Watson’s Apology

by Beryl Bainbridge

  To the Editor of The Times

  Surrey County Gaol, Jan.23, 1872

  Sir, The following statement was drawn up yesterday by the Revd Mr Watson, for the purpose of transmission to the Secretary of State. Before, however, it had left the gaol the respite arrived.

  Your obedient servant, The Chaplain.

  Surrey County Gaol, Jan.22, 1872

  Sir, I beg leave respectfully to submit to you the following statement, with a view to remove from your mind a possible misapprehension of the purpose for which I ordered the packing-case, concerning which I have reason to believe that an entirely erroneous impression exists with the public.

  My desire is, if the sentence of the law is carried into execution, to relieve my memory from the undeserved and terrible imputation which would otherwise rest upon it, and, if my life is spared, that I may, at least, have had the satisfaction of clearing whatever seems ambiguous in regard to this matter.

  When his Lordship asked me after the verdict of the jury whether I had anything to say why sentence should not be pronounced, it did not occur to me, as it ought to have occurred, that that was the time at which I should ask to be allowed to make some observations on the evidence such as I had wished to make previously, but was precluded from making through being defended by counsel.

  It did not strike me, as it ought to have struck me, that that was the only opportunity which I should have of contradicting or qualifying any misrepresentations which I considered to have been made concerning my case.

  I said merely, to his Lordship, that the defence maintained for me had been fair and honest, meaning as to its general character; but I ought to have added that there was one great particular as to which it was quite erroneous. I had suffered all observations regarding the box or packing-case which I ordered from Mr Robert Turner to pass without remark, except privately to my solicitor, to whom I gave a written paper on Wednesday, the first day of the trial, telling him, as I had constantly told him at other times, that the packing-case was intended only for the reception of books, manuscripts, and letters, but that finding myself on Tuesday afternoon, the 10th of October, not in a condition of mind to sort and arrange my manuscripts, and to make such selection from my letters as I had purposed, I told Turner, when I called to pay him between 2 and 3 o’clock on that day, that he need not be in any hurry to send the case, as I should not want it at that time, and that indeed he might wait to send it till he should hear from me again; a permission which I gave him merely for his own convenience. I then did not suppose that anything more would be heard of the case by myself, or that it would ever give rise to any public remarks. You will please to understand that the case was never brought to the house at all.

  My solicitor tells me that he communicated my observations, stated on the written paper which I gave him on the Wednesday, to Serjeant Parry, but that the learned serjeant was not influenced by them to alter the nature of the defence which he had premeditated on this point.

  By a reference to the report of the proceedings at Kennington Police-court, it will be seen that Turner gave his evidence there much more fully than he gave it at the Old Bailey. He stated at Kennington that when I ordered the packing-case, I told him that it was for holding papers; and he stated truly. He asked me when I ordered it whether it was to go abroad, or on shipboard, and I told him that it was not. He asked me also whether he should bind the corners with iron, and I answered that in that respect he might do as he pleased, provided that he made it strong. I assert now, as I have invariably asserted to my solicitor, that it was intended for no other purpose than for holding a few printed books, a large quantity of manuscripts, and a great number of letters, and that there is not, and has not been, the least foundation for representing that it was intended for any other object. There was nothing in the size of the packing-case to excite astonishment. A case 2ft.6in. long, 2ft.3in. wide, and 1ft.9in. in depth is not one of extraordinary dimensions. If compared with such packing-cases as may be seen by hundreds, of a far greater size, on wharves or in warehouses, it will appear but small. I had it made of such capacity because I had, as I have said, a great number of manuscripts and letters to put together, and I thought it better to have them in one receptacle than in more than one, as when several boxes are used for such a purpose they may possibly get separated, and one or more of them be lost.

  Let me add that there was neither word nor act of mine to connect the ordering of the packing-case on one day with anything that I had done on the preceding day. Such connexion as has been made has arisen only in the imaginations of those who have concerned themselves with the affair. As it seems to me it was not known either to the judge or the jury that the packing-case was not in the house with me. What I had said to Turner about the case being intended for papers was, if known to the prosecuting counsel, studiously kept in the background by them.

  I do not suppose that anything I could have said in court would have altered the final determination. But it has caused me much sorrow and many anxious and sleepless nights to reflect that I so unhappily failed to avail myself of that opportunity of saying what (as I did not then consider) it would not afterwards be permissible for anyone to say for me.

  My desire in troubling you with this letter is, as I said at first, to free myself from hearing more to my disadvantage than I justly ought to hear.

  I have the honour to be, Sir, your obedient humble servant, John Selby Watson.

  To the Editor of the Daily Telegraph

  Sir, Amidst the general feelings of sympathy and pity for the unfortunate victim of this crime, and of commiseration for the unhappy murderer, one person who played a prominent and painful, yet unavoidable, part in this domestic tragedy has been entirely overlooked, although deserving of much consideration.

  I refer to the Revd Mr Watson’s servant, Ellen Pyne, whose evidence established the nature of the crime, and was so important in the interests of both justice and the criminal, that she was complimented in court upon the manner in which her valuable testimony was given.

  While the case is so recent in the minds of your readers, it will be unnecessary to dwell upon the horrors and mental sufferings which she must have endured for months past.

  With her mistress found cruelly murdered, her master charged, tried, and convicted of the murder, and herself obliged day after day and week after week, to appear as one of the principal witnesses against Mr Watson, can it be wondered at that her health has become completely broken down, and her nervous system shattered, by the continuous concentration of her thoughts upon the circumstances surrounding this fearful crime? A long period must elapse before she will be able to resume – if, indeed, she will ever be able to resume – her original means of livelihood, and her friends, who formerly occupied a better position, can render her no assistance. She came under my care shortly after the murder, so that I have had ample opportunities of ascertaining how little amenable her case is to mere medical treatment. She urgently stands in need of absolute repose of mind and body, change of scene, and a general regimen wholly out of her reach without help.

  Will you kindly allow these few words of appeal on her behalf to appear in your journal? The Revd Mr Henry Thompson, of Stockwell Park-road, S.W., who knew the young woman during her faithful service of the Watsons, will take charge of any subscriptions, which will be duly acknowledged, or contributions can be sent to yours obediently

  Abbotts Smith, M.D. 7, Princes-street, Hanover-square W., Jan.27.

  To the Editor of the Dublin Evening Mail

  Sir, May I direct the attention of the public to the case of an aged lady, who has been left absolutely destitute, owing to the death of Mrs Watson, her only sister and from whom, for the last 26 years, she obtained her sole support – a pension of £17 per annum. The lady for whom I make this appeal is Miss Olivia Emily Armstrong, who resides at 80, Great Britain Street, and whose destitute circumstances are known to the Revd Mr Stamford, Rector of St Thomas’s, and Mr Tiverton, soda-water manufacturer, 57, U
pper Sackville Street, who have kindly consented to receive subscriptions on her behalf. I have already received towards the fund 10s from Mr John Moore Abbott, solicitor, Lower Gardener street; anonymous 10s6d; and from kind friends in Charlemont House, £2.

  I am, Sir, your obedient servant

  Joseph Bridgeman, 80, Great Britain Street.

  PART 5

  1872–1884

  He was taken with eleven other convicts to Parkhurst prison on the Isle of Wight. They travelled to Portsmouth in a railway carriage whose blinds were drawn in case the sight of the occupants should give offence. He wore a handcuff on his wrist with a length of chain linking him to the next man in the line. When he sat down he held the slack like a woman gathering up her skirts. He stumbled climbing the gang-plank of the ferry and that daisy-chain of wicked men jerked him upright.

  At Ryde, a covered cart, circled by screaming gulls, waited to drive them westward. After some miles the wind tore open the rotten flaps of the wagon and he glimpsed a stretch of puddled sand and the white crested sea. Turning a corner close by an orchard the cart entered a lane sprayed with blossom. In that whirling drift he watched his old life, that life of books and papers, ripped into a thousand pieces and scattered to the winds.

  For six years Fraser petitioned the Home Office to review the old man’s case. He was driven as much by guilt as pity; how could he ever forget that he had been a member of the Proprietary Board which had dismissed him from the school?

  For over two years he corresponded with a man named Dempsey, a relation of Watson’s living in Williamsburg, USA. Dempsey was a son-in-law of Abraham Watson who had emigrated thirty years before and was now dead. Dempsey had been willing, if the authorities had agreed to Watson’s parole, to take responsibility for him and bring him to America. Fraser had written to the American Embassy in London, offering, should Watson be released, to put up money against his good conduct. In an attempt to show the Home Office that they were in earnest, he had even persuaded Dempsey to come to England.

  He had written a long report in which he dwelt on Watson’s extreme age and declining health – prisoner Y 1395 was down to 133 lbs in weight and had asked for brown bread.

  He had badgered Maudsley – head of the Mad Doctors brigade – and five other medical men, into signing a certificate stating that in their opinion Watson had been of unsound mind when he killed his wife. One of the signatories, Gibson, had said at the trial that he thought Watson sane. Gibson had once let a man out of an asylum as cured who had afterwards gone round saying that he was Jesus Christ and who had ended up trying to crucify himself on his mother’s gatepost. Fraser had sent the certificate to the Home Secretary, and a copy to The Times.

  None of his efforts had come to anything, except that for a time convict Y 1395 was allowed brown bread. Dempsey’s approach had been turned down. No reason was given, but a friend of a friend who knew someone in the Penal Settlement Division had heard that it was on account of the murder having been ‘a very bad one’, and, advanced years or not, the prisoner’s sentence must stand.

  He believed that Watson still had moments of insanity. Only recently he had received the following letter:

  Y.1395, John Watson

  17th October, 1879

  Dear Fraser,

  He who is about to write a letter on this sheet of paper has nothing more to say of himself than that his ‘condition’ is much the same as when he last wrote on a similar sheet, and has little to say to him whom he addresses beyond an expression of hope and trust that he continues healthy and flourishing. He will therefore resume the subject of which he was previously treating – I read lately, in a scientific treatise, that light, which travels at the rate of 192,000 miles in a second in air, travels in the same time in vacuo 192, 500 miles. By what experiment this slight difference is supposed to be demonstrated, I cannot conceive. Indeed, from no theory regarding light is it apparent that light can exist in a vacuum. The old theory of solar emission, which considers light as oceans of luminous particles, makes the presence of such particles necessary whenever light appears; and the more modern theory, which represents light as the effect of motions in an ether, motions which in the notion of most men of science are undulatory or wave-like, but which I would fain believe to be mere impulses among the ethereal particles unproductive of waves, assumes that light can exist only when that ether also exists. Under either hypothesis there can be no light in an absolute vacuity. We must suppose that the luminous ethereal particles are of so subtle a nature as to permeate the particles of glass, and, more or less, the particles of other transparent or partially transparent bodies, and that a receiver, though it be exhausted of air, may yet retain ‘within’ it the ether, its particles being of so fine an essence as to defy the power of operations that act on glass or material. The scientific experience of the present day seems to substantiate the old saying that ‘nature abhors a vacuum’, and experiments on light in vacuo may apparently be deferred sine die. We observed above that the sun’s solar influence, or, in common phrase, the sun’s beams, act in a straight line. But they are also to be regarded as having a lateral action. When the sun rises, his rays appear to shoot in a rectilinear course through the atmosphere from east to west. But how is it that rooms having windows looking towards the south or north, and plains and vales that lie beneath the path of the solar radiance, are partially enlightened by his influence even before he ascends the horizon? It would appear that his more direct influence, which, by agitating, in a greater degree, the particles of ether in its rectilinear course, produces the more brilliant light, causes, at the same time, in a less degree, an agitation among the particles around it, which, propagated to a certain extent, generates the first light which we call the dawn. So in the evening the twilight will be the result of the agitation left by the radiance of day; an agitation which gradually decreases till all the particles of the ether sink into tranquillity, and total darkness ensues. Such effect may be compared to that of the flight of an arrow, or of a bird through the sky, which will disturb not only the particles in its direct course, but also those bordering on it; a disturbance which will spread and continue till the resistance of ether particles near enough to act upon it forces it to subside. But a thousand questions may be asked concerning the causes of the most ordinary phenomena of light, to which no satisfactory answers can be given. How is it, for instance, when I stand before the mirror, I see my features and figure exactly depicted on its surface? I am not ignorant of what books on optics tell us, that rays fall from every part of my face and person upon the mirror, and that certain of these rays are sent back or reflected to the eye, the angle of incidence and reflection of such rays as reach the eye being equal, as is shown by the perpendicular raised on the surface of the mirror at the point of contact. But how am I to really know all this? How am I to know that rays of light perpetually proceed from every part of my face and person, falling upon every surface within a certain distance, and that, if the surface on which they fall happens to be what is called a reflecting one, a certain proportion of them are directed back at my organ of vision? They may, indeed, if they proceed from my person at all, be so directed back to me from every surface on which they alight, though I do not perceive them, and though the science of optics speaks only of their return from surfaces that show by reflection, as it is termed, the figures or objects before them or within their scope. There must certainly be some medium of communication between me and the mirror, or my figure, which I see more exactly as I move, would not be represented in it at all. There must also be a medium of communication between the mirror and every object animate or inanimate, whose figure is reflected on its surface. What he is asking is, what is the cause, the mode, the nature of communication? How is he to feel certain that the communication is effected by rays, and not by the simple impulses of the particles of ether surrounding his person and around any other reflected object? Obliged to break off. Titcombe, Bishop of Rangoon!! Sounding brass – but anything for a ‘Coloni
al’.