Chapter 16 - Page 2

the method by which he had been murdered.

The murder itself, according to the theory of the prosecution, was committed in the following manner: Cranley, disguised as a sailor (the disguise in which he was finally taken), had been in the habit of meeting Johnson, and being tattooed by him, in a private room of the Hit or Miss tavern, in Chelsea. On the night of February 7th, he met him there for the last time. He left the tavern late, at nearly twelve o'clock, telling the landlady that "his friend," as he called Johnson, had fallen asleep upstairs. On closing the establishment, the landlady, Mrs. Gullick, found the room, an upper one, with dormer windows opening on the roof, empty. She concluded that Johnson--or Shields, as she called him--had wakened, and left the house by the back staircase, which led to a side-alley. This way Johnson, who knew the house well, often took, on leaving. On the following afternoon, however, the dead body of Johnson, with no obvious marks of violence on it, was found in a cart belonging to the vestry--a cart which, during the night, had remained near a shed on the piece of waste ground adjoining the Hit or Miss. A coroner's jury had taken the view that Johnson, being intoxicated, had strayed into the piece of waste ground (it would be proved that the door in the palisade surrounding it was open on that night), had lain down in the cart, and died in his sleep of cold and exposure. But evidence derived from a later medical examination would establish the presumption, which would be confirmed by the testimony of an eye-witness, that death had been wilfully caused by Cranley, employing a poison which it would be shown he had in his possession--a poison which was not swallowed by the victim, but introduced by means of a puncture into the system. The dead man's body had then been removed to a place where his decease would be accounted for as the result of cold and exhaustion. A witness would be put in the box who, by an extraordinary circumstance, had been enabled to see the crime committed by the prisoner, and the body carried away, though, at the moment, he did not understand the meaning of what he saw. As the circumstances by which this witness had been enabled to behold what was done at dead of night, in an attic room, locked and bolted, and not commanded from any neighboring house nor eminence, were exceedingly peculiar, testimony would be brought to show that the witness really had enjoyed the opportunity of observation which he claimed.

On the whole, then, as the prisoner had undeniably personated Johnson, and claimed Johnson's property; as he undeniably had induced Johnson, unconsciously, to aid him in the task of personation; as the motive for the murder was plain and obvious; as Johnson, according to the medical evidence, had probably been murdered; and as an eye-witness professed to have seen, without comprehending, the operation by which death, according to the medical theory,