HORSEWHIPPING IN COURT.

Evening Star, Issue 3178, 28 April 1873, Page 3

HORSEWHIPPING IN COURT.

The Ballarat Courier, Blh April, reports the case of a man horsewhipping his daughter during the sitting of the County Court on the previous day. His Honor Judge .Rogers, the members of the bar, and the suitors in court were startled into exclamations of surprise yesterday, when the scuffle and disturbance attendant on such an outrage brought the proceedings of the Court temporarily to a standstill. On the list of cases for the day was that of O’Brien v. Graham, in which the plaintiff, a barmaid at Douglas’s Port P.iillip Hotel in Sturt street, was to claim LIOO damages from the defendant (a brewer’s traveller) for alleged indecent assault. Whilst the young woman was waiting—in company with Mrs Douglas -in the female witness’s room, Patrick O’Brien, better known as Canadian Pat, the father of the plaintiff, walked hurriedly into the room, holding a riding whip in his right hand, with which he commenced to thrash his daughter, upbraiding her at the same time for appearing in Court in such an action. Hie girl ran to the front of the court-house to make her escape, and the father in his fury tore off her hat. He was immediately seized by the police, and taken before his Honor, who read him a very severe lecture on the enormity of his offence. The man said it was a very hard case to rear a daughter up to twenty years of age and see her getting into bad company and being led away, coming into Court without his knowledge in a case such as was instituted against Graham. His Honor told him that he had no right to take the law into his own hands, to horsewhip a young woman of that age although she was his daughter ; tr by such means to prevent a suitor bringing a case into that court. He would send him te gaol for seven days for contempt, and leave the young woman to prosecute him for the assault. O’Brien was then removed in custody, and taken at once to the gaol.