No further doubt exists that the man who murdered three
chil- ,dren in Holborn and a woman and child at Ramsgate was Stephen Forwood, alias Ernest Southey, baker, billiard-sharper, and writer of begging letters. Before the magistrate he declared himself a murderer but "an innocent man," and read a long paper, in which he argues that by law no man is condemned for killing another "in defence of law and justice," compares his conduct -with that of Tell, Virginias, and Abraham, and asks how he can be tried by his peers. "A jury is supposed to be selected from a man's peers—his equals. What constitutes this equality? The mind is the standard of the man, the controller and director of his actions. The severe trials which I have passed through in life—the out-of-the-way course my life has taken—have quickened me, and expanded my mind far beyond what would or could ordinarily be experienced by any one in the usual way, following such mode of life as I have." I, he means, whom society has not acknowledged, am too great even to be fairly tried.
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