Dickensians! discussion

THE TRIAL FOR MURDER

This is the thread to discuss The Trial for Murder by Charles Dickens, which is our fifth summer read this year, between 16th and 31st August.

Please LINK HERE for Bridget's summary of the story.

Bridget is the host for this read, so please allow her to comment first. Thanks!

Thanks Jean for setting up this thread.
Greetings Everyone. I've been having so much fun on Sara's Group Read of A Message from the Sea, I will be sad to leave all those characters behind.

But, tomorrow we start our discussion of The Trial For Murder and I wanted to pop in here quickly and make sure anyone who wants to join in can find a copy of the story. It can be a bit confusing because sometimes the story is called To Be Taken With A Grain Of Salt. Its part of the Doctor Marigold's Prescriptions collection of short stories. I think this group read one or two of the stories from that collection last summer. The Trial For Murder is Chapter Six of the Doctor Marigold Collection.

I found a copy in my Kindle Edition which is linked here. In this edition its found under "Christmas Stories" and then under "Doctor Marigold's Prescriptions" and then Chapter VI
https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Works...

There is also a free copy on the Gutenberg website. But its grouped with The Haunted House and The Signal-Man so it can be tricky to find there as well. Here is a link you can use to take you directly to those stories.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1289/...

Hopefully this is enough information so that we can all find a copy to read. Tomorrow morning I will post more background on the story itself. Hope to see you all there.

Thanks Bridget! That's nice and clear :)

Thank you, Bridget. I have found it on my Kindle and will read it as soon as time allows. Looking forward to this.

That's great Sara. Always wonderful to have your comments. Chime in whenever you can.

A little Background

This story first appeared in the 1865 Extra Christmas number of All the Year Round . At that point it was part of the Doctor Marigold's Prescriptions stories and was titled “To Be Taken With a Grain of Salt”. It was published again in 1866 in a collection of ghost stories titled Three Ghost Stories at which point the title was changed to “Trial for Murder”. (The other two ghost stories in that collection were The Signal-Man and The Haunted House).

The first and last stories in the Doctor Marigold collection are about the doctor and his deaf, adopted daughter Sophy. The middle stories are tales the doctor writes for her at Christmas to celebrate her learning to read. This wrap around story style is similar in structure to The Wreck of the Golden Mary and A Message from the Sea.

Like those other two wonderful Christmas tales we have recently read, there were collaborators on the Doctor Marigold stories as well. It is generally agreed that Charles Dickens wrote the first and last stories as well as one of the middle stories “To Be Taken With a Grain of Salt”. However, there are some scholars who believe that Charles Alston Collins wrote that story and Dickens only edited his work. They cite the portrayal of the ghost as proof of this, stating that the ghosts in Dickens other works are usually allegorical and draw more from his own personal life. We shall have to read on and see what we think.

A little more about Charles Collins.....

I thought you all might find this bit of information interesting.
Charles Collins is the younger brother of Wilkie Collins. He also married Katie Dickens, the youngest daughter of Charles Dickens and some believe his favorite child. They were married in 1860, so when this story is published Charles Collins is Dickens son-in-law. It was not a happy marriage.

Charles Collins wanted to be a painter (like his father), and tried to join the Pre-Raphaelites but they would not accept him. He then abandoned art and followed his brother into a writing career. He was commissioned to illustrate The Mystery of Edwin Drood. He illustrated the cover, but was too ill to finish the rest. He died in 1873 from cancer.

As far as the Doctor Marigold stories are concerned, Charles Collins is credited with writing "To Be Taken at the Dinner Table". Whether he also wrote "To Be Taken With A Grain of Salt" is up for debate.

Bridget, that is so interesting that the story was first called "To Be Taken With a Grain of Salt." It seems to indicate that we should approach the story with skepticism, and not really believe it. We don't always believe everything in a ghost story, but I'm wondering why this one is supposed to be more questionable. Maybe we'll find some answers as we're reading it.

Connie, I've been mulling over the same thoughts. It has made me look at the story differently, as if there's something there that I missed.

That's a great thought Connie. I feel like with the title, Dickens is instructing the reader on how to read this story. As if we need to bring something extra to the reading like cynicism, or humor, or suspension of disbelief. Or maybe something else.

Some critics feel that this story is a satire of an inept criminal justice system, which is also something to keep in mind as you read it.

That's fascinating Bridget! I know the story (as part of the "Dr. Marigold" collection) but not the disputed provenance. As others say, we'll have to bear it in mind and see what we think. I've also heard it said that it's the second most famous ghost story of his, and have it published on kindle with those other two. But I wouldn't have thought it was as famous as some of the others eg. The Signal-Man. Now I'm intrigued to read it again :)

Thank you!

Hmmm. Well I just read the story, but I think I will read it again with these comments in mind. There are a few moments in the story that come to mind immediately as statements on the judicial system of England in that time.
I had read this as a straightforward ghost story so now I can use a slightly different approach.

Sue, it's a lot of fun as a straightforward ghost story. I really enjoyed it. I, too, will read it again with different lenses on and see what comes of it. Should be fun.

I agree Petra. I do love ghost stories, and this is quite unlike any other I can think of in having the ghost be so specifically purposeful. I certainly won’t mind reading this again. I’m looking forward to reading from some of my other ghost story collections this fall too.

Bionic Jean wrote: "That's fascinating Bridget! I know the story (as part of the "Dr. Marigold" collection) but not the disputed provenance. As others say, we'll have to bear it in mind and see what we think. I've als..."

I was surprised by the disputed authorship as well. I've read the story twice now, and I'm still unsure if I agree or disagree with those scholars. But, like the story itself, its a fun mystery :-)

Wonderful thoughts, Petra and Sue. I agree with your love of ghost stories as well. I just got back from a camping trip with my family, and we had so much fun telling each other scary stories at night by light of the lantern (no campfires this year because of the fire danger).

That's why I was drawn to this story. Then I started researching it, and discovered more layers to it, which has also been fun to think about.

I know this is a short story, but I thought today I would give us all a little synopsis of it. Here is goes......

The story is told by wealthy banker who becomes a Jury Foreman at a murder trial. We never find our his name, or the names of the murderer and his victim. The story opens with a few explanatory paragraphs which attempt to establish the credibility of our narrator and let us know he reluctantly tells this story.

There was a notorious murder in England which attracts a great deal of attention, but the narrator emphasizes he is ignorant of any of the details before this story begins. His first knowledge of the murder comes when he opens his morning paper at breakfast and reads a description of a man found murdered in his bed. He is drawn to this story. He reads it three times. As he lays the paper down, he feels a flash or a rush and immediately sees “that bedroom passing through my room, like a picture impossibly painted on a running river”". He goes to the window and looks down on the street.

He sees two men walking on the opposite side of the street. The first man looks over his shoulder. He is being followed by a second man who raises his fist in a menacing fashion and has a waxen face. Our narrator sees their faces distinctly and they leave an indelible impression. He also notes that no one else on the street seems to take notice of these two men as they walk.

Then late in the evening, the narrator is in his bedroom with his valet. The narrator sees the second man with the waxen face open his dressing room door and beckon for the narrator to follow. The narrator enters the dressing room but there is no one inside. He turns to his valet and asks him if he saw something and as our narrator places his hand on his valet, the valet trembles and says “O Lord, yes, sir! A dead man beckoning”.

The following morning the narrator receives a summons to serve upon a Jury. The defendant in the trial is the first man our narrator saw on the street. As the narrator enters the jury box, the defendant is visibly shaken.

The jury is sequestered for ten days and nights, and the narrator is chosen as the Foreman. During the second day of the trial he counts thirteen jurors in the box, instead of twelve. He asks the juror next to him to also count, and that man also counts thirteen, but says that can’t be right.

At night the jurors all sleep in one room watched over by an officer of the court. On the second night, the same waxen man appears again. Only the narrator can see him. The ghost appears to be whispering in the ear of all eleven jurors. The next morning the jurors discover they all dreamed of the murdered man last night.

The narrator then describes three of the jurors in unflattering terms as unintelligent and parochial. In the evenings when they are discussing the trial and the conversation drifts in favor of the defendant the ghost appears to the narrator and insists he intervene.

The ghost is in constant view in the courtroom, but only to our narrator. The ghost reveals the gash across his throat. The ghost appears to hover near witnesses for the defense and the judges as well. He is not seen by these people, but the ghost’s presence affects them all as if they are being haunted.

The jury deliberates for over two hours, held up mainly by those three parochial jurors who remain obstinate. As the guilty verdict is read the ghost drapes a grey cloth over his head and disappears. The judge asks the condemned man if he has anything to say, to which he replies he knew he was doomed because the Foreman of the jury was prejudiced against him. He claims,
“before I was taken, he [the narrator] somehow got to my bedside in the night, woke me, and put a rope round my neck.”

I must apologize, I guess that wasn't a short synopsis afterall. Sorry about that :-)

For me, it was the last line of the story that made me want to read the story again. I wondered was the narrator telling the truth? or was he lying? or was he perhaps insane?

When the defendant saw the juror at his bedside was that the work of the ghost? Or was the narrator really there?

I am curious about why the ghost is haunting anyone. I do have a tendency to overanalyze, so bear with me, but is he afraid of not getting a fair trial? What is Dickens trying to say with this story? it is spooky so maybe there is no point other than to enjoy the good writing. Bridget where did u go camping? Maybe you wouldn't mind telling me in the chat parlor how the smoke was.

No apologies necessary Bridget! A full summary is exactly what we need, and I appreciate you taking the trouble to provide one, thank you :) It's now linked to comment 1.

Angela wrote: "I am curious about why the ghost is haunting anyone. I do have a tendency to overanalyze, so bear with me, but is he afraid of not getting a fair trial? What is Dickens trying to say with this stor..."

I think you are onto something here Angela about what this story says about the fairness of trials. Without the ghost the outcome might have been very different.

For example, the valet initially thinks to refuse the summons when it is served because "that class of Jurors were customarily chosen on a lower qualification than mine [ie: the narrator's social status]"

The narrator then says "for a day or two I was undecided whether to respond to this call, or take no notice of it."

So it seems to me without the haunting of the ghost our narrator would not have been in the jury at all. The story is leading us to believe that most of the jurors might have been more like the three "dunder-headed" jurors we encounter later on.

It’s an interesting little story. So the only way the murdered man can get justice is to ‘haunt’ the jurors and the witnesses? The story doesn’t tell us anything about the crime itself except the violence of it, so yes I think it must be a criticism of the justice system. Strangely I think of Victorian justice as being more likely to find the innocent guilty particularly if they’re poor, rather than murderers getting away with it unless perhaps the accused is rich!

Janelle wrote: "It’s an interesting little story. So the only way the murdered man can get justice is to ‘haunt’ the jurors and the witnesses? The story doesn’t tell us anything about the crime itself except the v..."

That's true Janelle -- what you said about the injustice to the poor during the Victorian Era -- I expect that kind of thing in Victorian novels as well. We read about that in one form or another every time we pick up a Dickens novel.

This story differs a bit from that theme in that it seems to indict the educated classes for leaving the responsibility for serving on juries to the lesser educated people.

The idea that something is wrong with court systems is common, I think, in many Dickens stories. I'm thinking of David Copperfield and the negative view we get of Proctors at Doctors Common. I've not read Bleak House, but I believe it is an even larger, sustained indictment of the whole legal system. So in that line, this is a theme in keeping with Dickens writing - which possibly lends credibility to his authorship of this story.

If anyone is interested, I found one article that said this short story was inspired by the real life murder of Lord William Rusell. He was found dead in his bed one morning in May 1840. The investigation revealed that he was murdered by his valet.

If you want to read about that murder, I found a great write up of it here
https://www.geriwalton.com/murder-of-...

I read the story and enjoyed the build up created by introducing the "visions" of the ghosts seen by the narrator throughout. I wasn't exactly expecting it to end so abruptly with that last line. It was quite a line too. I turned the page on my kindle and expected a bit more. So, I too must go back and read this again.

Bridget wrote: "Janelle wrote: "It’s an interesting little story. So the only way the murdered man can get justice is to ‘haunt’ the jurors and the witnesses? The story doesn’t tell us anything about the crime its..."

I was thinking that the ghost "chose" the narrator because of his station or education. Thanks for that Bridget.

Bridget wrote: "If anyone is interested, I found one article that said this short story was inspired by the real life murder of Lord William Rusell. He was found dead in his bed one morning in May 1840. The invest..."

Dickens attended the hanging of Courvoisier with Thackeray so he would have been very familiar with this case. It got a lot of publicity so probably most people in London had heard about the murder through gossip or the press.

That was an interesting, detailed article, Bridget.

Ah, so contemporary readers would’ve been familiar with the crime!

Thanks for the link to that article, Bridget. Very interesting to see the details on which the story was based.

I do plan to read this story again but I remember references to the justice system including to the jury system, mentions of failings in the system.

Lori wrote: "I read the story and enjoyed the build up created by introducing the "visions" of the ghosts seen by the narrator throughout. I wasn't exactly expecting it to end so abruptly with that last line. I..."
That's exactly how I felt about the ending too, Lori. It was so abrupt. And then it made me question what was really going on in this story.

Bridget, thanks so much for all the background and for the link to the actual murder details. It is fascinating that the tale was written without naming the crime because everyone would have immediately recognized and known the details. Made me think of the O.J. trial here. You could have included the detail about the glasses being returned and everyone would have known the rest.

It felt to me like the ending was a superb twist. All the while we had been concentrating on the ghost haunting the narrator and then we have the narrator's spirit haunting the murderer. {{shudder}} I did a double take. Did the ghost make that happen? Was he using the narrator as a medium?

Like most of you, I read it twice. It was an unusual ghost tale, but often we are told spirits cannot rest because they are seeking justice, so at least we know why the ghost was there.

Completely agree with the observations about the justice system. Without the ghost's intervention, we might well have the wrong outcome. We know Dickens was all too aware of the flaws in the system, having been so closely associated with it himself.

I was surprised to find this referred to as Dickens second most famous ghost story. Perhaps this is because it is included with Dr. Marigold, which I do think gets read quite a bit, but like Jean, I would think there are several others better known.

As to the disputed provenance, that would be interesting, if it were established that his second most famous ghost story was written by someone else. In reading it the second time, I feel sure either Dickens wrote this or he had a very heavy hand in influencing and guiding the writer...it has the feel of him.

I'm now wondering if there's any similarity with the writing style in this, and in an unattributed part of A message from the sea (1860) by Charles Dickens, since Charles Allston Collins was recorded as a contributor there too, but we couldn't nail which bit.

On the other hand, I too am doubtful about the disputed provenance, as I've always thought this to be by Charles Dickens - and it feels like him, as Sara says.

I'm so glad you both (Sara and Jean) think it was written by Dickens, because that's what I think too, but I trust your judgement more than my own!

The twist at the end, was the only thing that made me wonder if Dickens wrote this story, because I'm so used to how he supplies his readers with nicely wound up stories that close off all the threads.

Maybe the twist ending is responsible in part for keeping this little story ranked with much more substantial stories like "The Singnal-Man". I found one source that talked about how influential "Trial for Murder" was with other authors of horror or ghost stories, namely LE FANU/ JAMES and M R James. Heres' a link to the article I found:

https://www.oldstyletales.com/single-...

Interesting website, Bridget.

Thanks for that article, Bridget.

Bridget, I really enjoyed that article.

This article makes Dickens purposes quite clear. It's fascinating how he blends so many elements together this seamlessly.

Thanks for posting the article, Bridget.

This is an illustration of a trial in 1857, in Glasgow, of Madeleine Smith, who put poison in her lover's goodnight drink. It has been used as a cover for this story:



by C. L Doughty

This one is original, a dark plate illustrating the ghost dressed in black, with his face deeply shadowed, framed by the narrator in his patterned dressing-gown (right) and his curious but unknowing valet, brush in hand:



by Edward G. Dalziel

Thank you for posting the illustrations Jean. I love seeing the artwork that accompanies Dickens stories.

I saw the second one by Dalziel as I was researching the story. I quite like how the ghost is depicted as he looks so different from the living men in the picture. I like the valet too. He looks so carefree, it seems obvious he doesn't see the ghost.

I had not heard about the first illustration, or the 1857 trial. I love how dramatic the illustration looks with the woman about to cry.

Jean, you are a marvel at locating illustrations for a story! I like how the illustration of the ghost shows him with such deep-set, haunting, dark eyes.

Bridget, thank you for hosting this story. I enjoy stories with a supernatural element to them.

Those are terrific illustrations, Jean. Thank you for posting them.

The valet & ghost picture is wonderful. Very atmospheric.

The court room illustration is very detailed. It makes a wonderful book cover for this story.

I too like the original dark plate - it looks very sinister with the lighting on the narrator's face.

The first reminds me of artists' sketches, which until quite recently here were the only visual record of courtroom scenes, as cameras were not allowed in British courtrooms. It's a bit more detailed but has that feel abut it.

Bridget - thank you so much for hosting this great read - and finding such interesting background details and things out about it! Another absorbing summer read, well worth going into in a little more depth. Good choice!

And we still have a couple more days, if anyone has not read this one yet :)

Bridget - Wanted to thank you for the link to the excellent article, which gave me yet another perspective on the tale.

And, Jean, of course, thanks for the illustrations.

Bionic Jean wrote: "The first reminds me of artists' sketches, which until quite recently here were the only visual record of courtroom scenes, as cameras were not allowed in British courtrooms. It's a bit more detailed but has that feel abut it.
..."

I had the same thought, Jean. We sometimes get an artist's sketch of a courtroom scene on our Evening News segments. The detail is nowhere near this sketched scene.

Thank you everyone for making this (my first ever hosting of a read) so much fun. It was easier than I expected, and I learned so much about this short story. Before I started this, I had no idea it was part of the much larger Doctor Marigold story, and now I want to go read that as well!

Thank you, Bridget, for the brilliant leadership and for giving me another Dickens ghost story to add to my "read" list. I have read at least part of Doctor Marigold, but obviously not all, since I had not come across this before, so I might be right behind you in reading that one.

Thanks Bridget! You did a marvelous job of hosting! This was a fantastic ghost story and fun to read along with everyone.

Bridget, thank you for hosting this read. You did a great job in choosing the story and leading us through it. Thank you!