The Mammoth Book of Unsolved Crimes

The year of grace 1902 was one of those vintage years of crime. It witnessed such memorable events as the arrest of the poisonous Polish publican, George Chapman (by some regarded as the original Jack the Ripper): the trial of Kitty Byron for the murder of her stockbroking lover: the liquidation of the Darby family by Edgar Edwards: the murders on the barque Veronica; and the mysterious death of Rose Harsent at Peasenhall. This last case has long been a favourite of criminologists but, at least until recently, the line taken by those who have written about it-Sir Max Pemberton, H. L. Adam, Guy Logan, and Elizabeth Villiers to name only four-has been that the suspect was a monstrously wronged man, and many have followed Sir Max’s lead in suggesting that the village belle died by misadventure and that there was never a murder at all. In 1934, however, William Henderson edited, in the Notable British Trials series, a comprehensive account of the mystery and refused to be bamboozled by the fact that the suspect was outwardly a deeply religious man of a puritanical disposition.

As a race, we English instinctively distrust Puritans: we doubt if Cromwell’s army was all that model, and we know that the Puritans suppressed bear-baiting not because it was cruel to the bear but because some people enjoyed it. The attitude of their Victorian descendants was admirably satirized for our fathers in the song, “Of course you can never be like us, but be as like us as you’re able to be.” We jealously guard our right to smoke, drink, dance, and be merry when we want and not when the godly want. And although we do not, if we are honest with ourselves, suspect them all of hypocrisy, we derive a modicum of pleasure from the spectacle of one of them being found out: nor are we surprised that they should be so found out from time to time.

Only very recently we have witnessed the downfall of an Australian teetotal politician who had earned the style of “Lemonade” Ley from his devotion, even at public banquets, to that worthy if unsatisfying beverage: we know now that he kept a mistress, that he promoted shady companies, that he was a brazen liar, and that he organized at least one murder. An earlier generation recalls Norman Thorne, that refulgent member of the Alliance of Honour (which eschewed the anticipation of connubial bliss by the affianced) who not only maintained two mistresses at the same time, but actually buried the dismembered remains of one of them under his chicken-run. Again, at least three of our medical poisoners were outwardly good churchmen: Palmer of Rugeley was a regular communicant: Pritchard of Glasgow and Cross of Shandy Hall both kept diaries in the most sanctimonious terms: yet all three expedited the demise of their wives. The type however reaches its apogee in Scotland and my readers who wish to study the Caledonian hypocrite are referred to the sparkling pages of William Roughead. For me, the most fascinating of his collection is “Holy Willie” Bennison, poisoner, bigamist, and a lay preacher on behalf of the Primitive Methodists in the city of Edinburgh. [26]

And now to meet another Primitive Methodist elder, Mr William Gardiner of Peasenhall, a charming Suffolk village. The place of his birth does not seem to be recorded, but the event took place in about 1867: he married a girl from Yoxford, Georgina Cady, in October 1888 and settled in Peasenhall (which is some three miles from his wife’s village) about a year or two later. The union was blessed with no less than eight children, of whom six were living at the time of their father’s tribulations. For many years he had worked for a local firm of agricultural implement makers, with whom he had risen to the position of foreman carpenter: he was held in high esteem by his employers but, even though he was sufficiently well thought of to represent them at the Paris exhibition, he was paid no more than twenty-seven shillings a week. There is no doubt that he was industrious but, in his little community, he is said to have been respected rather than liked. However, since he was, after all, a foreman, this is not exactly surprising. He is described as “a dark, swarthy-complexioned man of heavy build” by Mr Henderson, and by Sir Max Pemberton as of almost Spanish appearance. He also affected a jet-black beard. Nature had clearly equipped him suitably for a Calvinistic role and this he played superbly in the Primitive Methodist community at Sibton, an adjoining hamlet, where he fulfilled the functions of superintendent, treasurer, and trustee of the Sunday school, assistant society steward, and choirmaster. It was his association with the choir which proved his ultimate downfall, for amongst the choristers was a girl named Rose Anne Harsent whom he had seen grow from an attractive child to a desirable woman. Rose was on friendly terms with his wife and, had he desired an amorous dalliance, there were none of the usual difficulties in his path. Nor was the girl likely to demur.

In the year that Queen Victoria died, Rose was twenty-two, and Gardiner was twelve years her senior. She was the daughter of a carter employed at the Drill Works of which Gardiner was the foreman. She was herself employed as a domestic servant by the local Baptist elder, Deacon Crisp, in whose establishment she had replaced a girl who had been dismissed some three years previously in a condition alike embarrassing to herself and interesting to everyone else. The Crisp residence, known as Providence House, was unfortunately suited to the immoral desires of its handmaidens, whose room was immediately over the kitchen and access to it was by a separate stairway: the Crisps were old, and the Deacon somewhat deaf. Mr Henderson makes no attempt to court East Anglican susceptibilities and says of Rose, “living as she did in a part of England not notably celebrated for a particularly high standard of moral purity, she was probably a fair specimen of the girlhood of her district”. As he had, only a sentence or so earlier, put on record that the attentions of this girl’s admirers “had not been altogether free from certain gross accompaniments” and that “the cruder side of her amorous adventures was not entirely distasteful to her”, the Suffolk grandmother of today may well feel aggrieved. It would have been more courteous to have compared her with Alexandrine Vernet, that dangerous schoolmistress of Nohèdes who was, H. B. Irving tells us, “twenty-two years of age and comely after a bold and alluring fashion, perpetrated atrocious efforts at poetry, and had a pronounced taste for dirty literature”.

Rose did not, in fact, write poetry, but she made up for this deficiency by preferring her dirty literature to be rhymed. She had been sufficiently intrigued by the pornographic ditties sung by the younger villagers of an evening to request the youth who lived next door to supply her with written copies of these edifying verses; for a maiden of half a century ago, she was singularly advanced, and her contemporaries must have shuddered at her depravity. She was also not unacquainted with certain of the franker passages of holy writ to be found in Genesis and Proverbs. In short, Rose Harsent enjoyed her role of village belle and was a most unsuitable companion for a susceptible young elder whose wife’s frequent confinements entailed for him the occasional period of sexual abstinence. For William Gardiner was clearly a full-blooded male and it may be that his visit to Paris had not been without resulting effect on his character.

On 1 May 1901, Mrs Gardiner was once again in the last stages of pregnancy and on that evening Rose was seen to enter a little thatched building known as the Doctor’s Chapel: [27] this was the place of worship of old Crisp, and one of her domestic duties was to sweep it out: it stands a little way back from the main road, is immediately opposite the Drill Works (where Gardiner was employed), and is only a minute’s walk from Providence House. Rose was observed by two inseparable young men who were also employed at the works. One of them, George Wright (known in the village as “Bill”), was twenty years of age and came directly under Gardiner: the other, Alphonso Skinner (known as “Fonzo”), was somewhat older and worked under another foreman. They were intrigued to see Gardiner follow the girl in and both subsequently admitted that they crept up outside the chapel in the hope of hearing something indecent, from which one can only infer that rumour had already linked the names of the choirmaster and the chorister. Certainly, if they were to be believed, their eavesdropping was amply rewarded: nor can their tale have been wholly fabricated since, though he strenuously denied the dialogue, Gardiner admitted being in the chapel with the girl.

The conversation they overheard was significant: Rose was heard to exclaim “Oh! Oh!” and her exclamations were followed by a rustling sound and by merry feminine laughter. Wright then lost his nerve and slunk away but the more mature Skinner was determined to hear more. Rose, so he said, then asked Gardiner if he had noticed her reading her Bible on the previous Sunday: the elder asked her what she was reading about and she replied, “I was reading about like what we have been doing here to-night. I’ll tell you where it is. Thirty-eighth chapter of Genesis”, with which she mentioned the particular verse to which she referred. Now this chapter is devoted to the remarkable adventures of the widow Tamar at the hands of Onan her brother-in-law and Judah her father-in-law. Even in the verbatim account of the trial the actual verse is not specified, but whichever one it was we cannot but agree with Sir Max that the passage was so compromising to her virtue that, assuming the incident to be true, the nature of their relations was left in no doubt.

Bill and Fonzo were not pleasant young men: not content with spying, they proceeded to spread the scandal around Peasenhall. Some, no doubt, rejoiced that the sanctimonious foreman was not, after all, above the selfish lusts of the flesh: others were horrified that a young woman could quote scripture to such purpose. At the risk of irrelevance, I note that times have changed and that Alexander Woollcott has placed on record that a well-known American critic has named a favourite canary after Tamar’s brother-in-law. Within a short while, the rumour reached the ears of Gardiner himself and, on 8 May, he sent for both youths at the works and demanded a written apology. They refused and insisted that they had only told the truth: Gardiner was later to say that they gave as the reason for their refusal that if they withdrew their allegations they would have been hooted in the village, but even if this was said it is not an admission of lying.

The reason why an abject written confession of lying was required was because Gardiner wanted something to lay before his brother elders at the forthcoming investigation at Sibton into his conduct. It is not clear who was responsible for initiating this inquiry: Gardiner claimed that it was held at his request but it appears that the person who in fact wrote to the circuit superintendent, the Rev. John Guy, was a septuagenarian lay preacher named Rouse. As Rouse claimed to have supported Gardiner on this occasion (although he certainly did not do so later) it may be that he wrote his letter at the instigation of his traduced colleague. Accordingly on 11 May, a score of senior Primitive Methodists forgathered at Sibton under the presidency of Mr Guy. They heard the evidence of Skinner. They heard the evidence of Wright. They heard the denials of Gardiner. They did not bother to hear Rose at all, presumably because they did not feel it right to put that sort of question to a young girl. Guy decided that the case had not been made out: he may have told some members of the sect that Skinner’s tale was a fabrication from beginning to end but his considered judgment seems to have been that, in such a case, it was safer to rely on the word of one member of the sect than on that of two strangers who worshipped in the Church of England. It is obvious that the main purpose of the investigation was to smother the scandal, if it were possible, and if the facts did not prove too blatant to ignore. Gardiner resigned all his offices but was solemnly re-elected to them all. Guy had a word in private with Rose who assured him that she had never been guilty of any impropriety with the choirmaster: he also warned Gardiner against being too friendly with the female choristers, while Gardiner conceded that in the past he had been indiscreet. In short, the case was, in Scots usage, not proven which, we are told, means “not guilty, but don’t do it again”.

The acquittal was certainly not as honourable as Gardiner himself would have liked and we must now consider three letters that he either wrote or had written. The first two, from internal evidence, seem to have been written between 8 May and 11 May, and were sent to Rose: they were later found among her possessions-the little minx proving too sly to destroy them-and it was then suggested that they were carefully composed epistles whose purpose was to warn the recipient what policy to adopt. One ran:

Dear Rose,

I was very much surprised this morning to hear that there’s some scandal going the round about you and me going into the Doctor’s Chapel for immoral Purposes so that I shall put it into other hands at once as I have found out who it was that started it. Bill Wright and Skinner say they saw us there but I shall summons them for defamation of character unless they withdraw what they have said and give me a written apology. I shall see Bob [28] tonight and we will come and see you together if possible. I shall at the same time see your father and tell him.

Yours &c. WILLIAM GARDINER

Presumably it was not practicable, or deemed impolitic, to arrange the meeting, since a second letter followed in which Gardiner as good as said that, while he had no doubt of his own ability to bluff and brazen his way out of the predicament, he did not entertain such sanguine hopes about her capacities in such a direction, indeed he had reluctantly come to the conclusion that she would give the show away. To quote him:

Dear Rose,

I have broke the news to Mrs Gardiner this morning, she is awfully upset but she say she know it is wrong for I was at home from half past 9 o’clock so I could not possibly be with you an hour so she wont believe anything about it. I have asked Mr Burgess to ask those too [sic] Chaps to come to Chapel to-night and have it out there however they stand by such a tale I don’t know but I dont think God will forsake me now and if we put our trust in Him it will end right but its awfully hard work to have to face people when they are all suspicious of you but by God’s help whether they believe me or not I shall try to live it down and prove by my future conduct that its all false, I only wish I could take it to Court but I dont see a shadow of a chance to get the case as I dont think you would be strong enough to face a trial. Trusting that God will direct us and make the way clear, I remains

Yours in trouble, W. Gardiner

This strikes a much less confident note than the earlier letter. It is curious that Gardiner’s wife should be ready to supply him with some sort of alibi, but he was able to point out to her that Wright had been caught spying on her own brother some years earlier when her brother was courting in Wright’s mother’s orchard: perhaps it was a telling debating point. The meeting in the Doctor’s Chapel was to be admitted, but its duration was to be cut down, in order that an innocent explanation might be more readily accepted.

But whatever he may have felt of Rose’s shortcomings as a witness, it is known that Gardiner did consult a solicitor. The man of law certainly told him that, against penniless youths, he would not recover his costs and may have told him that to allege un-chastity against a man was actionable as slander only in rare cases, e.g., against a beneficed clergyman, and that Gardiner’s unpaid offices hardly brought him within the exceptions. However, the solicitor did write to Wright and Skinner on 15 May to threaten legal proceedings unless they apologized in writing within seven days: the bluff failed. There was no apology from either, nor was a writ ever issued. The matter was officially dropped and might, in time, have been completely forgotten. What is uncertain is whether the association between Gardiner and Rose now ceased.

It cannot have ended completely, as they must have met at choir practices during the week and at the Sunday services. It is, however, worthy of record that only one person subsequently alleged anything untoward between them, and that person was that bumbling busybody Henry Rouse who had been so largely responsible for the solemn Vehmgericht of the Sibton elders. Nine months after the original scandal, Rouse said he saw Gardiner and Rose walking down a lane at nine o’clock at night: he bade them good night but neither vouchsafed a reply. Nine days after that, he called Gardiner aside after a Wednesday prayer meeting and berated him for continuing an association which could only “do the chapel a great deal of harm”. If Rouse is to be believed (and Gardiner denied the conversation in its entirety) Gardiner expressed the hope that his wife would not be informed and, upon receipt of this assurance, undertook to refrain thenceforth from such nocturnal peripatetics.

A second incident, also denied by Gardiner, is said to have occurred a month or so later. Though improbable and seemingly senseless, there is contemporaneous evidence that, whether or not it was true, there was certainly a complaint about it. The redoubtable Rouse chanced to glance behind himself while ranting from the pulpit and was horrified to see Gardiner with his feet up on Rose’s lap. “You gentlemen,” said Rouse in the witness-box, “know what I mean by the lap of a person. I ceased to speak, with the intention of telling one of them to walk out of the chapel but something seemed to speak to me not to expose them there.” In the end Rouse did not speak to his colleague at all: instead, on 14 April, he dictated to his wife what was to be an anonymous letter to Gardiner, correctly assuming that her writing would not be recognized. Gardiner kept this letter and it was read at the trial:

Mr Gardiner,

I write to warn you of your conduct with that girl Rose, as I find when she come into the chapel she must place herself next to you, which keep the people’s minds still in the belief that you are a guilty man, and in that case you will drive many from the chapel, and those that will join the cause are kept away through it. We are told to shun the least appearance of evil. I do not wish you to leave God’s house, but there must be a difference before God’s cause can prosper, which I hope you will see to be right as people cannot hear when the enemy of souls bring this before them. I write to you as one that love your soul, and I hope you will have her sit in some other place and remove such feeling which for sake she will do [sic].

It is thus clear enough that Gardiner, in spite of the scandal, was not averse to sitting beside the girl in the choir. Such conduct was incautious, to say the least, and the more unfortunate when it is realized that, at about the end of the previous November, Rose had had intercourse with some man that had resulted in pregnancy. She seems to have kept her condition secret as long as she could, but her situation was not one that permitted indefinite concealment. She borrowed a book on abortion from the obliging youth next door who had previously supplied her literary desiderata, but her pregnancy continued uninterrupted. About the middle of May, she was taxed with her condition by her mistress, Mrs Crisp: she denied it, but obviously the time was coming when she would have to follow her domestic predecessor into retirement. In such circumstances, she could do only one thing, to seek assistance from the man, whoever he was, who was responsible for her impending motherhood. In view of her secrecy in the matter, one assumes that this man was unable to marry her because he already had a wife: an unmarried man would have been jostled to the altar by the mere weight of local opinion. And so, at the end of May, there was a married man in Peasenhall, on the verge of exposure and, if he held any position of respect, of shattering disgrace.

At twenty past eight on the morning of 1 June, Rose’s father called at Providence House to bring his daughter her laundry. It was a Sunday and the previous night had been marked by a heavy thunderstorm. Old Harsent was surprised to find the back door open: he went into the kitchen, to find his daughter dead on the floor. Her body was in a pitiful condition, turned towards the wall of a room only ten feet six by eight feet six inch with its head towards the staircase. Rose had been wearing stockings and a nightdress but some paraffin had been spilt and an attempt made to burn the body which had consumed most of the nightdress while merely charring her arms and lower part of the body. The fire was not the cause of death, as there was a wound in the chest which a medical expert later said had been made with an upward thrust: her throat had been cut twice, practically from ear to ear and with such force as to sever the windpipe. Some blood had spurted towards the staircase, and there was a large pool of blood between her head and the wall. There were no footmarks in the blood, and therefore no reason to assume that the murderer had been stained. Although it should have been obvious that the unhappy girl had been suddenly struck down by the blow to the chest, turned over to the wall so that the blood would spurt away, and then despatched with no more ceremony than a sheep or goat, such was not the original police theory.

Harsent covered his daughter’s body with a rug but otherwise moved nothing except the metal top portion of a broken lamp that was lying beside her. As he was doing so, Crisp’s brother came to the door followed by other villagers, for bad news never takes long to circulate. Someone sent for the village constable and this worthy, Eli Nunn, arrived at twenty minutes to nine. The briefest of conversations with the Crisps, the most cursory examination of the almost naked body, must have told him that Rose was well advanced in pregnancy. But, in the absence of bloody footprints, Nunn decided that this was a case of suicide. The local police have been rightly ridiculed for holding such an opinion, even momentarily, but it is quite wrong to suggest, as has been so often done, that the delay enabled the murderer to destroy incriminating evidence. Nunn did not know of the crime until just before nine o’clock and we shall see what Gardiner had been doing as early as eight o’clock that morning.

In any event, it is doubtful if the suicide theory was held for long. By the body was another source of paraffin in addition to the broken lamp, a smashed bottle that had recently held paraffin but which had once held medicine: nor was there any doubt as to its ownership as it still bore the label For Mrs Gardiner’s chdn. There was also a charred piece of newspaper, with which the fire had been started: it came from a 30 May copy of the East Anglian Daily Times, a paper not taken by the Crisps although delivered daily to Gardiner at the works, curiously enough by Rose’s fourteen-year-old brother. A search of her bedroom proved more interesting still, revealing as it did not only Gardiner’s two letters about the torrid interchange in the Doctor’s Chapel but also a third note in what looked remarkably like the same handwriting. With it was an envelope, postmarked 31 May: the letter was an assignation for midnight on the night of the murder and was couched in the following terms:

ED R,

I will try to see you tonight at 12 o’clock at your Place if you Put a light in your window at 10 o’clock for about 10 minutes then you can take it out again, dont have a light in your Room at 12 as I will come round to the back.

It was not signed, so it is evident that the writer knew that his hand would be recognized. It was equally clear that the writer lived in Peasenhall if he was able to see the warning signal. It was unfortunate for Gardiner that the similarity of writing was immediately detected and also that his home should be only 208 yards away from Providence House with a clear view of Rose’s bedroom from his front doorstep: he also not infrequently returned home at about ten o’clock and his route from the works passed Providence House. From the outset he was the obvious suspect, and such he has remained.

Since Gardiner had left his home at nine o’clock to take his children to Sunday school, it was some time before he was told of the violent death of his favourite chorister. He was told at eleven o’clock and evinced no surprise whatsoever: as he had known her since childhood and had been meeting her twice a week at least for choral reasons at Sibton chapel, it was felt that he should have been more shocked than he appeared to be. And it is hard to believe that a bearded elder would fail to expatiate on such a death unless he was singularly preoccupied.

The case was handed over to Superintendent Staunton who, on the Monday morning, [29] called on Gardiner at the Drill Works and taxed him with writing the letter of assignation: Gardiner denied it, but conceded that the writing was remarkably like his own. During the lunch interval, Gardiner left the works and did not thereafter return: in modern parlance, he was assisting the police with their inquiries. Meanwhile a significant additional piece of information had come to light: Burgess, a bricklayer, remembered chatting with Gardiner outside his house for a quarter of an hour at about ten o’clock on the night of the murder, and also recalled noticing a light at the top of Providence House when he walked away. The inference that Gardiner was watching for the signal was almost irresistible. On the Tuesday evening, after the coroner had opened his investigation, William George Gardiner found himself taken into custody and formally charged with murder: for the purposes of completeness, it should be recorded that he denied the charge.

Subsequent to his arrest, further evidence came to light to suggest that no mistake had been made. A gamekeeper named James Morriss, whose detective instincts were acutely developed, said that he had been walking along Peasenhall’s main street at five o’clock in the morning and had seen a single set of footprints in the mud left by the rain leading from Gardiner’s house to Providence House and back again. Being aware of the Harsent scandal-his superior gamekeeper’s brother was Wright’s landlord-he was interested and mentioned the matter to his superior when he met him, about two and a half hours before the murder was even discovered: at half-past eleven, he heard of the murder and realized its importance. Before the coroner he stated that he would be able to describe the sole marks and, since he was a gamekeeper, his evidence should have been reliable: a juror drew a blank sole on a piece of paper and passed it to Morriss, who proceeded to draw two parallel bars across it. The evidence was not particularly helpful to the police at this stage: they had collected all of Gardiner’s known clothing from his wife in the hope of finding something incriminating but they had found no such shoes. But, on June 6th, a policeman called on Mrs Gardiner to ask if she had any India-rubber-soled shoes: she then produced a pair that she said had been given her by her brother when up in London during the week previous to the murder. The markings coincided with Morriss’s drawing.

But what the police proved incapable of discovering was the time at which Rose had been killed. The doctor judged, from the state of rigor mortis, that she had died between half-past twelve and half-past six, with the probabilities in favour of half-past four. The police preferred to link the crime with the time given in the assignation, i.e., midnight. The Crisps admitted to having been awakened by the storm, whereupon Mrs Crisp had come downstairs to make sure the rain was not coming in: they were later reawakened by a scream and a thud which the Deacon refused to permit his consort to investigate, pointing out that Rose had been told that, if ever she was nervous, she could come to their bedroom. Mrs Crisp told the coroner on 3 June, and again on 16 June, that the scream had occurred between one and two o’clock, but it later transpired that she had not looked at a clock in making this guess. All that can be said for certain about the time factor is this: the girl expected a caller at midnight, by which time a storm was raging and continued to rage for at least an hour and a half longer. The rain had ceased by four o’clock. We know that Rose expected him to come, as her bed had not been slept in: presumably she did not wish to fall asleep as she had to let him in when he arrived. She would not have expected him until the storm had died down: the nature of the visit was presumably intended, at least by her, to discuss her future, now that her mistress’s suspicions were aroused, rather than for further trysting.

On other aspects of the case, the police had some tenuous technical evidence available. A handwriting expert’s conclusions were damning to Gardiner. And, although no blood-stains were to be found on any of his clothes, a penknife of his which, in the view of a medical expert, could have inflicted the fatal injuries, proved to have been newly sharpened and had been scraped inside, but even so there was some blood inside the hinge. Gardiner explained this by saying that he had been hulking (vernacular for disembowelling) a rabbit and since the expert was able to say no more than that the blood was not more than a month old and mammalian, his explanation was not wholly unsatisfactory. [30] There was also a small piece of woollen material found by Rose’s body which, it was assumed, might have been torn off in the fatal scuffle, but hopes of matching it with the arrested man’s clothing had failed. On the other hand, the envelope containing the assignation note proved to be identical with those used at Gardiner’s place of employment. Though not an especially strong chain of circumstantial evidence, it was thought sufficient to justify sending him for trial. It is worth noting that, at this stage of the case, that over-observant elder, Henry Rouse, had not given evidence, either before the coroner or before the bench, and that there was no evidence of any association between the accused and his alleged victim during the year that followed the episode in the Doctor’s Chapel.

Since the strength of the prosecution’s case would lie in Gardiner’s motive, it had become essential to show that Wright and Skinner were witnesses of truth. And so, on 28 July, Constable Nunn went to the chapel with Burgess and the two youths and re-enacted the amatory vignette that they claimed to have overheard: acoustically speaking, it was not impossible. And shortly before the opening of the Ipswich Assizes, the police became aware of an important witness who had not so far seen fit to reveal himself. This person was Herbert Stammers and his house overlooked the yard at the back of Gardiner’s home: he claimed that, at half-past seven on the Sunday morning, over an hour before the murder had been discovered, Gardiner had gone to the wash-house and lit a large fire. The inference was that he had been burning incriminating clothing, since it was not the practice to light fires of that size on a Sunday morning: I should add that, oddly enough, Gardiner claimed to be in possession of only two shirts at the time of the crime.

Gardiner’s trial took place on 6, 7, 9 and 10 November 1902: the intervening day was a Sunday and the jury protested at the proposal to keep them cooped up in Ipswich, pointing out that it would be more pleasant to spend the weekend at Felixstowe, even though out of the season; the judge arranged for them to spend the day at the seaside under supervision, but they had to return to Ipswich for the night. The judge was Mr Justice Grantham, a popular foxhunting squire but an indifferent lawyer and all too liable to make up his mind at an early stage of the proceedings that he was called upon to try: as he was not particularly adept in concealing his prejudices, he was not the most suitable judge for a case where the balance of evidence was so evenly poised. The prosecution was in the hands of Mr H. F. (later Sir Henry) Dickens, a son of the novelist and a conspicuously fair man: the defence was led by Mr E. E. (later Sir Ernest) Wild who established his reputation by his conduct of the case. Both were to end their days as contemporary Old Bailey judges, the one as Common Serjeant and the other as Recorder. That Wild’s efforts on behalf of his client were magnificent cannot be gainsaid, but he showed unwarranted irascibility with witnesses, with Dickens (even descending to personalities), and, in the subsequent trial, with the judge: he drew inferences against witnesses that lacked justification: with greater justification he muddled the jury with several choice red herrings.

As the first trial proved abortive, we need not be much concerned with it, save to note certain differences between it and the repeat performance some ten or eleven weeks later. Rouse was not subjected to much cross-examination and Mrs Gardiner suggested that he was lying because he was jealous of her husband’s superior position in the chapel hierarchy. There was an unfortunate misunderstanding with the judge when Skinner was telling of his interview with Gardiner: it appears that the accused man told Skinner that the tale was “made up out of old stuff” which Grantham took to mean that there had been previous talk of the association, although Dickens conceded that the phrase, in the vernacular, meant no more than rubbish, without reference to its age. Wild also elicited from the police superintendent that a newspaper reporter had been present at the post-mortem: as this produced an indignant outburst from the judge, Wild took the opportunity to comment on the prejudice shown against Gardiner in the local press, although it elsewhere appears that the East Anglian Daily Times had largely contributed to the defence funds.

The first suggestion made by the defence was that Rose’s neighbour and purveyor of pornography was at least as good a suspect as Gardiner himself: a certain amount of prejudice had already been imported into this side of the case by having this meretricious literature read to the jurors in private rather than have it recited in open court. The writer, Frederick James Davis, admitted to knowing Rose, though he denied ever having intercourse with her or even going out with her. As a grocer’s assistant, it was his duty to call at her kitchen several times a week and it was at her request that he had supplied her with sundry salacious ballads and selected excerpts of Holy Writ. He had also written her a torrid love-letter, but he again denied being her lover. He had begun this course of conduct in September 1901 and on a date not later than December of that year (at which time she will have been one month pregnant) he had supplied her with a book which discussed abortion: she had asked him for it and he had supplied her with it in the hope, vainly, that she would yield to his amatory overtures. The book also mentioned a remedy for sore feet, from which he suffered: after Davis had agreed that he owned a pair of India rubber-soled shoes, Dickens interrupted to say that he would call Davis’s father to give the unhappy youth an alibi for the whole of the evening. Wild explained that this was not necessary, as all that the defence alleged against Davis was that he was responsible for her condition. After the judge had told him that his “abominable conduct” was a disgrace to humanity, the witness withdrew.

Opening for the defence, Wild once more complained of local prejudice and said that Gardiner had been portrayed in a waxwork exhibition in the very act of killing the girl. The allegations of immorality against the accused remained unproved and Gardiner had therefore no motive to kill her. Nor did the time factor help the prosecution as it had been suggested that the murder had taken place at about half-past one, although at that time Gardiner and his wife were with a friend who was terrified of thunder: Mrs Gardiner could say that she had gone to bed with her husband at two o’clock and that he had not left their bedroom until eight o’clock the next morning. He would also call evidence that the footprints seen by Morriss, if indeed they had ever existed, were certainly not in evidence at four o’clock that morning and, in those circumstances, can hardly have been made by Gardiner. The label on the bottle had led the police astray: the real assassin possessed a suit of clothes like the fragment of cloth that had been found, but Gardiner possessed no such suit. [31]

Although prisoners had been allowed to give evidence on their own behalf for only three or so years, there had already grown up a practice that such evidence should be given before the other defence witnesses, if only, as far as possible, to make fabrication of evidence more difficult. But Wild seems to have been allowed, without objection, to call Gardiner last. His first witness was Mrs Gardiner, who claimed to have been unable to sleep that night until five o’clock owing to aches and pains that she attributed to the thunder: she remembered remarking to her husband, at about twenty past two, that it was beginning to get light: in cross-examination she conceded that her husband had not told her of the scandal until the morning of the Sibton inquiry. [32]

Amelia Pepper said that she lived next door to the Gardiners and, owing to the thinness of the partition, was able to hear everything that went on in their house. She had herself gone to bed at one o’clock and had heard her neighbours retire at two o’clock: at twenty past two she had come downstairs and had remained there until a quarter past four, apparently because she was worried by the storm. She had stayed in the front room and had from time to time opened the front door to see if the storm had stopped: at no time did she notice any footsteps or hear anyone leave the Gardiners’ home, although she did hear somebody moving about and understood it to have been Mrs Gardiner (who admitted getting up to look at one of the children). Amelia Pepper’s tale was an odd one but, if believed, it provided an alibi for Gardiner after two o’clock: the lady must be distinguished from Rosanna Dickenson, the brontophobe with whom the Gardiners claimed to be until two o’clock.

Martha Walker was called to corroborate Mrs Gardiner’s explanation of the broken bottle, which was that she had filled it with camphorated oil and given it to Rose about Eastertime for a cold. Mrs Walker was a regular attendant at the Sibton chapel and had known the Gardiners for some twelve years: her daughter was a member of the Sibton choir. She was able to remember Rose telling her that she had cured a cold with camphorated oil given her by Mrs Gardiner: this conversation was not strictly admissible in evidence, but the prosecution generously did not object to it.

Gardiner then gave his evidence. It was mostly a string of denials of each separate incriminating fact. To account for the blood on his knife, he told the rabbit story and swore that he had not cleaned the knife since 31 May. To account for being seen outside his house at ten o’clock, he said that he was watching the storm coming up. In view of the nature of his evidence, it is not surprising that he was unshaken by cross-examination.

Wild then sought to show that the Rev. Mr Guy had described the evidence of Wright and Skinner as a fabrication and for this purpose proposed to call an elder named Abraham Goddard. The judge doubted if this was admissible, Wild referred to Lord Denman’s Act, and the judge then said that it might be wiser to admit the evidence even if, strictly, it was inadmissible. Goddard then quoted Guy as having called the youths’ tale a fabrication, but it emerged in cross-examination that the superintendent had also said that it was a case of two for and two against and that he preferred those within the chapel to those without.

Of the other witnesses who contradicted Nunn’s audition tests and Gurrin’s handwriting evidence, little need be said: they made a poor showing and Wild, in his final address, obviously realized their shortcomings. He explained that Gurrin was a professional witness: the defence witnesses were not and were therefore at the mercy of a skilled cross-examiner like Mr Dickens. On the other hand, both Gardiner and his wife had stood up to this last test and emerged unscathed. He also made the amazing suggestion that the footprints seen by Morriss may have been a blind to draw suspicion in the direction of Gardiner, which hardly seems a fruitful line of argument. Dickens replied, expressing the hope that he had discharged with consideration his distasteful duty of cross-examining the prisoner and his wife: in the prosecution view, the murderer had to fulfil certain conditions and Gardiner was alone in fulfilling them all. I deal so cavalierly with counsels’ arguments as we shall be meeting them on a second occasion.

On the other hand, Mr Justice Grantham was to have only one occasion to address his mind to the Peasenhall problem. His summing up was strongly adverse to the prisoner, but not unwarrantably so: it certainly did not justify all the bitter strictures that have been passed upon it by posterity. He began, as seems to have been his custom, [33] by saying that the case was a remarkable one and that he could not remember one in which the issues were so difficult. The jury did not have to decide the truth of the scandal in the chapel, nor could they place any reliance on the verdict of the Sibton elders in view of their obvious preference for the version given by their colleague: the important fact was that, as a result of the affair, Guy had felt it incumbent on himself to caution Gardiner about his attitude to the charming chorister. There was no evidence that Davis was aware of the girl’s pregnancy and no reason to suspect him of the murder. Crimes of this class were as a rule committed by the last person one would suspect, and therefore the prisoner’s good character did not affect the matter much. The murder was deliberately planned, and Gardiner’s conduct, both in the six months preceding the crime and upon hearing of it, struck his lordship as suspicious: it was odd that he should have displayed no emotion on hearing of her death. The evidence of Morriss was most important: no bloodstains were found, but then the jury was well aware of the ease with which India rubber soles could be washed: the judge did not appear to realize that it was never suggested that the murderer stepped in the blood at all. It did not matter that Mrs Crisp had originally timed the scream between one and two o’clock but could no longer be sure: in such circumstances, it was hard for anyone to be sure. The presence of the charred paper was not important, since the newspaper concerned had a wide circulation: of far greater importance was the little bottle with Gardiner’s name on it, and the jury might think it improbable that the girl would herself have filled it with paraffin. The similarity of the envelopes was not important since they were of a common type. The evidence as to the similarity of handwriting given by Gurrin was highly significant and the contradiction of his evidence by the defence witnesses was “lamentably deficient”. In short, Mr Justice Grantham ran true to form.

The jury retired at a quarter past four and returned at half-past six to ask the judge what was the inference to be drawn from the absence of blood on the accused’s clothing. Grantham properly advised them that it was a point in his favour, although it was not and could not of itself be conclusive of his guiltlessness. The jury again retired until twenty minutes to nine when they announced their inability to reach a verdict. It was soon evident that eleven were for conviction when the dissentient was asked by the judge if further time might make him change his opinion. “I have not made up my mind not to agree,” was the reply, “if I was convinced that the prisoner was guilty, but I have heard nothing to convince me that he is guilty.” There was a swiftly suppressed burst of applause, and the jury was discharged. It was subsequently suggested that the juror was not a believer in capital punishment, but a careful analysis of his remark suggests rather that he was not a believer in circumstantial evidence.

And so Gardiner had to be tried again. Both prosecution and defence had shown their hand and both were aware of what they had to meet. The English practice, in the ordinary way, results in the prosecution putting all its cards on the table, while the defence need disclose nothing until there is no time to refute its story. Gardiner’s advisers were therefore somewhat at a disadvantage, but they used the opportunity to bring forward some fresh evidence and in particular to unearth certain derogatory incidents from the past of that hoary old pry Henry Rouse. For a while there was a suggestion of entrusting the defence to Sir Charles Gill but this was felt to be unfair to Wild and most amply did he justify the trust reposed in him. The same counsel accordingly crossed swords again at Ipswich on 21 January 1903, for another four-day trial of the old issue.

The judge, on this second occasion, was Mr Justice Lawrance. His Chancery background had not fully prepared him for the hurlyburly of the criminal courts but he had by now experienced twelve years in the King’s Bench Division and his was a more judicial personality than that of Mr Justice Grantham. He was strong enough to rebuke Wild when necessary and it will not be anticipating the story too much to say that he was not too favourably impressed with Gardiner’s version of his relations with Rose.

Dickens was never a brutal prosecutor: he had just come from the Old Bailey where he had put up a valiant though vain effort on behalf of Kitty Byron. He opened his case temperately and was far too good a tactician to overcall his hand: counsel can never be sure that a witness will come up to his proof. His survey of the facts was accurate, apart from his adding a decade to the prisoner’s age. In his view, the interchange in the Doctor’s Chapel and in particular the details of it given by Skinner were beyond invention and this incident was the keystone to the case. He indulged in a little theorizing in respect of the oil lamp and the broken bottle, but his theory was sound and met all the facts: the murderer had brought the bottle of paraffin to start a fire, but he had corked it so well that he was unable to open it: he had then dismantled the oil lamp, but had been unable to extract the combustible fluid from it and had then smashed the bottle, forgetting that it bore his name. This evidence, and all the other evidence, pointed at Gardiner as the culprit. [34]

After plans and photographs had been proved, George Wright told his story. Wild tried to discredit him by suggesting that he had been reprimanded at the works by Gardiner but, since the first trial, Wright had ascertained the exact date of the rebuke and it had been after the chapel incident: witness said that, if anything, he was grateful to the accused, who had been responsible for his promotion to wheelwright. He agreed that five or seven years earlier he and his friends had observed one Cady [35] and his young woman from a tree: pressed by Wild as to why he had talked about it, he made the reasonable reply, “They were in my mother’s orchard and they had no business there.” He could have added that he cannot have been more than fifteen at the time.

Alphonso Skinner, the older observer, was more firmly handled by Wild who was so domineering that first Dickens and then the judge had to intervene. To the suggestion that he had learnt his story by heart came the reasonable retort that he had by now told it many times, to the elders, to the magistrates, to the coroner, and at the previous trial. When pressed too hard to concede that Gardiner had always denied the indecency and always admitted being in the chapel with Rose, Fonzo remarked that, at the works, Gardiner had originally denied ever going to the chapel at all. Wild sat down hurriedly.

The Rev. John Guy, superintendent of the Wangford circuit, told of the inconclusive investigation at Sibton: he agreed that he had, at one time, mistakenly said that Rose Harsent was questioned by the elders. He became angry when counsel suggested that his memory was defective, and denied ever describing the chapel incident as a trumped-up affair. It was quite clear that the minister was never satisfied of Gardiner’s innocence but he pointed out that one of the difficulties of pursuing the matter was that the next investigatory body was comprised of himself, Gardiner, and one other elder. In his view Rouse was senior to Gardiner in Primitive Methodist hierarchy since he was a lay preacher and Gardiner was not. Rather surprisingly, Wild elicited from Guy that he had himself been taxed on one occasion with comparable indiscretions: as counsel took the same line with Rouse, the jury can hardly have formed a favourable impression of the Sibton elders, of whom of course the accused was one.

Henry Rouse gave his age as seventy-three and claimed to have been a Primitive Methodist for thirty-five years. He had come to Sibton some two years prior to the chapel incident, in which, so he claimed, he had taken Gardiner’s part. He told his tale of the subsequent association between the accused and the dead girl but, however much Wild might seek to discredit him, there was no gainsaying that in the April, when Rose was pregnant but before Mrs Crisp had taxed her, Rouse had had that letter written to the choirmaster taxing him with excessive familiarity. Rouse had to admit bringing a charge of arson against a thirteen-year-old boy which was dismissed by the magistrates. This was the second murder trial at which he had given evidence but it was not his fault he had not given evidence in the police court. It was true that he had himself once been accused of misconducting himself with the wife of a farmer whom he had persuaded to look after a sow for him, and it was said that, under the joint pretence of visiting the sow and spreading the gospel, he had called on the lady for other than religious purposes. This was quite false, as was an accusation of misconduct with another woman, although it was true that he had left the district shortly after these accusations. He was not much more fortunate in his new abode, where he quarrelled with a villager over money and pursued his quarrel by telling the vicar that his enemy’s daughters were a couple of whores. It was not an impressive performance, and Wild had once had to interrupt him by saying, “I don’t want any preaching.” This amazing man had been a lay preacher for a quarter of a century: in private life he described himself as a labourer.

Harry Harsent, Rose’s fourteen-year-old brother, said that he had often taken letters between Gardiner and his sister in both 1901 and 1902: he agreed that at the previous trial he said that he had taken no such letters in 1902 and supposed that was the truth: Constable Nunn had not tried to make him remember since. On the other hand, Wild did not cross-examine the postman who had delivered the assignation note at a quarter past three on the afternoon before the murder, although he claimed to have delivered similar envelopes to Rose on three or four other occasions. It should be made clear that Gardiner admitted writing twice to Rose, and that she had written once to him, about the choice of hymns for choir practice. Rose was a girl who kept her letters and, if there had been others, it is curious that they too had not been preserved, if not for romantic reflection at least with an eye on subsequent proceedings in bastardy.

With Mrs Georgina Crisp, Wild showed himself at his worst. The lady, it will be recalled, was no longer definite about hearing the scream between one and two o’clock and it suited Wild that she should revert to her original timing, because of the footprint evidence. Instead of approaching her tactfully, Wild practically called her a liar and lost his temper when she kept calling him “Mr Wild”: for this she is hardly to be blamed as Wild had called on her three weeks before the trial to inspect the scene of the crime. His attacks on her failed to produce the result he desired, although they did impel the Deacon (who had been given a seat on the bench beside the judge) to intervene: Mr Justice Lawrance silenced the Deacon, and Wild sneered “Is this the deaf gentleman?”: counsel then produced the red herring that Crisp had behaved badly in not investigating the scream at the time. In the end, Mrs Crisp became so muddled that she was unable to say whether or not the storm was continuing at the time of the scream: had she been handled more gently, she would probably have accepted Wild’s contentions as not impossible.

Wild did not bother much with Burgess: there was no doubt that he was on his doorstep at ten o’clock, but so were many other villagers. Mrs Rosanna Dickenson was almost a defence witness. She said that Mrs Gardiner had come to her home at about half-past eleven and that Gardiner had followed about half an hour later: they had both left together at about half-past one, just as the storm was passing over. The Crown left it to the jury to infer, if they so wished, that the crime was committed before Gardiner called on this witness: it certainly appears that Gardiner had originally suggested that he had gone to the witness together with his wife.

This was somewhat sloppy, since Morriss, who was the next witness, made it clear that the footprints that he saw between Providence House and Gardiner’s house had been made after the storm was over, as otherwise all trace of them would have been washed away. He agreed with Wild that if the police had not come to him, he would probably never have mentioned the matter at all. Stammers told of the fire lit by Gardiner on the Sunday morning: he denied that he had been coaxed by the judge at the first trial into saying that it was a large fire and that he had originally described the conflagration without the adjective: on being pressed, Stammers added that, in the twelve months that he had lived opposite the Gardiners, he had not known them light a fire there on a Sunday morning.

John Samuel Rickards produced samples of Gardiner’s handwriting: the reprimanding of Wright had been subsequent to the chapel incident: envelopes similar to that which had contained the assignation note were used at the Drill Works: they were very ordinary and cost about three shillings per thousand.

After Rose’s father had told of finding her body, Constable Nunn described the appearance of the corpse: the constable had collected all Gardiner’s clothing and found him to possess only two shirts. [36] Wild’s cross-examination of him was directed largely to show the inadequacy of his acoustic tests at the Doctor’s Chapel and brought a rebuke from the judge: “You put it offensively to him and then blow him up if he makes an observation; it is not fair to any witness.” Wild’s next gambit was that the India rubber shoes were visible to Morriss when he made his sketch, but this suggestion was clearly groundless. He then tried to persuade Nunn that he had been improper in interviewing Mrs Gardiner while her husband was more or less under arrest: Nunn retorted that he felt it his duty to stop the pair getting together, even if no admission from the wife would have been admissible against her husband. Nunn did agree that he had altered his record of his conversation with the wife in his notebook, but otherwise his evidence was practically unshaken.

Superintendent Staunton said that the only difference between Gardiner’s and his wife’s version of their movements was whether or not they had gone to Mrs Dickenson together: he said they had, she said they had not. Wild used the opportunity of having him in the box to put in three separate confessions to the murder by palpable lunatics. Dickens protested mildly, but the judge said that he would not be too strict. Wild suggested that one of the letters might have come from a brewer called Goodchild but Dickens elicited the fact that this man was never in the right place to post the assignation letter. It was just another of Wild’s red herrings: the merit of the letters may be summed up by one quotation from one of them: “Must I give myself up to the law? I cannot. My beard is grown like Brother Gardiner’s. I must wander on the sea.”

The medical evidence is already known to the reader, and was not particularly helpful. Dr Stevenson, the senior Home Office analyst, told of his unsuccessful search for blood-stains and paraffin on Gardiner’s clothing, and of the minor discovery on the penknife: the condition of this knife was certainly curious:

It was a little oily and had evidently been freshly cleaned and sharpened. It had been scraped inside the haft. On examining the interior of the handle and between the metal and bone of the handle I found a minute quantity of mammalian blood. I should say the blood inside had not been more than a month there.

Dr Stevenson’s evidence about the little bottle hardly fitted the prosecution theory, as he thought that some, if not all, of the broken bits had been fractured by heat. He agreed that the cork had been so forced into the neck that it could not be prised out by the fingers: this fitted Dickens’s theory. Wild did not cross-examine him at length, contenting himself with the fact that the expert had found a minute piece of cloth which did not match with any of Gardiner’s known clothing: on being asked where he found it, the doctor gave the curious reply:

It had dropped out of the paper containing the glass, which was in a small box. I did not find it during my first examination, but a day or two after when it turned out amongst the debris of the bottle.

So, although Wild relied largely on this fragment, it may well be that it had nothing whatever to do with the case.

It is unnecessary to follow the luckless Davis through his admissions and denials: asked if he was not surprised that Rose should have asked him for the dirty ditties, he said that there were worse girls than Rose “at the present day”. Wild again conceded that he did not suggest that Davis was the murderer. Still less, as this is not a text-book, need we follow the evidence of Thomas Gurrin, the handwriting expert: it seems an almost irresistible conclusion that it was Gardiner who wrote the letter making the midnight appointment.

Wild opened the defence by pointing out that Gardiner had spent 234 days in custody, besides making the conventional attack on circumstantial evidence. Gardiner was “perhaps not too popular owing to the fact that he is a teetotaller, and that he is a man professing religion” but he was certainly no scoundrel. In any case, would a man commit misconduct with a girl less than 200 yards from her home “with the louts loitering about”? Gardiner was cleared of the scandal at the time and, if Guy said that he was in a dilemma, Guy was mistaken and there was no dilemma at all: as for Rouse, he was nothing but a prurient old scoundrel unworthy of credence. Even if the jury believed that Gardiner wrote the letter of assignation, that did not show him to be guilty of the murder, however grave the suspicion might be. Certainly he did not keep the appointment for midnight, and the prosecution seemed to suggest that he had visited the girl at about half-past one. In any event, it was dangerous to convict any man on the evidence of handwriting experts. The accused would explain the blood on the knife, and his wife would explain how the bottle came to be in Providence House. Morriss’s evidence was probably mistaken. Stammers had exaggerated the size of the fire: if anything had been burnt, Stammers would have smelt it and the police would have found the remains. Gardiner could not have done the murder without getting scratched or getting his clothing stained, and there was no suggestion that this had happened. The evidence pointed just as strongly at Davis as it did at Gardiner, and one of the confession letters suggested that the real murderer was trying to blame Goodchild. Not only was the case against Gardiner not proven: he was entitled to a verdict of not guilty on this unjust charge brought against him.

Mrs Gardiner was examined at length: she had always believed her husband innocent of the Harsent scandal and said that, apart for a brief period about eleven o’clock when she went over to Mrs Dickenson and he followed after assuring himself that their children were safely tucked up in bed, they had been together all the evening. She fainted before she could be cross-examined and was evidently in a high state of nervous tension. “There had been much cruel suspense connected with the case,” comments Mr Henderson, “but a belief in her husband’s innocence might have been expected to inspire her with greater fortitude, unless of course she was in weak health or abnormally temperamental.” She admitted that a fire had been lit in the yard on the Sunday morning, although only for the purpose of boiling a kettle. And she agreed that her husband had not seemed much shocked at the violence of Rose’s end.

Her cross-examination had to be postponed, and Gardiner himself then gave evidence. His explanation of the chapel incident was that Rose had asked him to help her with the door which was somewhat stiff. His story generally was an out-and-out denial: Wright, Skinner, Rouse, and Stammers were all liars: Morriss was in all probability mistaken. His writing was similar to that in the letter of assignation, but he had not written that letter. He could not remember cleaning his knife about the time of the murder, nor did he ever recall scraping it inside: he had hulked the rabbit in May, which he conceded was rather late for so doing, indeed the rabbit was breeding and had had to be buried. He possessed only two shirts and knew nothing about them as his wife bought them and supplied him with clean ones as he required them: he agreed that his laundry was washed fortnightly and that he changed his shirt every Sunday, which makes the feat somewhat difficult to accomplish.

Mrs Pepper had to agree that the person she heard moving in Gardiner’s house at twenty past two in the morning might have been Gardiner himself and that it was only Mrs Gardiner’s own statement that made her think it was not. Her story of waiting downstairs for a couple of hours hardly strikes one as credible. After her performance, Mrs Walker recounted the history of the medicine bottle and an accountant and a bank clerk said that they did not believe Gardiner had written the letter in question. A fowl dealer said that he had passed by Providence House at four o’clock in the morning and had not noticed the footprints observed by Morriss. An architect and a quantity surveyor said that they had made tests at the Doctor’s Chapel and that, in their view, it was not possible to hear from outside what was going on inside. The defence solicitor was also called, ostensibly to support them but, one suspects, rather for Wild to import some more prejudice into the case: he received short shrift from the judge.

MR WILD: I believe it is a fact that the notice of the character of Rouse and Stammers’s evidence was served upon you at the last moment, just before the last Assizes?

LAWRANCE, J.: There is nothing to complain of in that.

MR WILD: No, my lord.

LAWRENCE, J.: Then why bring it up?

A host of elders were called to contradict the memory of the Rev. Mr Guy, which they did reluctantly, and to declare their faith in the accused, which they did more enthusiastically. Brother Abraham Goddard said that Guy had called it a fabrication and a trumped-up affair: in cross-examination, he agreed that Guy had used the word dilemma and had said that he preferred to believe his own church. Brother Cripp, who had known Gardiner for twenty-eight years, said that he was first asked to give evidence less than a week before the second trial began. Guy had certainly called the affair a fabrication but had not mentioned the word dilemma in the discussion with Brother Goddard. Brother Noah Etheridge agreed with Brother Cripp: he too had not given evidence at the first trial. Brother Samuel Goddard said that Guy had expressed the view that Gardiner was “in the clear” and had never used the word dilemma, although he believed that the minister had stated his preference for believing two in the church rather than two out. Similar evidence was given by Brother Fiddler. The trial seemed to be more concerned with what Guy had said in 1901 than with what Gardiner had done in 1902: Dickens commented on the skill with which the brethren remembered a conversation that had taken place twenty months before.

Wild said that, apart from the cross-examination of Mrs Gardiner, that concluded the defence. The judge said that he had caused the man Goodchild to be brought to the court and that if the defence made any suggestion that he had anything to do with the murder, he would be given the fullest opportunity to defend himself. The court adjourned with Wild expressing the hope that he had said nothing improper. On the next day, Mrs Gardiner threw a fit of hysterics on the way to the court. Wild called Brother Etheridge to say that she was in no state to give evidence and that, on the previous day, she had lain on the table in the waiting-room for four hours in a state of collapse. A doctor was sent to her and she was recalled. She was not seriously shaken by Dickens: she had slept on the night of the murder only from five till eight o’clock and her husband had certainly not lit the fire in the yard at seven o’clock as suggested by Stammers. She made her husband’s shirts and he had only two: if he got wet, “he had to get dry again”.

Wild’s final speech does not lend itself to condensation. It began with an appeal to the jurors’ sympathy: “Shall it go forth to the world that this poor country girl”-she had been married thirteen years and borne eight children [37]-“who has staggered from her illness in order to face the ordeal of cross-examination is the wife of a murderer?” It underlined the main points of the defence, admitting that if they did not believe Mrs Gardiner and thought her husband was guilty that she must then be an accomplice in the murder of his paramour. It conceded that Gurrin’s evidence was good enough for a civil action, but was not to be acted on in a criminal case. And ended up in an impassioned plea to say that the case was not proven and that the accused was, in England, therefore entitled to be acquitted.

Dickens replied that this was not a case where the jury should be misled by sympathy for the accused’s relatives. Murder had been done and, although he had refrained from taking technical objections, everything pointed at the accused as the guilty man. Why should they, as the defence suggested, look for an unknown man-for neither Davis nor Goodchild were guilty-when they had the letter, the footmarks, the signal, the knife, the association, the shoes, and the bottle all pointing to Gardiner. People did not swear a man’s life away recklessly and there was no reason whatever for thinking that Skinner, a man of twenty-seven, or Rouse, or Stammers, would swear to seeing what they had not seen.

Mr Justice Lawrance pointed out the difference between direct and circumstantial evidence and went on to analyse certain aspects of the evidence. The most improbable part of Skinner’s story was the language attributed to the dead girl but, after considering the literary compositions found in her possession, the improbability immediately disappeared. As far as the Sibton investigation went, it did not matter what Guy thought of the facts: what did matter was what the jury thought. It had been suggested that Rouse was an evil-liver, but had this been the case, would he have been allowed to remain in a position of trust in his church? Judging the similarity of handwriting was a matter for the jury, but experts were useful in pointing out similarities and Gurrin was the best in his class. Someone made an appointment with the girl, someone kept it and the girl had died. Very strong suspicion must be cast on the writer of such a letter. The defence had not contradicted the fact that, from in front of Gardiner’s doorstep Rose’s window was clearly visible, and where was Gardiner seen at the time that the signal was to be given? Stammers had seen a fire early that morning. Morriss had seen footprints and, had the police not wasted time speculating on suicide, somebody else might have remembered these prints. The evidence about the condition of the knife was not important taken by itself, but it was certainly significant in the light of the other evidence. The label on the bottle was significant. The absence of bloodstains on Gardiner was a point in his favour, but there was no suggestion that the blood had been stepped in: the evidence about his possessing only two shirts was perplexing. The murderer might not have been the father of the girl’s unborn child, but he probably had good reason to suppose that he would be given the credit for her condition. If they had a reasonable doubt, the accused was entitled to the benefit of it but such doubt must be fair and reasonable and not trivial “such as the speculative ingenuity of counsel might suggest”. The only certainty they could have would be what they had seen with their own eyes but they had to act on the sort of evidence that they would act on in their ordinary lives. It depended so much on what people meant by a moral certainty. If the facts led them to the conclusion that the accused, although no human eye saw him, was the man who did the murder they would be justified in giving effect to such opinion. Otherwise, Gardiner was entitled to their verdict.

The jury retired at five o’clock and were out for nearly two and a quarter hours before returning to announce that, like their predecessor, they were unable to agree. The judge had correctly assumed that standards of what was a moral certainty varied, and it was later understood that once again it had been eleven votes to one, though on this occasion eleven were for acquittal. Although double disagreements are not unknown, it is as far as I know unique for there to be one in a murder case. The practice is to put the accused on trial a third time and offer no evidence, thus giving him the advantage of a full acquittal: there is much to be said for this course as it is hard to say that a case has been proved beyond reasonable doubt when two juries have already disagreed.

On this occasion the procedure was varied. Five days after the second disagreement, the Attorney-General lodged a nolle prosequi, thereby intimating that it was not intended to proceed with a third trial. Gardiner was accordingly released from Ipswich Gaol and, after removing his distinctive beard, departed for London and was not thereafter heard of again with any certainty. Legend in Peasenhall has it that he once visited Yoxford, his wife’s village, and his children are said to have visited Peasenhall itself. He is variously supposed to have found employment in London as a wheelwright and to have taken over a tobacconist’s. If he was innocent, then his tribulations were those of Job, but I fear that my sympathies are with the majority of the first jury.

The reader need not agree. He may even find solace in the accident theory. According to this school of thought, Rose slipped on the stairs as she came to the door to let in her lover. She fell on the little bottle which was in her hand, thereby cutting her throat in two places and wounding herself in the chest: the lamp dropped from her hand and broke on the floor, setting fire to the paraffin. The lover entered and fled in horror, presumably leaving behind his old copy of the East Anglian Daily Times.

There is also the detective story solution. I have always assumed that it was in reference to the Peasenhall case that ex-Detective Sergeant Leeson wrote:

A sequel… may be found in the evidence given at a murder trial some years ago. The victim had been done to death in her own house by someone who had visited her, and the evidence on which the prosecution relied to prove the case consisted of footprints which they endeavoured to prove were made by the accused man. There was no doubt that the boots produced belonged to the prisoner, and fitted the prints, but he was acquitted for want of substantiating evidence.

It is true that the footprints were made by someone passing to and from the prisoner’s home, but to my mind the evidence, had it been weaved differently, would have proved the prisoner’s wife to have been the guilty person. [38]

It is true that it was theoretically possible for Georgina Gardiner to have carried out the murder, but her demeanour in the witness-box hardly fits her for the role of Lady Macbeth. She may have had the will to destroy the viper that threatened to destroy her home, but she would hardly have borrowed her husband’s knife for the purpose: nor, in the broadest sense of the word, was the murder of Rose Harsent a ladylike operation.