Page 36 of The Girl from Greenwich Street

Quite lately I heard Croucher say he did not like her and she should not stay in the house, she was a very bad girl, and he was not going to keep a bad girl in the house; he was sure he said that she was a bad girl, he could prove it, he knew it himself. Then he said she was a whore and he could prove it. He had lain with her one night himself. He said he had heard she was a bad girl, and he was determined to know if it was so, and therefore he had lain with her one night and was satisfied it was so.

—From the trial of Richard D. Croucher for the rape of Margaret Miller

New York City

July 8, 1800

“He used force. He did what he would, and hurt me very much, so much that I could hardly get home the next morning.”

Tears streamed down Margaret Miller’s thin face, the words coming out in disjointed gasps. The jury strained forward to try to catch the words. Cadwallader stood by her, trying to signal support by his very presence. It had taken some doing to get her on the stand at all; at the sight of Richard Croucher in the dock she had backed away, and it had taken Cadwallader some time to soothe her enough to get her to take her oath.

On the other side of the room, Brockholst Livingston leaned back in his chair, his arms folded across his chest, listening with a marked air of disbelief.

Brockholst had been victorious at the polls in May; Cadwallader had gone down to defeat. It was very clear Brockholst expected another easy victory today.

He’d done it before. Several years back, Livingston had won a famous—or infamous, depending on whom one asked—rape case for Henry Bedlow against Lanah Sawyer. The city had cried guilty; a civil court ruled Bedlow guilty. But Livingston, employing all his formidable powers of persuasion, had brought in a verdict of not guilty in the criminal case.

Not this time, Cadwallader swore. Not this time. This girl deserved justice. Elma Sands deserved justice. He caught sight of Maria sitting in the front row of the gallery, and her calm gaze lent him strength.

“Did you cry out and make a noise when he hurt you?”

“At first I screamed, but he said if I did not hold my tongue, he would kill me.”

Margaret scrubbed the tears away from her eyes, casting a fearful glance at the man in the dock. “I cried all the time, but not loud. I was afraid to.”

“Was the injury repeated on you more than once that night?”

“Yes, sir, three times.”

Cadwallader had learned his lesson. No elaborate theories. No scores of witnesses. Just Margaret Miller, and then two neighbors, who testified as to the girl’s fear of her new stepfather—and that he’d called her a whore and sworn he’d had her.

Unlike Elma Sands, this victim was here, and able to speak for herself. The way she shrank from Croucher spoke more eloquently than any address Cadwallader might have given.

“Gentlemen.”

Brockholst strode to the center of the room. “No crime excites greater abhorrence or indignation than the one with which the prisoner stands charged. But—if anything of an improper nature has passed between them, I am inclined to believe that it has been with her consent. The passions may be as warm in a girl of her age as in one of more advanced years, and with very little enticement, she may have consented to become his mistress.”

Cadwallader looked at Margaret Miller, skinny, flat-chested, her hair in braids, a schoolgirl who looked far younger than her actual age.

Brockholst waved a hand at his client. “You perceive the disadvantages under which the prisoner labors. The party injured is herself the principal witness—but when once it is known that a girl has had a connection with a man, there is instantly a strong bias in her own mind, and in those of her relations, that it should be proved to be done by violence. So strong indeed is the temptation to give it this color, that it is hardly possible for a girl so situated to tell the truth.”

Brockholst addressed the jury man-to-man, his tone knowing, indulgent. They all knew, he seemed to imply, exactly what had gone on.

“I am not defending the conduct of that man. I will suppose he is guilty of having most shamefully seduced and ruined the girl, but seduction is not rape.”

Seduction. The girl had been scarcely able to walk for two weeks after Croucher’s assault.

“Gentlemen of the jury.”

Cadwallader could feel the anger throbbing through him. No carefully crafted speeches this time, no labored hunts through law books for precedents with which Brockholst would only quibble. Fury lent him eloquence. “This girl, finding this man paying addresses to her mother, looks on him as a father. Without hesitation she agrees to go to his lodgings, to sleep with a girl in the house—she is seduced into his room—he undresses her and treats her with violence—she calls for help—then he threatens to murder her if she does not desist, or if she ever makes a discovery of his guilt. Loose, unbuttoned, and ready for violation, with a diabolical countenance rendered ghastly by infernal lust, he lays his merciless hands upon her. She was almost torn asunder.”

He paused, giving the jury time to consider that, to look at Margaret Miller, hardly a creature of unbridled lust, only a child, a vulnerable child.

It made Cadwallader sick to think of what she had endured—and all the worse for knowing that it might have been avoided. If he had fixed on Croucher as the murderer of Elma Sands, instead of pursuing Levi Weeks, if he had seen Croucher hanged, this girl would be even now at school instead of on the stand, a hunted, haunted thing.

You couldn’t have known, Maria had told him.

Cadwallader looked at the jury. “It is worth remarking that a trial for murder which lately took place in this city made a strong impression on the mind of this child. She knew that the accusation was that a woman was cruelly murdered. She had learned the particulars of that trial from the prisoner. Is it any wonder his threats to put her away acted powerfully on her mind?”

In the dock, Richard Croucher shifted uneasily. Cadwallader remembered his lies, his gloating, his mock concern for Elma. He wasn’t gloating now. He turned to murmur something to his counsel. Brockholst shook his head.

Cadwallader gestured forcibly toward Margaret. “Her age—her size—her sufferings—her appearance before you—her tears here—the very appearance of the prisoner—forbid you to believe that she could ever have consented to his embraces.”

In his capacity as recorder, Richard Harison stood and addressed the jury. “The prisoner at the bar stands indicted for the commission of a rape upon Margaret Miller. The court cannot with propriety charge you, gentlemen, whether you ought or ought not to give credit to the principal witness, that is certainly your province. If upon the whole you think her worthy of credibility, you must say the prisoner at the bar is guilty. If otherwise, you are bound to acquit him.”

The jury filed out, some pausing to cast last looks over their shoulder at Margaret or Croucher.

Had they been swayed by Brockholst’s argument? Cadwallader hoped not. This wasn’t just about justice for Margaret. It was for the shades of Elma Sands and Rose Malone.

The door opened. The jury jostled back in, not looking at the prisoner. They had been gone no longer than it took them to leave and come back again.

They had returned quickly in the Weeks case too—with a verdict of not guilty.

Cadwallader looked anxiously at Maria. When this was over, whatever happened, they were going away together, the three of them, as a family. He’d take her to London and Bath and Brighton. . . . Or possibly France. They could go to Paris and David could make friends with French donkeys in the Jardin des Tuileries.

Harison addressed the foreman. “How do you find the defendant? Guilty or not guilty?”

The foreman looked at Richard Croucher and then back at the judges, before pronouncing one word.

“Guilty.”