A Book of Remarkable Criminals | ||
2. The Career of Robert Butler
There is a report of Butler's trial published in Dunedin. It gives in full the speeches and the cross-examination of the witnesses, but not in all cases the evidence-in-chief. By the kindness of a friend in New Zealand I obtained a copy of the depositions taken before the magistrate; with this I have been able to supplement the report of the trial. A collection of newspaper cuttings furnished me with the details of the rest of Butler's career.
The Career of Robert Butler
I. THE DUNEDIN MURDERS
ON the evening of March 23, 1905, Mr. William Munday, a highly respected citizen of the town of Tooringa, in Queensland, was walking to the neighbouring town of Toowong to attend a masonic gathering. It was about eight o'clock, the moon shining brightly. Nearing Toowong, Mr. Munday saw a middle-aged man, bearded and wearing a white overcoat, step out into the moonlight from under the shadow of a tree. As Mr. Munday advanced, the man in the white coat stood directly in his way. "Out with all you have, and quick about it," he said. Instead of complying with this peremptory summons, Mr. Munday attempted to close with him. The man drew back quickly, whipped out a revolver, fired, and made off as fast as he could. The bullet, after passing through Mr. Munday's left arm, had lodged in the stomach. The unfortunate gentleman was taken to a neighbouring hospital where, within a few hours, he was dead.
In the meantime a vigorous search was made for his
The man taken by Hennessy gave the name of James Wharton, and as James Wharton he was hanged at Brisbane. But before his death it was ascertained beyond doubt, though he never admitted it himself, that Wharton was none other than one Robert Butler, whose career as a criminal and natural wickedness may well rank him with Charles Peace in the hierarchy of scoundrels. Like Peace, Butler was, in the jargon of crime, a "hatter," a "lone hand," a solitary who conceived and executed his nefarious designs alone; like Peace, he supplemented an insignificant physique by a liberal employment of the revolver; like Peace, he was something of a musician, the day before his execution he played hymns for half an hour on the prison organ; like Peace, he knew when to whine when it suited his purpose; and like Peace, though not with the same intensity, he could be an uncomfortably persistent lover, when the fit was on him. Both men were cynics in their way and viewed their fellow-men with a measure of contempt. But here parallel ends. Butler
Butler was of the true Prussian mould. "In crime," he would say, "as in war, no half measures. Let us follow the example of our rulers whose orders in war run, `Kill, burn and sink,' and what you cannot carry away, destroy.'" Here is the gospel of frightfulness applied almost prophetically to crime. To Butler murder is a principle of warfare; to Peace it was never more than a desperate resort or an act the outcome of ungovernable passion.
Ireland can claim the honour of Butler's birth. It took place at Kilkenny about 1845. At an early age he
When in 1876 Butler quitted Australia for New Zealand, he was sufficiently accomplished to obtain employment as a schoolmaster.
At Cromwell, Otago, under the name of "C. J. Donelly, Esq.," Butler opened a "Commercial and Preparatory Academy," and in a prospectus that recalls Mr. Squeers' famous advertisement of Dotheboys Hall, announced that the programme of the Academy would include "reading, taught as an art and upon the most approved principles of elocution, writing, arithmetic, euclid, algebra, mensuration, trigonometry, book-keeping, geography, grammar, spelling and dictation) composition, logic and debate, French, Latin, shorthand, history, music, and general lectures on astronomy, natural philosophy, geology, and other subjects." The simpler principles of these branches of learning were to be "rendered intelligible, and a firm foundation laid for the acquirement of future knowledge." Unfortunately a suspicion of theft on Butler's part cut short the fulfilment of this really splendid programme, and Butler left Cromwell hurriedly for the ampler field of Dunedin. There, less than a fortnight
On the 18th of February, 1880, Butler was released from prison. With that consummate hypocrisy which was part of the man, he had contrived to enlist the sympathies of the Governor of the Dunedin Jail, who gave him, on his departure, a suit of clothes and a small sum of money. A detective of the name of Bain tried to find him employment. Butler wished to adopt a literary career. He acted as a reporter on the Dunedin Evening Star, and gave satisfaction to the editor of that newspaper. An attempt to do some original work, in the shape of "Prison Sketches," for another newspaper, was less successful. Bain had arranged for the publication of the articles in the Sunday Advertiser, but when the time came to deliver his manuscript, Butler failed to appear. Bain, whose duty it was to keep an eye on Butler, found him in the street looking wild and haggard. He said that he had found the work "too much for his head," that he had torn up what he had written, that he had nowhere to go, and had been to the end of the jetty with the intention of drowning himself. Bain replied somewhat caustically that he thought it a pity he had not done so, as nothing would have given him greater joy than going to the end of the jetty and identifying his body. "You speak very plainly," said Butler. "Yes, and what is more, I mean what I say," replied Bain. Butler justified Bain's candour by saying that if he broke out again, he would be worse than the most savage tiger ever let loose on the community. As a means of obviating such an outbreak, Butler suggested that, intellectual employment having failed, some form of manual labour should be found him. Bain complied with Butler's request, and got him a job at levelling reclaimed ground
About the same time Butler had some talk with another member of the Dunedin police force, Inspector Mallard. They discussed the crimes of Charles Peace and other notable artists of that kind. Butler remarked to Mallard how easy it would be to destroy all traces of a murder by fire, and asked the inspector whether if he woke up one morning to find some brutal murder had been committed, he would not put it down to him. "No, Butler," replied the inspector, "the first thing I should do would be to look for suspicious circumstances, and most undoubtedly, if they pointed to you, you would be looked after."
In the early morning of this Saturday, March 13, the house of a Mr. Stamper, a solicitor of Dunedin, had been broken into, and some articles of value, among them a pair of opera glasses, stolen. The house had been set on fire, and burned to the ground. On the morning of the following day, Sunday, the 14th, Dunedin was horrified by the discovery of a far more terrible crime, tigerish certainly in its apparent ferocity. In a house in Cumberland Street, a young married couple and their little baby were cruelly murdered and un{sic}{an??} unsuccessful attempt made to fire the scene of the crime.
About half-past six on Sunday morning a man of the name of Robb, a carpenter, on getting out of bed, noticed smoke coming from the house of a neighbor of his, Mr. J. M. Dewar, who occupied a small one-floored cottage standing by itself in Cumberland Street, a large and broad thoroughfare on the outskirts of the town. Dewar
Nothing more was known of what had occurred that morning until at half-past six Robb saw the smoke coming from Dewars' house. Mrs. Dewar, who alone could have told something, never recovered consciousness and died on the day following the crime. Three considerable wounds sufficient to cause death had been inflicted on the unfortunate woman's head, and five of a similar character on that of her husband. At the head of the bed, which stood in the corner of the room, there was a large smear of blood on the wall just above the door; there were spots of blood all over the top of the bed, and some smaller ones that had to all appearances spurted on to the panel of the door nearest to the bed.
The investigation of this shocking crime was placed in the hands of Detective Bain, whose duty it had been to keep an eye on Robert Butler, but he did not at first associate his interesting charge with the commission of the murder. About half-past six on Sunday evening Bain happened to go to a place called the Scotia Hotel, where the landlord informed him that one of his servants, a girl named Sarah Gillespie, was very anxious to see him. Her story was this: On the morning of Thursday, March 11, Robert Butler had come to the hotel; he was wearing a dark lavender check suit and carried a top coat and parcel. Butler had stayed in the hotel all Thursday and slept there that night. He had not slept in the hotel on the Friday night, and Sarah Gillespie had not seen him again until he came into the house about five and twenty minutes to seven on Sunday morning. The
Butler was next seen a few minutes later at a shop near the hotel, where he bought five tins of salmon, and about the same time a milk-boy saw him standing on the kerb in Cumberland Street in a stooping position, his head turned in the direction of Dewars' house. A little after ten the same night Butler entered a hotel at a place called Blueskin, some twelve miles distant from Dunedin. He was wearing an overcoat and a light muffler. He sat down at a table in the dining-room and seemed weary and sleepy. Someone standing at the bar said "What a shocking murder that was in Cumberland Street!" Butler started up, looked steadily from one to the other of the two men who happened to be in the room, then sat down again and, taking up a book, appeared to be reading. More than once he put down the book and kept shifting uneasily in his chair. After having some supper he got up, paid his reckoning, and left the hotel.
At half-past three the following morning, about fifteen miles from Dunedin, on the road to Waikouaiti, two constables met a man whom they recognised as Butler from a description that had been circulated by the police. The constables arrested and searched him. They found on him a pair of opera glasses, the property of Mr. Stamper, whose house had been burgled and burned down on the morning of the 13th. Of this crime Butler acknowledged himself to be the perpetrator. Besides the opera glasses the constables took from Butler two tins of salmon, a purse containing four shillings and sixpence, a pocket
The same evening a remarkable interview took place in the lock-up at Waikouaiti between Butler and Inspector Mallard. Mallard, who had some reason for suspecting Butler, bearing in mind their recent conversation, told the prisoner that he would be charged with the murder in Cumberland Street. For a few seconds, according to Mallard, the prisoner seemed terribly agitated and appeared to be choking. Recovering himself somewhat, he said, "If for that, you can get no evidence against me; and if I am hanged for it, I shall be an innocent man, whatever other crimes I may have committed." Mallard replied, "There is evidence to convict you—the fire was put out." Butler than{sic} said that he would ask Mallard a question, but, after a pause, decided not to do so. Mallard, after examining Butler's clothes, told him that those were not the clothes in which he had left the Scotia Hotel. Butler admitted it, and said he had thrown those away in the North East Valley. Mallard alluded to the disappearance of the prisoner's moustache. Butler replied that he had cut it off on the road. Mallard noticed then the backs of Butler's hands were scratched, as if by contact with bushes. Butler seemed often on the point of asking questions, but would then stop and say "No, I won't ask you anything." To the constables who had arrested him Butler remarked, "You ought to
A few days after Butler's arrest a ranger on the Town Belt, a hill overlooking Dunedin, found a coat, a hat and silk striped cravat, and a few days later a pair of trousers folded up and placed under a bush. These articles of clothing were identified as those which Butler had been seen wearing on the Saturday and Sunday morning. They were examined. There were a number of bloodstains on them, not one of them larger in size than a pea, some almost invisible. On the front of the trousers about the level of the groin there were blood spots on both sides. There was blood on the fold of the left breast of the coat and on the lining of the cuff of the right arm. The shirt Butler was wearing at the time of his arrest was examined also. There were small spots of blood, about fourteen altogether, on the neck and shoulder bands, the right armpit, the left sleeve, and on both wristbands. Besides the clothes, a salmon tin was found on the Town Belt, and behind a seat in the Botanical Gardens, from which a partial view of the Dewars' house in Cumberland Street could be obtained, two more salmon tins were found, all three similar to the five purchased by Butler on the Sunday morning, two of which had been in his possession at the time of his arrest.
Such were the main facts of the case which Butler had to answer when, a few weeks later, he was put on his trial before the Supreme Court at Dunedin. The presiding judge was Mr. Justice Williams, afterwards Sir Joshua Williams and a member of the Privy Council.
II. THE TRIAL OF BUTLER
To a man of Butler's egregious vanity his trial was a glorious opportunity for displaying his intellectual gifts, such as they were. One who had known him in prison about this time describes him as a strange compound of vanity and envy, blind to his own faults and envious of the material advantages enjoyed by others. Self-willed and arrogant, he could bully or whine with equal effect. Despising men, he believed that if a man did not possess some requisite quality, he had only to ape it, as few would distinguish between the real and the sham.
But with all these advantages in the struggle for life, it is certain that Butler's defence would have been far less effective had be{sic} been denied all professional aid. As a matter of fact, throughout his trial Butler was being advised by three distinguished members of the New Zealand bar, now judges of the Supreme Court, who though not appearing for him in court, gave him the full benefit of their assistance outside it. At the same time Butler carried off the thing well. Where imagination was required, Butler broke down; he could not write sketches of life in prison; that was too much for his pedestrian intellect. But given the facts of a case, dealing with a transaction of which he alone knew the real truth, and aided by the advice and guidance of trained intellects, Butler was unquestionably clever and shrewd enough to make the best use of such advantages in meeting the case against him.
Thus equipped for the coming struggle, this high-browed ruffian, with his semi-intellectual cast of countenance, his jerky restless posturing, his splay-footed waddle, "like a lame Muscovy duck," in the graphic words of his gaol companion, stood up to plead for his life before the Supreme Court at Dunedin.
It may be said at the outset that Butler profited greatly by the scrupulous fairness shown by the Crown Prosecutor. Mr. Haggitt extended to the prisoner a degree of consideration and forbearance, justified undoubtedly towards an undefended prisoner. But, as we have seen, Butler was not in reality undefended. At every moment of the trial he was in communication with his legal advisers, and being instructed by them how to meet the evidence given against him. Under these circumstances the unfailing consideration shown him by the Crown Prosecutor seems almost excessive. From the first moment of the trial Butler was fully alive to the necessities of his situation. He refrained from including in his challenges of the jury the gentleman who was afterwards foreman; he knew he was all right, he said, because he parted his hair in the middle, a "softy," in fact. He did not know in all probability that one gentleman on the jury had a rooted conviction that the murder of the Dewars was the work of a criminal lunatic. There was certainly nothing in Butler's demeanour or behaviour to suggest homicidal mania.
The case against Butler rested on purely circumstantial evidence. No new facts of importance were adduced at the trial. The stealing of Dewar's wages, which had been paid to him on the Saturday, was the motive for the murder suggested by the Crown. The chief facts pointing to Butler's guilt were: his conversation with Mallard and Bain previous to the crime; his demeanour after it; his departure from Dunedin; the removal of his moustache
Such as the evidence was, Butler did little to shake it in cross-examination. His questions were many of them skilful and pointed, but on more than one occasion the judge intervened to save him from the danger common to all amateur cross-examiners, of not knowing when to stop. He was most successful in dealing with the medical witnesses. Butler had explained the bloodstains on his clothes as smears that had come from scratches on his hands, caused by contact with bushes. This explanation the medical gentlemen with good reason rejected. But they went further, and said that these stains might well have been caused by the spurting and spraying of blood on to the murderer as he struck his victims. Butler was able to show by the position of the bloodstains on the clothes that such an explanation was open to considerable doubt.
Butler's speech in his defence lasted six hours, and was a creditable performance. Its arrangement is somewhat confused and repetitious, some points are over-elaborated, but on the whole he deals very successfully with most of the evidence given against him and exposes the unquestionable weakness of the Crown case. At the outset he declared that he had taken his innocence for his defence. "I was not willing," he said, "to leave my life in the hands of a stranger. I was willing to incur all the disadvantages which the knowledge of the law might bring upon me. I was willing, also, to enter on this case without any experience whatever of that peculiarly acquired art of cross-examination. I fear I have done wrong. If I had had the assistance of able counsel, much more light would have been thrown on this
A great deal of the evidence as to his conduct and demeanour at the time of the murder Butler met by acknowledging that it was he who had broken into Mr. Stamper's house on the Saturday morning, burgled it and set it on fire. His consciousness of guilt in this respect was, he said, quite sufficient to account for anything strange or furtive in his manner at that time. He was already known to the police; meeting Bain on the Saturday night, he felt more than ever sure that he was susspected{sic} of the robbery at Mr. Stamper's; he therefore decided to leave Dunedin as soon as possible. That night, he said, he spent wandering about the streets half drunk, taking occasional shelter from the pouring rain, until six o'clock on the Sunday morning, when he went to the Scotia Hotel. A more detailed account of his movements on the night of the Dewars' murder he did not, or would not, give.
When he comes to the facts of the murder and his theories as to the nature and motive of the crime—theories which he developed at rather unnecessary length for the purpose of his own defence—his speech is interesting. It will be recollected that on the discovery of the murder, a knife was found on the grass outside the house. This knife was not the property of the Dewars. In Butler's speech he emphasised the opinion that this knife had been brought there by the murderer: "Horrible though it may be, my conclusion is that he brought it with the intention of cutting the throats of his victims, and that, finding they lay in rather an untoward position,
Butler rejected altogether the theory of ordinary theft. No thief of ambitious views, he said, would pitch upon the house of a poor journeyman butcher. The killing of the family appeared to him to be the motive: "an enemy hath done this." The murderer seems to have had a knowledge of the premises; he enters the house and does his work swiftly and promptly, and is gone. "We cannot know," Butler continues, "all the passages in the lives of the murdered man or woman. What can we know of the hundred spites and jealousies or other causes of malice which might have caused the crime? If you say some obscure quarrel, some spite or jealousy is not likely to have been the cause of so dreadful a murder, you cannot revert to the robbery theory without admitting a motive much weaker in all its utter needlessness and vagueness. The prominent feature of the murder, indeed the only feature, is its ruthless, unrelenting, determined vindictiveness. Every blow seemed to say, `You shall die you shall not live.'"
Whether Butler were the murderer of the Dewars or not, the theory that represented them as having been killed for the purpose of robbery has its weak side all the weaker if Butler, a practical and ambitious criminal, were the guilty man.
In 1882, two years after Butler's trial, there appeared in a New Zealand newspaper, Society, published in Christchurch, a series of Prison "Portraits," written evidently
A few years after its appearance in Society, this account of Butler was reproduced in an Auckland newspaper. Bain, the detective, wrote a letter questioning the truth of the writer's statements. He pointed out that when Butler first came to Dunedin he had been at liberty only a fortnight before serving his first term of imprisonment, very little time in which to make the acquaintance of a woman and dispose of the stolen jewellery. He asked why, if Butler had hidden the jewellery just before his arrest, he had not also hidden the opera-glasses which
At the same time, the account given by Butler's fellow— prisoner, in which the conduct of the murdered woman is represented as constituting the provocation for the subsequent crime, explains one peculiar circumstance in connection with the tragedy, the selection of this journeyman butcher and his wife as the victims of the murderer. It explains the theory, urged so persistently by Butler in his speech to the jury, that the crime was the work of an enemy of the Dewars, the outcome of some hidden spite, or obscure quarrel; it explains the apparent ferocity of the murder, and the improbability of a practical thief selecting such an unprofitable couple as his prey. The rummaged chest of drawers and the fact that some trifling articles of jewellery were left untouched on the top of them, are consistent with an eager search by the murderer for some particular object. Against this theory of revenge is the fact that Butler was a malignant ruffian and liar in any case, that, having realised very little in cash by the burglary at Stamper's house, he would not be particular as to where he might get a few shillings more, that he had threatened to do a tigerish deed, and that it is characteristic of his vanity to try to
Butler showed himself not averse to speaking of the murder in Cumberland Street to at least one of those, with whom he came in contact in his later years. After he had left New Zealand and returned to Australia, he was walking in a street in Melbourne with a friend when they passed a lady dressed in black, carrying a baby in her arms. The baby looked at the two men and laughed. Butler frowned and walked rapidly away. His companion chaffed him, and asked whether it was the widow or the baby that he was afraid of. Butler was silent, but after a time asked his companion to come into some gardens and sit down on one of the seats, as he had something serious to say to him. For a while Butler sat silent. Then he asked the other if he had ever been in Dunedin. "Yes," was the reply. "Look here," said Butler, "you are the only man I ever made any kind of confidant of. You are a good scholar, though I could teach you a lot." After this gracious compliment he went on: "I was once tried in Dunedin on the charge of killing a man, woman and child, and although innocent, the crime was nearly brought home to me. It was my own ability that pulled me through. Had I employed a professional advocate, I should not have been here to-day talking to you." After describing the murder, Butler said: "Trying to fire the house was unnecessary, and killing the baby was unnecessary and cruel. I respect no man's life, for no man respects mine. A lot of men I have never injured have tried to put a rope round my neck more than once. I hate society in general, and one or two individuals in particular. The man who did that murder in Dunedin has, if anything, my sympathy, but it seems to me he need not have killed that child." His companion was about to speak. Butler stopped him.
Having developed to the jury his theory of why the crime was committed, Butler told them that, as far as he was concerned, there were four points against him on which the Crown relied to prove his guilt. Firstly, there was the fact of his being in the neighbourhood of the crime on the Sunday morning; that, he said, applied to scores of other people besides himself. Then there was his alleged disturbed appearance and guilty demeanour. The evidence of that was, he contended, doubtful in any case, and referable to another cause; as also his leaving Dunedin in the way and at the time he did. He scouted the idea that murderers are compelled by some invisible force to betray their guilt. "The doings of men," he urged, "and their success are regulated by the amount of judgment that they possess, and, without impugning or denying the existence of Providence, I say this is a law that holds good in all cases, whether for evil or good. Murderers, if they have the sense and ability and discretion to cover up their crime, will escape, do escape, and have escaped. Many people, when they have gravely shaken their heads and said `Murder will out,' consider they have done a great deal and gone a long way towards settling the question. Well, this, like many other stock formulas of Old World wisdom,
Butler was more successful when he came to deal with the bloodstains on his clothes. These, he said, were caused by the blood from the scratches on his hands, which had been observed at the time of his arrest. The doctors had rejected this theory, and said that the spots of blood had been impelled from the axe or from the heads of the victims as the murderer struck the fatal blow. Butler put on the clothes in court, and was successful in showing that the position and appearance of certain of the blood spots was not compatible with such a theory. "I think," he said, "I am fairly warranted in saying that the evidence of these gentlemen is, not to put too fine a point on it, worth just nothing at all."
Butler's concluding words to the jury were brief but
In the exercise of his forbearance towards an undefended prisoner, Mr. Haggitt did not address the jury for the Crown. At four o'clock the judge commenced his summing-up. Mr. Justice Williams impressed on the jury that they must be satisfied, before they could convict the prisoner, that the circumstances of the crime and the prisoner's conduct were inconsistent with any other reasonable hypothesis than his guilt. There was little or no evidence that robbery was the motive of the crime. The circumstance of the prisoner being out all Saturday night and in the neighbourhood of the crime on Sunday morning only amounted to the fact that he had an opportunity shared by a great number of other persons of committing the murder. The evidence of his agitation and demeanour at the time of his arrest must be accepted with caution. The evidence of the blood spots was of crucial importance; there was nothing save this to connect him directly with the crime. The jury must be satisfied that the blood on the clothes corresponded with the blood marks which, in all probability, would be found on the person who committed the murder. In regard to the medical testimony some caution must be exercised. Where medical gentlemen had made observations, seen with their own eyes, the direct inference might be highly trustworthy, but, when they proceeded to draw further inferences, they might be in danger of looking at facts through the spectacles of theory; "we know that people do that in other things besides science—politics, religion, and so forth." Taking the Crown evidence, at its strongest, there was a missing link; did the evidence of the bloodstains supply it? These bloodstains were almost invisible. Could a person be reasonably asked to ex
In spite of a summing-up distinctly favourable to the prisoner, the jury were out three hours. According to one account of their proceedings, told to the writer, there was at first a majority of the jurymen in favour of conviction. But it was Saturday night; if they could not come to a decision they were in danger of being locked up over Sunday. For this reason the gentleman who held an obstinate and unshaken belief that the crime was the work of a homicidal maniac found an unexpected ally in a prominent member of a church choir who was down to sing a solo in his church on Sunday, and was anxious not to lose such an opportunity for distinction. Whatever the cause, after three hours' deliberation the jury returned a verdict of "Not Guilty."
Later in the Session Butler pleaded guilty to the burglary at Mr. Stamper's house, and was sentenced to eighteen years' imprisonment. The severity of this sentence was not, the judge said, intended to mark the strong suspicion under which Butler laboured of being a murderer as well as a burglar.
The ends of justice had been served by Butler's acquittal. But in the light of after events, it is perhaps unfortunate that the jury did not stretch a point and so save the life of Mr. Munday of Toowong. Butler underwent his term of imprisonment in Littleton Jail. There his reputation was most unenviable. He is described by a fellow prisoner as ill-tempered, malicious, destructive, but cowardly and treacherous. He seems to have done little or no work; he looked after the choir and the library, but was not above breaking up the one and smashing the other, if the fit seized him.
III. HIS DECLINE AND FALL
IN 1896 Butler was released from prison. The news of his release was described as falling like a bomb-shell among the peaceful inhabitants of Dunedin. In the colony of Victoria, where Butler had commenced his career, it was received with an apprehension that was justified by subsequent events. It was believed that on his release the New Zealand authorities had shipped Butler off to Rio. But it was not long before he made his way once more to Australia. From the moment of his arrival in Melbourne he was shadowed by the police. One or two mysterious occurrences soon led to his arrest. On June 5 he was sentenced to twelve months' imprisonment under the Criminal Influx Act, which makes it a penal offence for any convict to enter Victoria for three years after his release from prison. Not content with this, the authorities determined to put Butler on trial on two charges of burglary and one of highway robbery, committed since his return to the colony. To one charge of burglary, that of breaking into a hairdresser's shop and stealing a wig, some razors and a little money, Butler pleaded guilty.
But the charge of highway robbery, which bore a singular resemblance to the final catastrophe in Queensland, he resisted to the utmost, and showed that his experience in the Supreme Court at Dunedin had not been lost on him. At half-past six one evening in a suburb of Melbourne an elderly gentleman found himself confronted by a bearded man, wearing a long overcoat and a boxer hat and flourishing a revolver, who told him abruptly to "turn out his pockets." The old man did as
On June 18 Butler was put on his trial in the Melbourne Criminal Court before Mr. Justice Holroyd, charged with robbery under arms. His appearance in the dock aroused very considerable interest. "It was the general verdict," wrote one newspaper, "that his intellectual head and forehead compared not unfavour-ably with those of the judge." He was decently dressed and wore pince-nez, which he used in the best professional manner as he referred to the various documents that lay in front of him. He went into the witness-box and stated that the evening of the crime he had spent according to his custom in the Public Library. For an hour and a half he addressed the jury. He disputed the possibility of his identification by his alleged victim. He was "an old gentleman of sedentary pursuits and not cast in the heroic mould." Such a man would be naturally alarmed and confused at meeting suddenly an armed robber. Now, under these circumstances, could his recognition of a man whose face was hidden by a beard, his head by a boxer hat, and his body by a long overcoat, be considered trustworthy? And such recognition occurring in the course of a chance encounter in the darkness, that fruitful mother of error? The
The jury acquitted Butler, adding as a rider to their verdict that there was not sufficient evidence of identification. The third charge against Butler was not proceeded with. He was put up to receive sentence for the burglary at the hairdresser's shop. Butler handed to the judge a written statement which Mr. Justice Holroyd described as a narrative that might have been taken from those sensational newspapers written for nursery-maids, and from which, he said, he could not find that Butler had ever done one good thing in the whole course of his life. Of that life of fifty years Butler had spent thirty-five in prison. The judge expressed his regret that a man of Butler's knowledge, information, vanity, and utter recklessness of what evil will do, could not be put away somewhere for the rest of his life, and sentenced him to fifteen years' imprisonment with hard labour. "An iniquitous and brutal sentence!" exclaimed the prisoner. After a brief altercation with the judge, who said that he could hardly express the scorn he felt for such a man, Butler was removed. The judge subsequently
Butler after his trial admitted that it was he who had robbed the old gentleman of his watch, and described to the police the house in which it was hidden. When the police went there to search they found that the house had been pulled down, but among the debris they discovered a brown paper parcel containing the old gentleman's gold watch and chain, a five-chambered revolver, a keen-edged butcher's knife, and a mask.
Butler served his term of imprisonment in Victoria, "an unmitigated nuisance" to his custodians. On his release in 1904, he made, as in Dunedin, an attempt to earn a living by his pen. He contributed some articles to a Melbourne evening paper on the inconveniences of prison discipline, but he was quite unfitted for any sustained effort as a journalist. According to his own account, with the little money he had left he made his way to Sydney, thence to Brisbane. He was half-starved, bewildered, despairing; in his own words, "if a psychological camera could have been turned on me it would have shown me like a bird fascinated by a serpent, fascinated and bewildered by the fate in front, behind, and around me." Months of suffering and privation passed, months of tramping hundreds of miles with occasional breakdowns, months of hunger and sickness; "my actions had become those of a fool; my mind and will had become a remnant guided or misguided by unreasoning impulse."
It was under the influence of such an impulse that on March 23 Butler had met and shot Mr. Munday at Toowong. On May 24 he was arraigned at Brisbane before the Supreme Court of Queensland. But the Butler
The sentence of death was confirmed by the Executive on June 30. To a Freethought advocate who visited him shortly before his execution, Butler wrote a final confession of faith: "I shall have to find my way across the harbour bar without the aid of any pilot. In these matters I have for many years carried an exempt flag, and, as it has not been carried through caprice or igno-rance, I am compelled to carry it to the last. There is an impassable bar of what I honestly believe to be the inexorable logic of philosophy and facts, history and experience of the nature of the world, the human race and myself, between me and the views of the communion of any religious organisation. So instead of the `depart Christian soul' of the priest, I only hope for the comfort and satisfaction of the last friendly good-bye of any who cares to give it."
From this positive affirmation of unbelief Butler wilted somewhat at the approach of death. The day before his execution he spent half an hour playing hymns on
A Book of Remarkable Criminals | ||