“‘This witness was a reverend person as I guess about seventy years of
age. His testimony was delivered gravely and temperately, but to the good
admiration of the auditor. Whereupon, applying himself to the Lord Chief
Justice, he said, “My lord, my brother here present is minister of the
next parish adjacent, and I am assured saw all done as I have affirmed,”
whereupon that person was also sworn to give evidence, and he deposed
the same in every point, viz., the sweat of the brow, the changes of
its colour, the opening of the eye, the thrice motion of the finger and
drawing it in again; only the first witness deposed that a man dipped
his finger in the blood to examine it, and swore he believed it was real
blood. I conferred afterwards with Sir Edmund Vowel, barrister at law,
and others who concurred in this observation, and for myself, if I were
upon my oath, can depose that these depositions, especially of the first
witness, are truly here reported in substance.
“‘The other evidence was given against the prisoners, viz., against the
grandmother of the plaintiff and against Okeman and his wife, that they
lay in the next room to the dead person that night, and that none came
into the house till they found her dead next morning, therefore if she
did not murther herself, they must be the murtherers, and to that end
further proof was made. First she lay in a composed manner in her bed,
the bed cloaths nothing at all disturbed, and her child by her in the
bed. Secondly, her throat was cut from ear to ear and her neck broken,
and if she first cut her throat, she could not break her neck in the
bed, nor _e contra_. Thirdly, there was no blood in the bed, saving that
there was a tincture of blood upon the bolster whereupon her head lay,
but no other substance of blood at all. Fourthly, from the bed’s head on
there was a stream of blood on the floor, till it ponded on the bending
of the floor to a very great quantity and there was also another stream
of blood on the floor at the bed’s feet, which ponded also on the floor
to another great quantity but no other communication of blood on either
of these places, the one from the other, neither upon the bed, so that
she bled in two places severely, and it was deposed that turning up the
matte of the bed, there were clotes of congealed blood in the straw of
the matte underneath. Fifthly, the bloody knife in the morning was found
clinging in the floor a good distance from the bed, but the point of the
knife as it stuck in the floor was towards the bed and the haft towards
the door. Sixthly, lastly, there was the brand of a thumb and four
fingers of a left hand on the dead person’s left hand.
“‘Hyde, Chief Justice: “How can you know the print of a left hand from
the print of a right hand in such a case?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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