LANGUISHIN GIN GAOL

Gisborne Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2038, 25 March 1907, Page 3

LANGUISHIN GIN GAOL

The famous case of Adolph Beck Beck opened tho eyes of tho British public to the fact that in spile of trial by jury and an elaborate judicial system which is supposed to safeguard the rights of the individual till ho is proven guilty, it is quite possible that a perfectly innocent man may bo convicted, branded as a felon, and compelled to suffer the degradation of gaol life. Tho result of tho Beck case was a strenuous appeal by Mr. ft. B. Sims and others for a Court of Criminal Appeal, so that it would he open to any prisoner, either rightly or wrongly convicted, to have his case reviewed. Another extraordinary instance has come to iiglit in England of wrongful arrest and falso imprisonment. This time the victim is a young mail named George Henry William Lewis, convicted at the Middlesex sessions in November of passing a worthless

cheque for £2. According to the Daily Mail, the facts were that the

cheque was presented to a shopkeeper by a man who pretended to have been sent by one of bis customers named Mrs. Josephs. The cheque proved to have been taken

from a cheque-book which had been in Lewis’s possession. But Lewis had previously entrusted the hook to a friend named Staev. in order that it might he returned to the bank, as his account was exhausted. On hearing that cheques from this hook were being presented, lie had before September 29t.h gone to the. hank and warned the manager and the police. Notwithstanding this action, which no man who intended afterwards to pass a fraudulent cheque would have been likely to take, be was arrested on tlie ground that he hiul presented tho cheque in Kilhurn, and was identified as the criminal by the shopman. When he appeared before the Police Court n servant of Mrs. Josephs, Millie Marsh, swore that ho was an acquaintance of hers, and that on the date of the offence she had told him that she had a cheque

which Mrs. Josephs wished to cash, whereupon ho had stated that he also had a cheque to cash. At the Middlesex sessions she added to.lier evidence further assertions, among them the statement that ho had written to her and told her that he had cashed the cheque in question himself. Yet Lewis swore that he had never set eyes upon her till she appeared at tho Police Court. There were discrepancies in her evidence which should have aroused the suspicion of the Court, and on which Lewis’s counsel did not fail to dwell. But when that counsel, Mr. Black, cross-exam-ined Marsh to demonstrate tho worthlessness of her story, Sir R. Littler, the chairman, interposed, and insisted that no one would believe a word of the defence offered. So strong an influence did he exert upon the jury that they, too, seem to have jumped hurriedly to the conclusion that the servant’s tale was correct. Five respectable witnesses were placed in the box to swear to tlie fact that Lewis could not have visited the shop at the time stated, and to show that on the evening in question ho was at a card party. But the case was pro-judged- from the first; a verdict of guilty followed; and Lewis was sentenced to three years’ penal servitude, which was afterwards reduced to 15 months’ imprisonment. This unsatisfactory trial

had a startling sequel. The girl Alarsli subsequently confessed that she committed perjury in order to shield her lover, named Brady, and who was subsequently arrested for passing valueless cheques. Ho resembled Lewis in appearance, and this resulted in a case of mistaken

identity as far as the shopman was concerned. When tho last mail left England there was an agitation for the release of Lewis, which the Home Secretary, for some extraordinary reason, proposed to defer till the trial of Brady and tho girl Alarsli. The case,. following the Edalji case recently investigated by Sir Conan Doyle, proves that there is often n tendency to take far too much for granted in criminal cases,particularly where charges arc based on circumstantial evidence, and a grievous wrong may he inflicted on perfectly innocent people.—Truth.

A competent authority in Christchurch gave it as his opinion that Borneo Gardiner, the bugler for the Gisborne School Cadets, was the best bugler of those who were with thp Poverty Bay and Napier cadet battalions at the Exhibition.

In the course of an address at Raetibi last week, Air. Fowler, organiser of the Farmers’ Union in the Wellington provincial district, urged that tlie selling price of New Zealand wool should be fixed by the pas-toralists—-and not by the- brokers.' A first-class expert should be appointed at a good salary—say £2OOO a year, which would mean a rate of 4£d per bale —and he would be able to go to tlie auction room and see that the clip was not sold below a certain price. Mr. Fowler was convinced

that if such a system was adopted the farmers would receive more money for wool than they did under the present arrangement.