Kate Clarke > Quotes

“Tomorrow Louise Masset is to be hanged. Today, therefore, while there is yet time we wish to ask the Home Secretary once and for all whether the case is so absolutely free from all element of doubt as to justify him in thus ruthlessly coming to an irrevocable decision. We hold no brief either for or against Louise Masset. She may be innocent or she may be guilty. Our only concern is that justice shall be done. Our only contention is that sufficient doubt exists and sufficient fresh evidence has come to light since the trial to justify at least an examination of these witnesses before the wretched woman is hurried out of this world.”
― Kate Clarke, Trial of Louise Masset:

“But the account which she gave of her movements on that day when her child was admittedly murdered, and the entire narrative which she asked the jury to believe, confirmed, by their inherent weakness, the very positive case put forward against her by the Crown. To take a single crucial point – she surrenders the care of her child to strangers of whom she knows nothing, and whose place of residence she does not think it worthwhile to visit beforehand. It is not likely that a woman really devoted to her child would act in this manner. In addition to this piece of negative evidence, we have a tissue of other improbabilities – the sudden appearance of the unknown baby-farmers, their equally prompt disappearance after the tragedy, not the faintest sign of their presence in the waiting room or the apartment where the poor child was done to death, and the time said to have been spent by the prisoner in wandering about Brighton, without managing to leave such traces of her roamings as would enable their genuineness to be ascertained.

Against this strange texture of improbable circumstances the jury had to set a formidable body of facts. It was undoubted that the prisoner was herself the last person in whose care the child had been seen. She secured possession of the child by falsehood. Some of the clothes that he had worn before his murder were found in her hands. The brick with which the deed was done resembled in shape and general appearance bricks to which she had access in the home of a friend [referring to Léonie Cadisch’s house] and it could easily have been carried in the bag which she had with her on the day of the murder. All that could be said to weaken these considerations was that no human being could be so callous as to make a murder the preliminary act in an intrigue. But, unhappily, the history of crime shows how untrustworthy are deductions of this sort.”
― Kate Clarke, Trial of Louise Masset:

“Despite their desperate efforts to persuade the Home Secretary to issue a reprieve, the family members did Louise and her son a great disservice by shutting their doors on Manfred instead of helping Louise to overcome her evident despair at her situation. Had the family been less judgemental – if they had welcomed Manfred, instead of rejecting him – this murder might never have happened. Yet, because of their small mindedness over Manfred’s birth, their shame was to be compounded a hundredfold by Louise’s infamous death at Newgate.”
― Kate Clarke, Trial of Louise Masset:

“Admitting that the prisoner possessed great intelligence and ability, he mingled his admiration with regret that much of the quick talent of a southern race, with which she was connected, should be used to defeat the ends of justice. If it were true that she was a woman of resource, and would invest statements with circumstantiality, it was obvious that to an iron nerve that was necessary to commit this crime must be added the tongue of the serpent.”
― Kate Clarke, Trial of Louise Masset: