  HAYWARD’S OFFICE WAS just off Cheapside, tantalisingly close to Old Jewry Street, an ancient road that dated back to the Norman Conquest, surviving in name the Jewish expulsion of 1290 by the first and most ruthless of the Edwards. It was a simple chamber, not great in size, as Hayward worked alone except for Myers and several junior clerks who managed to look invisible. On first sight, Z thought the place a shambles – even compared to the Record’s remarkable state of derangement – but he soon became aware that what appeared as disorganisation was simply the outward manifestation of too much work and too little room. Myers, in fact, was a brilliantly obsessive systematizer who kept Hayward’s little ship afloat despite the overwhelming ballast of paper which threatened each day to sink them into the underground river that people claimed ran mysteriously below.

  A small wooden table had been cleared of its boxes to provide space for the conference which had been called by Myers on Hayward’s behalf after the initial shock of Lipski’s conviction had worn off and, in its place, the determination to save an innocent man. For, it seems, both Myers and Hayward had been convinced that the jury would find their client not guilty as charged – until the final moment of the judge’s summation. What ensued was a sense of outrage and anger coupled with a tinge of guilt that somehow, in some way, they had been culpable.

  But how were they to have known that Geoghegan would leave them in the lurch? Their strategy had been based upon the notion that the prosecution’s case would fall apart for lack of concrete evidence. But that had depended on an articulate attorney who could passionately underline this fact to a weak-kneed, lily-livered jury that otherwise would be playing the prosecution’
s poodle. It also depended on the judge’s adherence to the letter of the law without introducing his own moral conjectures which, as Z had realised, was essentially an invitation to convict quickly so he, the judge, could don his black hat, pass sentence, and still be home in time for dinner.

  As the solicitor and chief clerk, Hayward and Myers were helplessly obliged to watch these rogue events mischievously play themselves out. And as Lipski’s hired solicitor, Hayward was the man primarily responsible to his client – which ordinarily would have been neither here nor there, but in this case presented a serious problem in that Hayward sincerely believed in Lipski’s innocence, as did his most valued and trusted employee, Myers. And being someone both honest and honourable, Hayward was truly devastated by what he saw as his failure to provide the best possible defence to save a seemingly virtuous man from the gallows.

  Maggie had come along with Z, not at his suggestion but because when they were in the flower garden at Victoria Park and he had told her of this rump gathering which had been set up to initiate the fight for an appeal, she had insisted.