Note 1 — Front matter

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.”