LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
UNEQUAL SENTENCES.
[TO THE EDITOR 07 THE " EPROTALTOR:1
Szn,—Is it possible that the sentence passed by Lord Craighill on the wretched Isabel Grant will really be carried out ? Do your readers know the case, and will no effort be made to save her? I will not trust myself to tell the story in any words but those of the Times' reporter, lest I be accused of making it more pitiful than it is; though I do not well know how that might be :--
" Isabel W. Thomson, or Grant, a woman over 50 years of age, was sentenced to death by Lord Craighill, at the Glasgow Autumn Circuit, for the murder of her husband, Peter Grant, an engineer. The case is a very pitiful one. Grant and his wife lived in a house in Walker Street, Parlick, a suburb of Glasgow, and had a family, some of whom are grown up. On June 19th last, Grant was at work on board an Anchor Line steamer, lying in the Clyde, and in the evening, when be received his pay, his wife went to meet him, and accompanied him home. On the road they had some drink, and when they arrived at their house they were apparently on quite friendly terms. Shortly afterwards, however, the two quarrelled, and the woman, in a fit of passion, plunged a large bread-knife, about ten inches in length, into her husband's stomach, inflicting injuries of which he died two days afterwards in the infirmary. The trial of the prisoner lasted two days, and the woman, who is in poor health, was evidently labouring under the most acute mental agony the whole time. She hid her face in her hands from morning till night, and wept constantly, the convul- sive heaving of her body betokening the greatness of her distress. When the jury returned the verdict finding her guilty by a small majority she completely broke down, wringing her bands in the very ecstasy of despair, and on the Judge assuming the black cap, she gave a loud shriek, and fell back on the dock-seat in a death-like swoon. The female warders in attendance endeavoured to restore animation, but were unsuccessful, and while sentence of death was being pronounced, she lay in the arms of a police-officer in a perfectly unconscious state. The scene throughout was intensely painful, and created a profound sensation in court. The doomed woman, who was ordered to be executed on the 26th inst., was carried out of court still insensible."
No woman, I think, who understands the true interests of her sex, desires exceptional indulgence to be shown to the offences of women. If a wife incur debts she cannot pay, or rob at her husband's instigation, I, for one, would admit no defence to be made for her as a feme couverte ; nor yet remit for her the extreme penalty of the law, supposing her to have committed a capital crime. But if a woman ought not to be treated with ex- ceptional leniency, assuredly there is no earthly reason why exceptional severity should be exhibited towards her offences. Why, then, is Isabel Grant to be hanged for stabbing her husband in a sudden, tipsy quarrel, when homi- cides of like kind are almost uniformly punished as " manslaughter " only ? Surely though the mischance of the wretched creature using the bread-knife (which doubtless lay under her hand) brought her crime into a different legal category from that of equally fatal assaults inflicted by the heavy hand or iron-shod foot of a man, the other details of the case clearly prove there was nothing resembling malice, or murderous premeditation in her offence?
Compare this story of the poor, crushed, and penitent Scotch- woman with that of the Irishman, Cornelius Spillane, detailed last week in the Daily News, from the Cork Examiner of August 1st. Spillane went home late at night last Easter Sunday, and almost immediately struck his wife (apparently without pro- vocation) three blows, which felled her to the ground. After this he left her for a moment, then returning, lifted her up and cast her down again. The woman (who was far ad- vanced in pregnancy) prayed that the priest and doctor might be sent for, as she felt herself dying ; and Spillane went out for the purpose, swearing an oath as he left the house that he "hoped his wife would never recover." She actually expired shortly after- wards, saying, before she died, "God forgive him who did it to me, and he will miss me yet !" Now, how was the crime of this man treated ?
In the first place, he was charged with " manslaughter " only, though the counsel for the prosecution remarked that "the evidence would warrant the charge of murder."
In the second place, though there was absolutely no defence offered, and though two witnesses deposed to his swearing he hoped his wife would not recover, and another appeared in court with a head broken by Spillane's friends for bearing testimony against him,—in spite of all this, the jury, after finding him guilty, recommended Mm to mercy.
Lastly, to complete the ghastly farce, the Judge (Chief Justice May) told the prisoner that his double murder of wife and un- born babe was as "near an accident as anything could be," and sentenced him to one week's imprisonment. This, if we may trust the Cork Examiner's reporter (I write, of course, assuming that the story of the trial is given therein cor- rectly), was the measure dealt out by counsel, jury, and judge to Cornelius Spillane,—one week's imprisonment ! And to Isabel Grant—the heart-broken and penitent creature who, in the brief madness of drink and sudden quarrel, gave one blow (not three) —counsel, jury, and judge have dealt,—death. She will be hanged, unless the Home Secretary interfere. She is now enduring the double- agonies of remorse for her crime and of mortal terror in anticipa- tion of the scaffold, while Spillane has, of course, been for the last three weeks at large, his brief sentence having expired, and doubt- less his position among his friends being very little, if at all, altered by the " accident " of the death of his wife and unborn child.
Comment on these two parallel stories of the judicial treatment of a man who killed a woman, and of a woman who killed a man, would be superfluous. Nor is it my purpose now to press the- question which naturally occurs to me,—" Would such things happen, were women summoned on juries when women are prisoners at the bar?" I wish, with your kind permission, to make one or two general reflections on this case of Spillane, and on the many cases—less astounding, yet still of the same character —which appear almost daily in the public journals.
One of the chief raisons d'être of our criminal laws is, admittedly, to educate the consciences of the masses ; to train them to view crime with the same horror as it is regarded by moral and culti- vated men ; to serve, in short, as an organ does in a church, by sounding continuously the true note, to bring by degrees all wavering and ill-tuned voices to the same pitch.
Assuming this to be the case, it is obvious that wherever the popular conscience is specially deficient, wherever a class of great moral offences is slightly regarded and readily condoned by the ignorant and brutalised, there it specially behoves the adminis- trators of the law to execute it with peculiar care and strictness, enforcing on the bystanders the fact that the deed they look on with indifference has been determined by their legislators to constitute a heinous offence, deserving of severe chastise- ment. If the reverse of this occur, if a Judge treat lightly a crime which is already too lightly estimated by the popu- lace, and even go out of his way to make a sort of apology for it, and call it an "accident,"—can there be any doubt that the results must be disastrous, and that it will take years to undo the ill-consequences of such a sentence?
There is very little need to strike terror into the minds of wives respecting the crime of husband-murder. There is, however, alas! the most grievous and crying need to alarm the more brutal sort of husbands as to the consequence of killing their wives. Yet Cornelius Spillane has had one week's imprisonment, and Isabel Grant lies under sentence of death.—I am, Sir, Sze.,
FRANCES POWER CORSE.
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