The Chieftain: Victorian True Crime Through The Eyes of a Scotland Yard Detective (9 page)

There was then a mad dash for the prisoner and witnesses to get from Hackney to Bow Street for the resumed magistrate’s hearing due to start at 11 a.m.
The Times
noted that ‘the coroner had deprived the witnesses of all chance of rest or refreshment before being exposed to another long examination and the occurrence was the subject of bitter complaint’.
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At the end of a disgruntled day’s proceedings, Mr Flowers formally concluded that there was sufficient evidence to warrant a trial by jury and committed Müller for trial at the next sessions of the Central Criminal Court, on the charge of wilfully murdering Mr Briggs. Müller was then transported to Newgate Prison, where the mob was waiting for him outside.

Müller’s trial started at a crowded Old Bailey on Thursday 27 October. The prosecution team for the Crown consisted of the solicitor general, Sir Robert Collier (Liberal MP for Plymouth and later to become attorney general).
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He was assisted, amongst others, by Serjeant-at-Law William Ballantine and Hardinge Giffard, later Earl of Halsbury and a lord chancellor.
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Müller’s defence team was led by Serjeant-at-Law John Humffreys Parry, a senior barrister and popular and successful advocate.
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As was the practice at that time, there were two judges, the more senior of whom was the Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer Sir Frederick Pollock, a previous attorney general in the Tory administrations of Sir Robert Peel.
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The junior judge was Baron Martin. ‘The judges having taken their seats the prisoner Müller was placed at the bar … He was neatly dressed in a plain brown-coloured morning coat, which he wore buttoned on the chest. His manner was quiet, self-possessed, and respectful. For some time at first his countenance was pale, but at length assumed what appeared to be its natural hue.’
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Müller pleaded ‘not guilty’ to the charge of murder and, somewhat surprisingly, elected to be tried by twelve Englishmen rather than a jury partly composed of foreigners which, in view of his nationality, he was entitled to elect for (an entitlement that ended in 1870). The case for the Crown was opened by Collier who began by entreating the jury to remove from their minds any of the hostile press coverage that had been so prevalent.
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Collier then proceeded to summarise the key issues of the Crown case: that Thomas Briggs had been murdered by Müller, and that the motive was the theft of his watch and chain. Müller had been keen to travel to America but needed money to do it. Through a sequence of financial transactions involving several pawnbrokers, he had raised the money he needed for his passage. Mistakenly removing Briggs’ hat from the railway carriage and leaving his own, he had modified Briggs’ hat in an attempt to disguise it. When arrested on board the
Victoria
, his trunk was found to contain both Brigg’s watch and his hat. Though Müller had not been observed in the train compartment where Briggs was murdered, he had been in London on the night of 9 July and had the opportunity to commit the murder.

The individuals that were called to provide evidence on behalf of the Crown on the first day of the trial included relatives of Briggs (with whom he had been dining on 9 July before travelling homeward), the two clerks who had first entered the blood-soaked compartment at Hackney Wick, the railway staff, the medical men and the police from K Division. These were followed by John and Robert Death and by Müller’s landlady and landlord, Mrs Blyth and her husband. The Blyths bore sympathetic testimony to the quiet and inoffensive disposition of the prisoner. They also mentioned that, on 9 July, Müller had discarded one of his boots and replaced it with a slipper because he had injured his right foot; a feature that one assumes should have made him more noticeable as he travelled round London on that day. Important evidence was presented by the next witnesses, Mrs Repsch and her husband, a fellow German and work colleague of Müller. The couple were regularly visited by Müller, with whom they were on friendly terms. When Müller had visited them on 11 July, he had shown Mrs Repsch a new watch chain which he claimed to have bought at the docks. When the chain that had been purchased by Müller at Death’s silversmiths was shown to her in court, Mrs Repsch identified it as the one shown to her by Müller. In addition, she stated that Müller had been wearing a new hat on that Monday, and she had chided him for his extravagance. She also described Müller’s previous hat, her description being consistent with that found in the railway carriage. By 5 p.m., with seven or eight Crown witnesses still to be examined, the court was adjourned and the jury ‘in accordance with custom, were escorted to the London Coffee-House in Ludgate-hill to stay over night’.
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On the following day the trial resumed with the examination of further prosecution witnesses, including several pawnbrokers who gave evidence of the financial transactions that had taken place between them and Müller. But the court (which was again crowded, with hundreds of people congregated outside) was most keenly anticipating the appearance of the key witness, Jonathan Matthews. Would the defence team suggest that Matthews rather than Müller was the guilty man? Was the hat found in the railway compartment really Matthews’ hat rather than Müller’s? Was Matthews making things up, simply to claim the £300 reward? As events turned out, Matthews stood his ground and persisted with his claim that he had not heard about the murder until the day (18 July) on which he had first contacted the police. Parry provided evidence that Matthews had been previously convicted of theft in 1850 (serving a prison sentence of twenty-one days for the offence), but the consensus view seemed to be that ‘severe as was the cross-examination of Matthews, in the judgement of those who heard it, it had not shaken the weight of his evidence in any material degree’.
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Later in the day the evidence of Müller’s arrest given by Clarke and Tanner came as something of an anti-climax, with all the essential details being well known. However, Parry did probe Clarke on whether Müller had said ‘I never was on the line’ or ‘I never was on the line that night’. Clarke couldn’t remember, but, when pressed, told the court that ‘I am quite certain that if the passage quoted is in the deposition, the prisoner used it’.
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Clarke was also recalled during Tanner’s evidence and asked whether Müller had sold any clothes during the voyage (yes, a waistcoat that Müller had subsequently bought back), and whether his clothes had been forensically analysed (no). The prosecution evidence was then concluded by the witnesses Thomas Briggs (the younger) and the hatter, Daniel Digance.

It was now the turn of Müller’s defence team to present their case. The legal procedures of the time dictated that the speech for the defence was made before calling any witnesses. The prosecution then had the right to reply to the case presented by the defence team, and often exercised that option. Defendants were also not allowed to give evidence in their own defence at Crown courts, so Müller could not be called into the witness box even if his counsel had thought that would help his cause. Müller’s counsel delivered a speech which ended with applause from sections of the courtroom.
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As expected, he first reminded the jury that they should disregard the comprehensive newspaper coverage of events before the trial and chastised the press:

I must say that it is for the most part unusual when a person has been arrested on a charge on which, if found guilty, his life must be sacrificed [the death penalty was the mandatory sentence for murder], to find writers, not in insignificant journals but in the most respectable and the most eminent parts of the press, commenting on the likelihood of the guilt or the innocence of such a person.
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He then concentrated on undermining the credibility of two of the key prosecution witnesses, Mrs Repsch and Jonathan Matthews. With Mrs Repsch, who had damagingly identified the hat found in the train compartment as being one that she had seen Müller wearing, he implied that the prosecution may effectively have ‘trained’ her into its recognition, though ‘he cannot conscientiously charge her with perjury’.
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Sailing close to the wind, he moved on to Matthews:

If I were to point to Matthews as having been guilty of the murder, or a party to it, I should be a disgrace to the profession to which I am proud to belong. There was no such stuff in my thoughts; but this I will say of Matthews, that he is a man whose evidence is entirely untrustworthy, who gave his evidence in a most unsatisfactory manner, and to whose testimony I am sure no educated man, having the responsibility of the life of a fellow-creature on his shoulders would pay any attention for a moment. He is obviously actuated by a desire to obtain the reward offered for the murder of Mr Briggs.
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Parry then stated that the prosecution evidence had not been sufficient to confirm beyond reasonable doubt that the hat found in the train compartment was Müller’s, or that the hat found in Müller’s trunk was originally Mr Briggs’ hat. He stressed that Müller ‘was always chopping and changing, buying and selling’.
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Clearly, Parry hoped to leave the thought in the jury’s mind that Müller could have purchased the incriminating items from another person, rather than committing the murder himself. He then turned to the issue of Müller’s slight physique and whether he would have had the strength to beat and rob Briggs, and throw him out of the compartment:

there is, I say, one part of this inquiry which I almost defy you to reconcile with the guilt of the prisoner. Mr Briggs seems to have been a man of about 12 stone weight and 5 feet 9 inches in height … in robust and vigorous health. Compared with Mr Briggs the young man at the bar is a mere stripling … Could, I ask you, the struggle which ended in the death of a powerful sober man of considerable weight and with all his faculties about him, have been perpetrated by a young man such as he whom you now have before you?
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Suggesting that the murder must have been committed by more than one person, Parry indicated that he would be calling a witness who would confirm that he had seen two men in the railway compartment with Thomas Briggs on the evening of 9 July. Finally, he stated that he would be calling alibi witnesses who would confirm that Müller could not have been on the 9.45 p.m. train from Fenchurch Street as he had been elsewhere at that time.

On Saturday 29 October the first defence witness called was Thomas Lee, who had been previously discarded as a witness for the prosecution. Lee said he had seen two other men in the compartment with Mr Briggs at Bow station, but his evidence lacked credibility on cross-examination.
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The alibi witnesses also failed the credibility test. It emerged that Müller had been a regular caller at a house in Camberwell where a young lady called Mary Ann Eldred was lodging, and it was claimed that he had called to see her in her lodgings on the evening of 9 July, only to find that she had gone out. The landlady, Elizabeth Jones, gave evidence to this effect and stated that Müller had not left until at least 9.30 p.m. according to her clock (which, if correct, would have meant that he would have been unable to catch the train on which Briggs had travelled). Once it became clear that Elizabeth Jones’ house was a brothel, and that Mary Ann Eldred was a prostitute (although, by all accounts, fond of ‘her little Frenchman’, as she called Müller), these witnesses did not help Müller’s case; neither did a bus conductor, Charles Forman, who remembered seeing a man on his bus who was wearing a slipper, but could not remember whether he had seen him in July or August.

In his reply to the defence case, the solicitor general responded to the attempt to compromise Mrs Repsch’s testimony by commenting that ‘a fairer or more straightforward witness never appeared before a jury’. With serious intent, but with legal tongue-in-cheek, he expressed his pleasure that ‘my learned friend most honestly, candidly, and eloquently disavowed any intention – the remotest idea – of imputing to Matthews that he was concerned in the murder’. On the subject of Müller’s alibi, he questioned the timekeeping and accuracy of the brothel clock by asking the jury if they thought that Elizabeth Jones’ ‘respectable and well conducted establishment were so ordered that the goings out and the incomings of its inmates were regulated by clockwork?’
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At 1.30 p.m. the senior judge Lord Chief Baron Pollock commenced his summing-up to the jury; ‘Though scrupulously fair and dignified in tone, it was decidedly unfavourable to the prisoner’.
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The jury members retired to consider their verdict at 2.45 p.m. and, after only fifteen minutes’ deliberation, they returned a verdict of ‘guilty’. It was a considerable surprise when, ‘directly the fatal word was pronounced, the lord chief baron burst into a flood of tears. He placed his hands over his face, and raised his elbows on his desk, and a profound silence reigned throughout the court.’
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The black cap was placed on the head of Baron Martin who sentenced Müller to death by hanging. Müller, who had continued to display surprising firmness and self-possession, said: