On the bright autumn day that their mother was sentenced to death, three children dressed in deep mourning sat in the sunshine with their governess. They knew that their papa was dead, and that was why they were in black. They were told that their mamma was very, very ill--too ill for her children to be with her--and that she "might die." But the little ones had not the slightest idea that the mother who "might die" was accused of having killed their father. When the verdict had been given, and the sentence pronounced, the children were taken away by a relative and brought up under another name. The law did not in this instance "take its course." At the last moment there was a reprieve, and the death sentence was commuted to one of penal servitude for life.
A curious circumstance has stamped the day of that reprieve on my memory.
On the morning that the Home Secretary's decision was announced I was at Madame Tussaud's Exhibition. The effigy of the condemned woman had, in deference to public opinion, which was divided, been put in a separate room, instead of in the Chamber of Horrors--the usual department for condemned criminals.
On the day of the reprieve a number of people were standing in front of the figure, which was naturally a special attraction. "Ah!" said a man standing near me, "they'll have to take her out of this place altogether some day."
Fifteen years later this woman was released on license, or, as those who cling to old forms of expression say, "ticket-of-leave." That very day her effigy was removed from the premises, and it no longer forms part of the exhibition.
This convict came out into the world. The fact was duly recorded in the Press with considerable emotional comment, and the old dispute as to her guilt or innocence was temporarily revived.
But to how many people did the most dramatic feature of the tragedy present itself? Few of those who re-discussed the celebrated case in all its points remembered that the children of the "murderess" had lived their lives and grown up in ignorance of their mother's fate.
When the unhappy woman was free once more, did she seek her children and reveal herself, or did she mercifully leave their lives unshadowed by the knowledge that the celebrated convict about whose release all the world was talking was their mother?