Mr. Cross has respited all the prisoners in the Penge
case. He consulted Mr. Justice Hawkins and other Judges, and cross-ex- amined Clara Brown, but it would appear from the wording of his circular to the Press that he was mainly influenced by a memo- rial presented by Sir W. Jenner and other eminent physicians. The memoitalista state that " the morbid appearances described as having been observed post-mortem in Harriet Staunton's body are such as indicate death from cerebral disease ; and that such symp- toms as were recorded during the last few months of life, and espe- cially those which are described by Dr. Longrigg as immediately preceding death, are not the symptoms which starvation could have
induced, but are usual and characterstic symptoms of certain' forms of disease of the brain." The memorialists do not, as we understand them, deny the starvation, but only assert that the actual cause of death was cerebral disease—which may of course have been made effective by the starvation—but Mr. Cross thought it most expedient, in presence of their opinion, to remit the capital penalty. It is not yet known what the commuted sentence will be, but it ought logically to be a comparatively light one. If the Stauntons were not guilty of murder, and a very cruel murder, they were guilty only of callous neglect, which, though morally much the same, is necessarily a lighter crime in the eye of the law, its degree varying with legal responsibility. 'We do not see, for example, how Alice Rhodes, if not guilty of murder, is legally guilty at all. It was not her business, legally, to see that Mrs. Louis Staunton was properly treated.
