petitions for a reprieve

the jury’s verdict of guilty was rendered on august 7, 1889. the evidence at the trial, as well as the learned judge’s “summing up,” was reported almost verbatim in the english press. the result was that, not only in liverpool, but in almost every city, town, and village of the united kingdom, men and women of every class and grade of society arrived at the conclusion that the verdict was erroneous—as not founded upon evidence, but upon the biased and misleading summing up of the case by the mentally incompetent[226] judge. within a few days my lawyers, the messrs. cleaver, of liverpool, who had notified the press that they would supply forms of petition, were inundated with applications. for the first two days they issued one thousand a day, and i have been informed that no less than five thousand petitions for a reprieve, representing nearly half a million signatures, were sent to the home secretary within the following ten days. in response to these, the home office issued to the press the following decision:

“after the fullest consideration, and after taking the best medical and legal advice that could be obtained, the home secretary advised her majesty to respite the capital punishment of florence elizabeth maybrick and to commute the punishment to penal servitude for life; inasmuch as, although the evidence leads to the conclusion that the prisoner administered and attempted to administer arsenic to her husband with intent to murder him, yet it does[227] not wholly exclude a reasonable doubt whether his death was in fact caused by the administration of arsenic.”

illogical position of home secretary

thus it will be seen that the home secretary, mr. matthews, ignored the important statement of the judge at the trial, when, in giving emphasis to his remarks, he told the jury that: “it is essential to this charge that the man died of arsenic. this question must be the foundation of a judgment unfavorable to the prisoner, that he died of arsenic.” then mr. matthews, on reviewing the evidence given at the trial, finding it impossible to justify the verdict, because the evidence “does not wholly exclude a reasonable doubt whether his [james maybrick’s] death was in fact caused by the administration of arsenic,” which question was to be the foundation of a judgment unfavorable to me, instead of giving his prisoner the benefit of the reasonable[228] doubt, took it upon himself to apply the spirit of the law and of the constitution, by making use of a wrongful conviction for one offense charged in order to punish me for a different offense for which i had never been tried, but with which he, without any public trial, charged me, viz., “administering and attempting to administer arsenic” to my husband.

new evidence of innocence ignored

these charges, made by mr. matthews in 1889, have never been defined; nor has any statement been submitted to me or my legal advisers of the evidence relied on to prove them; nor have i been afforded an opportunity of being heard by counsel in answer to them, nor of pleading anything in reply to them. had a second trial been granted me, i should have seen the evidence upon which the new charges were made against me, and in open court i could [229]have confronted the witnesses. but mr. matthews sentenced me to penal servitude for life (without giving me a chance to defend myself against the charges) which involved nine months’ solitary confinement in my case—in itself a most excessive punishment for the untried and, consequently, unproven charges. he sent me to suffer fourteen and one-half years on suspicion—a suspicion not warranted by any evidence given at the trial. the new evidence, which has been obtained since my conviction, is admitted by all fair-minded persons to be of such a nature that it would satisfy any intelligent jury that i was not only wrongfully found guilty of murder, but was most wrongfully treated by mr. matthews. it completely exonerates me from the charge of murder as well as “administering and attempting to administer arsenic.” since this evidence was published, no one has attempted to justify the conviction or the sentence passed upon me.

had the jury, instead of finding a verdict of “guilty” of murder, returned a verdict[230] in the same terms as the finding of mr. matthews, the judge must have entered it as “not guilty” and discharged me.

lord russell’s letter

well might the lord chief justice russell of killowen write me, as he did on the 27th of june, 1895, telling me that he had never relaxed his efforts to urge my release, and saying:

royal court, 27th june, 1895.

mrs. maybrick,

dear madam: i have been absent on circuit; hence my delay in answering your letter.

i beg to assure you that i have never relaxed my efforts where any suitable opportunity offered to urge that your release ought to be granted. i feel as strongly as i have felt from the first that you ought never to have been convicted, and this opinion i have very clearly expressed to mr. asquith, but i am sorry to say hitherto without effect.

rest assured that i shall renew my representations to the incoming home secretary, whoever he may be, as soon as the government is formed and the home secretary is in a position to deal with such matters.

i am,

faithfully,

russell of killowen.

this also seems to be the opinion of the leading counsel for the prosecution, mr. addison, q.c., m.p. (now judge addison, of the southwark county courts), who is reported to have said, after the summing up, that “the jury could not, especially in view of the medical evidence, find a verdict of guilty.” this statement will be found in sir charles russell’s protest to mr. matthews.

efforts for release

the public are not probably fully aware how much intensity of feeling and earnest work has been expended on my case during[232] the fourteen and one-half years of my imprisonment. the home office knows. men in high positions in both political parties in england have often united in demanding a new trial. the almost invariable reply has been that the best means to effect my release was to obtain new facts or evidence, and submit these to the home secretary for his consideration. those well-meaning advisers seemed to forget that the half million of petitioners for my reprieve or free pardon in england—not to count those in america—were not moved thereto by new facts or evidence, but by the absence of facts or evidence sufficient to prove that the alleged crime had been committed by any one, or that either guilt or complicity in that crime, if crime it were, attached to me. surely it is not the business of the public nor of individual citizens to prove the innocence of any unhappy person whom process of law selects for punishment, while it is the business of every citizen to see that the courts incontestably[233] prove the guilt of any person accused of a crime before sentence is passed, in the following manner:

1. it must be proved that a crime has been committed.

2. it must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused person is the one who committed it.

even new evidence superfluous

neither condition has yet been fulfilled in my case. the evidence on which a half million petitioners said and say i was unjustly condemned is sufficient in itself. while it is true if a new trial had been granted me i could have produced new evidence that overwhelmingly demonstrated my innocence, it is also true that more facts or new evidence were not requisite to enable justice to be done.

the doctors’ doubt

the doctors who gave evidence in favor of death by arsenical poisoning all stated that they would not have felt certain on the subject if the one-tenth of a grain of arsenic had not been found in the body. therefore, since the presence of that arsenic could be otherwise accounted for, i was entitled to an acquittal even on the evidence of the crown medical witnesses. moreover, the symptom on which two or three doctors for the prosecution laid most stress—continuous vomiting—was referred by the third to morphia administered by himself. all three were examined before any evidence of mr. maybrick’s habit of arsenic taking was given. had they believed him to be an arsenic eater, they might have arrived at a different conclusion. the doctors for the defense, who declared that mr. maybrick’s symptoms were not those of arsenical poisoning, were men of far more experience as regards poisons[235] than the crown medical witnesses. the quantity of arsenic found in the body was, in their opinion, quite consistent with administration in medicinal doses, and might have been introduced a considerable time before.

the proved administration of poison with intent to kill is punishable by penal servitude, but not necessarily for life—sometimes for only three years; but the charge must be proved in open court to be a felonious attempt by some means actually used to effectuate the intent, and it remains with the prosecution to produce the necessary evidence that the means used were sufficient for the accomplishment of the effect.

the medical evidence proved that the quantity of arsenic—one-tenth of a grain—found in mr. maybrick’s body was not sufficient to have produced death.

public surprise at verdict

the times of august 8, 1889, declared that, of the hundreds of thousands of persons who followed the case with eager interest and attention, not one in three was prepared for the verdict. the large majority had believed that, in the presence of such contradictory evidence, the jury would give the prisoner the benefit of the doubt and bring in a verdict as much like the scotch “not proven” as is permitted by english law.

character of jury

there was strong prejudice against me, due to the numerous false and sensational reports circulated by the press during the interval between the arrest and the trial. the jury belonged to a class of men who were not competent to weigh technical evidence,[5] and no doubt attached great[237] weight to the opinions of the local physicians, one of whom was somewhat of a celebrity. but the main element in the conviction was justice stephen, whose mind, undoubtedly owing to incipient insanity (he died insane a year later), was incapable of dealing with so intricate a case.

the “mad judge”

the liverpool daily post, as i am told, had been hostile rather than favorable toward me, but, on the death of lord chief justice russell, that journal, in articles of august 13 and 14, 1900, showed that it fully appreciated the unfairness of my trial, for it stated that no human being ought to be handed over to be tried by a “mad judge.” the following is taken from the post of august 13, 1900:

“the death of the lord chief justice may have recalled to the minds of some liverpool folk a sad and sordid tragedy[238] enacted among them eleven years ago, in which he was a principal performer. to those who were there, a vivid recollection still persists of that bright july morning when a thronged court, hushed in expectancy, awaited the beginning of the maybrick trial. in fancy one still hears the distant fanfare of the trumpets as the judges with quaint pageantry passed down the hall, and still with the mind’s eye sees the stately crimson-clad figure of the great mad judge as he sat down to try his last case. a tragedy, indeed, was played upon the bench no less than in the dock.

“few who looked upon the strong, square head can have suspected that the light of reason was burning very low within; yet as the days of the trial dragged by—days that must have been as terrible to the judge as to the prisoner—men began to nod at him, to wonder, and to whisper. nothing more painful was ever seen in court than the proud old man’s desperate struggle to control his failing faculties. but the struggle was unavailing. it was clear that the growing volume of facts was unassorted, undigested in his mind; that[239] his judgment swayed backward and forward in the conflict of testimony; that his memory failed to grip the most salient features of the case for many minutes together. it was shocking to think that a human life depended upon the direction of this wreck of what was once a great judge.”

justice stephen’s biased charge

the charge of mr. justice stephen to the jury positively teemed with misstatements as to the evidence given during the trial. i quote a statement from the same journal in its issue of august 17, 1900:

“i should be very sorry to think that the same number of errors as to the matters of fact given in the evidence had ever been made in any judge’s charge. it simply swarms with them, and as the jury at the end of a long trial is likely to prefer the judge’s résumé to their own recollection, i doubt if the verdict in the maybrick case was founded on the evidence at all. and if i am right in thinking that the jurors founded their verdict on the judge’s recapitulation[240] of the evidence rather than on the evidence itself, i do not see how any counsel could have saved the prisoner.”

that the jury “did not hear the whole of the evidence very distinctly” is admitted by one of them in the liverpool daily post of august 10, 1889. consequently they were likely to be unduly influenced by the judge’s charge. there is no evidence that the jury detected the judge’s misstatements, as a more intelligent jury certainly would have done. their minds were “taken captive” by the charge of justice stephen, and they were as “clay in the hands of the potter.”

lord russell’s memorandum quashed

the lord chief justice sent the home secretary a memorandum consisting of twenty folios, in which he stated the strong opinion that “mrs. maybrick ought to be released at once.” the lord chief justice also requested that the contents of his[241] memorandum be made public. yet when asked in the house of commons to lay the document on the table of the house in order that it might be accessible to the members, the home secretary emphatically declined. the london daily mail, in a leader on this incident, said:

“the only conceivable reasons for declining to give publicity to the letter, which was actually intended for publication, are apparently official red tape and the fear of giving new life to the agitation in favor of mrs. maybrick’s release. this result will be almost as effectually achieved by surrounding the case with further mystery and leaving upon the public mind the grave suspicion that justice may not have been done.”

repeated protests of lord russell

the following extracts are taken from the “life of lord russell of killowen” by r. barry o’brien.

“in november, 1895, he [lord russell] wrote to sir matthew white-ridley (page 260), conveying his strong and emphatic opinion that florence maybrick ought never to have been convicted; that her continued imprisonment is an injustice which ought promptly to be ended, and added: ‘i have never wavered in this opinion. after her conviction i wrote and had printed a memorandum, which i presume is preserved at the home office. lest it should not be, i herewith transmit a copy.’

“as is known, what happened was that mr. matthews, after consultation with the present lord chancellor, lord salisbury, and mr. justice stephen, and after seeing dr. stephenson, the principal crown witness, and also the late dr. tidy, respited the capital sentence on the expressed ground that there was sufficient doubt whether death had been caused by arsenical poisoning to justify the respite.

“it will be seen (1) that such a doubt existed as to the commission of the offense for which florence maybrick was tried as rendered it improper, in the opinion of the home secretary and his advisers, that the capital sentence should be carried out; and[243] (2) that for more than six years florence maybrick has been suffering imprisonment on the assumption of mr. matthews that she committed an offense for which she was never tried by the constitutional authority and of which she has never been adjudged guilty.”

from page 261: “this is in itself a most serious state of things. it is manifestly unjust that florence maybrick should suffer for a crime in regard to which she has never been called upon to answer before any lawful tribunal.

“is it not obvious that if the attempt to murder had been the offense for which she was arraigned, the course of the defense would have been different? i speak as her counsel of what i know. read the report of the defense, and you will see that i devoted my whole strength to and massed the evidence upon the point that the prosecution had misconceived the facts, that the foundation on which the whole case rested was rotten, for that, in fact, there was no murder; that, on the contrary, the deceased had died from natural causes.

“it is true that incidental reference was[244] made to certain alleged acts of florence maybrick, but the references were incidental only; the stress of my argument being, in fact, that no murder had been committed, because the evidence did not warrant the conclusion that the deceased had died from arsenical poisoning. on the other hand, had the crown counsel suggested the case of attempt to murder by poison, it would have been the duty of counsel to address himself directly and mainly to the alleged circumstances which, it was argued, pointed to guilty intent. that these alleged circumstances were capable in part of being explained, in part of being minimized, and in part of being attacked as unreliably vouched, can not, i think, be doubted by any one who has with a critical eye scanned the evidence. i do not deny that my feelings are engaged in this case. it is impossible that they should not be, but i have honestly tried to judge the case, and i now say that if i was called upon to advise in my character of head of the criminal judicature of this country, i should advise you that florence maybrick ought to be allowed to go free.”

from page 262: “i think it my duty to renew my protest against the continued imprisonment of florence maybrick. i consider the history of the case reflects discredit on the administration of the criminal law. i think my protest ought to be attended to at last. the prisoner has already undergone punishment for a period four times as long, or more, as the minimum punishment fixed by law for the commission of the crime, of which she has never been convicted or for which she has never been tried, but for which she has been adjudged guilty by your predecessor in the office of home secretary.”

the american official petition

the following is quoted from the american official petition sent to the rt. hon. henry matthews, q.c., m.p., her majesty’s principal secretary for the home department:

“as florence elizabeth maybrick is an american woman, without father, brother,[246] husband, or kin in england, except two infant children, enduring penal servitude for life in woking prison;

“as the conduct of her trial resulted in a profound impression of a miscarriage of justice, in an earnest protest against the verdict, and the execution of the sentence of death, and its commutation to penal servitude for life on the ground of reasonable doubt whether a murder had been committed;

“as a careful legal scrutiny of the evidence given at the trial by eminent solicitors, barristers, queen’s counsel, and members of parliament, and the production of facts not in evidence at the trial have resulted in a final decision of counsel that the case is one proper for the grave consideration of a criminal appellate tribunal—if such a tribunal existed;

“therefore, we earnestly ask that the rt. hon. henry matthews, q.c., m.p., her majesty’s principal secretary of state for the home department, will advise her majesty to order the pardon and release of the prisoner, who has now suffered an imprisonment of three years.

“levi p. morton, vice-president of the united states, president of the senate.

“charles t. crisp, speaker of the house of representatives.

“charles foster, secretary of the treasury.

“james g. blaine, secretary of state.

“s. b. elkins, secretary of war.

“w. h. miller, attorney-general.

“john wanamaker, postmaster-general.

“b. t. tracy, secretary of the navy.

“john b. noble, secretary of the interior.

“g. m. rusk, secretary of agriculture.

“j., cardinal gibbons.

“j. m. scofield, major-general commanding the army.

“a. w. truly, brigadier-general-in-chief, signal office.

“thomas lincoln casey, brigadier-general-in-chief of engineers.

“joseph cabell breckenridge, brigadier-general, infantry-general.

“j. o. kelton, brigadier-general, adjutant-general.

[248]“william smith, paymaster-general.

“h. m. batchelder, general-quartermaster-general.

“b. dubarry, general and commanding general infantry.

“o. sutherland, general infantry general.

“d. w. flagler, chief of ordnance.

“j. norman lisber, acting judge-advocate-general.

“thomas ewing, brevet-major-general, u. s. a., and many others.”

secretary blaine’s letter to minister lincoln

i will conclude by quoting the letter of secretary blaine to mr. robert lincoln, then minister to the court of st. james. it will be seen that mr. blaine was of opinion that i had lost my citizenship. since this letter was written it has been decided by the supreme court of the united states that a woman married to a foreigner, on the death of her husband can, on application, be reinstated to citizenship.

hon. james g. blaine,

american secretary of state, 1889-1892.

“department of state, washington,

“march 7, 1892.

“my dear mr. lincoln: as mrs. maybrick lost her american citizenship by her english marriage, and as i fear she does not resume it by her widowhood, i can not instruct you officially as to the course you should pursue toward her.

“but her american and southern birth, her connection with many families of the highest respectability and even of prominence in the country’s service, have attracted much attention to her fate.

“i have no other interest in her than an interest which you and i share in common with all our countrymen—the desire to help an american woman in distress. that she may have been influenced by the foolish ambition of too many american girls for a foreign marriage, and have descended from her own rank to that of her husband’s family, which seems to have been somewhat vulgar, must be forgiven to her youth, since she was only eighteen at the time of her marriage.

“there is a wide and widening belief in this country that she is legally innocent[250] and illegally imprisoned. the official charge of the judge that murder must be proved and the official announcement of the home secretary that the evidence leaves a ‘reasonable doubt’ of murder are the premises of but one conclusion—the discharge of the prisoner.

“the fact that she was never indicted or tried by a jury of her peers on a specific count of felonious attempt to administer arsenic, yet is condemned to penal servitude for life on the home secretary’s statement that she evidently made such an attempt, can never be reconciled to the english principle that an accused person shall be tried by a jury of his peers. lawyers here are among the strongest believers in the illegality of her imprisonment. indeed, the sense of injustice is developing and deepening into horror.

“officially i could only instruct you on behalf of a multitude of american citizens to investigate her case. personally i beg to express to you my deep interest in it, and pray you, if possible, to communicate with messrs. lumley and sir charles russell as to any method of american cooperation[251] which may seem to them desirable.

“messrs. lumley have made a very able brief, which i am sure would interest you, and which seems to me unanswerable. sir charles russell, whose reputation you know, is her counsel. consult with them what best can be done, from an american point of view, to secure mrs. maybrick’s release. and if you shall have read lumley’s brief, i am sure that conviction will lead you to personal activity in her behalf.

“you can communicate with me in strict confidence, as from one american citizen to another, for the relief of an american woman helplessly enduring a great wrong.

“believe me, etc.,

“james g. blaine.”

and yet it required the time from march 7, 1892, until july 20, 1904, to attain my liberation; and then it was accomplished by time limit and by no act of grace or concession on the part of the english government.

henry w. lucy on lord russell

the strand magazine, london, in its november number, 1900, published an article by henry w. lucy, esq., who, speaking of the late lord chief justice russell, says:

“the most remarkable episode in charles russell’s career at the bar undoubtedly was his defense of mrs. maybrick.

“i happened to find myself in the same hotel with him at liverpool on the morning of the day set down for the opening of the trial. at breakfast he spoke in confident terms of his client’s innocence and of the surety of her acquittal. he did not take into account the passing mood of the judge who tried the case, and so found himself out of his reckoning; but the verdict of the jury, still less the summing-up of fitz-james stephen, did not shake his conviction. sir charles russell was of all men least likely to be misled by appearances or deliberate deception; having[253] probed the case to the bottom, having turned his piercing eyes on the woman in the dock, having talked to her in private and studied her in public, he was convinced of her innocence.

“lord landoff was a lawyer of high position at the english bar when, as mr. henry matthews, he came into the home office.

“the verdict of the jury was ‘guilty,’ and her sentence was death, which was a real surprise, as was afterward learned, even to the judge, sir fitz-james stephen. if mr. matthews believed her guilty, he should not have commuted her sentence upon the ground that he assigned. if she was guilty she well deserved death on the scaffold. the evidence, however, satisfied mr. matthews that there was reasonable doubt that the death of mr. maybrick was due to arsenic. in this view, as is well known, he was sustained by justice stephen. if such a doubt really came into mr. matthews’s mind, as was made the ground of the commutation of the sentence, under english law that doubt entitled the accused to acquittal.

“why he lacked the courage of his convictions can only be surmised. at all events he did not dare to take the responsibility of allowing her to be executed.

“the intercession of the american government through mr. blaine, secretary of state, was urgent, strong, and most intense. it is incredible that mr. matthews desired any loophole to release her. the case was full of them.

“sir matthew white-ridley was not a lawyer, and there is no probability that he ever read the evidence in the case, which was voluminous. he could not have read the papers in three days if he had attempted it. he simply followed his predecessor’s line and was not able to take up the case on its merits.”

lord russell’s conviction of mrs. maybrick’s innocence

this statement of mr. lucy is of great value as an answer to the assault made on lord russell’s memory after his death, on his firm belief in my innocence.

lord hugh cecil wrote to a constituent:

“i believe i am right in stating that he (lord russell) never said that he believed mrs. maybrick to be innocent.”

when this was shown lord russell by mr. a. w. mcdougall, esq., the chief justice exclaimed:

“does lord hugh cecil suppose that i would abandon all the traditions of the bar and put forward publicly as an argument in such a case my personal belief in this, that, or the other thing? does he suppose that i would have made all the efforts i have been making to obtain her freedom if i believed her to be guilty?”

explanation of attitude of home secretaries

“personal rights,” of november 15, in commenting on the statement of mr. lucy in the strand magazine, says:

“we do not share the belief that sir fitz-james stephen was insane in any plenary sense at the time of the trial; but we are convinced that he was not fully sane. his charge to the jury, the report of which is reproduced in full in mr. levy’s book, is grotesquely inaccurate; and if the jury took it to be a compendium of the evidence—as they probably did—the result of their deliberation is fully accounted for. indeed, if the facts were such as the judge stated, the verdict could hardly be impugned. how different they were may be seen by any one who compares the evidence with the judge’s charge, in the book already referred to. to take a single instance: the judge stated that, according to the evidence of alice yapp, at the commencement of mr. maybrick’s illness, he was very sick and in great pain immediately after some medicine was given to him by his wife. alice yapp swore nothing of the kind. she saw neither any administration of medicine nor any sickness. we could give other instances of gross inaccuracy, generally leading to the conclusion of the prisoner’s guilt; but, for our[257] present purpose, the above incident will suffice.

“if this was the character of the judge’s charge to the jury, what confidence can be placed in his notes? still upon those notes was probably based the conclusions of successive home secretaries or of the officials employed by them. when mr. lucy holds up his hands in astonishment at the marvelous consensus of opinion of various home secretaries, he seems to us to manifest remarkable blindness—for one so long behind the speaker’s chair—as to the vicarious nature of that opinion. it is more than possible that the conclusions of mr. matthews, mr. asquith, and sir matthew white-ridley were all drawn for them by the same gentleman, or, at least, that the same gentleman helped these various home secretaries to come to the same conclusion.

“we hope that mr. ritchie, the new home secretary, will judge this matter for himself. let him read the salient portions, at least, of mr. levy’s book, and, per contra, the article of x. y. z. in the contemporary review of september last. if he[258] likes to make the inquiry, he will find that x. y. z. is one of his new permanent staff, and that the doctrines put forward in the article are the embodiment of home office practise. this is a matter which does not concern the maybrick case alone. scarcely a month passes without some new manifestation of injustice brought about by adherence to the traditions of the department over which mr. ritchie now presides. if he will seek out this hydra and slay it, he will leave for himself an immortal name among secretaries of state, and—what he will hold of more importance—he will cut off a permanent source of injustice, give releasement and joy to the innocent pining in prison, and breathe a new life into a department which is sadly in need of a renovating spirit.”

hon. robert t. lincoln,

american ambassador to court of st. james, 1889-1893.

upholding the justiciary

in the same number of this journal is an article from “lex,” a well-known writer in english journals, which we reproduce:

“sir: may i call attention to the two articles in the liverpool post of august 13 and 14, in which the utter incompetence of the judge at the maybrick trial is strongly asserted? the writer is distinctly hostile to the prisoner, and writes without any intention of raising the question whether the trial was not null and void; but as the english system consists of trial by judge and jury, the total incompetence of either element should clearly vitiate it. moreover, mr. ruggles-brise, on the occasion of a visit to america in 1897, stated that the reason of the steadfast refusal of the home secretary to release the prisoner was his desire to uphold the wholesome authority of the english justiciary. that authority can not be regarded as wholesome if the judge was insane. lord russell, who was present throughout the trial, was of different opinion from that of the judge. he was undoubtedly sane. if sir j. f. stephen was insane, the public will, i think, be of opinion that the sane judge should have had the most influence with the executive.”

need of court of criminal appeal

lord esher, in the times of august 17, 1889, strongly advocated a court of criminal appeal, and the times, in an article of the same date, supported the views expressed by lord esher and by lord fitzgerald, as follows:

“a court of appeal, as lord esher sketches it, would not be open to the objections which can be fairly urged against our present informal method of procedure. the home secretary, as a quasi court of appeal, is, as lord fitzgerald remarks, not a judge and has not the power of a judge.... the judgment pronounced by a strong court of criminal appeal, such as lord esher’s letter suggests, would do more to satisfy the public mind than the best efforts of the home secretary could possibly do. the reform which lord esher advocates has been long called for, and lord fitzgerald did well to press it on the government.... what the public feel is that they would rather have the fallibility[261] of trained judges than the fallibility of an individual sitting without any of the apparatus with which a court of law is enabled to detect truth from falsehood, and perhaps unconsciously confusing the prerogative of mercy with justice.”