whose trial happened to finish on a Saturday
evening, at too late an hour for the jury to be
able to bring their twelve powerful minds to an
unanimous conclusion before midnight, was no
murderer in the eye of the law, however clear
the facts; but must escape scot-free. The
Sunday must be respected. On Sunday no
verdict can be received. Therefore the jury
must be kept, if kept at all, till the Monday
morning. But during the hours of
detention, being justly regarded as atrocious
criminals set to catch one of their own sort,
they must not be allowed food to eat, or fire to be
warmed by. If, at the close of twenty-four hours,
the twelve can by these persuasive methods be
induced to be reasonable, and to see things in
one and the same light, well and good; if not,
then the methods must continue until one of
them be taken ill; and then, but not till then,
the fraternity must be dismissed, to dine and to
be warmed at their own discretion. And once
dismissed—so ran the argument—the prisoner
must be dismissed too, for no one can be tried
twice for the same offence. With much
expenditure of time and learning was this point
laboured.

Of course the Sunday was the difficulty.
The twelve might have been locked up for a
night, and been none the worse. They would
have been pretty sure to have agreed in the
morning. But to lock them up foodless from
Saturday night till Monday morning would, it
was felt, have been too strong a measure;
Sunday, though a "dies non" in law, being, through
a perversity of Nature, as much a "dies" as any
other day in the matter of stomachs. But rather
even that, it was contended, than that a
prisoner's life should twice be jeopardised. Let
the jury starve and shiver themselves into
unanimity. Let them be carried about in carts
after the judge on circuit. (Such, it appears,
was the wholesome practice of our ancestors.)
Fiat justitia, ruat jury! Not once only, but
twice was Charlotte Winsor's counsel
instructed to maintain this argument before the
assembled judges; and twice was Charlotte
brought up to Westminster to listen. Four
times did the wretched woman hear her advocate's
orations from beginning to end—the only
living soul who did. The bitterness of death
was a long time in passing. It did pass,
though, at last. "The point" was finally
decided against her, and for the third time she
was left for execution. Her sentence was
finally commuted, in just consideration of the
time she had been kept waiting, into penal
servitude for life.

Harris was, of course, set free; but not
until she, too, had had her further experience
of the delicate machinery of the criminal
law. She was kept in prison till the spring
assizes of this present year (1866), then was
once more placed at the bar for the murder of
her child. The proceedings were "merely formal"
this time. One by one, twelve jurymen
were solemnly sworn to try her conscientiously,
and true verdicts give according to the
evidence, so help them God! and all the usual
preliminaries of a trial for murder were gone
through. Then the counsel for the prosecution
informed the court that he "proposed to
offer no evidence;" the judge informed the jury
that they must therefore say that the prisoner
was "not guilty;" and they said so. Then
the prisoner was removed. Then she was called
again. The grand jury had found a true bill
against her, and she had been "tried" and
acquitted on that. But at the coroner's inquest
it had also been determined that she should be
tried; and it is within the discretion of counsel
to carry on the prosecution on the finding of
the coroner's jury, even, though the grand jury
throw out the bill. So, one by one, the twelve
jurors were all sworn again, to the same solemn
effect; again the court was informed that no
evidence would be offered; again the judge told
the jury to acquit; again the jury obeyed the
judge; and then the farce was really over; and
everybody was supposed to be much impressed.
Harris looked more bewildered than ever (well
she might!) as she went away.

The reflections of Mrs. Winsor under these
experiences would be a curious study: the
rather as she seems to have been a woman of
grim humour. It has been the destiny of that
weird old woman to give more trouble, to waste
more time and money, and to sit longer in
courts of justice, than any other criminal of
ancient or modern times. To bring down the
excellent Calcraft on three fruitless errands to
Exeter; to have her scaffold thrice built and
her grave thrice dug; to speculate much and
long, in uneducated astonishment, on the
eccentricities of the English law; to meditate on the
difference, which has puzzled wiser heads than
hers, between judges in banc and judges off
it; and to be occupied for months (unbeknown)
in the solution of Hamlet's problem,
"To be, or not to be"—this was a "simple
coming-in for one woman." Numberless stories
are current in the west, of her sayings and
doings during her imprisonment. She grew
very impatient of the law's delay, it is said,
before the final arrangements were made.
Death had no terrors for her, nor life either;
but she abhorred uncertainty. She was very
cheerful when first awaiting her execution;
condoled with her husband on his approaching
loss, at the same time pleasantly advising him
to take another wife as soon as he could, for he
would never get on without one. Her first
sensation, when the event was put off, and
she found that still she was not to be
set free, was one rather of annoyance than
otherwise, deepening into strong disgust when
the second reprieve came. "Let 'em hang me,
or let 'em let me alone," she said; "I don't
like being made a fool of." At another time:
"I've told 'em I done it" (she confessed her
complicity in the murder, but always
maintained that Harris was the chief agent), "what
do they want more?"

Shallow logic! though at first sight not without
force. She condoled with her husband on
the provoking uncertainty in his further matrimonial
arrangements, of which she was the