by Neil Storey
The following day Lipski was brought before Thames Police Court and committed for trial by Mr Lushington the magistrate. He was then removed to Holloway Prison and transferred to Newgate the week before the trial.
Israel Lipski was first brought before Mr Justice James Fitzjames Stephen at the Central Criminal Court on Wednesday 27 July 1887. The prosecution was the formidable team of Mr Harry Bodkin Poland and Mr Charles Mathews for the prosecution, with Mr Gerald Geoghegan appearing for the defence. The proceedings did not last long. Lipski was asked how he pleaded and replied not guilty ‘in a firm voice’, but Mr Geoghegan requested more time to prepare the defence and asked for the case to be held over until the following Friday. Justice Stephen acquiesced and even suggested that the case may be heard at the next sessions, but Geoghegan declined and the hearing commenced proper on Friday 29 July.
Harry Poland led the prosecution against Lipski. Known for his fairness, Poland had been involved in some of the most significant cases of the late Victorian era, including the Tichbourne Claimant and the Wainwright case.
All the learned counsels were immensely experienced legal men; Harry Poland had been involved in some of the most significant cases of the late Victorian era, including the Tichborne Claimant and the Wainwright case. Gerald Geoghegan was one of the leading barristers of his day, but tragically his eloquence was marred by alcohol abuse. A senior counsel, Mr A.J. McIntyre, QC, was brought in over Geoghegan while the trial was held over – perhaps, as Friedland suggests in The Trials of Israel Lipski, as Geoghegan was marred by drink again. McIntyre, although a sober and well-respected QC, was not a criminal law specialist and had not appeared at the Central Criminal Court after spending years ‘out to grass’ on the County Court Bench.
In opening the case, Mr Poland related more about the known movements of Lipski on the morning in question, as recorded in The Times of 30 July 1887:
The prisoner was a stick maker, and he had engaged a boy named Pitman and a man named Rosenbloom to assist him in that business. At 6.30 on the morning of Tuesday, 28 June, the prisoner was seen in the yard of the house dressed. The husband of the deceased had gone to work at 6 o’clock. At 7 o’clock Rosenbloom came to work at the house and the boy Pitman at 8 o’clock. The prisoner went to the shop of a general dealer in Backchurch Lane for the purpose of buying a vice and a sponge to be used in his business, and while there he asked what time an oil shop next door opened. Before the prisoner left the house a man named Schmuss called and spoke to the prisoner about working for him. The prisoner told him to go upstairs and wait, which he did for some time, but finding the prisoner did not return, he left. The prisoner went to the oil shop and purchased a pennyworth of nitric acid, which was used in his business. The prisoner returned to the house and asked the landlady to get him some coffee. The coffee was prepared, but as the prisoner was not present the landlady called out to him to come down and get it. The boy Pitman answered that the prisoner was not in his room. It was alleged that at that time the prisoner was in the deceased’s room.
In the latter part of the opening, Mr Poland related some of Lipski’s statement and soon after brought up as witness Simon Rosenbloom, the ‘Simon’ accused of being one of those who killed Miriam Angel and attempted to kill Lipski. Under cross-examination from McIntyre, Rosenbloom emphatically denied any involvement in the crime and was clearly believed – to the degree that Mr Justice Stephen took the unusual step of intervening to ask ‘whether there was any use in pursing the questions further?’
Mr McIntyre for the defence replied that he was cross-examining Rosenbloom’s statement because ‘the prisoner could not give his account of the matter.’ Mr Justice Stephen, clearly losing patience, replied that he ‘had again and again allowed a prisoner to make a statement before his counsel addressed the jury if he wished to do so.’
The other man Lipski had implicated in the murder was named and brought to give evidence at the trial. Isaac Schmuss, as in the case of a number of witnesses, gave his evidence via an interpreter. He denied any involvement in the crime and – despite a suggestion to the contrary by the boy Pitman in his evidence – denied knowing Rosenbloom. Mathews led the questions for the prosecution, and Schmuss openly admitted that he had been to 16 Batty Street on the morning of the murder, at about 8 a.m.; he was hard up and expecting some work from Lipski. He had been met at the door by Lipski and was told to go upstairs and wait. He went to the upper storey room and waited there with Rosenbloom and Pitman. After hanging around for about fifteen minutes the three became fed up with waiting and departed; Schmuss went and had breakfast.
Cross-examination after preliminary questions established Schmuss’s trade was that of a slipper maker, and that he could not speak a word of English. McIntyre tried to establish if Schmuss was at the scene of the crime on the morning in question.
McIntyre: Did not you yourself go into the room that belonged to Mrs Angel?
Schmuss: What Mrs Angel? I did not go in.
McIntyre: The first floor in the house where you went to work?
Schmuss: I went nowhere.
McIntyre: Were you not standing in the doorway of her room when Lipski was coming up the stairs?
Schmuss: No, I was not there. I was nowhere.
McIntyre: You were not with Rosenbloom?
Schmuss: No.
McIntyre: Did you know Rosenbloom?
Schmuss: I saw him once, then I saw him for the first time.
McIntyre: Do you mean that you never saw him till you saw him in Lipski’s room?
Schmuss: I saw him never more I saw him the first time there.
The judge was clearly showing his impatience at the line of questioning and McIntyre could sense another intervention coming. He took the initiative by saying: ‘My Lord, I do not propose to go through all the same cross-examination as with the last witness, as this man denies being there at all.’ Mr Justice Stephen replied: ‘No, there is no use in doing that.’
Further witnesses, including Miriam’s mother-in-law Mrs Dinah Angel, Harris Dywein, the boy Pitman and the landlady of 16 Batty Street, all recounted their stories of the case. The landlady’s evidence was particularly damning. She confirmed, as mentioned in the opening statements of the case, that at about 8.30 a.m. Lipski had asked her to fetch some coffee for him. This she did, but when she called up to let him know it was ready, he did not come; upon a second call Pitman had called back, ‘He ain’t here.’ As she had not see him go out, Lipski’s whereabouts in the house were not known between 9 a.m. and the time he was discovered under the bed in Miriam Angel’s room.
The second – and what was to prove to be the final – day of the trial opened on 29 July 1887. The first witness called was Inspector Final, who related the circumstances of taking Lipski’s statement, after which he read out the tract for the court (including some answers to further questioning by Final during which Lipski expanded his accusation to identify Simon Rosenbloom of Philpot Street as the murderer).
Inspector Final was followed into the witness box by Dr Kay, who gave his account of his first examination and subsequent post-mortem of the body, expanding on his findings to state he considered Miriam Angel had suffered at least four very violent blows, probably from a man’s fist, to the right eye and temple, causing her to be, as the doctor phrased it, ‘stunned.’ The post-mortem revealed the acid, estimated to have been a quantity of about half an ounce, had travelled down to the stomach, leading Kay to deduce ‘it had been poured down her throat while she was insensible.’ Significantly, Dr Kay was now not inclined to suggest his post-mortem revealed any evidence of recent ‘sexual connection.’
Mr William Calvert and Mr Thomas Redmayne, house surgeons at The London Hospital, then gave evidence of Lipski’s treatment and injuries. They both confirmed he had swallowed nitric acid: it was found on his clothes and hands. Lipski’s hands, right wrist and forearms also bore scratches, but these were not considered by the medical men to ‘indicate violence of any serious kind.’ Neithe
r was there any visible sign of violence beyond the acid burns and scratches. Then Charles Moore, the manager of the shop in Backchurch Lane, described selling a bottle of nitric acid to a man he identified ‘to the best of his belief’ as Lipski on the morning of 28 June, and recalled: ‘He said he was a stick maker, he wanted it for staining sticks – I cautioned him that it was poisonous.’
Penny Illustrated Paper illustration of items of evidence and the staircase and window associated with the murder.
The case for the Crown concluded with an appearance from Anna Lyons – the woman who would have been Lipski’s future mother-in-law. She recalled lending Lipski money, and when asked about her impressions of the man replied, ‘So far I cannot give him a bad character, he always behaved himself.’ And with a few questions to further establish Lipski was indeed employing himself as a stick maker (also supplying a list of the names for whom he was known to have worked), her evidence was completed, and all that remained were the counsels’ summing up to the jury.
After a recess for lunch Mr Poland presented that facts as:
so simple and clear that on the evidence the jury could form only one conclusion. It was clear that at the time the deceased lost her life she and the prisoner were the only persons in the room, and that on the very day on which the occurrence took place he had purchased the acid which was undoubtedly the cause of death. The question of motive was not material, but upon the facts it was reasonable to suppose that the accused might either have intended to outrage the deceased or to commit a robbery.
Poland then went on to dismiss the allegations of the involvement of Rosenbloom and Schmuss.
Mr McIntyre for the defence said it was his ‘painful duty to have to put forward a defence which implicated others [Rosenbloom and Schmuss]’, suggesting that two men could have easily overwhelmed Mrs Angel – one administering the blows while the other muffled her cries. He attempted to dismiss the suggestion that Lipski had entered Mrs Angel’s room with an immoral purpose, to which Mr Justice Stephen interjected again, observing that the prosecution ‘had not given up the motive of immorality.’ McIntyre contended that he believed the fact the accused was found under the bed was far more in keeping with his statement that he was attacked by two men and concluded that the evidence for the Crown ‘was too inconclusive to justify the jury in finding the prisoner guilty upon a charge of this awfully serious character.’
In his lengthy summing up, Mr Justice Stephen pointed out the lack of motive for robbery and went so far as to state that:
It was more probable that passion was the motive for the crime, and that if that were so it would rather be the act of one man than two. It was shown that the prisoner had not been acquainted with the deceased and her husband, and consequently if it was the prisoner who committed the act it must have been under the influence of a sudden temptation.
But he did go on to point out: ‘The prisoner was a man of good character and was engaged to be married, and these were circumstances which the jury should take into consideration in favour of the prisoner.’ Mr Justice Stephen’s final directions to the jury asked them to consider:
One could hardly imagine that two men who were strangers to each other should walk down from the workshop and go into the deceased’s room for the purpose of committing an assault upon her, and it was almost as difficult to imagine that they should go into the room of a woman as poor as themselves for the purpose of taking a few clothes, which after all they did not take, and why should they rob the prisoner? How could they reconcile the prisoner’s statement with the fact that the door was locked on the inside? The locking of the door was a circumstance of great importance supposing the jury were of opinion that it was locked. The observations made on the part of the defence as to the improbability of the prisoner having committed the crime were of very great importance, and should be carefully considered by the jury. If the jury came to the conclusion that the prisoner was the person who committed the offence, then the natural inference was that he attempted to commit suicide afterwards.
The jury retired at 4.43 p.m. and just eight minutes later they returned a verdict of guilty as charged against Israel Lipski. Asked if he had anything to say, he replied in Yiddish, ‘I did not do it.’ Lipski outwardly remained composed as Mr Justice Stephen donned the black cap and pronounced the death sentence upon him. Lipski was then ‘taken down’ and removed to Newgate to await his execution.
After the trial questions were raised about the interventions and weak cross-examination from the counsel for the defence. Lipski’s solicitor, Mr John Hayward, had found what he believed to be great weaknesses in the evidence presented by the prosecution, and even believed he had found a witness who would state another man bought some nitric acid from another shop at the time of the crime: this man also claimed to be a stick maker, but did not resemble Lipski. Hayward sent telegrams to senior government officials, placed adverts in national papers and even produced a pamphlet detailing the ‘evidence’, and as a result a question was asked in the House of Commons. The Times of 15 August 1887 reported:
Sketches of counsel, witnesses and the accused (centre) in the Lipski trial.
Strenuous efforts were made on Saturday afternoon to obtain from the Home Secretary a reprieve of Lipski. Directly after Mr Matthews’s reply in the House of Commons to Mr Graham, Mr L.J. Greenberg, who has been assisting Mr Hayward in his endeavours to obtain a respite of the sentence, called at the House and saw Baron de Worms, with whom Mr Greenberg had a prolonged interview. Baron H. de Worms advised Mr Greenberg to make his statement to the Home Office, and this was done. Subsequently Mr Hayward and his managing clerk, together with Mr Greenberg, proceeded to the House of Commons, where they were met by Baron Henry de Worms, Sir Wilfred Lawson, Mr Hanbury, Mr Graham, and others, and by them introduced to the Home Secretary in his private rooms. With the Home Secretary were Sir Henry James and Mr Lushington. The interview lasted upwards of an hour and a half. The Home Secretary assured the deputation that, as he had promised in the House, he would keep his mind open to the last moment and would not allow the law to take its course if he saw the slightest grounds for altering his decision. During the interview Mr Hayward received from the Home Secretary an acknowledgement in behalf of Her Majesty of the telegram that had been despatched to Osborne.
Campaigning editor W.T. Stead: ‘Lipski must not be hanged.’
Extended media interest came from mostly Jewish newspapers, with the notable exception of the Pall Mall Gazette which took on the campaign for a reprieve in an article written by its campaigning editor W.T. Stead, heralded with the sensational statement: ‘Lipski must not be hanged. Why not? – For a very simple but very sufficient reason. Mr Justice Stephen, who tried Lipski, and whose summing up contributed not a little to his conviction, has since been converted, and is aghast at the prospect of hanging a possibly innocent man.’ Justice Stephen’s response, published in The Times, spoke first of a breach of confidence and then used terms such as ‘it was absolutely false and unfounded’ as he dealt with the most contentious elements of the article.
However, any criticism of the case or claims of ‘new evidence’ – or any suggestion that an innocent man may be sent to the gallows – soon became academic: after all appeals were lodged, and all avenues exhausted, and it was certain there was to be no reprieve, Lipski confessed. He exonerated all those he had implicated in the crime.
What follows is a transcription of Lipski’s confession. I leave it to the judgement of the reader to decide how believable his sworn ‘whole truth’ really was, especially if one recalls the witness statements of those who discovered the body of Miriam Angel at 16 Batty Street on the morning of Tuesday 28 June 1887:
I Israel Lipski, before I appear before God in judgement, desire to speak the whole truth concerning the crime of which I am accused. I will not die with a lie on my lips. I will not let others suffer, even on suspicion, for my sin. I alone was guilty of the murder of Miriam Angel. I thought the woman had money in
her room, so I entered – the door being unlocked and the woman asleep. I had no thought of violating her, and I swear I never approached her with that object, nor did I wrong her in this way.
Miriam Angel awoke before I could search about for money, and cried out, but very softly. Thereupon I struck her on the head, and seized her by the neck, and closed her mouth with my hand, so that she would not arouse the attention of those who were about the house. I had long been tired of life, and had bought a pennyworth of aquafortis that morning for putting an end to my life. Suddenly I thought of the bottle I had in my pocket, and drew it out and poured some of the contents down her throat. She fainted, and, recognising my desperate condition, I took the rest. The bottle was an old one which I had formerly used, and was the same as that which I had taken with me to the oil shop. The quantity of aquafortis I took had no effect on me.
Hearing the voices of people coming upstairs I crawled under the bed. The woman seemed already dead. There was only a very short time of my entering the room until I was taken away. In the agitation I also fainted. I don’t know how it was that my arms became abraded. I did not feel it, and was not aware of it.
As to the door being locked from the inside, I myself did this immediately after I entered the room, wishing not to be interrupted. I solemnly declare that Rosenbloom and Schmuss know nothing whatever of the crime of which I have been guilty, and I alone. I implore them to pardon me for having in my despair tried to cast the blame upon them. I also beseech the forgiveness of the bereaved husband. I admit that I have had a fair trial, and acknowledge the justice of the sentence that has been passed upon me.