In the Pellizioni case, 1863-4, there might have been a terrible failure of justice, as terrible as any hitherto recorded in criminal annals. This was a murder in a public-house at Saffron Hill, Clerkenwell. The district then, as now, was much frequented by immigrant Italians, mostly of a low class, and they were often at variance with their English neighbours. A fierce quarrel arose in this tavern, and was followed by a deadly fight, in which a man named Harrington was killed, and another, Rebbeck, was mortally wounded. The police were speedily summoned, and, on arrival, they found an Italian, Pellizioni by name, lying across Harrington's body, in which life was not yet extinct. Pellizioni was at once seized as the almost obvious perpetrator of the foul deed. He stoutly proclaimed his innocence, declaring that he had only come in to quell the disturbance, that the murdered man and Rebbeck were already on the ground, and that in the scuffle he had been thrown on the top of them. But the facts were seemingly against him, and he was duly committed for trial. [Illustration: "FOUND AN ITALIAN ... LYING ACROSS HARRINGTON'S BODY" (p. 169).] The case was tried before Mr. Baron Martin, and although the evidence was extremely conflicting, the learned judge said that he thought it quite conclusive against the prisoner. He summed up strongly for a conviction, and the jury brought in a verdict of guilty, whereon Pellizioni was sentenced to be hanged. This result was not accepted as satisfactory by many thoughtful people, and the matter was taken up by the Press, notably by the _Daily Telegraph_. Some of the condemned convict's compatriots became deeply interested in him. It was known that in the locality of Saffron Hill he bore the repute of a singularly quiet and inoffensive man. Ultimately, a priest, who laboured among these poor Italians, saved Justice from official murder by bringing one of his flock to confess that he and not Pellizioni had struck the fatal blows. This was one Gregorio Mogni, but he protested that he had acted only in self-defence. Mogni was forthwith arrested, tried, and convicted of the crime, with the strange result that now two men lay in Newgate, both condemned, independently not jointly, of one and the same crime. If Mogni had struck the blows, clearly Pellizioni could not have done so. Moreover, a new fact was elicited at Mogni's trial, and this was the production--for the first time--of the weapon used. It was a knife, and this knife had been found some distance from the scene of the crime, where it could not have been thrown by Pellizioni. And again, it was known and sworn to as Mogni's knife, which, after stabbing the men, he had handed to a friend to take away.