Mr Briggs' Hat: The True Story of a Victorian Railway Murder (33 page)

Yet Collier could not materially shake the evidence either of Eldred or of Jones.
Stupid and confused
as these two witnesses were
, wrote the
Telegraph
, they gave the impression that they were speaking what they believed to be the truth. The weakness of the alibi remained. Even if it was true, it was not entirely incompatible with the prisoner’s guilt. When it came to timekeeping, Collier had successfully imputed that Eldred was fatally unreliable and that her
powers of perception and memory were flawed. Müller might have been in Camberwell on the night of the 9th, but Collier had effectively demolished any confidence that an exact time could be fixed to his presence there, and exact times were crucial if Parry was to establish that Müller could not have been on Thomas Briggs’ train.

It did not help that before she was dismissed, a juror asked Eldred whether she was
in the habit of noticing Müller’s hat
. She said that she was not. Dropping her eyes and turning to leave, Eldred looked up at Müller. The German in the dock and the young deaf prostitute smiled sadly at one another.

Parry’s final witness was Charles Foreman. The omnibus conductor told the court that his last ’bus left Camberwell Gate at about ten minutes to ten, arriving in King William Street about twenty past the hour. Prior to that, an omnibus left the Camberwell stand at seven o’clock. It meant that if Müller had been at Stanley Cottage after seven – and he had not left the Repschs’ in time to get there earlier – he could not have made it back to the City from Camberwell Gate in time to reach Fenchurch Street before Briggs’ train departed.
I remember
, said the conductor,
that I had a gentleman ride in my omnibus on my last journey … from Camberwell Gate to the City, who appeared to be lame and wore a slipper. It was in the summer
. The problem was that he could neither remember the month nor the day of the week. Further, although his customer had been young and fair the conductor remembered him as rather stout. That description did not correspond to the slim young German now on trial for his life.

Serjeant Parry had no more witnesses to call. By comparison with the twelve hours taken by the prosecution so far, arguments for the defence had lasted a mere four.

*

Parry might have done enough to establish the element of uncertainty that would liberate his client, but the Crown still had the advantage. Müller and his legal team were now constrained to
listen as Collier summed up the arguments for the prosecution. He applauded the zeal and proficiency of his learned brother Parry and expressed himself satisfied that the defendant had been fortunate in the provision of such an eminent team. Müller had been given the best possible chance, suggested the Solicitor General, but the fact remained that murder had been proven against him.

The hats, he submitted to the jury, told the story. He contended that the hat found in the carriage belonged to Müller and that this was a fact rather than a probability, proving that Müller had been present at the time of the attack. He reminded them that only one or two such hats were ever made with that same lining (dismissing the evidence given that it might have been four). What of Mr Briggs’ hat? It had been missed and it was most conclusive that the murderer had gone away with it and cut it down. Both Mrs Repsch and Mrs Matthews saw Müller wearing that hat from Monday 11 July.
My learned friend, feeling the gigantic difficulties – which I candidly admit – of the case he had to grapple with, did not feel himself able to propound to you any theory of Müller’s innocence consistent with the fact of his hat having been found in the railway carriage.
The facts regarding the hats were strengthened by Müller’s possession at that time of a new chain – a chain which John Death had given him in exchange for one wrenched from the unconscious body of Mr Briggs.

Matthews might, Collier conceded, be motivated by the reward – but that was, after all, the point of rewards. The jury had seen the walking stick and they had examined the tailor’s shears but he felt himself under no obligation to prove the murder weapon. Müller was young and strong while Thomas Briggs had been recovering from illness and was elderly. As for Lee’s evidence, Collier suggested that the man was not trustworthy enough to take the stand. Ultimately, he now believed that the evidence, circumstantial though it was, turned out to be
even stronger than he had suggested in his opening speech. The words
fact
and
proved
punctuated his argument, overwriting the possibilities of suspicion and probability. The hats were – he said – at the centre of it all and the hats proclaimed Müller guilty.

Most damaging, Collier then turned the evidence intended to prove Müller’s alibi to the prosecution’s advantage. Since Eldred was such an unreliable timekeeper, he posited, was it not possible that she had gone out on Saturday the 9th at half-past eight, or even a quarter to nine? If Müller had arrived soon after, and left within minutes, it would have allowed him time to take an earlier omnibus (he declined to remind the jury that only one ’bus ran between seven and ten o’clock at night) and his arrival at King William Street or Fenchurch Street Station would then have coincided almost exactly with the arrival of Thomas Briggs on his journey home.

After breaking for an hour, the judge Lord Chief Baron Pollock began his summation to the jury at two o’clock. Müller rose from his seat, leaning against the front of the dock, motionless. Several reporters now noticed that, while Parry had described him as puny, the prisoner in fact had
an expanded chest.
They would later leave the court to describe to their readers
his large,
massive, sinewy hands
folded on the dock and the peculiar determination of … his closely compressed lips
.

Judge Pollock’s summation began by focusing on the hat found in the carriage and the watch and chain
. These,
he intoned,
are the three links in the chain of evidence for the prosecution, each distinctly apart from each other
.
It would be for the jury to say whether
[Müller]
had given a satisfactory account for them.

Although Parry had been at pains to establish with the jury that the law cast the burden of proof on the prosecution and that the case against Müller was, at worst, inconclusive, Pollock’s own advice differed. In effect, he now diluted the standard of proof as he had famously done at the Mannings trial in the late forties by
directing the jury that they need not be as certain as if they had seen events with their own eyes. They must simply exercise, he advised, as much caution as they would in their ordinary, everyday business dealings. In effect, the judge ruled that the jury’s decision could be based on probability rather than on certainty.

Pollock reminded the twelve men of the jury that Müller was said to have been lame but that his lameness had not affected his ability to take a walk on Sunday with the Blyths for three hours from six o’clock. Then he demolished Müller’s alibi, believing that the assembly must feel
great compassion for the situation in life which
[Eldred]
has filled. Her evidence consisted, certainly, very much more in saying what she could not than to saying what she did recollect
. Pollock’s vitriol was reserved instead for Mrs Jones: a madam about whom it was
impossible to speak … with the same degree of forbearance
.

Listening to the venerable judge, Müller must have suspected that Pollock was shivering the theories of his defence to atoms. After an hour’s solemn summation, at almost three o’clock, the jury retired to consider. Müller sat quietly as whispers rose to hearty conversations. An arm’s length from the dock the lawyers round the green baize table talked to one another at the tops of their voices –
the scene in court
, reported the
Telegraph
,
was very like that presented by a betting ring before a great race is going to be run
.

Conspicuously alone, Müller seemed to be making a desperate effort to appear composed. From time to time, Thomas Beard leaned over to speak to him, attempting to support his client during the awful interval of suspense.

Jury deliberations were often quick – in 1864 juries were still
denied fire, food or refreshment
in an effort to discourage delays – but after scarcely a quarter of an hour the twelve men of the jury filed back in, taking the court by surprise. Following them into court, Judge Pollock entered without Baron Martin. Müller was asked to stand. The call went up for silence.

Gentlemen, are you agreed upon your verdict?

We are.

How do you find the prisoner at the bar – guilty or not guilty of the murder with which he is charged?

There is no record of whether any of the jurymen looked at Müller standing immobile in the dock, waiting for the verdict that would decide his fate.

Guilty.

That is the verdict of you all?

Yes.

*

The jury believed that the hat left in the carriage was Müller’s hat and that he therefore must have been there. They presumed that his possession of Briggs’ hat and gold watch at the time of his arrest was the direct result of his crime. They did not believe that Müller’s visit to Camberwell precluded his ability to have been on the North London Railway at the time of the murder. They disregarded the evidence of Thomas Lee perhaps because he could not satisfactorily account for his delay in coming forward: a whiff of shiftiness, cast over him by the prosecution, had stuck. Parry had failed to cast suspicion on Jonathan Matthews, or to make enough of the existing injury to Müller’s foot. He had not convinced the jury that Briggs’ death had resulted from injuries sustained as he fell from the train, nor that there was enough doubt surrounding the murder weapon or the true ownership of the hats to force an alternative verdict. He seemed also to have forgotten to make it clear to the jury that the evidence of the omnibus conductor independently substantiated the claim Müller made in his New York press interview that he had been in Camberwell on the night of the murder.

The jury was unanimous, and they made no recommendation to mercy. The second judge, Martin, arrived back in court in his billowing robes as the Clerk of the Arraigns spoke towards the
dock:
Prisoner at the bar, you have been convicted of the crime of wilful murder. Have you anything to say why judgement of death should not be given?
Involuntarily, Müller’s firmly compressed upper lip began to twitch. He shook his head.

Placing a piece of
black cloth over his wig
, Martin addressed the prisoner.
Prisoner at the bar
, you have been found guilty by the jury of the wilful murder of Mr Briggs … It is usual with judges to state, in passing sentence, if they entirely concur in that verdict, and they do so for two reasons … I am authorised to state that we are perfectly satisfied with that verdict and I state so in order to remove entirely from your mind the possibility that you will live in this world much longer … I beseech you to avail yourself of the means of making your peace with your Maker. I wish to remove from your mind any hope of alteration of the sentence. I feel no more doubt that you committed this murder than I do with reference to the occurrence of any other event of which I am certain but which I did not see with my own eyes …

The sentence is that you be taken from here to the prison from whence you came, that from thence you be taken to a place of execution, that there you be hanged by the neck till your body be dead; that your body when dead be taken down and that it be buried within the precincts of the prison where you were last confined. And may God have mercy on your soul.

Dry-eyed, Müller watched as the usually intransigent Judge Pollock unaccountably pressed a large handkerchief to his eyes to obscure his tears. Two warders standing behind Müller advanced to take him by the arms but, shrugging them off, he stepped forward with extraordinary self-possession. Then, the one man who had been barred from speaking throughout his own trial, with one hand almost covering his mouth said in a very low, trembling voice and in broken English:
I should like to say something. I am satisfied with the sentence which your Lordship has passed. I know very well it is what the law of the
country prescribes. But I have been convicted on false evidence not a true statement of facts, whatever my faults may be.

Only those sitting nearest to the dock heard his words, hardly audible among the clamour of the room. The judges had already turned to go.

Steadily, the spectators streamed out, turning their backs on the dock and their attention towards dinner. A thunder of cheers went up outside as news of the verdict rippled out onto the crowded streets around the Old Bailey, the roars thrumming into the unseasonably cold dusk. In the dim light of the court, Müller heard it. His stern self-command faltered and then snapped. All hope gone, he began to weep.

CHAPTER 30

The Shadow of Doubt

Müller had the presence of mind to turn and bow to his counsel before the grip of a warder’s strong hand directed him back down the steps and along the tunnel to Newgate. He waited as each gate was unlocked before and resecured behind him, making his way not to his old cell but to another, assigned specifically to condemned prisoners.

The new cell was long and narrow
– about nine feet high, nine deep and six broad, with a door four inches thick. There was a small window and a fireplace. To one side was a long wooden settle and on the table lay a Bible and religious tracts, a spoon and fork but no knife. He would change into dark grey prison dress. The warders watched as the cold realisation of his fate broke through the walls of his shock and Müller gave himself up to waves of fear and grief.