Edmund Lester Pearson was the greatest true crime writer who ever put pen to paper. (I can say that because I live on the western side of the Atlantic. Those on the eastern side of same might cite William Roughead but his work does not stand the test of time. One of these days I'm going to burden the world with my mixed opinions of Roughead.)
One reason is because Pearson had such an absolute command of historical murders. Another is because he had impeccable taste in crimes he chose to cover. Another is because he is so very quotable. Yet another is because he was a man of unabashed conviction -- and it's always more enjoyable to read the writings of someone with particularly strong opinions, whether or not you agree with them. Well-written rants make for good reading.
And it turns out I am not the sole member of the ELP Fan Club. A Clews visitor -- coincidentally also an attorney -- shares my high regard for Pearson to the point that he tracked down some of the essays that never made it into the compilations that were published in book form. He was kind enough to send me copies of these old magazine essays that haven't seen the light of day in decades.
I have decided to share highlights of these pieces here. If you too are a Pearson fan and would like copies of some or all of these essays, just send me an email and I will pay them forward and send you copies too. I regret that they aren't quite yet in the public domain or I would just type them all up here but alas the copyrights are not expired.
In The Juror Is Probably Right (Scribners, Feb. 1933), Pearson relayed his own experiences as a juror in county, military, and federal courts and as a reporter in the gallery. From these he concluded that when jurors occasionally blunder it is usually in favor of the prisoner; they prefer to acquit; and a ridiculous amount of leeway is given defense counsel to "suggest theories which are so idiotic as to merit no consideration."
Says Pearson: "Those who harbor the idea that prisons are largely populated by the innocent or that unfortunates who have committed no crime are frequently claimed by the executioner -- such as these need only do one thing: stop seeing moving-pictures and reading detective novels and go instead to witness some real trials."
Alas -- this essay reveals Pearson to be an unabashed racist and one winces today when reading the rest of the essay. When Pearson was in the army, he reports, he sat as a juror on the trial of a soldier with the "peculiarly inappropriate name" of White -- a "cornfield darky" accused of killing a fellow soldier. Pearson could not convince his fellow jurors to label the crime murder and White was convicted of mere manslaughter. The Pearson aficionado is forced to shake her head... and turn the page.
In The Perfect Murder (Scribner's July 1937), Pearson writes about the murder of Florence Small. (A much longer and better essay on this same case appeared in the Pearson compilation titled Murders that Baffled the Experts.) Pearson comments that "what chiefly makes crime worth reading about, either as fiction or fact, is the human element, the strange problems it presents in human conduct, the revelations it makes of the dark recesses of the human heart." Couldn't have said it better myself.
Pearson goes on to wax poetic about the childish efforts of crime novelists and how the efforts of the writers of detective stories have confused the masses and affected public attitudes toward crime. "Many people seriously try to apply some story-book clew toward the solution of every notorious murder," Pearson says. "Fiction about the criminal character -- or ninety per cent of it -- is designed to please emotional rather than rational folk. A little reading in the fiction of crime, and still a little more about the facts of crime, in England and America, ought to convince anybody that the myth of the marvelous amateur detective has been built up at the expense of the ordinary and frequently honest policeman."
What is Evidence? (Scribner's, December 1937) is the best and longest essay in this little collection. In it Pearson staunchly defends the much maligned type of evidence called circumstantial. He points to the cases of Charles Tucker (also the subject of a longer essay that appeared in one of Pearson's book collections), the fraudulent Roger Tichborne, and others, and reaches the conclusion that "Circumstantial evidence is conclusive proof only to intelligent persons; they have the ability to draw inferences."
In another long essay on circumstantial evidence, A Reporter At Large, Pearson explores the cases of Bruno Richard Hauptmann, Professor Webster, and many others convicted without direct evidence and the unreasonable "superstition" that has arisen about the reliability of circumstances as the basis for a murder conviction.
And the other essays in the collection include That Was New York -- concerning the murder of Dr. Burdell; Annals of Crime -- on the case of Messrs. Laidlaw and Sage; Onward & Upward With the Arts: The Rabbit of Wales -- on the word origins of the Welsh rare bit; and Sherlock Holmes Among the Illustrators (Book Magazine, August 1932) which may hold some interest for Conan Doyle fans who find it interesting to meditate on the various ways Sherlock Holmes has been imagined by sketch artists over the decades, though the subject matter did not allow room for Pearson's distinctive sarcasm.
A Reporter At Large: Do We Execute Innocent People? may well test the mettle of even the hardcore Pearson fan; he baldly asserts with his usual flair that one must go back two or three hundred years to find a case in which an innocent person was executed. He dismisses the Heilwagner case and other examples as "false confessions." He disparages Charles Edward Russell. He claims that "People who devoutly believe that innocent men stand on the gallows, or sit in the electric chair, are generally those far removed from the actual operations of the courts. That men who do not deserve it sometimes suffer lesser punishments -- seldom very severe punishments -- is beyond doubt. That people are sometimes framed by the police is true, and always has been true, but more often than not they are habitual criminals, and the injustice they suffer is technical. Because they unfairly elude their just deserts, the police sometimes unfairly entangle them in a net of manufactured evidence. But to get a first-degree conviction for murder, and a subsequent execution, upon framed evidence is an entirely different thing." What nonsense and balderdash. But eloquent nonsense. So we can excuse him.
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