At the close of December, Ellen Riosn heard a slight noise beneath her bed. Lighting a candle, she discovered a child cowering in the gloom, clad only in his nightshirt. He begged her for bread. He was so wasted that the neighbour fancied she beheld a creature already consumed by hunger. A few weeks later, on the 16th of February 1867, she saw him once more in the same house; he expired shortly thereafter. At the trial, however, no single witness was able to unfold the entire history, but rather a sequence of fragmentary observations—some gathered from an opposite window, others recalled after the catastrophe, and all converging upon this single question: who was answerable for the neglect that had brought the child to his grave?
The case was tried at the Central Criminal Court, at the Old Bailey, on the 8th of April 1867. John George Conde and Mary Conde, his wife, stood indicted for the wilful murder of William Conde. The published record describes the female prisoner as the boy’s stepmother; John, for his part, had acknowledged before the coroner that he was his father. The proceedings did not culminate in a conviction for murder. Yet the two prisoners were to quit the dock with widely differing verdicts.
Ellen Riosn was a lodger who occupied a single room in the same tenement. She had seen William but twice. On the first occasion, at the end of December, he had secreted himself beneath her bed; he appeared feeble and emaciated, crying out for bread. The second occasion was the day of his death. She then believed he was sinking from sheer starvation, yet the admission she made of her own limitations weighed as much as her solicitude: she had been absent for the greater part of the interval between these two encounters, and had witnessed neither the family’s meals nor their domestic routine.
Her first deposition gave rise to an argument on a point of law. Counsel for the defence objected to the child’s words, uttered as they were out of the presence of the prisoners. The learned judge ruled that the complaint might be received as a verbal act demonstrative of his condition—a craving for sustenance—and not as a narrative whose every detail was to be taken as substantive proof. The plea for bread was thus admitted into the evidence, notwithstanding the objection of the defence.
Jane Tucker lived across the street. From her window, she deposed to having observed William repeatedly, standing upright against the wall, sometimes for hours together. She rarely saw him stir from that station; when his mother quitted the room, he would occasionally sit down, only to start up the moment she returned. Tucker was not within the chamber. She kept watch from across the road, principally during the hours she chanced to be at home, generally of an afternoon. The distance enabled her to discern the child’s posture and the other children gathered round the board, but not to ascertain what words were spoken to him when her gaze was turned away.
According to her testimony, the other children ate while William remained apart; she never saw food given to him. The defence cross-examined her as to the casements, the hours of her outings, and her duties as a district visitor. She was obliged to concede that she was not continually watching the house, and that her attention had been drawn to the lad merely because he appeared in an ill plight.
Mary Voller, the landlady, had seen the boy but seldom. She stated that he had begged her for bread and water, which she gave him, and that he ate with ravenous greed. She had heard weeping which she attributed to blows, though she could not always tell which child raised the lamentation. She described one occasion on which she saw him struck with a walking-stick; this incident was corroborated by Caroline Murray, another lodger who was present on that day. Murray related that William had taken some salt fish and potatoes from a cupboard, whereupon Mary Conde had chastised him. She added that, for months together, she had heard the cries of a child whom she believed to be William.
Murray had likewise drawn the notice of a mounted constable to the state of William’s arms. John Conde had thereupon brought the lad out into the street, protesting that he was not starved. After this altercation, the neighbour explained, she had ceased to inquire into the cause of the cries, the family having taken mortal offence. Thus the recollection of a miscarried intervention blended with the memory of blows heard through the lath and plaster.
Eliza Hawke, who had tenanted another room in the dwelling, confirmed that she frequently heard a species of smothered cry. She believed she knew William’s voice. She affirmed that he appeared exceedingly thin, and that she had given him bread and butter when he asked for it in the yard. The other children, she observed, seemed better nourished. She had entreated the landlady to go upstairs with her to interpose. Voller had declined; Hawke was unwilling to venture alone.
Mary Wood spoke of an even earlier period: when she had lived adjacent to the family four years previously, William had already struck her as puny and ailing. Another neighbour, Caroline Jane Brabham, described a lad she had observed standing by a window, looking terrified and kept separate from his fellows. She referred this occurrence to an interval of five years past. Both memories reached back far anterior to William’s final weeks on earth.
George Charles Kernott, a surgeon, was summoned on Saturday, the 16th of February, shortly before noon. He found William still breathing, exceedingly prostrate, his body cold, and prescribed stimulants. According to his evidence, the child expired a few hours later. The coroner directed him to perform a post-mortem examination. The medical man described a frame reduced to the last degree of emaciation, the stomach nearly empty, and an entire absence of subcutaneous fat; he noted a few slight contusions. He attributed death to starvation, and considered that repeated blows might have accelerated the end of a child deprived of food. This conclusion was not without reservation: upon cross-examination, he admitted the presence of incipient lung disease, and declined to swear positively that the deceased had not died of that affection. He maintained, nevertheless, that privation afforded the most probable explanation of the appearances.
Mr Besley, counsel for the prisoners, pressed Kernott closely upon this head. Could he affirm that the post-mortem appearances excluded death from pulmonary disease? The surgeon distinguished between an incipient complaint and a chronic malady calculated to waste a patient away. Being further interrogated as to his grounds, he reverted to the absence of fat, the empty stomach, and the state of the other viscera. His conclusion remained privation of food, but his qualification was now part of the record. Kernott added that he had never before undergone examination by counsel.
John Conde had made a statement before the coroner, which was read to the court at the instance of the defence. In it he declared that William was his son, that he had suffered from scarlet fever some months earlier, and that he himself had endured unemployment before being set to work by the parish in a stone-yard. He spoke of the parish relief and rations received, insisted that the lad ate more than the other children, and acknowledged having seen his wife strike him. He stated further that William had been playing in the street on the Friday, had fallen ill, and had expired after the doctor’s visit on the Saturday. Yet in that very same declaration, he affirmed that the child had not quitted the house for six months, save to go into the yard.
At the close of the evidence, the court expressed the opinion that there was no case of murder to go to the jury. The defence was called upon to answer only a charge of manslaughter by negligence. The jury returned a verdict of guilty against Mary Conde upon that indictment, and the court sentenced her to twelve months’ imprisonment. John Conde was found not guilty. Thus the two persons arraigned for murder were not condemned together: Mary alone stood convicted, and that of manslaughter.
The published chronicle terminates there: twelve months for Mary, an acquittal for John. It records neither the endurance of the sentence nor the subsequent fate of the surviving children. At the opening of the trial, Ellen had related what a candle’s beam had disclosed beneath her bed. Other women had contributed a glimpse through a window, cries behind a partition, bread bestowed in the yard. The house had yielded up its witnesses. In the opening deposition, his petition had been that of a famished child: bread.