A FIJIAN TRAGEDY.

Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 956, 18 July 1877, Page 3

A FIJIAN TRAGEDY.

[From the Melbourne “ Argus.”] Some extraordinary rumours in connection with the death of the late Mr W. G. Baillio at Fiji have been circulated of late in Melbourne. Tbc circumstances of the unhappy event have almost passed out of mind, and it may be an act of justice to recall them. Only one newspaper, the Fiji “Times,” was published in Fiji at the time, and the particulars given in the Melbourne journals were all obtained from it. In one of its issues, the Fiji “ Times ” announces the arrival at Lcvuka of the Messrs. Kelt, from Suva, with the sad intelligence of the death of Mr Baillio. Mr Baillie was at the time in partnership with Henry Scott, by trade a joiner, and formerly of Collingwood. Ho and Baillie lived in one house, and Mrs Baillio and her daughter in another. On the morning of the 13th March, ,1871, Mrs Baillie went into the men’s house, and, seeing blood on the mosquito curtains, looked into the bed, and there found the corpse of her murdered husband. Judging from the appearances, Mr Baillie had been seized by the throat, and his head had been beaten in with a tomahawk or some other heavy instrument. He must have been attacked suddenly, for there were no signs of any struggle. An inquest was held the next day, presided over by Mr W. H. Brower, and a verdict of wilful murder was returned against Scot!, who was missing, as was also a rifle and a revolver and £IBO in sovereigns, the latter being the property of the Messrs Kelt, who

bad left tbe money for safe keeping, their plantation being further inland. A reward of £5 was offered for the apprehension of Scott, in order to enlist the aid of the natives, and it was determined that, if captured, lie should be sent for trial to Sydney. Some days afterwards the “ Fiji Times ’ ’ announced the discovery of the body of Scott. According to its narrative, Scotty is supposed to have wandered about the vicinity of the catastrophe until, worn out with remorse and indisposition, he committed suicide. We road—“ It would appear that he undressed himself and secured his clothes in the fork of a tree on the bank of the Neimbucalo Creek, some miles from the scene of the murder, and leaving his gun with his clothes, went into the creek and shot himself.” When the body was found was in an advanced stage of decomposition, but it was easily identified. None of the money was found with the clothes, but £6 or thereabouts was subsequently recovered from the natives. The white settlers were uncertain whether they should bury the body or hold an inquest upon it, and here the account breaks off, and the affair seems to have been dismissed from memory. We are told, however, that as a matter of fact the settlers did neither one thing or the other, but gathered wood together and burned the remains. No suspicion appears to have been entertained in Fiji that anyone but Scott could be implicated in the crime, and any theory that Scott was a victim involves the supposition that the murderer was able to kill two men without alarming the inmates of the adjoining house and then dragged the one body a mile away without leaving any sign of his presence. The absence of the money is the only circumstance calculated to arouse suspicion, bid the natives may have taken it or some white man who concealed his discovery of the body. No suspicion appears to have been entertained at Suva, and the origin of the rumours which have disturbed Melbourne was apparently a paragraph in a Gippsland newspaper stating that the actual murderer of Mr Eaillie was alive and in Victoria —a statement to which other journals gave currency, pointing it with allusions which Dr. Macartney, M.L.A., has taken home to himself. Dr. Macartney was the owner of the plantation adjoining that of Mr Eaillie, but wo learn that at the time of the outrage lie was absent looking after a second plantation which he was working on the Ea coast, and he did not return until the whole of the sad affair was over. As the the public is aware, however, the member for South Grippsland has a divorce suit pending, and the understanding is that the rumour arose out of allegations as to certain wandering statements said to have been made by Dr. Macartney before he became a Good Templar. The pity is that the painful rumour ever obtained publicity.