During the early years of my tenure of office as a criminal Judge I became, and still am, firmly impressed with the belief that to enable one filling that office to discharge the twofold duty attached to it—­namely, that of trying the issue whether the crime imputed to the prisoner has been established by legal evidence, and if so, what punishment ought to be imposed upon the prisoner, assuming the presiding Judge to be the person to determine it—­it is absolutely essential that he should keep the whole of the circumstances in his mind and carefully weigh every fact which either forms an element in the constitution of the offence itself or has a substantial bearing as affecting the aggravation or mitigation of the punishment; for it is not only essential that these matters should be known to and appreciated by the Judge who tried the case, but that they may be also presented for the information of the Home Secretary, who ought to be acquainted with them, so that he may form a satisfactory view of the whole of the circumstances surrounding the case.

A strange story that will ever stand out in my memory as one of the most dramatic of my life was that of a young lady who was a professional nurse at the General Hospital at Liverpool.  She was young, clever, and, I believe, beautiful, as well as esteemed and loved by all who knew her.

She had become engaged to an engineer, and it had been arranged that she should pay a visit to her mother in Nottingham on a Friday, so as to acquaint her with their engagement, the intended husband having arranged to come on the following Monday.

The parents were poor, respectable people, and the girl herself was poor, so that she had no change of attire, but went in her professional nurse’s dress.  It was her intention, however, to buy an ordinary dress at Nottingham.

There was a dressmaker in that city whom her mother knew, and with whose children in their early days her daughter had played.  Accordingly in the evening the nurse with a younger sister went to the cottage to make the necessary arrangements.

While she was there the son of the dressmaker came in, and was at once attracted by the beauty and the manner of the girl.  As they had known one another in childhood, it was not surprising that they should talk with more familiarity than would have been the case had they been strangers.

When the nurse rose to go, the young man asked permission to accompany her to her mother’s.  She declined, but he persisted in his request.

This man was a clever mechanic, and had invented a machine for making chenille.  Sad to say, this invention he used for the purpose of inveigling the girl into his workshop, which was situated on the second floor of an extensive range of warehouses in a yard at Nottingham.  He asked her to come on the Monday morning, and when she informed him that her lover was to come by the 12.30 train at Nottingham Station, he said if she came at eleven she would have plenty of time to see his invention, and then meet him.  She at last consented.