Justice Hawkins the Hanging Judge

Amelia Dyer was tried before Justice Henry Hawkins at the Old Bailey in 1896, just two years before the judge retired. His judicial career spanned more than twenty years and he himself is an interesting topic to explore, not least because he gained a reputation as a ‘hanging judge’ - in other words, disinclined to recommend mercy in capital cases. When Hawkins died in 1907, the Times ran an extensive obituary, which informed the reader that 'it cannot be said that Hawkins was a great judge [...] and he was sometimes charged with undue severity in criminal cases'. The obituary continued in somewhat more generous terms by describing Hawkins as 'acute and penetrating', before remarking that the memoirs Hawkins had had published in 1904 were 'two bulky volumes' which could not be said to 'constitute a valuable contribution to legal literature'. It continues that, 'the book, in fact, hardly deserves to be called amusing, for many of the stories, told at interminable length, have become somewhat flat and some of them are not free from vulgarity'. Ouch. If this is what was said about Hawkins upon his passing, then it certainly raises the question of what people made of him during his lifetime. That said, I have read parts of his Reminiscences and it isn't the most riveting read. If you're so inclined then you can see for yourself on Project Gutenberg. It is certainly an idiosyncratically compiled text and when it comes to defending himself against the label of 'hanging judge', Hawkins chose to quote the Kent Leader, which I will dutifully reproduce here to aid in poor Sir Henry's defence

"No one who has had equal opportunity would come to any other conclusion than that he was painstaking and careful to a degree, and particularly in criminal cases formed one of the most conscientious Judges on the Bench. Hanging Judge! Why, we have seen the tears start to his eyes when sentencing a prisoner to death, and, owing to emotion, only by a masterful effort could his voice be heard"

Born in Hertfordshire in 1817 and educated at Bedford School, Hawkins had begun his legal career as a barrister. His knowledge of the law was extensive and he worked diligently, but his most famous case, and arguably that which won him the most praise, was in 1871 when he acted on behalf of the Tichborne family in a civil case. That may not immediately sound all that exciting, but the circumstances surrounding the case have all the ingredients of a bizarre Victorian sensation.

The aristocratic Roger Tichborne was in his mid-twenties when he experienced a heartbreak that caused him to leave England and sail to South America. While it seems that he managed to reach Rio, he then apparently boarded a ship bound for Jamaica, and that ship promptly disappeared off the face of the planet, seemingly taking Roger with. His mother, Lady Tichborne, however, refused to believe that her son was dead, and luckily she had a clairvoyant to hand to bolster her belief that he was still alive. Eventually, Lady Tichborne’s younger son inherited the title and estate upon the passing of his and Roger’s father and it seemed that Lady Tichborne’s preoccupation with her missing son would be confined to placing adverts in foreign newspapers.

But then, eleven years after Roger was last seen or heard from, a letter arrived. All the way from Australia, the writer claimed to be Roger Tichborne, now married with a child and working as a butcher. It seemed wildly unlikely. Lady Tichborne was overjoyed. The stage was set for what was to come and, in 1866, this Roger Tichborne and his family boarded a ship for England.

Immediately, there were problems. Some, perhaps, could be explained away, such as the fact that the Original Roger had left England weighing less than 9 stones, while the Replacement Roger was a very much larger 24 stones. But his hair seemed to have changed colour. And then there was the fact that when he left he had had a tattoo and now he no longer had it. As one local man put it, ‘if you are Sir Roger, you’ve changed from a racehorse to a carthorse’. There really seemed to be no reason whatsoever to believe that the Replacement Roger and the Original Roger were the same man.

Original Roger and Replacement Roger in a visual comparison put together by the latter's supporters

Lady Tichborne, however, was utterly convinced that her long lost son had returned and began giving him an allowance of £1000 a year. Then, in 1868, Lady Tichborne died, and of course, all hell broke loose. The rest of the Tichborne family turned on the Replacement Roger and cut him off; he quickly began running out of money. Backed into a corner, he decided to sue for his supposedly rightful place as heir to the title and land. It is here that our own Henry Hawkins appears in the tale, for his defence of the Tichborne family was successful and the Replacement Roger lost his lawsuit. To add further woe, he was then arrested and charged with perjury.

Henry Hawkins, Baron Brompton; Arthur Orton; Edward Vaughan Hyde Kenealy by Faustin Betbeder, 1874, National Portrait Gallery

Despite a number of witnesses being called, many of whom testified to the uncanny resemblance between the Original Roger and the Replacement, the jury ultimately did not believe that they were the same person, in part because the latter, unlike the former, was entirely unable to speak French. It seemed also that the true identity of the fraud had been uncovered - he was Arthur Orton of Wapping, who had led a semi-criminal existence in Australia since going to sea as a child. Replacement-Roger-Actually-Arthur was sentenced to fourteen years imprisonment. Curiously, the story does not end there, for a child had accompanied the fraudster on his journey to England in the 1860s - her name was Theresa Tichborne. She kept the spirit of the claim alive in magnificently eccentric fashion. In 1913, the man who had by then inherited the baronetcy, Sir Joseph Tichborne, became engaged to be married to a young lady by the name of Denise Fulke Greville. In response, Theresa "Tichborne" penned a letter to the Earl of Granard, writing

"I have just seen the announcement of the approaching marriage of my cousin, Joseph Tichborne. I have asked you to use your influence to make them give me some of the money they stole from us, but you do nothing. It is nothing to you if I starve, as long as you and your wife can give parties and flaunt about with people who, if they knew the truth, would be ashamed to know you.

You cannot hide any more, for I am making you an accessory before the fact by telling you that I am going to shoot that girl rather than Joseph shall marry her and they shall live on my money. I am going to do it. Now hide, and pretend you think I don't mean it."

This threat was taken seriously and Theresa ended up in court. At trial, it was revealed that Theresa had been plaguing the family for years and she was sentenced to six months imprisonment on a blackmail charge. But this did not stop her and over the next few years she continued hounding the Tichbornes, even being charged as late as 1923 with attempting to extort money from the family by threatening to kill them. For this she was sentenced to one year in prison. Theresa also claimed that her father had confided to her that he had actually killed Arthur Orton and that he himself truly was Roger Tichborne. Stubborn in her assertion seemingly until the end, Theresa died in Tunbridge Wells in 1939.

Theresa "Tichborne"

The story of the Tichborne Case quickly ceased to have very much to do with Henry Hawkins at all, but I believe that once a story is begun it ought to be seen through. As a judge, Justice Hawkins presided over a number of high profile cases, including that of the poisoner Dr Cream and he was also on the periphery of the legal action involved in the Cleveland Street Scandal. One of his last cases, tried in the same year as Amelia Dyer, is a brilliant example of a "cut-throat case".

Henry Smith was a reclusive widower who lived in Muswell Hill. Paranoid about intruders, Smith instructed his gardener, a man named Charles Webber, to set up a makeshift alarm system each night, consisting of wires set around the house and connected to a detonator. On the evening of 12th February 1896, Webber set the alarm and then headed home for the night. The following morning, he found Henry Smith bound and gagged on the floor of the kitchen; he had been beaten to death. The alarm system had been dismantled, the house was in chaos, and £50 had been stolen from Smith's safe.

The killer or killers of Henry Smith had left behind a number of clues, including a set of boot prints and a child's lantern. A police informant put forward a tip that the perpetrators were two men in their thirties, Henry Fowler and Robert Milsom, and so the police decided to leave the lantern outside the Milsom's door and see what would happen. It was quickly claimed as the property of his fifteen-year-old brother-in-law. The two men went on the run and the police eventually tracked them down to, of all places, a waxworks show in Bath called The Chamber of Horrors.

In May 1896 the trial opened at the Old Bailey, presided over by Henry Hawkins, who refused an application that the two be tried separately. Hugh Stott, divisional surgeon for the Highgate Division of Police testified with certainty that

"I would say it scarcely possible for the wounds to be caused by one man"

Albert Milsom and Henry Fowler

The two men blamed each other and this is the meaning of a 'cut-throat case'. One witness testified that Milson had claimed that 'Fowler killed the old man, and I begged and prayed of Fowler to save the old man's life; I ran away, and Fowler ran after me; he ran away from the room, and Fowler fetched him back, and Fowler went and done the robbery'. For his part, Fowler claimed that it was Milsom who had 'first put his foot on the old man's neck until he made sure he was dead. Then we went upstairs, he first, and found the old man's trousers, with the keys in the pocket'.

In this trial, Hawkins joined the jury in commending the conduct of the police officers in the case, especially admiring their propriety and intelligence. Milsom and Fowler, meanwhile, were sentenced to death. Fears that Fowler would attack Milsom on the scaffold led to a decision to place another man, William Seaman, who was also due to be executed, between the two men. Upon realising why he had been positioned as he had, Seaman remarked 'well, this is the first time in my life I've been a bloody peacemaker'. Originally, the plan had been to execute Amelia Dyer alongside the three men, but in the end it was decided that she would hang the following day instead.

Sir Henry Hawkins is buried in Kensal Rise Cemetery, a largely forgotten figure in the 21st century, although many of the cases over which he presided live on in the popular imagination. One case in particular riveted and horrified the nation at the time it was heard and is still of interest even today. Hawkins' part in it is also noteworthy, as he was once again accused of demonstrating that 'undue harshness' for which he was known. Next week, it will be 1877 and we will visit the South East London suburb of Penge, where a murder has taken place. Or has it?