In Saint Helier, on Monday, 7 September 1829, a domestic quarrel spilled into the public thoroughfare. Witnesses saw a father pursuing his son; a few moments later, the father lay upon the ground with a shattered skull, and the young man was walking away. The account published in Jersey juxtaposes partial glimpses, reported speeches, and two conflicting versions as to the number of bricks cast.
Jolin was twenty-one years of age and worked as a blacksmith. His father, Philip Jolin, suffered from the gout and, according to the surgeon who attended him, was of an infirm constitution. Yet that same medical man, E. F. Dickson, hesitated not to attribute his death entirely to the violence sustained that afternoon. Summoned between one and two o’clock, he found the sufferer bathed in blood. Having dressed the wound, he waited until the man recovered his senses; returning forty or fifty minutes later, he found him dead. An examination of the cranium revealed a considerable extravasation of blood upon the brain. Dickson pronounced this the immediate cause of dissolution, and the naval surgeon William M’Doual concurred that a blow had ruptured a vital vessel.
The judicial record distinguishes two separate stages in the proceedings. On Thursday, 24 September, an inquest jury of Saint Helier declared Jolin guilty; he subsequently claimed the benefit of the Grand Jury. On Monday the 28th, he was brought anew before the Royal Court, whose proceedings and subsequent depositions form the body of the printed tract. They belong, therefore, to this second hearing, rather than to the initial inquest. The document does not elucidate the precise legal operation of this appeal; it records, however, that the jury impanelled on the 28th returned an undivided verdict of wilful murder, whereupon the Court pronounced the capital sentence.
The material proof of the deed rested upon those who had caught fragmentary glimpses of the affray. Jane Le Maistre, examined at the bar, testified that she had observed the elder man running after his son, who was weeping as though threatened with blows. She recounted that the father vowed to give him more of the same upon his return. Shortly thereafter, Jolin reappeared armed with pieces of brick. In spite of her entreaties, according to her deposition, he hurled one piece, striking his father upon the head, and fled. The father was in a state of fury; the witness herself had ducked to escape the missile.
Thomas Bertram, a youth of fifteen, related a longer and more violent sequence of events. He had seen the son emerge from the dwelling in tears, followed by the father, who declared his purpose to “make an end” of him. Jolin then betook himself to a heap of bricks, seized one, broke it in two, and turned back toward his pursuer. Bertram stated he had implored him not to throw the fragments; the young man threatened to cast them at him instead if he did not stand aside, and straightway hurled them at his father. One fragment took him upon the head, felling him to the earth. Jolin was said to have cried out, “Now get up again,” before departing. Bertram believed him to be in liquor.
Mary Le Riche, observing the scene from an adjacent casement, saw the father chasing his son and overheard reciprocal menaces; she perceived Jolin pick up a brick, but witnessed not the sequel. Thomas Thornton had heard the tumult and watched the pair disputing. He subsequently saw the young man take a brick in each hand, retrace his steps, and return a few moments later empty-handed, calmly eating an apple. He could not affirm whether he was intoxicated. By contrast, Edward Le Feuvre maintained he had seen him deep in drink before eight o’clock in the morning; later, Jolin came into his shop, stating that his father had beaten him, but that he had knocked him down in return, adding that he had “another” in mind. Le Feuvre deemed him then so intoxicated as to be scarce conscious of his actions.
Towards four o’clock, Philip Winter Nicolle, a centenier of the parish, apprehended Jolin upon the quays, news of the father’s death having spread abroad. When taxed with having slain his parent, the young man replied, according to Nicolle, that he could not help it; at the mention of the gallows, he burst into tears. Nicolle conveyed him to prison and notified the King’s Procureur that an inquest might be held upon the body. Those who had rendered first assistance, Thomas Hinchliffe and James Clark, described finding the victim bleeding profusely from the nose and mouth. Several other witnesses had merely heard the outcry or aided in raising the fallen man.
Yet the trial did not confine itself to the fatal blow alone. The witnesses summoned on Jolin’s behalf laid bare a domestic history that the prosecution could not readily reduce to the single transaction in the lane. Philip Manuel, formerly master of the brigantine Pelican, had known the prisoner as a mariner. He testified to having seen him drink with the crew, and had heard that he once sought to cast himself into the sea; above all, he deposed to having witnessed the father’s brutality. Fourteen months prior, according to Manuel, the elder Jolin had beaten the youth about the head with an iron bar; the son lay covered in blood, whilst his father forbade any assistance to be rendered. Manuel added that he had likewise seen him strike him across the legs.
Philip Aubin, who had served aboard the same vessel, recalled instances when the prisoner appeared “deranged” at Buenos Aires, threatening to leap overboard. He could not tell whether such conduct sprang from intoxication or a disordered mind. Philip Jeune deposed to having seen him in a transport of rage, appearing beside himself; on one occasion Jolin had snatched up a musket as though to fire it, though the witness could not say whether he had been provoked, nor whether his behaviour was the fruit of mental alienation. These remote memories raised the question of his sanity without resolving it in the manner of a modern medical inquiry.
Further depositions corroborated a long course of harsh treatment. Margaret Collas stated she had heard the mother shriek for aid and had seen the father strike his son with an iron bar; she affirmed that he frequently denied him food. John Case, a fellow workman of the elder Jolin, recalled blows dealt with a hammer or whatever implement lay at hand, directed commonly at the youth’s head. His observation concerning an abraded slate, which he suspected to be the young man’s doing, remained indeterminate. Philip Binet, to whose forge Jolin had gone to work on the morning of 7 September, judged him drunk before breakfast; on learning that he had struck down his father, Binet rebuked him and urged him to fetch a surgeon. The young man fell to weeping.
The coroner’s inquisition, read after these testimonies, concluded that Jolin had feloniously killed his father by voluntarily casting a brick at his head. The Court heard the prisoner’s advocate, Mr Hammond, followed by the King’s Procureur. After an hour’s deliberation, the jury assembled on 28 September brought in a unanimous verdict of wilful murder. This finding must not be confounded with any formal medical determination as to his sanity: though the witnesses had detailed fits of drunkenness, alarming conduct, and habitual ill-usage, the printed report records no finding of acquittal upon the ground of insanity. The Court subsequently rejected the prayer for mitigation of punishment, and the Bailiff pronounced the sentence of death.
The published record affords no verbatim stenographic transcript of Jolin’s own words in court; it notes merely that after Hammond’s pleading, the advocate read a written declaration penned by the condemned man. Therein he acknowledged his transgression, though protesting it was devoid of premeditation, and argued that he would have found far easier occasion to dispatch his father during those times when the latter lay helpless and dependent upon his nursing. He called to mind the wretched scenes between his parents, the blows, and the debauchery of which he had been the witness. The paper stood as an appeal for mercy, not as independent legal proof of the events it rehearsed.
The Reverend Edward Durell, rector of Saint Saviour, visited Jolin from 26 September onward—that is, after the initial verdict of the Saint Helier inquest jury, but prior to the hearing before the Royal Court on the 28th. His small volume, published a few weeks later, chronicles numerous prison visits and dwells at length upon the young man’s spiritual contrition. Durell was careful to state that their colloquies were not taken down in shorthand, but were reconstructed in substance from memory. He notes that Jolin spoke to him on the 27th of his appearance on the 24th; the official court narrative, however, places the full trial on the 28th. The clergyman was thoroughly persuaded of Jolin’s genuine penitence and deeply touched by his fate. His cell scenes, reported dialogues, and portrayals of inward grace illuminate the pastoral care bestowed upon the convict; they cannot, however, be accepted as impartial court records or medical diagnoses.
Jolin was executed on Saturday, 3 October. For this final scene, Durell notes that he was not present, citing an account from an island newspaper of 6 October. According to that gazette, the prisoner left the gaol shortly after one o'clock, escorted by nearly two hundred halberdiers and attended by two clergymen. He mounted the scaffold with a firm step, addressed the assembled multitude on the perils of drunkenness and the neglect of early training, and read aloud a passage from the New Testament. The journal attributed to him a full confession of the justice of his doom, recording that he died at peace with all mankind. After the drop fell, the body hung for an hour and three-quarters; it was conveyed back to the prison, and thence borne away to be buried in the dead of night on 4 October.
The execution brought the judicial process to an end, yet left unresolved the domestic misery that had engendered it. The printed chronicle preserves the fatal blow and the ultimate sentence, but alongside them remain the testimonies of ancient cruelties, doubtful sobriety, and fractured observations. The death of Philip Jolin remains at the center of the narrative, surrounded by testimonies that never wholly reconcile.