The Dublin Railway Murder

by Thomas Morris

At the climax of his speech, Mr Curran summarised the case against Spollin in words that dripped with sarcasm. ‘You are asked to convict him because money belonging to Mr Little was found near the place where he had worked; because an ordinary padlock was found in red lead under the money. You are asked to find him guilty of this murder because the hammer found in the canal and which fits the wound exactly is not proved to have been his, and because the first razor is not shown to have been his, and another with his name scratched upon it has turned up at a subsequent search in a place where it might have been thrown by any member of his family. You are asked to come to the conclusion that he is the murderer because of a ridiculous story which the children tell of having seen him at the chimney, and about a sun bonnet of a lilac colour which Julia Lyons, who is said to have made it, is not called to identify, and because of some idle talk which took place on the premises. You are asked to convict him because the press in this country and in England have raised an outcry, and public opinion has demanded this man as a victim. ‘You are in an awfully responsible position. You are now sitting in judgment, the arbiters of the fate of this unhappy man, but before you come to a conclusion that he is guilty, you must weigh the evidence carefully, and ask yourselves, does the evidence sustain this charge? If it is at all consistent with his innocence you must acquit him. I now leave...

The defendant at a murder trial in nineteenth-century Ireland was not permitted to give evidence, a measure intended to protect them from wily prosecutors and the dangers of self-incrimination. But if the rules gave a superficial appearance of even-handedness, in other respects the deck was stacked against the prisoner.

With regard to the discrepancies which do exist, you are told by the Crown that they are not material, and therefore should not destroy the credit of a witness with you; on the other hand, the counsel for the defence alleges that they are mistakes which a truth-telling witness could not make. The defence suggests that the children, in giving evidence, both acted under the control of their mother. Of course, if you believe this, you will not give credence to any statement they made.

then it will be for you to say whether that be not consistent with his guilt, but inconsistent with his innocence.’

‘Gentlemen, if you come to the latter conclusion you are bound in the discharge of a painful duty which you and all of us owe to the public, irrespective of consequences: to bring in a verdict of guilty. But let no feeling of the heinousness of the crime induce you, for one moment, to act on the feeling that justice requires a victim. Justice requires no victim; justice requires and prefers that ninety-nine guilty men should escape, than that a hair of the head of one innocent man should be sacrificed to mistake. And may the Almighty guide you to a true and just verdict.’

Even among those who believed that James Spollin was guilty, few suggested that the jury had reached the wrong decision. In a thoughtful editorial published immediately after Spollin’s murder trial, The Times argued that ‘it would be impossible to say that the evidence was conclusive, and the verdict a wrong one’. Reading the transcript of the trial today, it is difficult to see how a competent and impartial jury could have reached any other verdict. The prosecution had no physical evidence connecting Spollin with the crime scene. They could not link him to the supposed murder weapons, or prove that he had been anywhere near Mr Little’s office on the night of the cashier’s death. The most damaging evidence offered against Spollin was the allegation, made by two of his own children, that he had lied about his whereabouts on the evening of the murder – but the inconsistencies in their testimony, ruthlessly exposed in cross-examination, rendered their contribution almost worthless. Once the evidence of Lucy and Joseph Spollin was disregarded, the case against their father looked not so much flimsy as non-existent. The Crown argued that he knew the station buildings well, and that the stolen money had been found near his cottage. But these facts made him no more likely to have committed the crime than dozens of other railway employees. There was a gaping void at the heart of this prosecution, and everybody knew it. The one person whose evidence might have proved James Spollin’...