An Extraordinary Case.

Hastings Standard, Issue 369, 10 July 1897, Page 4

An Extraordinary Case.

A case, in which a woman named Robie died from poisoning nt Melbourne recently, prod need a curious legal difficulty. The first impression was that the woman had committed suicide, but subsequently, on the statement of their seveu-year old son, the husband was arrested on a charge of murder. It was not alleged that he poisoned the woman, but that he knew she had taken poison ; that before she swallowed it, in the heat of a quarrel, he said " Well, take it," in reply to a threat by the woman to take poison ; that although she was vomiting he dressed and went to choir practice ; that on his return he found his wife in a state of collapse but did not send for a doctor, and that he induced the child to tell untruths about the circumstances of his mother's death. At a coroner's inquest his counsel submitted that Robie was not responsible for his wife's death. She had taken poison of her own free will, and even though Eobie knew of that fact he was not liable criminally for any neglect on his part to provide a doctor or some other means of saving or attempting to save ber life. It might be that he committed a moral wrong. He certainly had committed no legal wrong, and that was all they had to concern themselves with. He was not bound by law to prevent his wife killing herself, or to attempt to save her when she had taken poison. The counsel for the Crown could not remember a legal authority bearing directly upon the question at issue, but he claimed that inasmuch as a master, or any person delegated by the master, or uniier contract, was liable to protect the life of a servant, so a husband should be held responsible for the life of his wife, who is under contract of marriage with him. The jury's verdict was " Suicide while of unsound mind," and Robie wsts liberated on his own recognisances.