Neil Hanson - The Custom of the Sea

It took the efforts of several police and court officials to secure Richard’s brother a seat in the front row. He was dressed in a yachtsman’s jersey with the name Marguerite sewn in red on the breast. Tom’s eyes strayed to him frequently during the proceedings.

Despite the press of people in the room there was an unnerving silence as Mr Genn rose to read out the charge. ‘The defendants are charged before Her Majesty’s Justices of the Peace that on or about the twenty-fifth day of July in this year of our Lord eighteen eighty-four, being subjects of Our Lady the Queen on the High Seas, feloniously, wilfully and of their malice aforethought, did kill and murder one Richard Parker against the Peace of Our Lady the Queen, her Crown and Dignity.’

He turned to face Tom. ‘How do you plead?’

On Tilly’s instructions, each man in turn made the same response: ‘I reserve my defence.’

Genn then turned back to the bench. ‘An application for a further remand has been received from the Treasury. I wrote to them asking for clarification and more definite instructions.’ He paused. ‘I have today received a reply that the solicitors of the Treasury will take charge of the case henceforth and they have requested me to ask for a week’s remand from today.’

Tilly was on his feet almost before Genn had stopped speaking. ‘May it please Your Worships, in consenting to the application made by the Treasury for a further remand, I feel it my duty again to apply to Your Worships that these unfortunate men may be admitted to bail.

‘The small room in which they are at present confined is ill adapted to their health. They have not recovered, and probably never will, from the privations and sufferings undergone. They are in a wretched state of health, and in addition to all that, the difficulties of properly preparing and conducting their defence under the circumstances of their confinement are very great indeed. Therefore, I still hope, after some further consideration of the point, that Your Worships will reconsider the question and grant my request.’

Liddicoat gave a grave nod. ‘We understand your application and will retire to consider it.’

Tilly remained on his feet. ‘There is only one point upon which I should like to address an observation or two,’ he said. ‘That would be the amount of bail, because it must occur to you that these men are by no means wealthy and have to get their living by the sweat of their brow. If you are led to fix an impossible bail, that would really not be granting my application at all. You would only be trifling with their feelings.’

Tilly paused and a smile tugged the corners of his mouth as he heard a rumble of agreement from the public seats. ‘That, I am sure, would be very far from any of Your Worships’ minds. Probably it will occur to you that this is a very serious case. So it is, but I must tell you as a lawyer who has practised before you a great number of years, that these men are only technically charged with the highest offence a man can commit against the law of England.’

Again he paused for emphasis. ‘It is merely a technical charge of murder which is alleged against them. I therefore think it is my duty at this early stage of the case just to record in your minds what the text books bearing on the criminal law of England have to say relating to offences of this kind. There is no abler commentator on the criminal law of this country than Mr Justice Stephen and he says there is one species of justifiable homicide where the party who is to blame is equally innocent as he whose death he occasions. This homicide is also justifiable from the great universal principle of self-preservation which, where one of them must inevitably perish, prompts every man to save his own life rather than that of another.

‘In pondering this question of bail, I wish you to consider the great universal principle of self-preservation. Admitting everything said about this case, it is not one in which there is the slightest possibility that the charge alleged against these men can hold. Therefore you should not consider it as if it were an ordinary allegation of murder but as one in which the charges are of a purely technical nature.’

He sat down to a round of applause from the public sections, quickly silenced by the bench. The magistrates retired for a considerable time, and Tom gnawed at his knuckles and dug his fingernails into his palms as he tried to hold back the tears he once more felt welling up. He searched the faces of the magistrates as they returned but their impassive expressions revealed nothing.

‘On the application of the Treasury,’ Liddicoat said, ‘this case will be remanded until Thursday next. The bench have carefully considered the application of Mr Tilly and grant it. The Captain to find sureties for two hundred pounds and—’ His words were drowned in a burst of cheering. He banged his gavel until the applause subsided. ‘Sureties for two hundred pounds and the other two for a hundred pounds each.’

There were more cheers and Liddicoat acknowledged them as if they were directed at him. He was a shrewd enough politician to know how strong local feeling had been against the incarceration of the three men, and the arrival of an anonymous letter, postmarked Sheffield, can only have further concentrated his mind.

He had passed it to the local paper which revealed that it contained,

A series of disgusting oaths, calling the Mayor by the most outrageous names for having issued the warrant for the apprehension of the survivors of the Mignonette . He had no right to take such a course as the men had not committed murder and the writer concluded by saying he intended to come to Falmouth the next week to shoot the Mayor for having issued the warrant and thereby entailed more suffering upon men who had already gone through so much. The letter was evidently written in a disguised hand and was upon two half sheets of paper, the style being incoherent.

As he had promised Tom, John Burton offered to stand surety for him. His offer was greeted with yet more cheers and shouts of ‘Good old Burton’ from the crowd.

Both Stephens and Brooks named people in Southampton as their guarantors. J. H. Cocksey, the chairman of the Southampton magistrates, was one of those named as ready to stand bail for Stephens, but although anxious not to have the public mood swing back against him, Liddicoat could not grant bail simply on the strength of names unknown to the bench, no matter how respectable they might be. ‘Is there no Falmouth man who will stand bail for these men?’ he said.

After a brief silence, John Burton again stood up. ‘I’ll go bail for fifty pounds for each of them if any other person will stand surety for the other half.’

There were no volunteers. Liddicoat then allowed Stephens and Brooks to leave the dock and cross the courtroom to where Burton was standing. After a brief, muttered conversation, he told the bench, ‘I’ll stand surety for all of them in the full amount.’

The cheers rose to a crescendo as Daniel Parker walked over and shook hands with each of the defendants in turn. It was a very public exoneration from the dead boy’s closest relative.

To Tom’s infinite relief, the majority of the back-slapping crowd did not pursue them far down the street once they left the court. By the time they reached the market square, the group following them had dwindled to a handful of people.

Tom hailed a hansom cab, then shook Tilly’s hand. ‘Thank you for what you have done for us.’

‘I’ve done little enough yet,’ Tilly said, though his face was flushed with pride. ‘The true test will come in a week’s time when we shall have to try and persuade the bench not to commit you for trial. That will not be so easily done. But I’m glad that you can at least now return to your loved ones.’ He walked away down the hill with his clerk.