Sunday, January 18, 2009
Postscript 2
Very sunny in the morning yesterday, so the world was a bright and cheerful place to fall into from out of the sack after the moderate intake of the night before. On the other hand, low flying sun a nusiance on certain stretches of the twisting road to Cheam. Must invest in those fancy sunglasses which incorporate your spectacle lenses - if I think I can bring myself to be seen in such things. The other hasard is the strobe effect one gets from the sun through the hedge when heading towards the newish St Paul's Church. Can be quite disorientating at times; even to the point if wondering if something worse could happen.
In this case, when pegging back up Howell Hill, an important postcript to yesterday's postscript came to mind. Firstly, there is the celebrated case of the brides in the bath. It seems that a modest number of brides died in their baths, towards the end of the 19th century, in various towns in Northern England, shortly after their weddings. Some relatives were a bit suspicious but nothing definately untoward was uncovered. Then, by chance, it turned out that the same gent. was the husband in every case. In a celebrated legal ruling, perhaps by a court of appeal, it was ruled that the circumstances of the first deaths were admissable in the trial of the last. While the crimes were indeed differant, the fact that the same husband figured in a number of similar cases was too much to put down to coincidence. As the adage goes, losing one bride in this way is bad luck, two is careless and three is felonious (in the older sense of the word). This ruling was one of the main planks on which material from one crime was admitted to the trial of another. But the Bryn Estyn case is rather differant: we are not talking about established facts about established crimes. We are talking about allegations on both counts.
Second, I have fallen into the same trap which I spend so much space here fuliminating upon. That is to say, the civil servants' cast of mind which says when there is a problem, dream up some rule to make it illegal. So in this case I am tinkering with the rules governing the conduct of trials. But the reasons for the trials occurring in the first place were cultural, perhaps anthopological, rather than legal. We were in the grip of a collective hysteria about abuse and needed scapegoats. Evildoers on whom we could heap our spleen and be cleansed. No tinkering with the rules was going to stop this, although, to be fair, it might have mitigated some of the effects. I don't know if the English are peculiarly prone to collective hysterias of this sort but I do remember the particularly bad attack at the time of the untimely death of Diana, Princess of Wales.
But arguing the other way, I have always found it hard to know how much of such things truly exists in the minds of the populace at large and how much exists in the pages of newspapers. Newspapers rant and rage about the ranting and raging out in the country about this or that event - but how much of this are they making up? Large headlines have the virtue of occupying a lot of space which one would otherwise have to spin words into.
In this case, when pegging back up Howell Hill, an important postcript to yesterday's postscript came to mind. Firstly, there is the celebrated case of the brides in the bath. It seems that a modest number of brides died in their baths, towards the end of the 19th century, in various towns in Northern England, shortly after their weddings. Some relatives were a bit suspicious but nothing definately untoward was uncovered. Then, by chance, it turned out that the same gent. was the husband in every case. In a celebrated legal ruling, perhaps by a court of appeal, it was ruled that the circumstances of the first deaths were admissable in the trial of the last. While the crimes were indeed differant, the fact that the same husband figured in a number of similar cases was too much to put down to coincidence. As the adage goes, losing one bride in this way is bad luck, two is careless and three is felonious (in the older sense of the word). This ruling was one of the main planks on which material from one crime was admitted to the trial of another. But the Bryn Estyn case is rather differant: we are not talking about established facts about established crimes. We are talking about allegations on both counts.
Second, I have fallen into the same trap which I spend so much space here fuliminating upon. That is to say, the civil servants' cast of mind which says when there is a problem, dream up some rule to make it illegal. So in this case I am tinkering with the rules governing the conduct of trials. But the reasons for the trials occurring in the first place were cultural, perhaps anthopological, rather than legal. We were in the grip of a collective hysteria about abuse and needed scapegoats. Evildoers on whom we could heap our spleen and be cleansed. No tinkering with the rules was going to stop this, although, to be fair, it might have mitigated some of the effects. I don't know if the English are peculiarly prone to collective hysterias of this sort but I do remember the particularly bad attack at the time of the untimely death of Diana, Princess of Wales.
But arguing the other way, I have always found it hard to know how much of such things truly exists in the minds of the populace at large and how much exists in the pages of newspapers. Newspapers rant and rage about the ranting and raging out in the country about this or that event - but how much of this are they making up? Large headlines have the virtue of occupying a lot of space which one would otherwise have to spin words into.
# posted by Jim @ 1:52 AM 
