Eastbourne manslaughter
Encyclopedia
The Eastbourne manslaughter was an 1860 legal case in Eastbourne
, England, concerning the death of 15-year-old Reginald Cancellor (some sources give his name as Chancellor and his age as 13 or 14) at the hands of his teacher, Thomas Hopley. Hopley used corporal punishment
with the stated intention of overcoming what he perceived as stubbornness on Cancellor's part, but instead beat the boy to death.
An inquest into Cancellor's death began when his brother requested an autopsy
. As a result of the inquest Hopley was arrested and charged with manslaughter
. He was found guilty at trial and sentenced to four years in prison, although he insisted that his actions were justifiable and that he was not guilty of any crime. The trial was sensationalised by the Victorian
press and incited debate over the use of corporal punishment in schools. After Hopley's release and subsequent divorce trial, he largely disappeared from the public record. The case became an important legal precedent in the United Kingdom for discussions of corporal punishment in schools and reasonable limits on discipline.
out of his home at 22 Grand-parade. He was well educated and from a middle-class family, the son of a Royal Navy
surgeon and brother of artist Edward Hopley. His household was fairly well off, and he and his wife kept several servants. Hopley was described by Algernon Charles Swinburne
as "a person of high attainments and irreproachable character". He expressed "utopian" educational ideals shared by many Victorian educational theorists. He wrote pamphlet
s on education topics which included "Lectures on the Education of Man", "Help towards the physical, intellectual and moral elevation of all classes of society", and "Wrongs which cry out for redress" advocating the abolition of child labour.
In October 1859, he was offered £180 a year (compared to an average annual salary of £94 for a male public elementary school teacher in 1860) to teach Reginald Channell Cancellor, a "robust" boy who had been "given up as ineducable". Reginald was the son of John Henry Cancellor (1799–1860), a court master and a "man of fair position" from Barnes, Surrey. The boy had previously been a student at a private school called St. Leonard's and under a private tutor. He was not a good student, with contemporary sources suggesting he "had water on the brain" and describing him as "stolid and stupid". Hopley attributed Cancellor's failure to learn to stubbornness. On 18 April 1860 he asked the boy's father for permission to use "severe corporal punishment" to obtain compliance, with permission being granted two days later. Hopley did not possess the cane
traditionally used to administer corporal punishment to students, so instead he used a skipping rope and a walking stick.
and argued that he should be buried immediately. He wrote to the boy's father requesting the body's immediate removal and interment. After viewing his son's dressed body, Cancellor's father accepted Roberts' assertion for cause of death and agreed to the burial.
Rumours began to circulate among the Hopleys' servants, suggesting that Hopley's wife had spent the night prior to the body's discovery cleaning up evidence of her husband's murder of the boy. Reginald's older brother, Reverend John Henry Cancellor, Jr. (1834–1900), arrived in Eastbourne from Send, Surrey
, on 25 April. He noticed discrepancies in the reports of his brother's death and requested an autopsy. Hopley asked prominent physician Sir Charles Locock, an "acquaintance" of the Cancellor family and an obstetrician
to the Queen, to examine the body and verify death by natural causes; Locock, however, believed that Hopley was responsible for the death.
A complete inquest into Cancellor's death was initiated. His body was taken for autopsy on 28 April and was found to be covered in blood under the gloves and stockings. His thighs were "reduced to a perfect jelly" and his body was covered in bruises and cuts, including two inch-deep holes in his right leg, deep enough to allow the medical examiner
, Robert Willis, to touch the bone underneath. Willis reported that other than these injuries, the boy was healthy and his internal organs (including the heart) were free of disease. He thus concluded that Cancellor had not died of natural causes, as Hopley had suggested, and noted that the boy had obviously been beaten shortly before his death. A female servant named Ellen Fowler, when questioned by investigators, reported that she had heard Cancellor screaming and being beaten from 10 pm until midnight and that, shortly thereafter, he abruptly fell silent. She also noted traces of blood in the house and on Hopley's candlestick, which was left outside Cancellor's bedroom, and evidence that Cancellor's and Hopley's clothes had been washed soon before the former was pronounced dead. Two other servants testified in the inquiry and gave similar accounts.
The inquest was unable to determine Cancellor's exact cause of death, but noted several inconsistencies in Hopley's explanation of events. He had failed to summon a doctor immediately and, upon questioning, had given outlandish excuses for his failure to do so. Hopley attempted to explain away the blood on the candlestick by attributing it to a broken blister on his hand, but did not offer an explanation for Cancellor's injuries. Hopley aroused further suspicion when he asked journalists present at the inquest not to include details of the corporal punishment in their stories, "in order to spare the feelings of the deceased family as of my own". Indeed, Cancellor's family was deeply affected by the case, as they had been "disinclined" to see Cancellor beaten; his father died shortly after the inquest of a "broken heart
".
. He and his then-pregnant wife spent the period between the initial hearing and the trial at Uckfield
. Hopley was confident that he would be found not guilty. He began composing a pamphlet titled Facts Bearing on the Death of Reginald Channell Cancellor, to be published after the trial; it was published by an associate of Hopley's after his conviction and detailed Hopley's explanation of Cancellor's death and his justification for his treatment of the boy. The press was extremely hostile, calling for a murder charge to be laid against him. He received a large amount of hate mail
from anonymous members of the public.
Hopley's trial took place at Lewes
Assizes
on 23 July 1860. The prosecutors were Parry and Knapp; Hopley was defended by the serjeant-at-law
William Ballantine
, who subsequently described Hopley as "distorted". Throughout his trial, Hopley described himself as reluctant to use corporal punishment. In describing the events preceding Cancellor's death, Hopley stated that he started crying while beating Cancellor, after which Cancellor presented his lesson and "Hopley took his head on his breast and prayed with him". Hopley presented testimonials from past students who described him as "kindly" and who noted an infrequent use of violence. Hopley claimed to be a paedagogical
follower of John Locke
, who had decried the use of corporal punishment except in cases of extreme obstinacy on the part of the student. He argued that, through the application of this theory, the beating that killed Cancellor had been a necessary one.
Robert Willis testified at the trial that there was no possibility that Cancellor's death had been a result of natural causes. He presented a detailed description of the boy's injuries, suggesting that they had been sustained over several hours. He also revealed that Cancellor's skull cavity contained six to eight ounces of fluid, attributing to this fluid the boy's seeming inability to learn as described by Hopley, but rejected any suggestions that it may have contributed to Cancellor's death. Cancellor's brother, Fowler, and Locock all testified against Hopley; Locock's testimony was particularly hostile, suggesting that Hopley's incompetent response to interviews was "tantamount to an admission of guilt". Other witnesses included the Hopleys' laundress, Roberts, three members of the coastguard who had seen lights on in the house late at night, a local constable, and the town registrar.
Ballantine's conduct during the trial was flawed, and he believed Hopley to be insane. Although he promoted the testimonials of former students and argued that a schoolmaster was unlikely to "so lightly jeopardize his ambitions", he congratulated Locock on the accuracy of his testimony in open court. Ballantine did not call key witnesses like Edward Philpott, another student of Hopley's who had been at the house that night. Philpott slept in the bedroom beside Cancellor's and had reported hearing no unusual noises or screams from Cancellor's room on the night of his death. Neither did Ballantine call Professor John Eric Erichsen
of University College Hospital
, who had conducted a second autopsy on Cancellor on 11 May and had suggested that "the misleading appearance of the body was attributable to an undiagnosed blood condition akin to haemophilia
". In his memoir Some experiences of a barrister's life, published in 1883, Ballantine offered a highly sensationalised account of Cancellor's death: "the wretched half-witted victim of a lunatic's system of education was deliberately mangled to death".
Hopley was convicted of manslaughter, not murder
, because of his position as a schoolteacher "endowed with parental authority". Sir Alexander Cockburn
, the Chief Justice
of the Court of King's Bench
, presented a summary of the decision:
Cockburn further suggested that Hopley should have realised Cancellor's cognitive deficiencies and taken these into account in his treatment of the boy.
Hopley was sentenced to four years of penal servitude at Millbank Prison
. After being indicted, he wrote: "while anguish shook the frame, the conscience suffered not one pang. I searched and searched among the deepest secrets of my soul, and could not blame myself... I could look up tranquilly into the face of heaven who knew me to be Not Guilty." He believed that his actions were justifiable because he had undertaken them in his duty as schoolteacher. He portrayed himself as a victim of public opinion, claiming that "a mournful accident was swelled up into a bloody midnight murder, and how it has been brought about that my unfortunate name has been branded, not simply through the United Kingdom, but through the civilised world, as one of the most execrable monsters or of madmen." He published a pamphlet arguing that Locock had perjured himself and had conspired with Fowler to influence the outcome of the trial.
Following Hopley's release from prison, he became immediately embroiled in a sensationalised divorce trial. His wife, Fanny, had petitioned for divorce on the grounds
that he was "unloving" and had mistreated her. She claimed that Hopley had married her as an "educational experiment", presenting Hopley's educational theories as evidence of his "lunacy". She had been 18 years old to Hopley's 36 at the time of their marriage in 1855. According to her statements during the trial, Hopley frequently criticised her writing and insisted that the couple's three children should be raised as "second Christs". She accused him of physically abusing her from the time of her first pregnancy, beating his first child only days after its birth (the child was later found to be "brain-damaged"), and suggesting that during his prison sentence she should be confined to a workhouse
. Hopley responded by claiming that he set rules only to ensure the maintenance of his household and the well-being of his family, and produced a set of romantic letters he had received from Fanny during his incarceration as evidence of her unforced affection for him.
The jury found Hopley guilty of cruelty, but suggested that Fanny had condoned his treatment of her. The judge therefore ruled that her case was insufficient to grant a divorce. The verdict sparked outrage among the public, who believed that "a great injustice had been done", and that Fanny should not be forced to remain married to an abusive convicted killer. Fanny left England shortly afterwards, allegedly to avoid having to continue living with Hopley.
Hopley largely withdrew from the public eye after the trial, becoming a private tutor in London and publishing pamphlets on spiritualism
in the late 1860s. He died at University College Hospital on 24 June 1876. A retrospective editorial published in The Times in 1960 concluded that Hopley was not "the villain which some persons pictured him to be"; it noted that at the time of his arrest Hopley had been planning the construction of a "model school" in Brighton
and that he had examined architect's drawings of the school after beating Cancellor.
In 1865, Cancellor's death was used in a medical journal article discussing adult hydrocephalus
. Despite Willis' statement that Cancellor had no pre-existing medical condition that would have caused or contributed to his death, author Samuel Wilks
suggested not only that Cancellor had hydrocephalus, but that he was consequently more susceptible to physical injury as a result. He pointed to the autopsy finding of fluid in Cancellor's brain to support his assertions and argued that this effusion
would have caused physical weakness.
R v Hopley was used as an archetypal case for legal commentaries about corporal punishment until physical discipline was officially banned in British schools well over a century later. According to education professor Marie Parker-Jenkins, R v Hopley is "the most quoted case of the 19th century involving the issue of corporal punishment". The case is credited with prompting outcry against corporal punishment among the general public; however, contemporary education journals rejected the possibility of abolishing corporal punishment. Hopley's defence, known as "reasonable chastisement", became a frequently used response to charges of corporal punishment and was incorporated into the Children and Young Persons Act 1933
. Cockburn's requirement for "moderate and reasonable" punishment was established as a legal limit to corporal punishment and is still employed in modern legal scholarship.
Eastbourne
Eastbourne is a large town and borough in East Sussex, on the south coast of England between Brighton and Hastings. The town is situated at the eastern end of the chalk South Downs alongside the high cliff at Beachy Head...
, England, concerning the death of 15-year-old Reginald Cancellor (some sources give his name as Chancellor and his age as 13 or 14) at the hands of his teacher, Thomas Hopley. Hopley used corporal punishment
Corporal punishment
Corporal punishment is a form of physical punishment that involves the deliberate infliction of pain as retribution for an offence, or for the purpose of disciplining or reforming a wrongdoer, or to deter attitudes or behaviour deemed unacceptable...
with the stated intention of overcoming what he perceived as stubbornness on Cancellor's part, but instead beat the boy to death.
An inquest into Cancellor's death began when his brother requested an autopsy
Autopsy
An autopsy—also known as a post-mortem examination, necropsy , autopsia cadaverum, or obduction—is a highly specialized surgical procedure that consists of a thorough examination of a corpse to determine the cause and manner of death and to evaluate any disease or injury that may be present...
. As a result of the inquest Hopley was arrested and charged with manslaughter
Manslaughter
Manslaughter is a legal term for the killing of a human being, in a manner considered by law as less culpable than murder. The distinction between murder and manslaughter is said to have first been made by the Ancient Athenian lawmaker Dracon in the 7th century BC.The law generally differentiates...
. He was found guilty at trial and sentenced to four years in prison, although he insisted that his actions were justifiable and that he was not guilty of any crime. The trial was sensationalised by the Victorian
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
press and incited debate over the use of corporal punishment in schools. After Hopley's release and subsequent divorce trial, he largely disappeared from the public record. The case became an important legal precedent in the United Kingdom for discussions of corporal punishment in schools and reasonable limits on discipline.
Background
Thomas Hopley, aged 41 at the time of the incident, was a schoolmaster in Eastbourne who ran a private boarding schoolBoarding school
A boarding school is a school where some or all pupils study and live during the school year with their fellow students and possibly teachers and/or administrators. The word 'boarding' is used in the sense of "bed and board," i.e., lodging and meals...
out of his home at 22 Grand-parade. He was well educated and from a middle-class family, the son of a Royal Navy
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...
surgeon and brother of artist Edward Hopley. His household was fairly well off, and he and his wife kept several servants. Hopley was described by Algernon Charles Swinburne
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Algernon Charles Swinburne was an English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic. He invented the roundel form, wrote several novels, and contributed to the famous Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica...
as "a person of high attainments and irreproachable character". He expressed "utopian" educational ideals shared by many Victorian educational theorists. He wrote pamphlet
Pamphlet
A pamphlet is an unbound booklet . It may consist of a single sheet of paper that is printed on both sides and folded in half, in thirds, or in fourths , or it may consist of a few pages that are folded in half and saddle stapled at the crease to make a simple book...
s on education topics which included "Lectures on the Education of Man", "Help towards the physical, intellectual and moral elevation of all classes of society", and "Wrongs which cry out for redress" advocating the abolition of child labour.
In October 1859, he was offered £180 a year (compared to an average annual salary of £94 for a male public elementary school teacher in 1860) to teach Reginald Channell Cancellor, a "robust" boy who had been "given up as ineducable". Reginald was the son of John Henry Cancellor (1799–1860), a court master and a "man of fair position" from Barnes, Surrey. The boy had previously been a student at a private school called St. Leonard's and under a private tutor. He was not a good student, with contemporary sources suggesting he "had water on the brain" and describing him as "stolid and stupid". Hopley attributed Cancellor's failure to learn to stubbornness. On 18 April 1860 he asked the boy's father for permission to use "severe corporal punishment" to obtain compliance, with permission being granted two days later. Hopley did not possess the cane
Cane
Cane are either of two genera of tall, perennial grasses with flexible, woody stalks from the family Poaceae that grow throughout the world in wet soils. They are related to and may include species of bamboo. The genus Arundo is native from the Mediterranean region to the Far East. Arundinaria...
traditionally used to administer corporal punishment to students, so instead he used a skipping rope and a walking stick.
Death
Cancellor was found dead in his bedroom on the morning of 22 April. His body was covered, with long stockings over his legs and kidskin gloves on his hands. The only visible part of the body was his face. A medical man of Hopley's acquaintance named Roberts pronounced that the boy had died of natural causes. When questioned, Hopley suggested that Cancellor died of heart diseaseHeart disease
Heart disease, cardiac disease or cardiopathy is an umbrella term for a variety of diseases affecting the heart. , it is the leading cause of death in the United States, England, Canada and Wales, accounting for 25.4% of the total deaths in the United States.-Types:-Coronary heart disease:Coronary...
and argued that he should be buried immediately. He wrote to the boy's father requesting the body's immediate removal and interment. After viewing his son's dressed body, Cancellor's father accepted Roberts' assertion for cause of death and agreed to the burial.
Rumours began to circulate among the Hopleys' servants, suggesting that Hopley's wife had spent the night prior to the body's discovery cleaning up evidence of her husband's murder of the boy. Reginald's older brother, Reverend John Henry Cancellor, Jr. (1834–1900), arrived in Eastbourne from Send, Surrey
Send, Surrey
Send is a village in the English county of Surrey. It reputedly got its name as a corruption of the word sand, which was extracted until the 1990s for construction and other purposes at pits nearby. Send is mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086 where it is named Sande.-History:Send appears in...
, on 25 April. He noticed discrepancies in the reports of his brother's death and requested an autopsy. Hopley asked prominent physician Sir Charles Locock, an "acquaintance" of the Cancellor family and an obstetrician
Obstetrics
Obstetrics is the medical specialty dealing with the care of all women's reproductive tracts and their children during pregnancy , childbirth and the postnatal period...
to the Queen, to examine the body and verify death by natural causes; Locock, however, believed that Hopley was responsible for the death.
A complete inquest into Cancellor's death was initiated. His body was taken for autopsy on 28 April and was found to be covered in blood under the gloves and stockings. His thighs were "reduced to a perfect jelly" and his body was covered in bruises and cuts, including two inch-deep holes in his right leg, deep enough to allow the medical examiner
Medical examiner
A medical examiner is a medically qualified government officer whose duty is to investigate deaths and injuries that occur under unusual or suspicious circumstances, to perform post-mortem examinations, and in some jurisdictions to initiate inquests....
, Robert Willis, to touch the bone underneath. Willis reported that other than these injuries, the boy was healthy and his internal organs (including the heart) were free of disease. He thus concluded that Cancellor had not died of natural causes, as Hopley had suggested, and noted that the boy had obviously been beaten shortly before his death. A female servant named Ellen Fowler, when questioned by investigators, reported that she had heard Cancellor screaming and being beaten from 10 pm until midnight and that, shortly thereafter, he abruptly fell silent. She also noted traces of blood in the house and on Hopley's candlestick, which was left outside Cancellor's bedroom, and evidence that Cancellor's and Hopley's clothes had been washed soon before the former was pronounced dead. Two other servants testified in the inquiry and gave similar accounts.
The inquest was unable to determine Cancellor's exact cause of death, but noted several inconsistencies in Hopley's explanation of events. He had failed to summon a doctor immediately and, upon questioning, had given outlandish excuses for his failure to do so. Hopley attempted to explain away the blood on the candlestick by attributing it to a broken blister on his hand, but did not offer an explanation for Cancellor's injuries. Hopley aroused further suspicion when he asked journalists present at the inquest not to include details of the corporal punishment in their stories, "in order to spare the feelings of the deceased family as of my own". Indeed, Cancellor's family was deeply affected by the case, as they had been "disinclined" to see Cancellor beaten; his father died shortly after the inquest of a "broken heart
Broken heart
A broken heart is a common metaphor used to describe the intense emotional pain or suffering one feels after losing a loved one, whether through death, divorce, breakup, physical separation or romantic rejection....
".
Trial
Hopley was arrested in early May and, after a seven-hour preliminary hearing, was released on 16 June on a £2,000 bailBail
Traditionally, bail is some form of property deposited or pledged to a court to persuade it to release a suspect from jail, on the understanding that the suspect will return for trial or forfeit the bail...
. He and his then-pregnant wife spent the period between the initial hearing and the trial at Uckfield
Uckfield
-Development:The local Tesco has proposed the redevelopment of the central town area as has the town council. The Hub has recently been completed, having been acquired for an unknown figure, presumed to be about half a million pounds...
. Hopley was confident that he would be found not guilty. He began composing a pamphlet titled Facts Bearing on the Death of Reginald Channell Cancellor, to be published after the trial; it was published by an associate of Hopley's after his conviction and detailed Hopley's explanation of Cancellor's death and his justification for his treatment of the boy. The press was extremely hostile, calling for a murder charge to be laid against him. He received a large amount of hate mail
Hate mail
Hate mail is a form of harassment, usually consisting of invective and potentially intimidating or threatening comments towards the recipient...
from anonymous members of the public.
Hopley's trial took place at Lewes
Lewes
Lewes is the county town of East Sussex, England and historically of all of Sussex. It is a civil parish and is the centre of the Lewes local government district. The settlement has a history as a bridging point and as a market town, and today as a communications hub and tourist-oriented town...
Assizes
Assizes
Assize or Assizes may refer to:Assize or Assizes may refer to:Assize or Assizes may refer to::;in common law countries :::*assizes , an obsolete judicial inquest...
on 23 July 1860. The prosecutors were Parry and Knapp; Hopley was defended by the serjeant-at-law
Serjeant-at-law
The Serjeants-at-Law was an order of barristers at the English bar. The position of Serjeant-at-Law , or Sergeant-Counter, was centuries old; there are writs dating to 1300 which identify them as descended from figures in France prior to the Norman Conquest...
William Ballantine
William Ballantine
Serjeant William Ballantine SL was an English Serjeant-at-law, a legal position defunct since the legal reforms of the 1870s.-Early career:...
, who subsequently described Hopley as "distorted". Throughout his trial, Hopley described himself as reluctant to use corporal punishment. In describing the events preceding Cancellor's death, Hopley stated that he started crying while beating Cancellor, after which Cancellor presented his lesson and "Hopley took his head on his breast and prayed with him". Hopley presented testimonials from past students who described him as "kindly" and who noted an infrequent use of violence. Hopley claimed to be a paedagogical
Pedagogy
Pedagogy is the study of being a teacher or the process of teaching. The term generally refers to strategies of instruction, or a style of instruction....
follower of John Locke
John Locke
John Locke FRS , widely known as the Father of Liberalism, was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social...
, who had decried the use of corporal punishment except in cases of extreme obstinacy on the part of the student. He argued that, through the application of this theory, the beating that killed Cancellor had been a necessary one.
Robert Willis testified at the trial that there was no possibility that Cancellor's death had been a result of natural causes. He presented a detailed description of the boy's injuries, suggesting that they had been sustained over several hours. He also revealed that Cancellor's skull cavity contained six to eight ounces of fluid, attributing to this fluid the boy's seeming inability to learn as described by Hopley, but rejected any suggestions that it may have contributed to Cancellor's death. Cancellor's brother, Fowler, and Locock all testified against Hopley; Locock's testimony was particularly hostile, suggesting that Hopley's incompetent response to interviews was "tantamount to an admission of guilt". Other witnesses included the Hopleys' laundress, Roberts, three members of the coastguard who had seen lights on in the house late at night, a local constable, and the town registrar.
Ballantine's conduct during the trial was flawed, and he believed Hopley to be insane. Although he promoted the testimonials of former students and argued that a schoolmaster was unlikely to "so lightly jeopardize his ambitions", he congratulated Locock on the accuracy of his testimony in open court. Ballantine did not call key witnesses like Edward Philpott, another student of Hopley's who had been at the house that night. Philpott slept in the bedroom beside Cancellor's and had reported hearing no unusual noises or screams from Cancellor's room on the night of his death. Neither did Ballantine call Professor John Eric Erichsen
John Eric Erichsen
Sir John Eric Erichsen, 1st Baronet was a British surgeon, born in Copenhagen, was the son of Eric Erichsen, a member of a well-known Danish banking family....
of University College Hospital
University College Hospital
University College Hospital is a teaching hospital located in London, United Kingdom. It is part of the University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and is closely associated with University College London ....
, who had conducted a second autopsy on Cancellor on 11 May and had suggested that "the misleading appearance of the body was attributable to an undiagnosed blood condition akin to haemophilia
Haemophilia
Haemophilia is a group of hereditary genetic disorders that impair the body's ability to control blood clotting or coagulation, which is used to stop bleeding when a blood vessel is broken. Haemophilia A is the most common form of the disorder, present in about 1 in 5,000–10,000 male births...
". In his memoir Some experiences of a barrister's life, published in 1883, Ballantine offered a highly sensationalised account of Cancellor's death: "the wretched half-witted victim of a lunatic's system of education was deliberately mangled to death".
Hopley was convicted of manslaughter, not murder
Murder
Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...
, because of his position as a schoolteacher "endowed with parental authority". Sir Alexander Cockburn
Sir Alexander Cockburn, 12th Baronet
Sir Alexander James Edmund Cockburn, 12th Baronet Q.C. was a Scottish lawyer, politician and judge. A notorious womaniser and socialite, as Lord Chief Justice he heard some of the leading causes célèbres of the 19th century.-Life:Cockburn was born in Alţâna, in what is now Romania and was then...
, the Chief Justice
Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales
The Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales is the head of the judiciary and President of the Courts of England and Wales. Historically, he was the second-highest judge of the Courts of England and Wales, after the Lord Chancellor, but that changed as a result of the Constitutional Reform Act 2005,...
of the Court of King's Bench
King's Bench
The Queen's Bench is the superior court in a number of jurisdictions within some of the Commonwealth realms...
, presented a summary of the decision:
Cockburn further suggested that Hopley should have realised Cancellor's cognitive deficiencies and taken these into account in his treatment of the boy.
Hopley was sentenced to four years of penal servitude at Millbank Prison
Millbank Prison
Millbank Prison was a prison in Millbank, Pimlico, London, originally constructed as the National Penitentiary, and which for part of its history served as a holding facility for convicted prisoners before they were transported to Australia...
. After being indicted, he wrote: "while anguish shook the frame, the conscience suffered not one pang. I searched and searched among the deepest secrets of my soul, and could not blame myself... I could look up tranquilly into the face of heaven who knew me to be Not Guilty." He believed that his actions were justifiable because he had undertaken them in his duty as schoolteacher. He portrayed himself as a victim of public opinion, claiming that "a mournful accident was swelled up into a bloody midnight murder, and how it has been brought about that my unfortunate name has been branded, not simply through the United Kingdom, but through the civilised world, as one of the most execrable monsters or of madmen." He published a pamphlet arguing that Locock had perjured himself and had conspired with Fowler to influence the outcome of the trial.
Reaction and aftermath
The trial was sensationalised by contemporary media. The press derided Hopley as "monstrous", and criticised schoolteachers in general and private schoolteachers in particular. Newspapers published graphic accounts of Cancellor's injuries and autopsy and further exaggerated the early rumours surrounding his death. Cancellor's was the first death by corporal punishment to have received broad public interest. To prevent overcrowding, the court issued tickets for admission to the public gallery during the trial; the courtroom was full an hour before the trial began. After Hopley's conviction, he issued at least two pamphlets on model education from gaol, which were poorly received by the public. Hopley's immediate fame was short-lived; a mere month after his conviction, the press was focused on another case of corporal punishment, that of Caroline Lefevre, whose arms were allegedly burnt by her teacher.Following Hopley's release from prison, he became immediately embroiled in a sensationalised divorce trial. His wife, Fanny, had petitioned for divorce on the grounds
Grounds for divorce
Grounds for divorce are regulations specifying the circumstances under which a person will be granted a divorce. Each state in the United States has its own set of grounds...
that he was "unloving" and had mistreated her. She claimed that Hopley had married her as an "educational experiment", presenting Hopley's educational theories as evidence of his "lunacy". She had been 18 years old to Hopley's 36 at the time of their marriage in 1855. According to her statements during the trial, Hopley frequently criticised her writing and insisted that the couple's three children should be raised as "second Christs". She accused him of physically abusing her from the time of her first pregnancy, beating his first child only days after its birth (the child was later found to be "brain-damaged"), and suggesting that during his prison sentence she should be confined to a workhouse
Workhouse
In England and Wales a workhouse, colloquially known as a spike, was a place where those unable to support themselves were offered accommodation and employment...
. Hopley responded by claiming that he set rules only to ensure the maintenance of his household and the well-being of his family, and produced a set of romantic letters he had received from Fanny during his incarceration as evidence of her unforced affection for him.
The jury found Hopley guilty of cruelty, but suggested that Fanny had condoned his treatment of her. The judge therefore ruled that her case was insufficient to grant a divorce. The verdict sparked outrage among the public, who believed that "a great injustice had been done", and that Fanny should not be forced to remain married to an abusive convicted killer. Fanny left England shortly afterwards, allegedly to avoid having to continue living with Hopley.
Hopley largely withdrew from the public eye after the trial, becoming a private tutor in London and publishing pamphlets on spiritualism
Spiritualism
Spiritualism is a belief system or religion, postulating the belief that spirits of the dead residing in the spirit world have both the ability and the inclination to communicate with the living...
in the late 1860s. He died at University College Hospital on 24 June 1876. A retrospective editorial published in The Times in 1960 concluded that Hopley was not "the villain which some persons pictured him to be"; it noted that at the time of his arrest Hopley had been planning the construction of a "model school" in Brighton
Brighton
Brighton is the major part of the city of Brighton and Hove in East Sussex, England on the south coast of Great Britain...
and that he had examined architect's drawings of the school after beating Cancellor.
In 1865, Cancellor's death was used in a medical journal article discussing adult hydrocephalus
Hydrocephalus
Hydrocephalus , also known as "water in the brain," is a medical condition in which there is an abnormal accumulation of cerebrospinal fluid in the ventricles, or cavities, of the brain. This may cause increased intracranial pressure inside the skull and progressive enlargement of the head,...
. Despite Willis' statement that Cancellor had no pre-existing medical condition that would have caused or contributed to his death, author Samuel Wilks
Samuel Wilks
Sir Samuel Wilks, 1st Baronet , was a British physician and biographer.-Early life:Samuel Wilks was born on 2 June 1824 in Camberwell, London, the second son of Joseph Barber Wilks, a cashier at the East India House...
suggested not only that Cancellor had hydrocephalus, but that he was consequently more susceptible to physical injury as a result. He pointed to the autopsy finding of fluid in Cancellor's brain to support his assertions and argued that this effusion
Effusion
In physics, effusion is the process in which individual molecules flow through a hole without collisions between molecules. This occurs if the diameter of the hole is considerably smaller than the mean free path of the molecules...
would have caused physical weakness.
R v Hopley was used as an archetypal case for legal commentaries about corporal punishment until physical discipline was officially banned in British schools well over a century later. According to education professor Marie Parker-Jenkins, R v Hopley is "the most quoted case of the 19th century involving the issue of corporal punishment". The case is credited with prompting outcry against corporal punishment among the general public; however, contemporary education journals rejected the possibility of abolishing corporal punishment. Hopley's defence, known as "reasonable chastisement", became a frequently used response to charges of corporal punishment and was incorporated into the Children and Young Persons Act 1933
Children and Young Persons Act 1933
The Children and Young Persons Act 1933 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland...
. Cockburn's requirement for "moderate and reasonable" punishment was established as a legal limit to corporal punishment and is still employed in modern legal scholarship.