On the 28th of June 1887, in a chamber in Batty Street, neighbours discovered Miriam Angel stretched upon her bed, and Israel Lipski, her fellow lodger, concealed behind that same bed, between the bedstead and the wall. She was dead; he still drew breath, his hands stained with acid. To the police, the scene appeared to unite both bodies within a single tragedy. To Lipski, it bespoke an entirely different history: two men, he maintained, had forced him to swallow poison, then cast him beneath the bed after taking the young woman’s life. At the trial, no witness could claim to have seen the murder. The prosecution rested upon the acid, the movements of that morning, the scorched apparel, and the prisoner’s own narrative; the jury pronounced him guilty and condemned him to death.
The tragedy took place at No. 16 Batty Street, a three-storey house wherein the Lipski family occupied the ground floor, the Angels a chamber on the first floor, and Israel the topmost room. For nearly two years he had dwelt with Philip Lipski, a tailor and master of the house, first as a simple lodger, and later converting his room into a workshop for the manufacture of walking-sticks. The family had hitherto accounted him industrious and honest. Miriam and Isaac Angel, who had arrived from Poland less than a year before, lodged opposite the staircase. Miriam was twenty-two years of age, and six months advanced in pregnancy.
On the night of the 27th to the 28th of June, Isaac Angel returned home towards nine o’clock. His wife was awake and in good health, he said; she fetched him beer, and later went abroad to have a letter addressed. He retired to rest at half-past eleven, and set forth for his labour on the morrow at a quarter past six. He left her in bed, behind a closed window partially screened by the blind. When he returned, summoned by a neighbour towards noon, he was denied entry to the room. The record thus places the last certain sight of Miriam alive at her husband’s departure; it offers no account of what she did thereafter.
Lipski’s morning was reconstructed through several depositions whose reckonings of time did not precisely agree. He was to open his new workshop, and had engaged Simon Rosenbloom, and subsequently young Richard Pitman, a lad of sixteen. Rosenbloom stated that he arrived towards seven o’clock. Lipski set him to work filing mountings for sticks, and then went out to purchase a vice and a sponge. Pitman arrived towards eight, went away to his breakfast, and returned. According to the lad’s recollection, Lipski then entered the workshop for a few minutes before going downstairs again; Rosenbloom did not recount the sequence in quite the same manner. Both acknowledged having seen another man ascend the stairs, but their accounts differed as to the duration of his presence and what they could understand of his speech in Yiddish.
This visitor was Isaac Schmuss, a locksmith newly arrived in England. He testified that he had waited a short while in the workroom, spoken with Rosenbloom in their native tongue, and then departed to break his fast. He swore that he never entered the Angels’ chamber, nor did he see Lipski again after leaving the premises. Counsel confronted him with contrary versions, suggesting he had stood near the Angels’ door or assisted in restraining Lipski. Schmuss denied these assertions. The trial laid bare these contradictions without producing any independent witness to the murder, nor did it account for every minute of that morning.
Another thread led to an oil and colour shop adjacent to the workshop where Lipski was wont to buy his materials. Charles Moore, the shopman, testified that a man who came in towards nine o’clock asked him for a small quantity of aqua fortis—that is to say, nitric acid—in a two-ounce phial. The customer stated that he required it for staining walking-sticks; Moore warned him that the liquid was a deadly poison. On the following day, the police conveyed Moore to the hospital, informing him that he might there see the man. He identified Lipski among the patients. The identification was thus recorded with its antecedent condition, and not as a recognition made at hazard, prior to any suggestion.
Towards eleven o’clock, the family and the landladies found the door of the Angels’ room secured. Dinah Angel, coming in search of her daughter-in-law, knocked without receiving an answer. Leah Levy peered through a chink in the partition and perceived Miriam upon the bed. Three women forced the door. They believed her at first to be in a swoon, but presently perceived that life was extinct. Her shift was drawn up, her hair dishevelled; a yellow fluid stained her countenance and her linen. The first to enter beheld little disorder in the room. Several persons went in before the surgeon and his assistant caused the chamber to be cleared; the depositions do not establish the precise order of every entry nor of each discovery.
Mr John Kay, the surgeon, arrived shortly before noon. He estimated that Miriam had been dead for some three hours—a conjecture founded upon the warmth of the corpse and the absence of rigidity, rather than upon any certain hour. He observed the marks of nitric acid about the mouth, the neck, the chest, and upon the hands. Having inspected the bed, he put aside the bedding and discovered Lipski upon the floor, behind the bedstead. The man was pale and well-nigh insensible; Kay felt his pulse, slapped his face, and saw him open his eyes. A constable perceived yellow stains upon his hands and his clothing. At the hospital, the medical officers likewise found marks of acid within his mouth and sundry small scratches, but no severe injuries such as might of themselves have stifled a cry.
At the post-mortem examination, Kay noted several violent blows upon the right temple, of sufficient force to stun the deceased, and acid within the mouth, the throat, the windpipe, and the bronchial tubes. The greater portion appeared to have entered the respiratory passages; the surgeon judged that about half an ounce had been administered. He ascribed death to the obstruction of breathing produced by the corrosive action of the acid. The body, he added, presented no signs of recent sexual connection. These findings described an outrage and a cause of death; they did not identify the perpetrator. Blood and acid mingled upon the bedding, but Kay discovered no stain of blood upon Lipski’s coat.
Lipski was carried to the hospital before being formally charged. Inspector David Final repaired thither that same evening in company with an interpreter, cautioning the prisoner that whatever he said would be written down and might be given in evidence. Lipski then recounted that he had quitted the workshop to buy a vice; that upon his return two men had overpowered him, forced him to swallow a draught represented as brandy, and thrust him beneath the bed. One was a former shopmate named Simon, he said, though he knew not where to find him and could not affirm that it was Rosenbloom. The other was unknown to him. He denied having slain Miriam. On the 2nd of July, when he was formally charged with the murder, his translated answer was: “I did not murder her; I did not do it.”
The defence could point out that this first declaration had been obtained before any formal charge was laid, whilst Lipski was yet an inmate of the hospital and under police surveillance; Inspector Final acknowledged that he had come in search of an account and was acting upon his own motion. The interpreter, for his part, confirmed the caution and the interpretation. The medical evidence disclosed no grievous bodily harm such as would corroborate the tale of a desperate struggle against two assailants, though scratches and burns were duly noted. Lipski’s complaint and these slight lesions did not suffice to prove the presence of the two assailants he described.
The coat worn that morning likewise assumed great prominence. Constable Inwood found it at the foot of the bed, beneath another garment, wet and impregnated with a substance that burnt his skin. Chemical analysis and its odour led the medical men to identify nitric acid. Lipski’s jacket and waistcoat were similarly stained; his left hand and several fingers bore yellow marks. He maintained that he had himself been poisoned; the Crown contended that his apparel connected him directly with the acid employed against Miriam. The chemical established a material proximity, not the precise act that had deposited it upon each article.
Witnesses from without added their constraints to the narrative. Thomas Warwick, working in the house opposite, stated that he saw Lipski enter towards a quarter to nine, and never saw him leave by the first-floor window, which he could observe from his own room. Yet he confessed that he had not watched the street without intermission, particularly during his breakfast hour. The window showed no visible marks upon the sill; the blind covered the lower portion, while the upper sash was slightly lowered. The testimony concerning the door and its fastening was likewise disputed: the landlord declared he had fitted it in good order, whereas those who burst it open described the staple of the lock as displaced. The examination did not render the door an absolute proof of an impossible entry.
The trial thus marshalled weighty matters, yet of diverse natures: the purchase of an acid that very morning, its presence in the room and upon the garments, the marks upon Lipski’s person, his apprehension beneath the bed, witnesses placing him within the house, and his own tale of an assault by two unknown men. The workshop, the callers, the morning’s comings and goings, and the door all raised perplexing questions; yet no human eye had witnessed the crime. The jury found Israel Lipski guilty, and the sentence of death was pronounced. The record closes with that judgment. It sets forth neither the detailed reasoning of the jury nor any subsequent event; it leaves unresolved the chasm between the certainty of the verdict and the absence of any witness to the deed.