Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated) (1238 page)

I have said that on the floor under the Youngman’s there lived a couple named Beard. At half-past five, a little after the time when the tailor had closed the hall door behind him, Mrs. Beard was disturbed by a sound which she took to be from children running up and down and playing. There was a light patter of feet on the floor above. But as she listened it struck her that there was something unusual in this romping at so early an hour, so she nudged her husband and asked him for his opinion. Then, as the two sat up in bed, straining their ears, there came from above them a gasping cry and the dull, soft thud of a falling body. Beard sprang out of bed and rushed upstairs until his head came upon the level of the Youngman’s landing. He saw enough to send him shrieking down to Mr. Bevan upon the ground-floor. ‘For God’s sake, come here! There is murder!’ he roared, fumbling with his shaking fingers at the handle of the landlord’s bedroom.

His summons did not find the landlord entirely unprepared. That ill- boding thud had been loud enough to reach his ears. He sprang palpitating from his bed, and the two men in their nightdresses ascended the creaking staircase, their frightened faces lit up by the blaze of golden sunlight of a July morning. Again they do not seem to have got farther than the point from which they could see the landing. That confused huddle of white-clad figures littered over the passage, with those glaring smears and blotches, were more than their nerves could stand. They could count three lying there, stark dead upon the landing. And there was someone moving in the bedroom. It was coming towards them. With horror-dilated eyes they saw William Godfrey Youngman framed in the open doorway, his white nightdress brilliant with ghastly streaks and the sleeve hanging torn over his hand.

‘Mr. Beard,’ he cried, when he saw the two bloodless faces upon the stairs, ‘for God’s sake fetch a surgeon! I believe there is some alive yet!’ Then, as they turned and ran down stairs again, he called after them the singular explanation to which he ever afterwards adhered. ‘My mother has done all this,’ he cried; ‘she murdered my two brothers and my sweetheart, and I in self-defence believe that I have murdered her.’

The two men did not stop to discuss the question with him. They had both rushed to their rooms and huddled on some clothes. Then they ran out of the house in search of a surgeon and a policeman, leaving Youngman still standing on the stair repeating his strange explanation. How sweet the morning air must have seemed to them when they were once clear of the accursed house, and how the honest milkmen, with their swinging tins, must have stared at those two rushing and dishevelled figures. But they had not far to go. John Varney, of P Division, as solid and unimaginative as the law which he represents, was standing at the street corner, and he came clumping back with reassuring slowness and dignity.

‘Oh, policeman, here is a sight! What shall I do?’ cried Youngman, as he saw the glazed official hat coming up the stair.

Constable Varney is not shaken by that horrid cluster of death. His advice is practical and to the point.

‘Go and dress yourself!’ said he.

‘I struck my mother; but it was in self defence,’ cried the other. ‘Would you not have done the same? It is the law.’

Constable Varney is not to be drawn into giving a legal opinion, but he is quite convinced that the best thing for Youngman to do is to put on some clothes.

And now a crowd had begun to assemble in the street, and another policeman and an inspector had arrived. It was clear that, whether Youngman’s story was correct or not, he was a self-confessed homicide, and that the law must hold her grip of him. But when a dagger-shaped knife, splintered by the force of repeated blows, was found upon the floor, and Youngman had to confess that it belonged to him; when also it was observed that ferocious strength and energy were needed to produce the wounds inflicted, it became increasingly evident that, instead of being a mere victim of circumstances, this man was one of the criminals of a century. But all evidence must be circumstantial, for mother, sweetheart, brothers — the mouths of all were closed in the one indiscriminate butchery.

The horror and the apparent purposelessness of the deed roused public excitement and indignation to the highest pitch. The miserable sum for which poor Mary was insured appeared to be the sole motive of the crime; the prisoner’s eagerness to have the business concluded, and his desire to have the letters destroyed in which he had urged it, forming the strongest evidence against him. At the same time, his calm assumption that things would be arranged as he wished them to be, and that the Argus Insurance Office would pay over the money to one who was neither husband nor relative of the deceased, pointed to an ignorance of the ways of business or a belief in his own powers of managing, which in either case resembled insanity. When in addition it came out at the trial that the family was sodden with lunacy upon both sides, that the wife’s mother and the husband’s brother were in asylums, and that the husband’s father had been in an asylum, but had become ‘tolerably sensible’ before his death, it is doubtful whether the case should not have been judged upon medical rather than upon criminal grounds. In these more scientific and more humanitarian days it is perhaps doubtful whether Youngman would have been hanged, but there was never any doubt as to his fate in 1860.

The trial came off at the Central Criminal Court upon August 16th before Mr. Justice Williams. Few fresh details came out, save that the knife had been in prisoner’s possession for some time. He had exhibited it once in a bar, upon which a bystander, with the good British love of law and order, had remarked that that was not a fit knife for any man to carry.

‘Anybody,’ said Youngman, in reply, ‘has the right to carry such a knife if he thinks proper in his own defence.’

Perhaps the objector did not realize how near he may have been at that moment to getting its point between his ribs. Nothing serious against the prisoner’s previous character came out at the trial, and he adhered steadfastly to his own account of the tragedy. In summing up, however, Justice Williams pointed out that if the prisoner’s story were true it meant that he had disarmed his mother and got possession of the knife. What necessity was there, then, for him to kill her? and why should he deal her repeated wounds? This argument, and the fact that there were no stains upon the hands of the mother, prevailed with the jury, and sentence was duly passed upon the prisoner.

Youngman had shown an unmoved demeanour in the dock, but he gave signs of an irritable, and occasionally of a violent, temper in prison. His father visited him, and the prisoner burst instantly into fierce reproaches against his treatment of his family — reproaches for which there seem to have been no justification. Another thing which appeared to have galled him to the quick was the remark of the publican, which first reached his ears at the trial, to the effect that Mary had better hang herself in the skittle-yard than marry such a man. His self-esteem, the strongest trait in his nature, was cruelly wounded by such a speech.

‘Only one thing I wish,’ he cried, furiously, ‘that I could get hold of this man Spicer, for I would strike his head off.’ The unnatural and bloodthirsty character of the threat is characteristic of the homicidal maniac. ‘Do you suppose,’ he added, with a fine touch of vanity, ‘that a man of my determination and spirit would have heard these words used in my presence without striking the man who used them to the ground?’

But in spite of exhortation and persuasion he carried his secret with him to the grave. He never varied from the story which he had probably concocted before the event.

‘Do not leave the world with a lie on your lips.’ said the chaplain, as they walked to the scaffold.

‘Well, if I wanted to tell a lie I would say that I did it.’ was his retort. He hoped to the end with his serene self-belief that the story which he had put forward could not fail eventually to be accepted. Even on the scaffold he was on the alert for a reprieve.

It was on the 4th of September, a little more than a month after the commission of his crime, that he was led out in front of Horsemonger Gaol to suffer his punishment. A concourse of 30,000 people, many of whom had waited all night, raised a brutal howl at his appearance. It was remarked at the time that it was one of the very few instances of capital punishment in which no sympathizer or philanthropist of any sort could be found to raise a single voice against the death penalty. The man died quietly and coolly.

‘Thank you, Mr. Jessopp,’ said he to the chaplain, ‘for your great kindness. See my brother and take my love to him, and all at home.’

And so, with the snick of a bolt and the jar of a rope, ended one of the most sanguinary, and also one of the most unaccountable, incidents in English criminal annals. That the man was guilty seems to admit no doubt, and yet it must be confessed that circumstantial evidence can never be absolutely convincing, and that it is only the critical student of such cases who realizes how often a damning chain of evidence may, by some slight change, be made to bear an entirely different interpretation.

TRANSCRIPT OF THE MANOR PLACE MURDER TRIA
L

Proceedings Of The Old Bailey
, 13th August 1860

723. WILLIAM GODFREY YOUNGMAN (25), was indicted for the wilful murder of Mary Wells Streeter. He was also charged on the Coroner’s Inquisition with the like offence.

MESSRS. CLERK
and
BEASLEY
conducted the Prosecution.

JAMES BEVAN. I am a carman, and reside at 16, Manor-place, Walworth — I am the landlord of the house — I occupy the ground floor — the house consists of a first and second floor — the first floor is immediately above my rooms — on 31st July last Mr. Beard occupied the first floor — that consists of a front and a back room — there was Mr. Beard, his wife, and one son — the floor above that was occupied by Mr. Youngman — I believe his name to be John — he is the father of the prisoner — his family consisted of his wife and two little boys — the second floor consisted of two rooms, a front and a back one — I had known at that time that the prisoner had been there for a few days; for a holiday, I understood — I had seen him backwards and forwards before 31st July — I believed him to be sleeping there — I remember the morning of 31st July — I was disturbed about ten minutes to 6, or something like that — I was then in bed, in the lower back room on the ground floor — I was disturbed by hearing a lumbering, as I supposed, on the top of the house; a lumbering, or heavy fell on the floor; a lumbering noise, as if something had fallen on the floor — the noise proceeded from the top of the house, as I supposed at the time, the second floor — as soon as I heard the noise I immediately jumped out of bed to hear and see what was amiss, and, before I could get to the door, Mr. Beard, who has the first floor, tapped at the door and said, “For God’s sake come up stairs, here is murder;” that was before I had got out of my room — I immediately proceeded up stairs to see what was amiss — I went on to the top landing, the landing of the seoond floor, and I turned my head and saw the little boy — there is a staircase that ends with a landing, and a door on each side of the landing — a door opens on to the landing from each room; the doors front each other on the landing — I saw the little boy lying dead on the top floor — I did not take very particular notice of him — I believe him to be the eldest boy — I did not see any one else about — I came down stairs and dressed as quickly as I could, to get assistance — as I was about to proceed for the officer the prisoner was standing on the first staircase — that was the first time I saw him that morning — it was directly I came down stairs and dressed; after I had dressed — I was then about to proceed for the officers — I should think not two minutes had been occupied by my dressing — on coming out of my room dressed I saw the prisoner standing three parts of the way on the first staircase; the staircase leading from the ground floor to the first floor — he was standing at that time looking downwards; looking down stairs — that staircase does not face the front door — the stairs, face the passage which leads to the door — at the bot-tom of the stairs there is a long passage, quite through the house, and the staircase is in the middle of the passage — he had got nothing on then, only his shirt — he told me his mother had done all this.

COURT.
Q.
What were the words he used, as near as you can say? A. He said, “My mother has done all this; she has murdered my two brothers and my sweetheart, and I, in self-defence, believe I have murdered her.”

MR. BEASLEY.
Q.
Was that all he said at the time? A. Yes — I then went for the police — I believe I heard the prisoner’s father go out that morning about half-past five.