undoubtedly been used for the crime, was at hand. Yet justice was deluded and the innocent suffered.
A very singular case of judicial error, in which there was a fabrication of evidence similar to that just described, occurred in England about a century ago. It was in the romantic but dangerous days of masked highwaymen, when many a moor and heath, and even many a highroad leading from English towns, was infested by these marauding gentry. A gentleman was travelling to Hull. Within a few miles of the town he was stopped by a man in a mask, and politely but firmly deprived of a bag of twenty guineas which he was carrying with him. Receiving no other injury from the encounter, he proceeded on his way, and in due time safely reached a cosey inn outside the town. He loitered in the kitchen while his supper was being prepared, and there related to a group of curious listeners the story of his adventure, adding that he had, for precaution's sake, taken care to put upon each several guinea a peculiar mark. Supper was soon ready, and he sat down to it with a relish. While he was satisfying his hunger, the landlord came in, and began to make rather eager inquiries about the robbery. On learning the facts, and especially that the guineas were marked, the landlord at once declared that he could give a clew to the robber. "I have a waiter, one John Jennings," he said, "who has latterly been very flush with money, and recklessly extravagant in his expenditures. This evening, about dusk, I sent him out to change a guinea for me. He has only just returned, and says he could not get it changed. On returning me the guinea I observed with surprise a mark upon it which was not upon that which I intrusted to him. I should have thought no more of it, however, had I not been told of the circumstance of your robbery and your marked guinea pieces. Unluckily, before hearing of it I paid away the guinea to a man who lives at a distance." The landlord had sent Jennings, who was drunk, off to bed. It was now agreed between him and his guest that the man's room should be searched. In his pocket was found a purse with exactly nineteen guineas, which the guest recognized as those of which he had been robbed. Jennings was of course arrested and accused of the crime. Denial was useless; every fact fitted to the charge against him. Tried at the assizes, the jury found him guilty, without leaving their seats, and he was executed.
Yet Jennings was as innocent of the robbery as a babe. A year had not elapsed before the landlord was arrested for a robbery committed on a guest at the inn. The proof in this case, at least, was too clear for doubt. The landlord was convicted and sentenced. While awaiting the doom of death, he confessed that he himself had committed the robbery for which Jennings had suffered. He had hurried home after getting the guineas, and had heard soon after with alarm of the arrival of his victim. He had been forced to part with one of the guineas to pay a bill; so he invented the story of sending Jennings to get a guinea changed, and had availed himself of the man's intoxication to conceal the rest of the money in the poor fellow's pocket.
We doubt if there ever happened a more melancholy instance of what is termed "judicial murder" than the famous case of Eliza Fenning. The tragic history of that unhappy young woman, though well remembered by old Londoners, is probably forgotten, or at least but little known, in the United States. Eliza Fenning was a fair girl of twenty-two, of more than usual intelligence for one of her class; bright, coquettish, but well-disposed and amiable. The daughter of a poor couple who dwelt in High Holborn, on the very spot where Day & Martin's blacking establishment now stands, she was employed as cook in the family of a Mr. Turner, a law-stationer in Chancery Lane. That family consisted of the Turners, man and wife, two apprentices named Gadsden and King, Sarah Peer, a housemaid, and Eliza Fenning, the cook. One day the father of Mr. Turner went to his
