Republican Herald

From Chamber's Edinburgh Miscellany,

CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE-THE YOUNG SAIL-MAKER.

In the year 1825, a young man who was serving his apprenticeship in London to a master sail maker, got leave to visit his mother to spend the Christmas holidays. She lived a few miles beyond Deal, in Kent. He walked the journey: and on his arrival at Deal in the evening, being much fatigued, and all troubled with the bowel complaint, he applied to the landlady of a public house, who was acquainted with his mother, for a night's lodging. Her house was full, and every bed occupied; but she told him that if he would sleep with her uncle, who had lately come ashore, and was boatswain of an Indiaman, he should be welcome. He was glad to accept her offer, and after spending the evening with his new comrade, they retired to rest.

In the middle of the night he was attacked with his old complaint, and wakening his bed-fellow, he asked him the way to the garden. The boatswain told him to go through the kitchen; but as he would find it difficult to open the door into the yard, the latch being out of order, he desired him to take a knife out of his pocket, with which he could raise the latch. The young man did as he was directed, and after remaining nearly half an hour in the yard, he returned to his bed, but was surprised to find his companion had risen and gone. Being impatient to visit his mother and friends, he also arose before day, and pursued his journey, and arrived at home at noon. The landlady, who had been informed of his intention to depart early, was not surprised; but not seeing her uncle in the morning, she went to call him. She was dreadfully shocked to find the bed stained with blood, and every inquiry after her uncle was in vain. The alarm now became general, and on further examination, marks of blood were traced from the bedroom into the street, and at intervals down to the edge of the pier-head. The police were immediately busy, and suspicion fell of course on the young man who had slept with him that he had committed the murder and thrown the body over the pier into the sea.

A warrant was issued against him, and he was taken that evening at his mother's house.

On his being examined and searched, marks of blood were discovered on his shirt and trousers, and in his pocket were a knife and a remarkable silver coin, both of which the landlady swore positively were her uncle's property, and that she saw them in his possession on the evening he retired to rest with the young man. On these strong circumstances the unfortunate youth was found guilty.

He related all the above particulars in his defence: but as he could not account for the marks of blood on his person, unless that he got them when he returned to bed, nor for the silver coin being in his possession, his story was not credited. The certainty of the boatswain's disappearance, and the marks of blood at the pier, traced from his bedroom, were supposed to be too evident signs of his being murdered; and even the judge was so convinced of his guilt that he ordered the execution to take place in three days. At the fatal tree the youth declared his innocence, and persisted in it with such affecting asseverations, that many pitied him, though none doubted the justness of his sentence.

The executioners of those days were not so expert at their trade as modern ones, nor were drop-and platforms invented. The young man was very tall: his feet sometimes touched the ground; and some of his friends who surrounded the gallows contrived to give the body some support as it was suspended. After being cut down, those friends bore it speedily away in a coffin, and in a course of a few hours animation was restored, and the innocent saved. When he was able to move, his friends insisted on his quitting the country, and never returning. He accordingly traveled by night to Portsmouth, where he entered on board a man of war on the point of sailing for a distant part of the world; and as he changed his name and disguised his person, his melancholy story was never discovered.

After a few years of service, during which his exemplary conduct was the cause of his promotion through the lower grades, he was at last made a master's mate: and the ship being paid off in the West Indies, he and a few more of the crew were transferred to another man-of war, which had just arrived short of hands, from a different station. What were his feelings of astonishment, and then of delight and ecstasy, when almost the first person he saw on board his new ship was the identical boatswain for whose murder he had been tried, condemned and executed five years before. Nor was the surprise of the old boatswain much less when he heard the story.

An explanation of all the mysterious circumstances then took place. It appeared that the boatswain had been bled for a pain on the ile by the barber, unknown to his niece, on the day of the young man's arrival at Deal, that when the young man wakened him, and retired to the yard, he found the bandage had come off his arm during the night, and that the blood was flowing afresh. Being alarmed, he arose to go to the barber, who lived across, but a press-gang laid hold of him just as he left the public house. They hurried him to the pier, where their boat was waiting; a few minutes brought them on board a frigate then under weigh for the East Indies: and once there, he never wrote home to account for his sudden disappearance. Thus were the chief circumstances explained by the two tenants of the strange bed. The silver coin being in the possession of the young man could only be explained by the conjecture that when he took the knife out of the boatswain's pocket in the dark, as the coin was in the same pocket, it stuck between the blades of the knife, and in this manner became the strongest proof against him.

On their return to England, this wonderful explanation was told to the judge and jury who tried the cause, and it is probable they never felt more severely the conviction of a man on circumstantial evidence. It also made a great noise in Kent at the time.