On the 28th of June, 1887, Miriam Agnel was murdered at her house in Batty Street, Whitechapel.

A lodger in the same house, Israel Lipski was subsequently charged with her murder, and, after a trial at the Old Bailey, was sentenced to death.

However, several people and organisations, were convinced that Lipski was, in fact, innocent of the murder, and a campaign was launched to secure a reprieve.

On Saturday the 13th of August, 1887, with time rapidly running out for Israel Lipski, The Pall Mall Gazette published the following article, imploring the Home Secretary, Sir Henry Matthews, to change his mind, and grant a reprieve:-

A LEGAL MURDER – LIPSKI

We are getting on.

After legal robbery, legal murder. After the consecration of the principle of plunder by the Scotch Conveyancing Act, the consummation of the act of murder by the execution of Lipski.

So it seems it is to be.

Mr. Matthews, the infallible Mr. Matthews, who was so sure that the evidence against Miss Cass left no doubt that she was soliciting in Regent-street, is now quite as sure that the unfortunate Lipski committed murder in Whitechapel.

Miss Cass, not being doomed to die, had time to vindicate her reputation.

NO DOUBT OF GUILT?

Lipski, however, will be hanged on Monday morning, which is convenient for the prosecution.

If Miss Cass, for instance, had been hanged the morning after Mr. Matthews assured the House of Commons that there was no doubt of her guilt, Mr. Newton, Endacott, and Mr. Matthews himself, would have been spared many an uncomfortable quarter of an hour present and to come.

DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES

But in the case of Lipski all will be safe.

Dead men tell no tales, and the ghosts of the legally murdered never haunt the corridors of the Home Office.

The Home Secretary, we are told this morning, has retried the case. Has he? If so, he has omitted one thing only, and that was to hear any evidence on Lipski’s side.

Lipski has not been heard, nor Lipski’s lawyer.

AN INNOCENT MAN WILL HANG

Mr Matthews seems to have decided to hang an innocent man pretty much as he decided to libel an innocent woman on the evidence of the accusers.

But the case is worse in the case of Lipski than in that of Miss Cass. For in the latter case the magistrate who tried the case stuck to his guns, whereas in the case of Lipski Mr. Justice Stephen seems to have made no secret of the fact that, to say the very least, he is haunted by a terrible doubt that after all Lipski is innocent.

THE JUDGE HAS HIS DOUBTS

We are assured most positively by the prisoner’s solicitor that the judge whose summing up sent Lipski to the gallows is no longer convinced that the evidence of his guilt is so strong as it appeared to him at the Old Bailey.

The opposing hypothesis has not adequately presented by the counsel for the defence.

And now there is, to say the least, a strong and reasonable suspicion in the judge’s mind not only that Lipski was not the murderer, but that he was actually attacked by the murderers, who wished to kill him in order to destroy the only witness of their crime.

It is terrible to think of the possibility of that hypothesis being correct.

LIFE IS SACRED, TIME IS SHORT

Life is so sacred a thing, and the opposing alternative to his guilt is so appalling that a stouter-hearted Home Secretary than Mr. Matthews might well shudder at the thought of sending to the gallows one who is not only innocent, but who is the one witness by whom the crime may yet be brought home to the actual murderer.

Time is short, but it is long enough for Lord Salisbury to insist upon a respite for at least another week.

That is not much to ask when a life is at stake. The Prime Minister must know by this time that he cannot trust the judgment of his Home Secretary. The sand in the glass is rapidly running out.

HIS DEATH WILL HANG HEAVY

Lipski sleeps twice more, and then tomorrow, as the crowd gathers at St. Paul’s to hear Canon Liddon, in a condemned cell close by, an innocent man will be counting the minutes that intervene before he is called out to be strangled to death – strangled in the name of the law and by the will of the Home Secretary!

If he is innocent, as his judge suspects him to be, his blood will lie heavy on the head of Mr. Matthews.

And not only on that of Mr. Matthews alone, but also on the head of Mr. Matthews master.

One word from Lord Salisbury and ——! surely that word will not be left unspoken?