Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations: The Veil Lifted, and Light Thrown on Crime and its Causes, and Criminals and their Haunts. Facts and Disclosures.Howe, William F.
History
Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations: The Veil Lifted, and Light Thrown on Crime and its Causes, and Criminals and their Haunts. Facts and Disclosures.
Howe, William F.
Crime -- New York (State) -- New York; Criminals -- New York (State) -- New York; New York (N.Y.) -- Social conditions
No, gentlemen, I will give you my theory of this case; I will render to
you what this man has told me, and if it be not a common-sense view of
it, no logic--no metaphysics--then discard every word uttered and
condemn this man. The pawnbroker throws additional light upon this
transaction, and, gentlemen, if you will refer to the date in his book
of the 17th of November (a month after his alleged larceny), you will
find an important fact which I beseech you to hold, pointedly, in your
own estimation. You will remember that she contradicts herself, and
stated that she had had no transactions with Hemmings after the alleged
larceny. One of the gentlemen on the jury put the very pertinent
question (seeing the force of this), whether she had transactions with
the prisoner after this alleged stealing. You will remember for
yourselves, gentlemen, and I point to it without fear of contradiction,
that at first she stated the ear-rings were taken on the 19th of
October, but, seeing, with a woman's keen perception, the fatal error
she had made in stating that admission, seeing that you, as common-sense
men, would have at once said: "Why not have had him arrested then?" she
quickly drew back, like a snail when the crashing foot is coming upon
it, and drew the horns within the shell which covered it; and,
yesterday, corrected the date. She changed the date and put it back from
November to October. I congratulate her upon the change! For all the
trickery and malice which were embodied in it, only enured to the
prisoner's benefit. It was here sworn, to-day, that on the 17th of
November last, her watch and chain (her watch and chain, gentlemen) not
Mr. Lynch's, but Eliza Bethune's, was pledged in New York at Mr.
Barnard's, the identical pawnbroker with whom the earrings were pledged.
By whom? By Mrs. Bethune? Oh no! gentlemen! but by Hemmings, the man
here. If he accomplished this ubiquitous feat, like the ghost in Hamlet,
to be in two places at one time, he is one of the most wonderful
performers of the modern day. (Laughter.) He could not be in Barnard's
pawn-shop in New York pledging Mrs. Bethune's watch on the 17th of
November, a month after the larceny, and be, as she would have you
believe, with Kate Fisher performing in Pittsburgh. Why, look at that
contradiction! I invoke that book (pointing to the pawnbroker's record),
as in other temples I appeal to the Holy one, for my protection. In your
hands I place it. Upon your altar do I offer it up; and I believe that
you will grant my prayers, that this will be taken as the strongest
evidence of the prisoner's innocence. Records cannot lie here. The
testimony is that this man had subsequent transactions with Mrs.
Bethune, supporting, beyond a doubt, my theory that she gave him the
ear-rings to pledge. Now let us see. She tells you (and there are other
circumstances of greater peculiarity still around this case)--she tells
you that she became acquainted with this man some twelve years since;
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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