West Port Murders (ePub)

Excerpt: 'We have heard a great deal of late concerning "the march of intellect for which the present age is supposed to be distinguished; and the phrase has been rung in our ears till it has nauseated us by its repetition, and become almost a proverbial expression of derision. But we fear that, with all its pretended illumination, the present age must be characterized by some deeper and fouler blots than have attached to any that preceded it; and that if it has brighter spots, it has also darker shades and more appalling obscurations. It has, in fact, nooks and corners where every thing that is evil seems to be concentrated and condensed; dens and holes to which the Genius of Iniquity has fled, and become envenomed with newer and more malignant inspirations. Thus the march of crime has far outstripped "the march of intellect, and attained a monstrous, a colossal development. The knowledge of good and evil would seem to have imparted a fearful impulse to the latter principle; to have quickened, vivified, and expanded it into an awful and unprecedented magnitude. Hence old crimes have become new by being attended with unknown and unheard-of concomitants; and atrocities never dreamt of or imagined before have sprung up amongst us to cover us with confusion and dismay. No one who reads the following report of the regular system of murder, which seems to have been organised in Edinburgh, can doubt that it is almost wholly without example in any age or country. Murder is no novel crime; it has been done in the olden time as well as now; but murder perpetrated in such a manner, upon such a system, with such an object or intent, and accompanied by such accessory circumstances, was never, we believe, heard of before, and, taken altogether, utterly transcends and beggars every thing in the shape of tragedy to be found in poetry or romance. Even Mrs. Radcliffe, with all her talent for imagining and depicting the horrible, has not been able to invent or pourtray scenes at all to be compared, in point of deep tragical interest, with the dreadful realities of the den in the West Port. To show this, we shall endeavour to exhibit a faint sketch of the more prominent circumstances attending the murder of the woman Campbell or Docherty, as proved in evidence at the trial.'