THE STOKE NEWINGTON MURDER.
"MYSTERY" is a word which lends itself to very loose usage, and full advantage has been taken of this liberty in regard to the Stoke Newington Murder. Except in the sense that.all murders are mysterious, so long as it is not known by whom they have been committed, the term is not specially appropriate. By dint of using a great number of unnecessary words, the Reporters of the Morning Papers have been able to convince the public that both the motive and the circumstances of the crime are strangely obscure. It is their business to spread conjecture over the requisite number of columns, and by avoiding as long as possible all mention of the very simple and probable theory contained in the Coroner's address to the Jury, this end was attained easily enough. The plan usually adopted has been to begin the mystery-making process by an expression of wonder that the victim, after parting from his friend, should have gone a little bit out of his road on his walk home. To us it does not seem very marvellous that a young man who had spent the last hours of the year partly in church, and partly with the girl with whom he was more or less in love, should have been inclined for a little dreaming before going back to his lodgings. Whether he had strolled to the place where he was assaulted, or was induced to go there by some made-up story of dis- tress, is immateriaL What happened after he was assaulted seems to be very simply explained by the Coroner's hypo- thesis. Tower was probably rather active than strong, and when the robbery was attempted, flight probably seemed to offer a better chance than resistance. If he could get over the palings which separate the waste ground on which he was assaulted from the reservoir, he apparently thought that he would be safe. The torn state of his coat goes to show that he was overtaken while in the act of climb- ing over, and from that time his assailants had everything their own way. There is nothing to indicate, however, that they intended to kill him ; if there were, the word " mystery" would not be so inapplicable, for why should any one have wanted to kill him ? Robbery is just as profitable when it is not accompanied by murder, as when it is ; and in this case, it would have been equally safe, or indeed, safer. The police would not have exerted themselves to trace the criminals who had robbed a young man of a silver watch and XS with anything like the energy which they will display in tracing his murderers. The cause of death, according to the medical evidence, was in all likelihood strangula- tion, and the dead man's own handkerchief was the instru- ment used. Now, strangulation is a thing which it is very easy to overdo, and the fainting-fits to which Tower was sub- ]pest saepts that in his case it may have been particularly if the humanisTi.st intended to produce unconsciousness was boldly and defy the\were rifled, and then, we may suppose, the
substitute for the r The man was not insensible, he was with a number of addition to the horror of the situation intended rather as an t have ascertained that he was dead ess. Perhaps they were experts in the art, and Tower may not have been the first case in which they bad to satisfy themselves on the same point. As soon as they were satisfied, the question how to dispose of the body be- came urgent, and the neighbourhood of the reservoir at once sug- gested a means of putting it out of sight for an indefinite time. If they had taken to their heels, and left the dead man on the ground, he might have been discovered before they were out of sight, and then pursuit might have begun inconveniently soon. In their hurry, they probably did not remember that there were enough traces of the struggle left on the ground to put the police on the scent. 'Anyhow, they were safe till day- light, provided that the body was out of the way, and accord- ingly they flung it into the water.
If the crime had not been committed in a London suburb, this would have been a very ordinary case of murder. The inten- tion to kill was probably wanting, but there was present that which supplies its place, a determination to commit robbery, and to take all the means which offered themselves to carry out that purpose. But the scene of the murder invests it with a far-reaching interest. In every newly-built district round London the same conditions are reproduced. Everywhere there are spaces left open and lonely,—spaces in which a cry for help, if it reaches some of the not distant houses, will find no one disposed to inquire into the cause which has produced it. The real security of these districts is the fact that those who traverse them are rarely worth robbing. The spread of athletics has made clerks who return borne late from busi- ness not always very safe prey to attack, and even when the thieves are free from this risk, there is the probable disappoint- ment awaiting them of finding that the rifled pockets have yielded nothing that is worth the stealing. But an occasional exception such as this comes as an unpleasant reminder that what is true in the average is not true in every case. The balance of risk is made up by a very little danger and a great deal of safety. But when one of the instances that supply the danger happens, its rarity is for the time forgotten. The hundreds of thousands who go home unmolested every night through a dozen winters, are of no account by the aide of the possibility that any one of them may on any night meet with the fate of Tower. One mode of dealing with this danger would be to greatly increase the strength of the suburban police force. But it is in practice found impossible to do this, when the police are paid from the rates. The community will not saddle itself with a burden which has no justification beyond the occurrence of a murder once in ten or twenty years.
We fall back, therefore, on the real deterrent,—the convic- tion in the mind of the murderer that if he is caught, he will certainly be hanged. But for this wholesome assurance, murders would be infinitely more numerous, because they would be infinitely less dangerous. In every robbery from the per- son, the possibility that the man attacked will show fight has to be taken into account. If he does show fight, he must be overpowered, and the blow which is meant to have this result, and no more, may easily be heavier thin the calcula- tion, and leave the victim dead, instead of disabled. There can hardly be a question that this consideration does prevent a good many robberies, as well as some murders ; nor, that the abolition of capital punishment would deprive it of its chief force. The robber would no longer have any motive for holding his hand. Even if he did do more than he meant to do, no great harm would come of it. The punishment for murder would be the same in kind as the punishment for robbery, and robbery accompanied by murder would often be more easily committed, and with leas chance of detection, than robbery standing alone. If we wish to multiply mysteries of the Stoke Newington order, we have only to do away with the hangman. He is an ugly element in our civilisation ; but while our civilisation remains what it is, he will continue to be a necessary one.
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