Note Footnote 2: — Chapter II

The evidence before any Court of Inquiry into an exciting occurrence is almost certain to reveal similar discrepancies. But what we find it hard to realise is that we ourselves can possibly be mistaken in what we have a distinct and positive recollection of having seen. It once happened to myself in a London street to see a drunken woman thrown under a cab by her husband. Two cabs were running along, a four-wheeler and a hansom: the woman staggered almost under the first, and was thrown under the second. As it happened the case never got beyond the police station to which the parties were conveyed after fierce opposition from some neighbours, who sympathised entirely with the man. The woman herself, when her wounds were dressed, acknowledged the justice of her punishment, and refused to charge her husband. I was all the more willing to acquiesce in this because I found that while I had the most distinct impression of having seen the four-wheeler run over the woman's body, and should have been obliged to swear accordingly, there could be no doubt that it was really the hansom that had done so. This was not only the evidence of the neighbours, which I suspected at the time of being a trick, but of the cabdriver, who had stopped at the moment to abide the results of the accident. I afterwards had the curiosity to ask an eminent police magistrate, Sir John Bridge, whether this illusion of memory on my part—which I can only account for by supposing that my eyes had been fixed on the sufferer and that I had unconsciously referred her injuries to the heavier vehicle—would have entirely discredited my testimony in his Court. His answer was that it would not; that he was constantly meeting with such errors, and that if he found a number of witnesses of the same occurrence exactly agreed in every particular, he would suspect that they had talked the matter over and agreed upon what they were to say. This was the opinion of an experienced judge, a skilled critic of the defects of personal observation. An Old Bailey counsel for the defence, who is equally acquainted with the weakness of human memory, takes advantage of the fact that it is not generally understood by a Jury, and makes the fallacious assumption that glaring discrepancies are irreconcilable with the good faith of the witnesses who differ.2