Our Ethel by Phil Batman

Author:Phil Batman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Crime and Mystery
Publisher: Troubador Publishing
Published: 2023-06-06T00:00:00+00:00

Nineteen

Ethel was the last person to make her appearance in the courtroom on the first morning of her trial for murder. For weeks she had languished in Armley Jail in dread of this day. She climbed the stairwell from the cells in the basement and surfaced into the dock, an open square box where countless other shattered people had been judged before her. She stood on the last step, gasped at the sea of faces out of focus beyond the rail, and turned to retreat. The warder in her wake took the backs of her shoulders and pushed her forward to the front.

The dock was raised on a plinth in the centre of an ornate oak-panelled room. Polished wood jutted out from every angle. Ethel stood at eye level with the judge seated some yards in front of her. She watched as the jury on their two long benches in another box down to her left gaped at the barristers and their legal teams adjusting their robes and wigs down to her right. Bundles of papers had been stacked on a table between them, together with her shoebox and teddy bear, and a skull. Ethel’s neighbours from back at the terrace could enjoy this drama unfold over the next couple of days from the public gallery in the balcony behind her.

All voices were hushed as Ethel arrived in the dock, but all eyes were drawn to the skull. Mr Cox for the prosecution rose from his bench, flicked the tails of his robe out from behind him, took his spectacles in his hand, and launched into his opening speech.

‘The case for the Crown, ladies and gentlemen of the jury,’ he said, ‘is this.

‘The defendant you see before you in the dock is Miss Ethel Slater, an eighteen-year-old woman. Spitefulness and rejection drove her to snuff out her defenceless newborn baby before his life had even really begun. She made two attempts to kill him. She failed at the first when she was interrupted by a neighbour, but succeeded when he was just four days old.

‘Miss Slater lives with her parents in a terraced house in York that is rented from the Railway Company. Her father is a butcher and her mother struggles with illness. The family is penniless and Ethel Slater is unmarried. She befriended the boy next door, a young man with prospects, by the name of Edward Sathersthwaite, with the aim of seducing him, and she fell pregnant. This ploy to trap a husband failed. Edward deserted her and she was left to carry an unwanted baby. You will see that Ethel Slater is a loose, feckless woman who lacks ambition or foresight. She was unable to hold down a job serving in a corner shop and was then incapable of supporting herself, let alone a child. She made no plans to care for a newborn baby, she turned down all offers of help, and she made no preparations for the birth.

‘The defendant chose to deliver her baby

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