The trial of the brothers Louis and Patrick Staunton, with
the wife of one of them, and the mistress of the other, for the murder at Penge of the unfortunate Harriet Staunton (the wife of Louis), after lasting for five full days, terminated on Wednesday night with a verdict of guilty against all the prisoners, but with a recommendation of the two women, and a strong recommendation of Alice Rhodes, to the mercy of the Crown. Mr. Justice Hawkins occupied the whole of Wednesday in summing-up, and a very masterly summing-up it was. The chief effort of the defence was, first, to discredit the principal witness as to the ill-treatment of the half-witted woman and the insufficient supply of food and clothing allowed her, by insisting on the discrepancies between Clara Brown's first statement before the coroner and the testi- mony she gave at the trial ; and next, to show that the symptoms from which Mrs. Louis Staunton was suffering at the time of her death were probably the symptoms of a tubercular disease of the brain or spine called meningitis, and that they did not at all neces- sarily suggest starvation. Mr. Justice Hawkins, however, marshalled the whole evidence so ably that these suggestions dwindled in signi- ficance. It became clear that Clara Brown's evidence was very powerfully confirmed from other quarters, and also that as a con- nexion of the prisoners she had a bias favourable to the prisoners and not against them ; and also clear that even if the deceased woman did die of meningitis, which is probable enough, it was of meningitis aggravated or caused by the ill-treatment she had re- ceived. Indeed the conduct of Louis Staunton to his wife's mother and to his own child, conduct which was known quite indepen- dently of Clara Brown's evidence, was all of a piece with the treat- ment of the unhappy woman herself. It is probable that the women's sentence will be commuted, but the two men can hardly escape death.
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