Browne, Kennedy and the "Tell-Tale Eye": A Response to Campion-Vincent

As a former criminal court and crime reporter and a folklorist, may I comment on Veronique Campion-Vincent's excellent paper on the "Tell-Tale Eye" (Folklore 110 [1999]:13-24)?

Michael Goss's reference in footnote 2 to The Trial of Browne and Kennedy by W. Teignmouth Shore says that the belief that the eyes of a dying person registered or "photographed" their last vision was tabloid invention and not widely held.

Shore's book is the only virtually verbatim report of the 1928 case and, in keeping with the publishers' rules about each of their "Notable Trials" series, it was prepared with access to judges, counsel and solicitors, legal papers and records. As a history of the case, publication might, as Campion-Vincent says, be "quasi-contemporaneous" but publication less than two years after trial was not at that time remarkable for such a diligently prepared report.

The "Tell-Tale Eye" angle comes, not from the tabloids or from Teignmouth Shore, but was inferred from Kennedy's own statement that he went round the car, and saw Browne with a Webley in his hand. The policeman was dying (and on his back) and Browne, still sitting in the car, addressing him, said, "What are you looking at me like that for?" and stooping down shot the policeman at close range through both eyes. Only four shots in all were fired (see The Trial of Browne and Kennedy, p. 49). The manner in which the statement was obtained by police was challenged at the magistrates' court committal proceedings, but the challenge was abandoned at the trial. Medical evidence confirmed the sequence of shots. What other reason could there possibly be for firing two shots to kill and then two more through the eyes?

Tabloids would not have had to invent such a belief. The "Tell-Tale Eye" belief was well known and popularly held, as indicated in the many pre-1928 references cited in Campion-Vincent's article. Moreover, I was born in 1928 and my parents, other relatives and their contemporaries impressed on me, both with and without reference to the Browne and Kennedy case, that the "Tell-Tale Eye" was ingrained in folkloric or superstitious belief at the time.

Teignmouth Shore's refusal to "reproduce any of the newspaper coverage of the case," which he describes as "factually worthless" and of little historic value, refers not to the court hearings at all, but only to the excitable and controversial period between trial and executions (see The Trial of Browne and Kennedy, p. 25).

Like many questioned criminal trials in Britain, the lay public should note that, where two people embark on a joint criminal enterprise--in this case to steal a car--and one of the pair kills, then both are equally guilty of murder in law.

Biographical Note

Brian McConnell is a journalist, author and folklorist with a special interest in urban legends and their transmission by lawyers, policemen and other professional people.

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