The Project Gutenberg eBook of Rebecca Jarrett

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Title: Rebecca Jarrett

Author: Josephine Elizabeth Grey Butler

Release date: March 29, 2025 [eBook #75738]

Language: English

Original publication: London: Morgan and Scott, 1885

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/75738

Credits: Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK REBECCA JARRETT ***

Transcriber’s Note:

New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.

REBECCA JARRETT.

BY

JOSEPHINE E. BUTLER.

“Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith.”—MATTHEW xxiii. 23.

“And the Pharisees and scribes murmured, saying, This Man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them.”—LUKE xv. 2.

Tenth Thousand.

LONDON: MORGAN AND SCOTT,

(OFFICE OF “The Christian,”)

12, PATERNOSTER BUILDINGS, E.C.

And may be ordered of any Bookseller.

A CHEAP EDITION FOR DISTRIBUTION IS IN PREPARATION.

Price 1d.; or 7s. per 100.

REBECCA JARRETT.

The trial is over. Our tongues are now loosed; and we can speak. And we will speak. The whole nation will speak, I doubt not, for William Stead, about whose noble sacrifice of himself there is only one opinion. It is not needful for me to add my mite of testimony to the character of that man, whom I am proud to have called my friend for many years.

What I have to do is to speak of REBECCA JARRETT. I am prompted to do so by my love and pity for her; and also in response to multitudes of letters pouring in upon me, from men and women alike, expressing an opinion of her differing very much from that given in all the “leaders” of the London Press on the morning after the verdict.

And now I am about to speak the exact truth. I shall not attempt to clear her from the blame which attaches to her on account of her wavering in regard to truth under the cross-examination, nor for the distinct falsehood which she uttered when pressed about her past life. All I wish to do is to present the exact truth about her, in justice to herself, and to Mr. Stead, for whom she acted; and also to give some incidents of personal history, which may tend not only to palliate these departures from truth of which she was guilty, but to show that the situation in which she was placed was pathetic—even tragic—and one from which there was, humanly speaking, no escape.

I accept gladly such an amount of contempt, or half-scornful pity, as has been publicly expressed for myself on account of my having been duped, as is supposed, by this poor woman. While sitting in the Court during the Judge’s summing up, and observing how for the moment all alike—the good, bad, and indifferent—who were present, as well as the outside world, had for the time rounded upon this poor woman; and how she was made, so to speak, the residuary legatee of all the errors and mistakes committed by the other prisoners in the dock; and observing that this poor creature—the “fallen woman”—was made the scapegoat, the convenient burden-bearer, upon whose shoulders execration, and blame, and contempt might be heaped ad libitum without protest from any—I thought, What a picture this is of the condition of the world at large!

Down all the ages, since that hour when Christ and the outcast woman were face to face in the Temple, and every man in the surrounding crowd was pointing the finger of scorn at her, the world has continually been pointing the finger at this typical figure of woe, as the scapegoat upon whom, justly or unjustly, the sins and miseries of society must be heaped. The question has always been, “What shall we do with her?” Never till this last “new era” has dawned upon us, has it been asked, “What shall we do with him?”—him, her companion in sin. And now at last this woeful figure stands forth, perhaps for the first time in the world’s history, as a fellow-worker in a great and noble cause for the emancipation of women from galling slavery to vice and to the hard judgment of men.

My thoughts were many and deep: but a great calm pervaded my soul; for above all the scorn and contempt expressed for that woman, in which I was glad to be to some extent included—above all the wrangling and injustice of that Court—I saw, as on a throne of light, the figure of her Saviour and mine; and I recalled that scene when He, sitting at the dinner-table of Simon the Pharisee, was judged with the same worldly-wise pity and scorn which was now falling upon Rebecca and me. Simon, the gentleman, the man of the world, the righteous man, said, “This man (Christ), if he were a prophet (or even if he were a man of any common sense or knowledge of the world), would have known who and what manner of woman this is that toucheth Him; for she is a sinner.” I heard the whispers near me, “If Mrs. Butler had not been such a fool, she would have known what kind of woman this is, and would never have trusted her.” And I was well content.

It is very probable that if that poor woman of the city, who was a sinner, who washed the feet of Jesus with her tears, had been called a few weeks later into a Court of Law in Jerusalem, and been placed for one long day and-a-half face to face with a sharp and clever Attorney-General, to answer concerning her past life, she also might have stumbled and wavered, in order to save other poor sinners like herself, whom she would have necessarily involved in any full revelation of her past. And yet all the time she loved God; and her sins, which were many, were forgiven her.

I shall give a brief sketch of the life of REBECCA JARRETT, without entering into the details of its darkest incidents, which have been already sufficiently dragged to light at the Old Bailey. I think that, after reading it, any impartial person, knowing anything of our poor human nature, will say that, if she misled Mr. Stead, as the verdict of the Jury declares, she did not mislead him intentionally. She was put in an exceptionally difficult position for a person of her poor education and miserable antecedents. Her head ached and her brain reeled under those long hours of cross-examination, and her memory (never a good one) often failed her; but I, who knew her most intimately, here record my profound and unshaken conviction that throughout her heart was true—true to the cause which she had learned to love as we do—true to me, and true to Mr. Stead, whom she had heartily desired to help in the work which she had learned to see to be necessary.

The public has not had a fair chance of judging of the whole case, the newspaper reports having been imperfect, and in many cases one-sided. It is no pleasure to me or to my fellow-workers to speak ill of Mrs. Armstrong and Mrs. Broughton; but in justice to Rebecca, the extraordinary nature of their evidence ought to be recalled. Mrs. Armstrong stated, under cross-examination, “If I said that, then, at Bow Street, I told a lie.”[1] She accused her little daughter of having told a lie; she accused Mrs. Broughton of having told a lie.

1. With regard to failure of memory, it will be remembered that the newspaper reports stated that Mrs. Armstrong, when under cross-examination, contradicted her own previous evidence six times, besides contradicting her husband, her daughter, and Jane Farrer.

Mr. Stead cross-examined Mrs. Armstrong somewhat closely as to what specific statements, or allusions, or clue of any kind, there were in the “Lily” paragraph of the Pall Mall Gazette article, which first kindled her suspicions, and led her to conclude that her child was the victim referred to. Stead’s avowed object in this was to show the Jury that unless Armstrong had really sold her child, and had therefore a guilty conscience, it was strange for her to alight on the “Lily” paragraph as referring to herself and her daughter.

Thereupon the Judge stopped Stead with this remark:—“I suppose you will contend by and by that this child was sold, and that, knowing that, you took it to rescue it from evil. I suppose that is the story that will be told; but it does not appear to me that the question of what passages caused her to identify ‘Lily’ as her daughter will help the defence you must by and by set up.”

Now, it must be obvious to every impartial person that if Stead could have shown by the witnesses’ evidence that there was not sufficient in the article to justify her in assuming “Lily” was her daughter unless she had a guilty knowledge of the transaction described, he would have rebutted one of the charges brought against him. And yet the Judge checked the examination!

The Judge waited until this point had been further pressed upon Armstrong by Stead, and then remarked to Stead:—“I think you have got enough now to enable you to urge upon the Jury that the conduct of Mrs. Armstrong was not consistent with that of an honest and affectionate mother.”

All this seemed to have slipped out of the memory of the Judge when he pleaded so tenderly for these witnesses, saying that there were certainly some discrepancies in their evidence; but what could they expect from poor ignorant women under severe cross-examination? The same leniency was not asked for by the Judge in the case of Rebecca, whose “discrepancies” were of a somewhat different nature from those of the witnesses above named.

Now, regarding that terrible falsehood of which so much has been said—and which, as Rebecca said, was forced out of her by the Prosecution, in order to discredit the whole of her evidence—I must give a few words of explanation, such as they are. The motive for that lie was one which I have heard several good men say almost forces one to respect the poor woman. It will be recollected that certain companions of her former life—men—had come down to Winchester, and during a period, from a fortnight to three weeks, had haunted our neighbourhood and shaken Rebecca’s nerves and feelings exceedingly by their threats. These were her former friends and companions of many years past, bound to her, as she was to them, by ties of natural affection, which are often exceedingly strong among the most criminal classes. The very fact that they are themselves the pariahs of society sometimes increases that strong affection. In Rebecca that affection resembles almost the fierce love of the tigress for those whom her natural instinct leads her to defend.

The following are the facts, which contrast curiously with the hypothesis of the Attorney-General, distinctly stated in Court, that “the man Sullivan was a myth.” The man Sullivan, with others, believing Rebecca to be in a good position, probably making money—and fearful that her breach with them, which she had declared to them must be final, would lead to inconvenient consequences to themselves—used threats which, doubtless, they might have carried out had they had the opportunity. After a time I reluctantly appealed for protection to the Winchester police, who acted most kindly towards us, watching these men, and keeping a kind of guard over Rebecca.

The annoyance continued, however, for some time; and she became sad and troubled in appearance. She came to us one day and said, “I have made up my mind; I can bear it no longer. They are my old friends, and I am grieved for them; I want them to turn over a new leaf and be good men. Will you let me send all my girls from the cottage for the forenoon to the House of Rest, so as to leave me quietly alone in the cottage? I will then ask my old friends in, and have it out with them.”

I agreed, though not without some fear, for I had learned to understand the conflicting motives which worked in poor Rebecca’s mind—the intense love for her old friends and relatives, opposed by the inward vow never to return to them, and to break with all her past sinful life and companionships.

She carried out her plan, however. The men came in, and sat on chairs placed for them opposite to her. She spoke to them long and earnestly. She pleaded with them for their own souls’ sake; she told them of what God had done for her; she showed them in the cottage the proofs of the kind of life she was now living, and of the mission she was carrying out, under our auspices. They could not mistake the character of that little home of peace and love—the Bibles and hymn-books lying about, the texts on the walls, the neatness, the evidences of industry, the cheap contrivances to make the poverty of the place even tasteful and attractive. The men were touched for the moment. They saw the reality of what she had stated to them concerning her change of life. They left her quietly, but not before she had renewed to them her solemn promise never to bring them into trouble; and this time the promise was made, not as formerly, but in the name of the God whom she had learned to love, and as a Christian and a changed woman. The men were understood to receive her assurance as a proof of the sincerity of her change of heart, their natural feelings being, “Oh, now that you have turned a good woman, of course you will show us up.” It must be apparent how solemn were the feelings in Rebecca’s heart of the obligation never to harm them by any revelation made by her or step taken by her.

They afterwards went back from their better state of mind, and renewed their persecution: and this it was that decided us to send Rebecca away for a time from Winchester. A proof of my confidence in her may be seen in this—that I refused to give up the mission work and the cottage so long as there was a hope of her returning to it. I kept a place open for her; and it was not true, as Inspector Borner endeavoured to represent it in Court, that she had fled from fear of discovery, and that the cottage had been hastily closed. It was not given up for some three or four weeks later; and Rebecca herself wrote a letter from Jersey giving detailed advice as to what she thought we had better do, namely, to send “Katie” to one situation, “Emily” to another, and so on: and then, as she said, “Shut up the cottage until better times.”

Bearing in mind Rebecca’s solemn promise, made as a reformed woman and a Christian, and then following her to the witness-box on the first day of cross-examination, we can see how terrible was the position in which she was placed. She was ignorant of the old and well-known method of prosecuting Counsel, to take a poor man or woman whose life has been a bad one, all through the past years, and drag out of him or her confessions which the questioner knows well how to use.

The questioner knows perfectly well that there are points at which the wretched witness will hesitate, and that he has probably grave reasons for concealing certain facts about which he is asked; and so possibly a falsehood is forced out, and then the prosecutor, in a tone of high and outraged virtue, points out that not one single word of all that that perjured witness says can now be believed.

We, Rebecca’s friends, saw the device in advance; we saw the fatal snare laid for her: but she, poor soul! did not. She answered truly as far as she could, until it came to the giving of an address which would have involved others in trouble. Then there flashed across her the promise made in her evil days, and the promise made later from better motives, under her new character. There rose afresh in her mind the desire that those to whom she had given her promise should see that a reclaimed woman would not break her word. She was standing between two oaths—the first, made to her old friends; the second, made in the witness-box, to speak “nothing but the truth.”

Reader, were you ever in such a position?—between two solemn promises, both of which you desired to keep, but which were opposed the one to the other? If you ever were, you can feel for this weak young convert to truth, and you can pity her weakness. Yes, she told a lie. She looked across the Court at me with an expression on her pale face which I shall never forget.

That night, on returning to her lodgings, she spent several hours on her knees, weeping as if her heart would break; no word of consolation availed for her. It was in vain to try to comfort her. She cried, and screamed to God, “O God, I have told a lie; I have perjured myself in the witness-box; I have lied before the world; I have ruined this cause, and I have got all my kind friends into trouble! And yet, O God, Thou knowest why I did it—oh, Thou knowest why I did it. Look into my heart; Thou knowest why I did it!”

She was very stupid—very blundering. What she ought to have done was, on the first day of cross-examination to refuse, as she did on the second day, to give any evidence at all concerning years long passed, which had nothing whatever to do with the case of Eliza Armstrong. She was not sharp enough to see that. Meanwhile, Inspector Borner had been sent down by the Government to the places mentioned, and came back with the triumphant news that she had given a false address.

In the witness-box, on the second day, poor Rebecca, seeing the snare into which she had fallen, in a voice full of pain, said to the Attorney-General:

“You forced that lie out of me; you make people tell lies.”

Then she took up the attitude which she ought to have assumed at first, of a distinct refusal to say one other word concerning her past life.

“If you want to know about that,” she said, “you have got to find it out for yourself.”

During the whole of that day she was cross-examined; she suffering in health, her head aching, and her brain reeling. Any one who has ever been, for only a quarter of an hour, under the ruthless cross-examination of a Government Prosecutor, knows something of what it is. With all the desire in the world to speak the exact truth, one feels one may be any moment tripped up, especially by the repeated demand to answer, “Yes or No;” a demand which sometimes cannot possibly be obeyed consistently with truth.

I do not attempt to deal in detail with the discrepancies between the evidence given by Rebecca, concerning her account given to Mr. Stead of her transaction in Charles Street, and Mr. Stead’s own account of that given in the Pall Mall Gazette. I must say that those discrepancies do not seem to me so very extraordinary as the Judge or the Attorney-General appeared to believe them to be. Let us recall the circumstances.

I saw Mr. Stead frequently during the time of his “descent into hell.” I say now, as I have said before, that that man combines the deepest tenderness of a compassionate woman with the manly indignation and wrath of a man—a father, whose feelings are outraged by crimes committed against innocent maidens, the helpless, and the young. At the time that he was making his investigations, those who saw him were sometimes almost afraid for his reason. He scarcely slept. We know what his nights were, when he, a pure-minded man, nurtured in the most refined and sternly Christian home, was going through the agony of visiting the infamous houses of the West End, where the leaders of the conspiracy of gold and lust reign triumphant. He was night after night seeing sights which made his brain reel and his heart bleed. At times he was tempted to give up all faith in God, in justice, in the atoning sacrifice, and the love of Christ.

“It is a sham,” he would cry, “a horrible sham, the whole of our professed Christianity and civilization.”

He felt as a man walking on the thin crust of a burning volcano, which might at any moment break under the feet of our people and let them down into the gulf beneath. His eyes were like burning coals within his brain. He had to pass rapidly from one part of his work to another with scarcely any interval of rest. He himself has confessed he did not take notes at the time of his conversation with Rebecca. An interval of some weeks passed before he wrote the story, which he, however, confidently believed he was writing truly as from Rebecca’s lips.

Rebecca herself, true as steel at her heart, was, as Mr. Stead has said, “muddled and confused in brain.” The troubles and long illnesses of her past life have not left her with the best of memories or the clearest power of expression. Between those two there arose some confusion in the recital of certain facts; but to me it appears that these facts were not vital to the case. She distinguished between the terms “brothel” and “bad house,” and Mr. Stead did not. Mr. Stead stated that she told him a certain house was a brothel. In the witness-box she said, “No, it was not; but it was a ‘bad house.’” The one term in her mind represented a house where immoral persons reside for immoral purposes; the other more of the character known in France as a house of assignation.

But the lines between the two expressions were not to her so distinct as they might seem to the learned Judge; nor, indeed, are they at all clearly defined by the police in their occasional raids upon the vices of the poor, and their more than occasional overlooking of the houses of ill-fame to which rich and high-placed profligates resort. The police apply these terms with remarkable freedom, in accordance with certain principles which guide them in their official action.

While Rebecca was speaking, in answer to the Judge, of her old friend Broughton, she had, I believe, before her mind the promise she told us had been made to “Nancy,” that she would not get her into trouble. This accounts for her evidence against Nancy having been softened down in the Court, and thus not wholly agreeing with the description of her former friend which she had given to Mr. Stead. Here, again, the motive of regard enters for her former friends and companions whom she desired to spare. No one can say, who saw her under that fearful day of cross-examination, that Rebecca tried to shelter herself. She was forced in the most cruel manner to speak of her past life, and of incidents and shameful things in it which had no bearing whatever on the present case. But she did not shrink from what affected herself. Her wavering began and ended where loyalty to her old friends came in.

In the month of May, while talking to Rebecca of the way in which God had drawn her out of her wretched life, I asked her several questions, and she replied, “I will write some day for you a little history of my life in my poor way.” “This is just for yourself,” she said. She did so; and turning over my papers to-day I find an old copy-book in which there is the following record in her own handwriting, and with her own poor defective spelling and grammar. I give it as it is:—

“THE HISTORY OF A RESCUED WOMAN.

“ISAIAH lix. 1.—‘Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear.’

“ISAIAH liv. 7, 8.—‘For a small moment have I forsaken thee; but with great mercies will I gather thee. In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment; but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the Lord thy Redeemer.’

“Rebecca Jarrett was born of respectable parents, her father being a good tradesman; but through his excessive drinking brought on failure of business, and early death of the father, the mother having to struggle hard with seven children. Rebecca being the youngest, and the only daughter, as would be expected, the mother lavished a good share of her love and care on her. This daughter lived at home with her mother till the age of fifteen, being brought up in a private school; but the chief thing was neglected in the bringing up of this daughter—the name of Jesus was never mentioned, nor a prayer thought of by this loving mother for her family. So Rebecca was brought up in ignorance of her Redeemer and Saviour.

“At the age of fifteen she entered into service, but only stopped one month in her first place, remaining at home again for seven weeks. Then she was taken into a good family as housemaid, being tall of stature; and after living there for five months (she was then a little over fifteen) she came in contact with one of the gentlemen visitors, who by flattery and presents led her to meet him in the evening unknown to her mistress.

“On a Good Friday she went for a day’s holiday to her home. After having tea with her mother and brothers, she left that home, not to enter it again for some years; for that evening, as she was returning home to her master’s house, she was met by this deceiver and led away from the path of virtue. By making some excuses for her absence she was taken back to her place, but still carrying on this sin till she could hide her state no longer. She was bound to leave her place. From there she went to Southampton, where she was met by this gentleman, who accompanied her to St. Helier’s, Jersey, where she was left alone by him to get over her trouble under the care of a Frenchwoman.

“In January a little girl was born. She was then taken to Fairfield, in Derbyshire, with her child, where she lived for two years with this man as his mistress, till another child was born. He then took her to Manchester and placed her in a house of ill-fame to get a living for herself and her two children, which she did for twelve months, carrying on a sinful career and giving way to drink and all kinds of vice.

“She afterwards met with an accident from a fall, by which she sustained the injury to her hip which lamed her for life. She was laid up for a considerable time in an infirmary. On leaving the infirmary, she found that her two children had been taken away from her; the father claimed one, and the other died. This loss of her children broke that young woman’s heart. The one was put away in some school which she could not trace. They kept it from her, as they said she was leading a bad life, and was, therefore, not a fit mother to have the charge of her children. About that time she was advised to go into a Home; but her heart was turned to bitterness on finding herself scorned by all who knew her, and the one thing she had been longing for and living for, she had been deprived of—to hear the voice of her children. One fond word from them would have woke up her mother’s heart within her, and made her try to do better. To feel their little arms around her neck once again, and to hear them call her ‘mother’ once again! Though they were the children of sin, yet she had a mother’s love for them; but they were gone from her for ever.

“Some kind hands were put out to help her then, but she refused all help, and returned with her mother to London, where she drowned her sorrow in drink. She afterwards made several attempts to begin again a respectable life, but fell from one sin to another. She then met with a man who took her about as his wife. He was a commercial traveller, but he could not give her the peace and rest which her heart was longing for; and from this time she entered still further into sin by taking four more of her poor sisters, to join her in her sinful career of life. Oh, my kind friends, where was God during all this time not to awaken her up? Why was her heart so hardened not only for herself, but to lead her younger sisters into sin?

“It would have been well if her sins were ended here; but they did not. For after awhile a larger house was taken, and more poor girls were taken in. What horror to think that she was the cause of many of those poor girls being introduced into a life of sin and vice; some of them leaving their homes—father and mother, perhaps, far away in the country; some led away by false deceivers, who, to gain their purpose, bring them to these houses.

“The girls thus brought in are led to believe they are being taken to some of their friends, and when they enter they find the house filled with poor unfortunates; and then with drink they are soon overpowered, and the seducer gains his purpose. After this the poor girls mostly feel there is no rise for them now; they dare not let their friends know what has happened; so they stop where they are, and give themselves up to an evil life. The great condemnation is for that landlady to encourage such sin. Such is the history of Rebecca Jarrett.

“Once a poor girl came from Exeter, and having lost her situation, came to Rebecca to live where she was. She afterwards caught cold; but no notice was taken of it, till at last the doctor was sent for. Inflammation of the lungs was pronounced to be very bad, till she found she could not get over it. She then thought of her Sunday-school and her aged parents. She asked Rebecca to pray; but no one in that house knew how to pray, and could not do so. Her parents were sent for from Exeter; but she was dead when they came. She died the same morning, and with no prayer offered up for her. Rebecca cannot now bear to think of the day when that father and mother came to witness that loved daughter dead in that house.

“You can guess what were the feelings of Rebecca, who had led her into sin, when she saw the look of that father and mother, who knew that she had helped their daughter to her sinful career. What sharp remorse, and what despair she felt! Will God ever forgive her? For that one soul did she not deserve to be cast down in her sins? But she did not listen to the voice of God even then, her heart was so hardened; she still went on in her sins.

“I fancy I can hear you say, ‘It was time she was cut down,’ but Jesus Christ did not think so. She was taken from London to Northampton by a man, leaving her house in the care of her mother and brothers, who had come to live with her. She had been a week at Northampton, when she was down ill of bronchitis. The doctor came and ordered her to keep her room. She was left a great deal alone at that time. And now it was that God began to awaken her from the sleep of death in which she had been for thirteen long years, ‘having her understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that was in her, because of the blindness of her heart; who, being past feeling, had given herself over to lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness’ (Eph. iv. 18). ‘Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and find none: cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground? Lord, let it alone this year also’ (Luke xiii. 7).

“Rebecca was very ill, and no one to look to her, except the landlady of the lodging, who belonged to the Salvation Army; and by her speaking to the Captain of the Northampton Corps, unknown to Rebecca, she came to visit her. Rebecca was extremely rude to her at her first and second visits, but in consequence of her loving care and attention to her while she was so ill, she allowed her to come often; but she would not listen to the message of salvation which the Captain wished to give her.

“Still this noble woman would not be daunted in the work for her Master. She got Rebecca to go and live with her in her own house, and as she found that talking was of no use, she just lived her life of a good Christian before Rebecca, which made a great impression on her; so that at last she consented to come up to London to Mrs. Bramwell Booth’s Refuge.

“She got very unsettled again, and longed to go back to her old home; but dear Mrs. Booth prevailed with her, though it sometimes took many hours’ pleading and praying for her: and even then she was not saved. But the great conflict had begun. She was rescued the 21st December. In the following January, while at Mrs. Booth’s, she came across some of her old companions, who pressed her to go home, with the excuse that her mother was ill and the house going out of order.

“On the 14th January they noticed her packing her box, and began to question her about the meaning of it; and she told them she was going back home again. Mrs. Bramwell Booth spent the whole of the morning, and the next day, pleading with her; but it seemed of no use. In the afternoon the kind friends still would not give her up. Dear Mrs. Booth, Miss Sapsworth, and all of them, kneeled around her as a last resource. They gave her into God’s hands, and asked Him not to let her go, for the sake of her own soul, and for the sake of the poor girls whom she had kept in her house.

“The conflict was great, for Rebecca had to give up her home and relatives, and to cast herself, entirely dependent, on the hands of strangers. But God was strong to deliver, and He helped the kind friends; for at five o’clock that day, after seven hours of prayer and pleading, God gave the victory, and Rebecca fell down at the feet of Christ Jesus and acknowledged her misery and sin. And He who had watched over her during all these years of sin took her that night and washed her in his own precious blood from every stain.

“After this Rebecca was taken ill, and had to go to hospital. Mrs. Booth thought it was best for her to leave London, as she had a bad hip, and they sent her to Mrs. Butler’s hospital Home at Winchester to rest for a time, and get her away from all her friends in London; as her own mother and brothers would be looking to her for support, and the man she had lived with, and others, were doing all they could to get her to come back. This made her new course of life very difficult. She was more than two months in the hospital (House of Rest), but was often wavering and unsettled in mind.”

Rebecca goes on to tell of a deepening of the work of grace in her own soul; especially speaking of a day in April, when, after many hours of inward conflict, she rose from her knees with a beaming face. She then continues:—

“Till then Rebecca had always had the idea when she prayed that she was speaking to God, but that He was far away from her; but on this day in April it was different. She felt as if she had that day met with Jesus, and she has kept closer to Him since that day. ‘God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you. Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness’ (Rom. vi. 17).

“After staying awhile longer in the Winchester House of Rest, God put it into Miss Humbert’s heart to go out into the streets at night and seek those poor fallen girls. So on the first Saturday night after this Miss Humbert took Rebecca with her to try and undo some of the evil she had done, by speaking to her poor lost sisters in the streets and in the public-houses. (Rebecca, who had been very lame from hip disease, recovered the power of walking somewhat suddenly during a time of earnest prayer that God would heal her completely; and after this she walked without fatigue for many hours a day in her mission work.) Twelve of those girls were spoken to on the first night of the mission, and on the following Monday were visited in their homes; and from that time Rebecca went on working for her poor sisters.

“A cottage, to which we gave the name of ‘Hope Cottage,’ was got for her, so that Rebecca could take her poor sisters home with her when she rescued them; and, thank God, one was rescued from a bad house after two years of a sinful life, even before they had got the furniture into the cottage. A week later another was brought in who had been leading a sinful life fourteen years. She was broken down in body; but God called her at the eleventh hour to give up all sin, and give herself to Him. Another and another was got in; and then some of these rescued ones went down to Portsmouth and visited over forty houses of ill-fame. They got their poor sisters to come home with them to their lodging, and gave them tea, and afterwards spoke to them about God. They might have got some of these poor girls to have stopped altogether if they had only had a place to bring them to. Some under the age of fourteen were carrying on the life of prostitution, sometimes in company with men over forty years of age—old enough to be their grandfathers.

“You, dear friends, who read this history will hardly realize it is true; but you have a living witness of the truth of it. This is not written in order to speak of the sinful past; but to encourage Christian friends to help the poor rescued ones on their new life—for the struggle is hard. No one knows but those who have gone through it.

“I would like to say it was not the being shut up in a Home for a length of time that won Rebecca, or brought her to God. It was the love and kindness of those around her. If love and kindness will not bring them to God, no locking up in a Home will. Often on our visits we hear the girls tell us they have been in such and such a Home; and when they get out they have again sunk as deep in sin. Dear friends, speak to these poor creatures, and tell them you love them, and let them see that you love them; and then they will believe in God’s love. I write this from my own experience; this is how I was won for Jesus by my friends in Winchester and London: not by preaching to, but by their love for me—a poor, miserable sinner, scorned by all men.”

To this account of herself I must add—what Rebecca cannot so well tell—some details of the work she did in Winchester. It was from my observation of her, and her influence amongst the most degraded of men and women, that I conceived the idea of a little Mission School of reclaimed women, who might be trained to go forth to seek and save the lost of their own sex. So far as we were able to carry out this idea, we found it wonderfully fruitful; and I do not mean to lose sight of it on account of a temporary check.

Rebecca’s influence here was something extraordinary. Her love and pity for the worst sinners were genuine and unbounded. She shrank from nothing that might have been repulsive or difficult to a more refined or less loving nature. She went straight into the worst and lowest dens of infamy, choosing frequently for her most arduous work the Saturday night, when drunkenness most prevails. She would stand in the midst of a den full of men and women of the lowest type, get them down on their knees, pray with them and for them, and teach them to pray; and when other persuasions failed, she related to them what she herself had been, and what God had done for her.

The reality of what she thus recorded struck home; many faces turned to her in wonder, and the fact that she had been one of themselves and now ardently desired their salvation, seemed to have a power to win their hearts and to overcome their incredulity, beyond any power which the words of a more blameless person might have had. Her influence was great with those low drunken men who abound in towns where the Contagious Diseases Acts have been in force; lazy scoundrels who disdain work, and live upon the prostitution of those poor creatures (formerly Government prostitutes), whom they tyrannize over, and often treat most cruelly. One of these, who afterwards attended our meetings like a man “clothed, and in his right mind,” came lately, on hearing of her visit to Winchester, to express his gratitude to her for what she had done for him.

A man and his wife, who had kept a notorious house of ill-fame for a great number of years in Winchester, were persuaded by her to give up their house, and induced even to co-operate with her in helping some of the inmates to a better life; and they themselves, yielding to her persuasion, took rooms near her, not far from the cottage. Their evil house was closed, and remains closed to this day. This place had withstood the repeated efforts of the police and of philanthropists; and at last succumbed to the simple persuasions and strong love of this poor woman—the same who during the recent weeks has been made the object of the fullest vocabulary of scorn, hatred, and contempt.

The man and his wife, above referred to, hearing that Rebecca was with us for a few days in the interval between the hearing at Bow Street and the trial at the Old Bailey, came to us begging that they might “just see her here for one moment to say, ‘God bless you,’” and added, “for what should we have been but for her?”

I must again mention Mary ——, to whom I recently referred in speaking at Exeter Hall. She was a handsome woman, of superior intelligence and nature, who had lived in great sin, and was bound in that life by affection to a man who, though not worthy of it, seemed to exercise a strange spell over her. Week after week, Rebecca pleaded with her in the streets, with tears and most earnest entreaties; and at last she prevailed. The poor woman came, suffering and ill, to Hope Cottage, too ill indeed to be properly received there; but Rebecca welcomed her, and she was put into an upper room, and nursed with the utmost tenderness and unwearying love by Rebecca, in circumstances which to most people would have been almost intolerable. It was one of those cases in which the sufferer becomes a mass of corruption before death. The inhabitants of the neighbouring cottages were so annoyed that they made a formal complaint: in consequence of which it became necessary at last to remove her to the pest-house of the Union, where she died. But during her sojourn with Rebecca, this poor Mary —— thought she was “in heaven.” The love of the woman who did everything for her with her own hands, although faint from the sickening odour of the wounds she had to dress, won that poor soul. She saw what the Saviour of sinners was, through the faint likeness of Him reflected in this poor Rebecca. She accepted the message of salvation which Rebecca brought to her.

We were obliged to take precautions, and remove other inmates from the house. Rebecca felt constantly sick, but never uttered the slightest expression of disgust; and if her task was spoken of to her as a sacrifice, she repudiated the idea, and said, “Oh no, I would do anything for her; I love her so much.”

When these things passed before my mind in the Law Court, during the five long hours of summing up, in the course of which the most dishonourable epithets were applied to this “disgusting and abominable woman,” I again recalled that scene in the Temple, where a sinful woman stood in the midst of a crowd of accusers; and I thought, If the Lord Jesus Christ had entered that Court of Law, and standing in the midst, had said to all present, from the highest to the lowest, “Let him that is without sin among you cast the first stone at her”—would any have moved? How many would have left the Court? How many would have remained? Rebecca Jarrett’s vindication has yet to come. But it will come. I wondered if such an act of self-sacrificing love could ever come even within the range of the imagination of many in that Court; and I remembered that there is a God in heaven, who, while man’s condemnation was falling so crushingly on her, was not and will not be unmindful of “her labour of love.”

The success of the mission on which I sent Rebecca to Portsmouth, accompanied by two of her rescued friends, who were being trained in the Cottage, has been testified to by others resident there, who continued to write urging us to allow her to come again. I take a few extracts from the little Journal which she kept at that time at my request. It is headed by the words, “Is not the Lord gone out before thee?”

“May 4th.—Took lodgings in Portsmouth. Went to a Salvation Army meeting. Asked God for fresh courage for the work.

“May 5th.—A wet day. Plenty of work for us. Visited in —— ——, No. 27, Mrs. S—— and three girls; Mrs. P——, No. 28; Mrs. T——, No. 29, a Roman Catholic, and three girls. Spoke to two; one promised to come to us. Visited Nos. 31, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42. No. 44, full of girls.

“May 6th.—Went visiting the ‘bad houses’ three hours in the afternoon. Katie and Mrs. S—— spoke to five; and I and Katie went for three hours at night to Queen Street. Stopped about nine girls. Spoke and prayed in the evening meeting of the Salvation Army.”

The same kind of report follows of May 7th, giving addresses of ten houses visited.

Similar reports for following days.

At the end of the mission, when they left Portsmouth—where they were most lovingly helped by Salvation Army friends—some of these poor girls followed them to the station with grateful offerings of humble bouquets of flowers, wishing them God-speed. They quickly recognized those who really loved them.

My own relations with Rebecca are illustrated by the following letter, written by me to her at Portsmouth. I find it among her little treasures left behind with me:—

“THE CLOSE,

“May.

“MY DEAREST REBECCA,—We have read with deep interest all your letters; and our hearts are following you with love and earnest prayer. I know the state of Portsmouth must make your heart sick with sorrow to see vice reigning unrebuked, and souls perishing unrescued. The town is so large; ‘the fields are white to the harvest, but the labourers are few.’ Don’t let yourself run short of needful money, my dear, so long as you think you can usefully remain where you are; for I am sure our God will supply me with the needful funds. I deeply sympathize with your wish to go and preach Jesus to your former acquaintances in London; but you must come back here first, dear Rebecca. The Cottage and the work do not seem at all the same thing when you are away. Give my dear love to Katie. I am so happy in thinking of you. Every blessing be with you.

“J. E. BUTLER.”

The following is an extract from one of her letters to my friend and secretary, Miss Humbert, about the same time:—

“My heart is set upon the Winchester work. You have led me on wonderfully in God’s service, which I never could have done without your help. We shall be at Winchester at 3.42. I have two girls, I think, coming; one a little girl of 14.[2] We are taking her from one of the worst streets here. There are three sisters. We have begged the mother to let them come home with us; but they will only let this one come. All three are living in sin. And we have another, I think, of 20 years of age. We believe we shall not come home empty-handed. Last night one of the poor girls brought me two lovely bunches of flowers and a nice geranium in a pot, and she says she will come to Winchester to me; but she has got to sell her house. I have a lot to tell you when I come home.”

2. In future Rescue Work of this kind, we must, if Mr. Justice Lopes rightly interprets the law, be on our guard to obtain the formal consent of the father before any child is taken out of the life of sin. We have always believed the mother’s consent was enough.

As the summer went on, Rebecca expressed the feeling sometimes that some severe discipline was in store for her. She wrote in July to Miss Humbert:—

“I feel there is some trouble coming. I could wish now I had never left my home and undertaken this other affair. I love you all very much. Do you think it would be best to shut up the Cottage for a time? I have left them no money; for I had only 5s. If you will look at my books, I only owe the baker for the bread; he never brought his book. I wish I had you with me this afternoon to hear your loving words.

“Your grateful, rescued,

“REBECCA.”

The Attorney-General made much of the idea he had conceived, which indeed has no foundation in fact—that Rebecca undertook the work she did for Mr. Stead, because she knew that her whole future depended on her doing it. “She knew,” declared the Attorney-General, “that she would lose her position with Mrs. Butler;” her future with Mr. Stead would be damaged; her whole prospects in life ruined—unless she did this thing. In this, as in many other assertions, Sir R. E. Webster is absolutely wrong. Rebecca had nothing either to gain or to lose by undertaking the work of Mr. Stead. The pressure put upon her was far from being what the Attorney-General asserted it to be. I said in my evidence in the Court (but it was not reported in any newspaper) that Rebecca had lived sufficiently long with me to have learned to share my convictions and wishes concerning the mass of criminal vice existing in London and other places.

Many a conversation have we had together in my own room or elsewhere on this subject; and in our prayers together we have asked God to let in the light upon this mass of wickedness, hitherto carefully shrouded by the conspirators of greed and lust. She had wept before me over the sufferings of the children; and when it was told her that Mr. Stead was about to take some desperate action to draw the veil aside and overcome the worst obstacle we had found opposed to us in the last fifteen years—namely, the incredulity of good people as to the existence of these crimes—she was ready to do her little best to help in the great work. We were as sisters together, not “employer and employed”—as reiterated by the Attorney-General and the Judge. She never received one penny of pay from me, nor from any one here, nor from Mr. Stead. I placed her here in the humble cottage, and gave her work to do; when her boots or her gown were worn out I may have supplied her with some of my own old clothing, as she always wished to have a neat appearance: and I can testify to the fact that the comforts and adornments of the cottage were of a very humble description; the food was very plain, and the economy exercised by Rebecca was severe. I have all her little account-books before me as I write; and it is touching to me to mark her strict conscientiousness over every penny spent, and her plans for saving, even perhaps to the disadvantage of herself and her girls, as much as possible.

She had nothing to lose or gain by undertaking the work for Mr. Stead, which proved to be too hard for her. I had her with me for several hours previous to her going to London, and we talked the matter fully over: we asked God to guide us; and to this hour I believe He did guide us, in spite of our mistakes. If Rebecca had said, on leaving the room that day, “Mrs. Butler, I cannot undertake this work,” I should have replied, “All right, dear Rebecca, don’t attempt it. Go back to your work at the Cottage.” She would not have incurred one moment’s displeasure from me; and she knew it.

I here interpose a remark. It may be asked, What induced me to unite with Mr. Stead in making use of so poor an instrument, so young a convert, and one with so terrible a past history, for the difficult work for which we engaged her? To this I reply that Mr. Stead needed for his purpose an “ex-brothel-keeper:” that was the character he told me he must have. He had tried several, who professed more or less of sincerity. They each at the very outset got drunk, and made off with the needful money he gave them to carry out his directions. Supposing that you who ask the question wanted for an end—which certainly was a holy, though a desperate one—such a character as this, where would you turn? Is such a person easy to find for such a work? Is it usual to find one who would have combined anything like a wish to serve a good cause with the experience of a disreputable past? It must be obvious to you how difficult it was to find the person wanted.

I do not wish to make any excuse for my own share in the hardihood and imprudence to which I am ready to confess, and of which I was guilty in asking Rebecca to undertake this difficult work; but in an exceptional enterprise we were forced to use exceptional means; and I can echo the words of Mr. Stead, that even our mistakes and want of wisdom have been, and will be, overruled for the success of the great cause we have at heart.

Supposing we had seen a house in flames, and we knew that in that house were shut up a number of little children who must perish unless the doors were broken open. The doors are barred: no entrance can be effected except by a violent blow. We seize the first instrument we find to our hand in the attempt to break open the door; but the instrument is too feeble, and breaks in our hands. Will you blame us because of that fact?—or will you not rather remember that one thought alone was present to our minds; and that was the horrible fate that awaited those children, and that our hearts were filled with the one absorbing desire to save them?

Rebecca continued her Mission work in Winchester with success, after the incident of the procuring of Eliza Armstrong, up to the 11th July, when she left Winchester.

Much was said in the Court about the letter written by Rebecca to Broughton on the 10th of June. It seems to have perplexed many people: to me it was quite clear. My own friends at least will accept, as worthy of credit, what I have to say concerning this; though I expect nothing but derision from the cynics who posed during the Trial in pretended astonishment over the hypocrisy of the woman who professed a desire for the real good of a person who had sold her child.

I had followed Rebecca’s inmost thoughts and mind during all this period. She felt that in acting the part imposed upon her, she had, perhaps, done an unkind thing. Day after day her yearning after little Eliza became more intense. I said to her on one occasion, “You seem to have an extraordinary love for that child; how is it?”

She replied, “The child and I have gone through so much together—through such strange scenes: and I do long to have her with me, to act straight towards her and her poor mother, and to show them what I really am, and what I feel towards them.”

I can attest that, beyond all doubt, poor Rebecca dwelt night and day upon the thought of making the whole story “end well.” She built a sort of castle in the air, in which she continually dwelt. Her plan—her dream—was as follows: To get the child from Paris; to have her with us here to train and teach her; then a little later to take her herself to Charles Street, London, to present her to her mother and father, and to Mrs. Broughton, and to make use of her own position towards her—as well as the child’s well-being—to convince these poor people that she (Rebecca) was indeed a changed character; and try to show them that, low and sinful as she knew them to be, the same Saviour who had changed her could change them, and enable them to live new lives.

We spoke together of a plan of inviting Mrs. Armstrong to come and stay a few days at the Cottage. We would, Rebecca hoped, induce her to give up the drink; and we would show her the happy life of those who had really turned from their sins, and were serving God.

The end in view, in writing this letter and the subsequent postcards, was the conversion of these poor souls. Yes, in spite of all that the Judge, the Attorney-General, the London Press, and ten thousand cynics may say, this was the real and true feeling and purpose of Rebecca’s heart. There are others, besides myself, who can testify to it.

The Attorney-General suggested that I am a weak and amiable person, who could be made to believe anything by any poor wretch who chooses to “pose” before me as a “Magdalen.” I have had a life-long experience of the most unhappy of my own sex; compared with which the experience of the gentlemen in the Court—even the most advanced in life—is that of mere children. I cannot therefore be surprised at their crude judgments in the matter. Some of them expressed wonder at Rebecca having a single kindly thought toward Mrs. Armstrong. How little do they know of human nature, in its conflicts, and wrestlings to free itself from sin, in its flashes of generosity and high feeling, even in its worst estate! Men of the world are wise, no doubt, in their generation; but often blind to much which concerns the spiritual world and the deepest life of the human soul. My astonishment was great, as I sat in that Court, at their own confession of their deep ignorance of human nature.

That letter of the 10th June, then, clumsily (for Rebecca is clumsy in all her ways and words) expressed the desire of the writer to prepare the way for the interview with Mrs. Armstrong and Mrs. Broughton, which was to be the beginning of a new chapter in the story; and the beginning, she hoped, of blessing to their souls. No opportunity was given me in the Court of throwing any light on this part—or any part—of her actions, although I was known to be her most intimate friend; and we were told, ad nauseam, that the question of “motive” could not be in any way admitted.

What I here state is confirmed by the letters written later by Rebecca to Mrs. Bramwell Booth, in which were the following expressions:—“Her conscience reproached her,” she said, “for leaving the child alone among a lot of foreigners.” “I am a mother myself, and have a mother’s heart. I loved this little one as a mother does.” And the little one loved her; and would have been well cared for if she had been left in Rebecca’s hands.

I do not here enter into the details of the alleged “abduction” process, of which we have heard enough and more than enough of contradictory statements and conflicting views.

Among the incidents connected with the Old Bailey, I will just mention, however, a conversation I had with Mrs. Bramwell Booth at the close of one of the most painful days in Court. I quote only from memory: her words were true and wise words.

Leaning sadly against a window, looking out on the Court, she said to me: “Oh, Mrs. Butler, how little do these men know of the lives of the very poor! How little do they understand what it is for a poor creature to free himself or herself from vicious surroundings and the wretched past! and how little do they know of God’s patient dealing with such souls struggling out of darkness to light!”

“Our heathen in England,” I replied, “are in the position of the heathen converts to whom St. Paul wrote as ‘dearly beloved in the Lord,’ and ‘called to be saints.’ Yet shortly afterwards he has to instruct these same people in the first principles of morality. ‘Let him that stole steal no more.’ Men must be honest, and work, and not live by rapine. He has to rebuke them both for vices and crimes, such as incest, and for drunkenness while partaking of the sacrament.”

“No,” she answered: “our highly-placed, worldly-wise gentlemen have no real experience of the ignorant, wretched populations of heathen England; else they would know that even when the heart of one of these is thoroughly turned to God, perfectly sincere, and meaning to lead a new life, the conscience still is for long enough covered with the rust of past evil habits. They are strangers—absolute strangers—to the ethics of Christianity in which we, more happily placed, have been carefully trained from childhood. The conscience, even after conversion, has to be trained and polished, so to speak. To us a lie, or even the approach to prevarication, is a thing which we carefully avoid and condemn in ourselves. To them, accustomed to lie, cheat, swear, etc., during their whole lives, it is not so easy—even after the poor soul has come out into the light, and is filled with the joy of salvation—to shake off the habits of falsehood and prevarication. It is in vain to expect the full education of a trained Christian in such converts drawn from the slums.”

Mrs. Booth continued:—“I think they would judge differently of the sincerity of Rebecca, if they could have seen her as I have seen her in the first weeks after her rescue. I have stood over her and wiped the great drops of perspiration from her forehead, when for hours she has wrestled in a kind of death-grip with her old temptation—the love of strong drink. Once she had obtained a glass of spirits after some hours of depressing faintness and exhaustion through her self-imposed abstinence. With this standing before her, she prayed in an agony; I watched her, prayed with her, and pleaded for her; and she conquered, and thrust it from her. This may seem a little thing to persons who have never been slaves to drink; but it is not a small thing; it is a test of a real and desperate sincerity in one who has been a subject of that raging passion.”

The following little note was written to me by Rebecca in the Old Bailey, and passed along to me:—

“THE DOCK,

“November 7th.

“DEAR MRS. BUTLER,—I do thank you very much for your love and kindness to me during all this time of trouble; and more especially for your confidence in me after all the terrible things you have heard said of me by the Prosecution in this Court. I am not at all flinching from the punishment which will be put upon me. God will be with me in prison, and with all of us. What we did was done for a good end; and God will stand by us all. But think of me; pray for me. You know how unwilling I was to do all that; but I do not mind what people think of me. God knows all about it. Remember me very kindly to Canon Butler, and to all I know at Winchester—Miss Humbert, Mrs. Hillier, Mrs. Jones. My love and deepest gratitude to yourself and your sister, Mrs. Meuricoffre. God bless you.

“From your REBECCA.”

Canon Butler, to whom she alludes with affection, has often testified to his good opinion of her. He writes of her thus, in response to an application from a friend:—

“THE CLOSE, WINCHESTER,

“November, 1885.

“I hear that Rebecca Jarrett is likely to suffer from prison treatment. I cannot refrain from expressing a hope that she maybe treated with all possible leniency during her imprisonment, for the following reasons:—

“(1.) She has suffered for some time from a weak hip, which frequently troubled her when she was at the House of Rest.

“(2.) Because, when she was at Winchester, her conduct was excellent, both as matron of a small cottage with several girls under her charge, and as an active agent in rescue work.

“(3.) Because, whatever may have been her faults, I believe her to be a sincere convert, and capable of being usefully employed for Christian work.

“GEORGE BUTLER, D.D.,

“Canon of Winchester.”

I brought Rebecca home with me on the night of the 7th, after the verdict. On Sunday, the 8th, we had a crowded meeting in our House of Rest, to express sympathy with her. Canon Butler spoke on Paul and Silas in prison, singing praises to God at the midnight hour. Rebecca said, after the meeting:

“Don’t trouble about me, kind friends; I don’t mind the prison. This is how I take it. I have been a great sinner in the past; and I take this going to prison as a chastisement for my past, and not for what I did for Mr. Stead, which I did with a good motive.”

When talking privately to Miss Humbert, she said, “I have been so tired and knocked about. I do feel I would like to be alone with God in the prison, even if it was for a year.”

I cannot help alluding, with gratitude, to the kindness and loyalty of several of the barristers in the Court—for the most part young men—and to their personal courtesy to us; to Mr. Read, who has twice been bail for Rebecca; and to other friends whom I might mention. I am sure that fortnight in the Old Bailey was an educating time to many.

Numerous great questions have been focussed in this bitter struggle; amongst others, the question of the gradual slipping away of some of our constitutional liberties, over which many of us have mourned for years. I made my protest publicly, seven years ago, against the withdrawal of the prisons of the country from local control, and the centralization of their management in the Home Office. I foresaw the tyranny which might henceforth be practised without hope of redress; for now, when an abuse arises, or a prisoner is cruelly treated, we can only appeal from the wrong-doer to the wrong-doer, from the tyrant to the tyrant; and we know by experience how little hope of justice we have when we appeal to the Government against the wrong-doing of its own officials.

Again, I protested publicly against the institution of the Public Prosecutor. I know that it is pleaded that there are occasions when such an institution is indispensable. It may be so; but I have observed for many years past on the Continent—and now the same observation is beginning to hold for England—that in cases where any question affecting morality or the action of reformers of abuses is involved, the Government, through its Public Prosecutor, almost invariably sides with the vicious against the virtuous—almost invariably acts in the interests of that portion of society which seeks to hide abuses by a conspiracy of silence, by which all hope of reform is barred. We cherish the hope that, in spite of the encroachment of principles foreign to the English sense of freedom, the sacred institution of Jury-trial will continue in its integrity, and that English Judges will continue to be impartial and just, as in our past history they have for the most part been.

I can scarcely exaggerate the shock it was to my feelings, as a humble watcher for many years for my poor country’s good, to hear that summing up of Mr. Justice Lopes on Saturday, Nov. 7th, and the tone in which he repeatedly impressed on the Jury that they had no alternative but to find a verdict of guilty against two of the accused. He had previously ruled out any question of the mother’s authority in disposing of her child, and based the question entirely on that of the father; and then, again and again, he reminded the Jury, that this being the case, and it being clear that the father’s consent had not been obtained, they, the Jury, could consequently pronounce but one verdict. Surely the country will be on its guard in future as to what may be expected whenever a Government prosecution is heard of in connection with any question of this nature vital to the moral life of the people.

I was also surprised to hear the Judge say more than once that he did not understand, and was astonished at, the interest which this case had excited in the country. It is no defect of intellect which prevents the appreciation by the Judge of the deep interest taken in this case by the thousands in our land who appreciate the vital principles involved in it. It is the habit of men of the world to look at all things from the point of view of the conventional standard of society in which they move—a society which seems to be becoming yearly more corrupt.

I am much mistaken in my reading of physiognomy if the majority of those Jurymen were not themselves surprised at the Judge’s summing up. I believe them to be honest men, who intended to be thoroughly just; but they were placed in a difficult position, the ground having been so narrowed on which they were to pronounce their verdict, and having been forced to eliminate from their considerations all question of motive.

It is as true of human law as of Divine law, that “the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.” It is equally true that, by a blind adherence to technical formalities, administrators may find themselves acting in direct opposition to the spirit of the law, while carrying it out in the letter.

Mr. Auberon Herbert justly remarks that the time for free discussion of the attitude of our judicial tribunals has come, when the lay sense of justice and the legal sense of justice diverge. We are a law-abiding people: hence it is all the more easy for a Judge, by basing his decisions upon a merely technical idea of justice, to overawe and unduly influence for a time the good and moral portion of the community, so as to produce a temporary verdict outside the Law Courts which agrees with that inside in condemning those who have rendered the highest service to the nation by labouring to make the law more “honourable.” But that verdict is only temporary. The real, well-considered verdict of the nation is yet to come. Present events are educating the people in regard to their own share of responsibility for the personal character and acts of our judges and magistrates, as well as of our representatives in Parliament.

William Stead, worn out and ill, has written in a moment of depression words which I regret in his farewell leader in the Pall Mall Gazette. He speaks of having had a fair trial; compliments the prosecution; confesses himself to have been to blame; hopes that nothing will be done to reverse the sentence. Against some of these expressions the country will loyally protest, though we shall readily forgive our brave and beloved friend for having fallen momentarily into such a tone.

Perhaps Mr. Stead may think that he himself was courteously treated; but what of the courtesy or even decent fairness shown in regard to Rebecca, upon whom the utmost of vituperation permissible in a Court of Law was vented?

In conclusion, I think I scarcely need to say any word to those who have been my fellow-workers in the cause of Purity for many years. They, I am sure, rejoice, as I do, in the midst of all our trouble, that this question has come fairly to the front, and that it can never be thrust back again into darkness. God is using the blindness of our Government, of the Press, and their supporters, to bring about some great revolution for good which could not be born without agonizing birth-pangs. No great thing has ever been done except through suffering. The Salvation Army are not wrong in taking for their device the words—“Blood and Fire.” Revolutionists for God and for purity must be ready to go through blood and fire.

Though for the moment hearts may fail, and the wicked seem to triumph and sin to have the victory, already we have our reward in many ways—in the passing of a better law, and in the partial check given to the great machinery of criminal vice, even without the action of the law, by the publicity given to the machinations of the evildoers. Surely every one who can move, speak, write, or pray, will now haste to the rescue. No reticence on the part of the Public Press, or any other power, will ever succeed in drawing the veil again over the horrors which have been once exposed, nor in stifling the cry of the poor victims.

A young girl spoke to me a day or two ago, having heard of the result of this trial. With despair in her eye, and bitter scorn on her lips, she spoke in a low, muffled tone, and said:

“I am sure God doesn’t care a bit for girls. Whenever there is a chance of something being done for us, and of these wicked men being punished, then the Government comes and stops it all; and the good people are punished and frightened, and all the work is put an end to; and girls are as badly treated as ever. God lets off the bad rich men so easily, and doesn’t care for us girls a bit.”

I said to her: “Stop, child; have a little patience, and you will see.” But she only answered in the same low, bitter, scornful tone: “But we have waited so long—so long!” Do not let this poor child’s expression of despair be forgotten. It is typical of what thousands are realizing, more or less consciously to themselves. But that God does not care is not true: and we shall prove it! If justice and judgment linger, it is only that their triumph may be the more complete.

Thousands of hearts and consciences will respond to the following words of Rev. HUGH PRICE HUGHES:—

“While our Government is squandering thousands in an attempt to ruin the one man to whom we owe a revolutionary improvement in the law, they are doing practically nothing to stop the real evil. The police of our great provincial towns are already effecting unprecedented moral improvements under Mr. Stead’s Act. But the 10,000 Metropolitan policemen, under the direction of the Government, have done nothing except allow Mrs. Jeffries to escape, rebuke Minahan, and prosecute Mr. Stead. All the journals which for fifteen years have never broken their conspiracy of silence, except to advocate the obscene and iniquitous Contagious Diseases Acts, are now howling against Mr. Stead. To each of them, as to Judas Iscariot of old, it must be said: ‘That thou doest, do quickly.’ ‘This is the hour and power of darkness.’ Now is the time to betray the cause of virtue. Stab away with your malignant and mendacious articles at the quivering hearts of pure women and good men. Hasten to fill up the measure of your iniquity. Jesus of Nazareth, the Friend of sinners, the Protector of children, has heard our prayers. The night is far spent. The long-expected day of Purity and Justice and Brotherhood is at hand.”

London: MORGAN & SCOTT, 12, Paternoster Buildings.

REBECCA JARRETT.

BY

JOSEPHINE E. BUTLER.

PRESS COMMENTS.

“This little book is one which should be read by all who desire to know the truth about the recent trial at the Old Bailey. Feelings of respect and sympathy cannot fail to be called forth towards one so earnest-hearted and devoted as the writer.”—British Women’s Temperance Journal.

“All fair-minded persons ought to welcome the account of Rebecca Jarrett’s life, just prepared by Mrs. Josephine Butler. We venture to think that the perusal of this pathetic sketch will modify those hard and bitter feelings towards this woman, which some good and sincere people think themselves justified in cherishing.”—The Christian.

“We beg our readers to purchase at once the little book which Mrs. Josephine Butler has just issued, entitled ‘REBECCA JARRETT.’ It is published at sixpence by Morgan and Scott. It places Rebecca Jarrett in quite a new light, and brings out the real character of the recent trial more clearly and fully than it has been brought out by anybody else.”—REV. HUGH PRICE HUGHES in The Methodist Times.

NOW READY.      FOURTH EDITION.

Handsomely Bound.      Price Six Shillings.

CATHARINE OF SIENA:

A BIOGRAPHY.

By JOSEPHINE E. BUTLER,

Author of the “Memoir of John Grey of Dilston,” &c.

WITH A PORTRAIT ENGRAVED ON STEEL.

EXTRACTS FROM REVIEWS.

The Spectator says—“Mrs. Butler, as we cannot but believe, has achieved a great success, and of the pages of this remarkable biography it is difficult to say whether they reflect more strikingly the aspects and events of the great century in which Catharine lived and laboured, or the personality of the saint herself.”

The Literary World says—“The story of Catharine of Siena, as told by Mrs. Butler, presents the saint in such a new light, that it is well worth reading by those who would turn with weariness from the lives of the saints as told either by the Bollandists or Benedictines. It teaches us that, as one man in his time can play many parts, so a life which we are tolerably familiar with in one aspect may be seen in a totally new light, according as it is grouped with others or simply studied by itself.... We are ready to admit that we have made a discovery in reading this life of St. Catharine, and the discovery is all the more striking since Mrs. Butler has apparently not sat down with any intention of rehabilitating the fair Sienese saint.”

The Dundee Evening Telegraph says—“We see in the beautiful character portrayed by the accomplished authoress of this volume a noble, pure and devoted Christian worker. She visited the forsaken prisoner; she brought comfort and hope to the lost and abandoned; she visited the sick, and in the hour when all human help fails and the fairest hopes of earth wither, we see her holding before the plague-stricken dying people the sacred emblem of sorrow and of triumph, and pointing undismayed to the unfailing refuge.”

The Freeman says—“No Christian reader will fail to be edified by the devout spirit and the profound sympathy with all that is noble and heroic in philanthropy, which pervades both the biographer and the subject of the biography.”

The Christian says—“We should be glad that all the women of England, and especially the Christian women, should read this noble life.”

LONDON: DYER BROTHERS, PATERNOSTER SQUARE

(CORNER OF ROSE STREET).

May be ordered through any Bookseller, or will be sent post-free on receipt of the published price.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

- Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.

- Used numbers for footnotes.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK REBECCA JARRETT ***

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Table of Contents

REBECCA JARRETT.

REBECCA JARRETT.

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE