第69章
Here is her evidence, given at Aylesbury Petty Sessions, August 22, before Lord Nugent, Sir J. D. King, R. Brown, Esq., and others:
'"After my husband's corpse was brought home, I sent to Tyler, for some reasons I had, to come and see the corpse. I sent for him five or six times. I had some particular reason for sending for him which I never did divulge. . . . I will tell my reasons if you gentlemen ask me, in the face of Tyler, even if my life should be in danger for it. When I was ironing a shirt, on the Saturday night my husband was murdered, something came over me--something rushed over me--and I thought my husband came by me. I looked up, and I thought I heard the voice of my husband come from near my mahogany table, as I turned from my ironing. I ran out and said, 'Oh dear God! my husband is murdered, and his ribs are broken.' I told this to several of my neighbours. Mrs. Chester was the first to whom I told it. I mentioned it also at the Saracen's Head."
'Sir J. D. King.--"Have you any objection to say why you thought your husband had been murdered?"
'"No! I thought I saw my husband's apparition and the man that had done it, and that man was Tyler, and that was the reason I sent for him. . . . When my neighbours asked me what was the matter when I ran out, I told them that I had seen my husband's apparition. . . .
When I mentioned it to Mrs. Chester, I said: 'My husband is murdered, and his ribs are broken; I have seen him by the mahogany table.' I did not tell her who did it. . . . I was always frightened, since my husband had been stopped on the road." (The deceased Edden had once before been waylaid, but was then too powerful for his assailants.) "In consequence of what I saw, I went in search of my husband, until I was taken so ill I could go no further."
'Lord Nugent.--"What made you think your husband's ribs were broken?"
'"He held up his hand like this" (holds up her arm), "and I saw a hammer, or something like a hammer, and it came into my mind that his ribs were broken."
'Sewell stated that the murder was accomplished by means of a hammer. The examination was continued on August 31 and September 13; and finally both prisoners were discharged for want of sufficient evidence. Sewell declared that he had only been a looker-on, and his accusations against Tyler were so full of prevarications that they were not held sufficient to incriminate him. The inquiry was again resumed on February 11, 1830, and Sewell, Tyler, and a man named Gardner were committed for trial.
'The trial (see "Buckingham Gazette," March 13, 1830) took place before Mr. Baron Vaughan and a grand jury at the Buckingham Lent Assizes, March 5, 1830; BUT IN THE REPORT OF MRS. EDDEN'S EVIDENCE NO MENTION IS MADE OF THE VISION.
'Sewell and Tyler were found guilty, and were executed, protesting their innocence, on March 8, 1830.
'Miss Browne, writing to us [Mr. Gurney] from Farnham Castle, in January 1884, gives an account of the vision which substantially accords with that here recorded, adding:--
'"The wife persisted in her account of the vision; consequently the accused was taken up, and, with some circumstantial evidence in addition to the woman's story, committed for trial by two magistrates--my father, Colonel Robert Browne, and the Rev. Charles Ackfield.
'"The murderer was convicted at the assizes, and hanged at Aylesbury.
'"It may be added that Colonel Browne was remarkably free from superstition, and was a thorough disbeliever in 'ghost stories.'"'*
*From Phantasms of the Living, Gurney and Myers, vol. ii. p. 586.
Now, in the report of the trial at assizes in 1830 there is not one word about the 'ghost,' though he is conspicuous in the hearing at petty sessions. The parallel to Fisher's case is thus complete.
And the reason for omitting the ghost in a trial is obvious. The murderers of Sergeant Davies of Guise's, slain in the autumn of 1749 in Glenclunie, were acquitted by an Edinburgh jury in 1753 in face of overpowering evidence of their guilt, partly because two Highland witnesses deposed to having seen the ghost of the sergeant, partly because the jury were Jacobites. The prisoners' counsel, as one of them told Sir Walter Scott, knew that their clients were guilty. A witness had seen them in the act. But the advocate (Lockhart, a Jacobite) made such fun out of the ghost that an Edinburgh jury, disbelieving in the spectre, and not loving the House of Hanover, very logically disregarded also the crushing evidence for a crime which was actually described in court by an eye-witness.
Thus, to secure a view of the original form of the yarn of Fisher's Ghost, what we need is what we are not likely to get--namely, a copy of the depositions made before the bench of magistrates at Campbelltown in October 1826.