‘By the light of the silvery moon...’ except Southey’s unnamed barrister used a doctored almanac to discredit the prosecution’s chief witness and assure the jury that, on that the night of the robbery, there had been no silvery moon by which his client could be identified. ‘Not’ as Horace Rumpole would say ‘in the best traditions of the Bar.’ In the later case, there is nothing to suggest that Lincoln’s almanac was anything other than the genuine article; but having sowed reasonable doubt in the jurors’ minds, he pursued his advantage with a masterly summing-up. “The last fifteen minutes of his speech” said an aide “was as eloquent as I ever heard... The jury sat as if entranced, and when he was through, found relief in a gush of tears.”
THIS brings to my recollection a legal anecdote, that may serve to exemplify how necessary it is upon any important occasion to scrutinize the accuracy of a statement before it is taken upon trust.
A fellow was tried (at the Old Bailey if I remember rightly) for high-way robbery, and the prosecutor* swore positively to him, saying he had seen his face distinctly, for it was a bright moon-light night. The counsel for the prisoner cross-questioned the man, so as to make him repeat that assertion, and insist upon it. He then affirmed that this was a most important circumstance, and a most fortunate one for the prisoner at the bar: because the night on which the alleged robbery was said to have been committed was one in which there had been no moon; it was during the dark quarter! In proof of this he handed an almanack to the bench, — and the prisoner was acquitted accordingly.
The prosecutor however had stated every thing truly; and it was known afterwards that the almanack with which the counsel came provided, had been prepared and printed for the occasion.*
In this anecdote, it is evident that the ‘prosecutor’ means not the public prosecutor or the counsel for the prosecution, but the person who had first laid charges against the defendant.
* Lincoln was accused of having forged his almanac too, in the sensational and eerily similar case of alleged murderer William ‘Duff’ Armstrong (1833–1899) which came to court in 1858. Armstrong was accused of murder by slungshot (a seaman’s weighted rope) on the basis of an identification which the chief prosecution witness swore benefited from a bright moon overhead, its position “just about that of the sun at ten o’clock in the morning;” Lincoln in cross-examination encouraged the witness to reaffirm his testimony most particularly, and then brought out his almanack to show that the moon could have been neither so bright nor high in the sky at the time. Lincoln, who received no fee, followed this up with an emotional speech to the jury and Armstrong was acquitted.
Précis
Writing in 1837, Robert Southey told readers how an unscrupulous English barrister secured a short-lived acquittal for his client, charged with robbery. Counsel brandished an almanac apparently proving that the chief prosecution witness had lied when he said the moon was bright enough for a formal identification — but it turned out that the almanac was a forgery. (57 / 60 words)
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