Mr Briggs' Hat: The True Story of a Victorian Railway Murder Read Online Free PDF Page B

financial need prior to the fateful weekend.
    Collier’s speech was punctuated with the words, Gentlemen, the case does not rest here . He stacked the weight of circumstantial evidence until Müller appeared irrevocably pinioned byit. Undoubtedly , Collier continued, the evidence in this case is what is called circumstantial evidence chiefly, but I may remind you that it is by circumstantial evidence that great crimes are most frequently detected. Murders are not committed in the presence of witnesses and to reject circumstantial evidence would be to proclaim immunity to crime … Gentlemen, I venture to think that if these circumstances are proved to you by witnesses, a stronger case of circumstantial evidence has rarely, if ever, been submitted to a jury.
    Faced with any reasonable doubts, he intoned, then the jury must acquit, but again he emphasised that the proof against the defendant was formidable. His opinion was irrelevant, he thundered disingenuously, but theirs counted: if they were convinced that the prisoner had indeed maliciously and violently murdered Thomas Briggs then they must not hesitate or shy from their duty. Silently looking each of them in the eye, Sir Robert Collier then turned and resumed his seat.
    Müller was listening attentively, scribbling notes for Parry or leaning over the dock to speak with him. The spectators shifted their gaze momentarily towards the dock and then, as the prosecution’s first witness was summoned, turned their eyes back towards the stand.
    One after the other, David Buchan, Caroline Buchan, the Fenchurch Street ticket collector Thomas Fishbourne, the clerks Harry Vernez and Sydney Jones, guard Benjamin Ames, engine driver Alfred Ekin, his train guard William Timms and the Bow police constable Edward Dougan were prompted by Serjeant Ballantine to repeat the stories they had told so many times before. None deviated from the substance of their past scripts and there was little for Serjeant Parry to establish in cross-examination. He focused only on David and Caroline Buchan, attempting to confirm the existence of threats made to their uncle. Both replied that they believed them to have existed but admitted that their knowledge was based on the reports ofothers. Asking Caroline, was it a person to whom he objected to send money? Collier objected and was overruled, but Parry decided against repeating the question. Was this because he believed that he had planted the first seed of reasonable doubt? Or, given earlier newspaper reports that the man supposed to have threatened Briggs was a respected member of his community, did Parry know that this line of questioning was unlikely to yield results?
    Of the doctors who had seen Briggs’ wounds at the Mitford Castle tavern and then performed the post-mortem, Parry cross-questioned only Francis Toulmin. The Briggs’ family doctor described the wounds to the top of Thomas Briggs’ head as being inflicted by a blunt instrument, used with considerable force – the wound on the left ear I believe to have been also inflicted by a blunt instrument, but of that I will not speak so certainly; that was my impression.
    Parry wondered why, if these blows were so violent, they were no deeper than half an inch? Was it not also possible that some of the injuries were caused by the fall from the train and was it not also true that the victim was considerably taller (at five feet eight inches) and heavier (at almost twelve stone) than the accused? Parry avoided mentioning the fact that Briggs was probably sitting when he was attacked and skirted the issue of the amount of blood in the carriage. He aimed only to suggest that Toulmin’s conclusions were by no means certain.
    For the prosecution, Ballantine next asked Inspector Kerressey to describe the state of the carriage, the patent hook left in Briggs’ waistcoat buttonhole and the jump link discovered in the floor matting, aiming to establish that the victim’s watch and chain were