THE TRIAL OF THE DYNAMITARDS.

Dunstan Times, Issue 1220, 17 July 1885, Page 3

THE TRIAL OF THE DYNAMITARDS.

A STRANGE CHAIN OF CIRCUMSTAISFIAL EVIDENCE. [Evening Star's London Correspondent.) London, May 20th. After a patient trial lasting over seven days, the dynamitards —Burton and Cunningham—were on Monday afternoon last found guilty of the crime known as treasonfelony, and sentenced to penal servitude for life. Fortunately, there can. bo no possible doubt that both men richly deserve their fate. Although built up in the main of the tiniest scraps of circumstantial evidence gathered with infinite paius from widely-differing sources, the ease against them as lucidly laid down by the AttorneyGeneral and summed up by Mr Justice Hawkins, is clear as daylight. The prisoners themselves were obviously staggered by the way in which, as the trial progressed, the meshes closed ronud them. When arrested Cunningham openly defied detection. He had blundered in allowing himself to be caught within the precincts of tho Tower after the explosion, and made things worse by telling a story, the falsity of which was immediately proved ; but he firmly believed there was no earthly possibility of connecting him with the catastrophe. Nor would there have been but for i he fatal finding of the little delouat r —fondly supposed by the man to have been safely destroyed—in a pair of his socks. It was this all-important discovery convinced the police that they were at length on the right track, and stimulated them to fresh efforts. But for it the rays’tery of ihe brown trunk might never have been solved, nor Burton have been arrested. The police, indeed, with nothing but the vaguest grounds of suspicion against Cunningham, must in time have let him go. It is worth noting that in both cases blunde s of the most trivial character undid all the well-nigh superhuman cate and pains taken to foil discovery. Failing to destroy the detonator rained Cunningham, and wearing an overcoat with eccentric buttons ton nceted Burton with tbe railway station explosions. “In order to be convinced bo yond possibility of doubt of the justice of the verdict wi hj reuard to Cunningham, wo have,” says a daily paper reviewing the leading points of the trial, “ only to consider for a moment what it is necessary to believe if we suppo.e him innocent. In that case he is undoubtedly one of the moat unfortunate individuals who eves found himself within the meshes of the criminal law. He would be an example of such an unparallod number of awkward coincidences as to utterly upset all tbe calculations which lawyers have hitherto been in the habit of deriving from cumulative circumstantial evidence. In the first place, we are called upon to imagine that Cunning ham, being admittedly an Irish-American, came to England for some good object, which, when even in fear of penal servitude, he is unable or unwilling to disrlo ie. He was unfortunate enough to arrive iu this country just before the dynamite outrages at Gower street, the Tower, and Westminster, apd lauding at Liverpool with a trunk almost empty, to leave for London in a day or two with the truua ‘ very heavy.’ Further, he was the victim of such an extraordinary conspiracy ot circumstances that he happens to have been identified bv three persons as being in the train at Gower street directly after the explosion in the Underground Railway, and without doubt he was inspecting the Tower at the lime of the dynamite outrage there. Willi regard to his presence at Gower street, two gir- s were produced by the defence who swore that Cunningham was at his lodgings at the very time when the explosion was taking place. These witnesses probably were mistaken about the exact time ; but the Crown, having regard,to their evidence, did not strongly insist on connecting Cunningham with the Underground affair. Granting for an instant that tho three people who swore positively to Cunningham’s presence in the Gower street train were all under a misapprehension, and that his visit to tbe 'l’ower was a mere accident, we are next confronted with the singular fact that a detonator—such as Colouel Majendie says is ‘ only used to explode nit'o compounds ’ —happens to have fallen into bis looked up bag at his lodgings iu Scarborough street, by some mere accident. The theory which the prisoner seemed himself to favor with regard to this latter untoward discovery was that an enemy must have done it —that some evil* disposed policeman, for example, placed the detonator in his bag on purpose to get him wrongly convicted. If Cunningham is innocent, we have to accept this theory as true ; but then we should have also to assume that a particular sort of detonator, never made in this country, was expressly imported from America to procure the conviction of an innocent man. Cunningham must also have been under some myste rious obligation to take the names of Dalton and Gilbert successively instead of his own. Why, if innocent, did he equivocate with the questions addressed to him by Inspector Aberiine at the Tower? Why did he falsely represent himself to have worked in the Liverpool Docks? It must be perfectly evident from the foregoing statement of proved facts that, if Cunningham were really guiltless, ho was more singularly unlucky than any human being that ever lived. But there are ,two other incidents connected with him in which Fortune again declared herself his enemy—when he went into the shop of the City clothier, a few days before the Tower outrage, and bought a second greatcoat to wear over his old one ‘ because ot the cold,’ declaring himself on the same occasion to be a ‘ Manchester man ’; and when ho was identified by detectives as carrying On a conversation with Burton iu the street. To imagine all these indications of guilt delusive—to suppose Cunningham to be the victim of a malicious fate, of a series of unfortunate coincidences, would require tho faith which would leuiove mountains. So terribly conclusive, however, was the case against this man from the very first, that the only element ot real uncertainty in the

trial was whether, or not Burton would bo proved equally guilty. And it is in no way surprising that his advocate should have striven with alibis energies to upsol Ihe evidence which seemed to link Burton with the other prisoner. Unquestionably the most convincing evidence against Barton was that supplied by the incident of the portmanteau purchased Southampton. It was proved that he landed at thas seaport from the steamship Douau on February 20, 1884. and then requested a poi-tei named Thomas.to help him in finding a shop where he conid purchase two secondhand tiunks. One of them, he said, he wanted for a friend who was with him. The incidents connected with the sale of these commonplace articles of luggage are quite dramatic, If Burton had not, directly ho landed on our shores from America, expressed an eager desire to be possessed of a couple of trunks, and if while purchasing them he had not been wearing a greatcoat with a peculiar set of buttons, tbe most important links of evidence incriminating him in the charge of being a Fenian emissary would have been wanting. Five days after Barton lauded at Southampton, and was .seen'to leave for London with two companions, there occurred the four contemporaneous dynamite attempts to wreck railway stations in the metropolis. The very trunk which had been purchased over the counter at Southampton was found live days later in the cloak-room at Chariugcross Station, full of cakes of ‘ Atlas ’ dynamite, with an infernal machine, fuse, and detonatar attached, which latter had luckily failed to operate The clockwork had liberated the trigger, but the trigger had missed the cap. Who can tell how many innocent lives were thus spared, or how great a wreck of property might have been otherwise produced ? But, besides the dynamite and the infernal machine, there was still a more tell-tale article in the Charing Cross trunk. This was the identical greatcoat with the peculiar buttons which had attracted the attention of the Southampton dealer. There were too many other facts against Burton to admit of his innocence; It was clearly proved that he met- Cunningham in London, and held conversation with him, and that the portmanteau found in his lodgings had been fetched by him from Great Presoot street, where Cunningham lodged. Then, if Burton were innocent, it was a strange piece of ill-fortune that he should come to England just before the dynamite outrages at the beginning of last year and leave directly after, and that his return to this country last December again just preceded some more diabolical crimes of the same sort. In his lodgings were found guides to the Tower and to the Houses of Parliament, and an attendant had noticed him prowling about the former place some days before the explosion. He was nominally a cabinetmaker ; yet it was shown that in the space of fifteen weeks he had only earned L 4 at his trade, but nevertheless had money to make voyages across the Atlantic, to go to Paris, and to live at ease in his lodgings in London. It must be abundantly evident from the course of these criminal proceedings that Burton was a ringleader in the Irish-American camp, and Cunningham somewhat more of an instrument in fulfilling the diabolical orders of the Fenians in America. The retribution which has befallen them has been speedy and thoroughly deserved.”