A very shocking incident has occurred at a private school of the highest class at Eastbourne. This establishment was restricted to the reception of a few pupils, the sons of persons in a high rank of life, willing to pay a large sum for the best instruction of their children, with the accommodation and treatment suitable to their position and prospects. The principal was a Mr. Hopley, a person of high attainments and of irreproachable character. One of the youths committed to his charge was Reginald Channell Cancellor, aged 15, son of Mr. Cancellor, a Master of the Court of Common Pleas. As the position of this gentleman was such that his son might expect hereafter to belong to one of the genteel professions, he spared no pains or expense to give his child an education such as would fit him for his aim in the struggle of life. He sought out for him a school of reputation and a master who had the credit of being a man of high attainments and a successful teacher of youth. Mr. Hopley was to receive 180l. a year with his pupil, and there was every incentive, therefore, to the tutor to endeavour to do his best by the boy.
Unfortunately, he did not understand the lad who had come under his control. Young Cancellor was labouring under disease. He had water on the brain. He was stolid and stupid, and he could not learn. He was silent when asked to repeat a sum in arithmetic which he had just been taught, and he did not know, or, as his schoolmaster thought, affected not to know, the difference between a sixpence and a shilling.
This was a case for medical custody and gentle treatment. Mr. Hopley took a pedagogue’s view of it, and thought it was a case of obduracy, to be broken down by force. He flogged the boy, and, as it did him no good, he told the father that the punishment must be increased until the authority of the school master was established. Up to this point there is not much to be said. The fate of the poor brain hampered, heavy, mindless boy, urged and flogged to work operations in his confused and formless intellect, must have been very wretched; but Hopley probably believed that all boys are alike, some brighter and some duller than others, but that all could take in the ordinary quantum of knowledge with more or less trouble if they pleased. At first he seems to have thought it his duty to conquer the boy’s obstinacy; but, as the contest went on, there appears too much reason to believe that it became a question of temper with the school master, and that violence and cruelty were the effect of vindictiveness and irritation.
One morning young Cancellor was found dead in his bed. The body was carefully covered over. It had white kid gloves upon its hands, and long stockings drawn far up over the thighs; nothing was visible but the face. Hopley suggested that the boy had died of disease of the heart, and wished a certificate from the surgeon and immediate burial. At one moment it appeared likely that the whole affair would be hushed up. But mysterious stories of midnight shrieks and blood-stained instruments of punishment began to be whispered about. The servants had seen blood upon the linen in Mrs. Hopley’s room, and had heard sounds which convinced them that the miserable wife had spent the night in the frightful task of preparing the body to pass a superficial investigation, and in getting rid of the traces of violence which would testify against her husband.
Then came the real investigation. The gloves and the stockings were stripped off, and the legs and the arms of the corpse were found to be coated with extravasated blood, “the cellular membranes under the skin of the thighs were reduced to a perfect jelly; in fact, all torn to pieces and lacerated by the blows that had been inflicted.” There were two holes in the right leg about the size of a sixpence, and an inch deep, which appeared to have been made by jabbing a thick stick into the flesh. The appearance was that of a human creature who had been mangled by an infuriated and merciless assailant.
All these appearances coincided but too faithfully with what was now learnt of the conduct of the schoolmaster. A servant girl who slept next to the pupil-room heard the boy crying and screaming under blows, and her master talking and beating. She listened at 10 o’clock, when the torture was going on, and she awoke at 12, and it was still proceeding. Then the cries suddenly ceased, and nothing after was heard during that unquiet night but the stealthy movements of the wife, who was, with womanly devotion, doing her fearful task of hiding the traces of the tragedy. Others of the servants had heard or witnessed part of the sufferings of the unhappy victim—had heard the blows, the exclamations—the midnight screams —and then (if the expression may be allowed) the horrid silence. They heard the steps of the unhappy wife, the pouring out of water; they witnessed the stained fluid, the wetted clothing, the gore spotted flooring and carpet, and, in the morning, the wild attempts to conceal the tragedy of the night. The narrative of these uneducated women told the tale of horror with a dramatic force beyond the reach of art. The superficial attempts of the awe-stricken family to give a natural appearance to the death could not impose upon persons who had witnessed the sufferings and heard the cries of the victim, and the shocking result became bruited abroad.
The brother of the poor lad (a clergyman) came to Eastbourne to inquire into the truth of the rumours current of his relative’s death. It would probably be uncharitable to remark too severely upon the statements made by the conscience-smitten man to conceal his crime; it may well be excused to a man placed in so terrible a position by the consciousness of unpardonable cruelty and the dread of the consequences to his good name, that he should represent in a non-criminal light the circumstances of the deed; but he said that when, as his latest act, he again fetched the rope and inflicted punishment, he himself burst into tears, and that then the poor lad placed his head upon his breast and asked to be allowed to say his lesson, and that he then prayed with him before he left him. Afterwards, he clasped his hands together and said, “Heaven knows I have done my duty by that poor boy.” The inquiries of the brother necessarily developed the whole miserable story, and Mr. Hopley was given into custody. The details of the evidence before the magistrates sent a thrill of horror through every family group throughout the kingdom.
The prisoner was tried at Lewes on the 23rd July, and the whole horrifying details having been repeated, he was found Guilty, and sentenced to four years penal servitude.
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