SCOTLAND YARD INQUIRY.

Hokitika Guardian, 12 June 1928, Page 3

SCOTLAND YARD INQUIRY.

Australian Press Assn.—United Service - LONDON, June 10. Judge Atherly Jones, the Judge of the Mayor’s City of London Court since 1913, speaking in ' London, attacked the police. He condemned their practice of extracting evidence from arrested persons by interrogation. He declared that- if any accused persons volunteered a statement such persons should be left to write it out for themselves. Major Jones said that prosecutions for indecency should not ,be brought unless corroboration by. the police was available. The Judge remarked that the practice of sending police attired in evening dress to buy champagne at night clubs, savoured of the Continental agent-provocateur method. The proper procedure in the case of Miss Savidge, he said, would have been to write, make an appointment, and 'obtain'her statement, but not to drive up to her employer’s place and carry her off to Scotland Yard. The press recalls - Judge Athcrley Jones’s activity in a case in the year 1887, when a girl named Walker was wrongly charged with being a > .walker. The Ministry of tl\e day refused Mr Atherley Jones’s demand for an inquiry, The Minister was defeated however, then he granted an inquiry. (Received this dav at 9.30 a.m.) . : k ’ LONDON, June 11. A subpoena lias been issued for the attendance of Miss Egan and her brother at the police enquiry. Hastings resumed his cross-examina-tion of Chief Inspector Collins, who admitted Miss Savidge was not warned that the police Wanted to ask questions before she was asked to go to Scotland Yard without notice such as was given. Sir Leo C. Money and Egan. Deducting interruptions, the question ing of Miss Savidge occupied 170 minutes. ' It began at 3.10 and ended at 0.40. Miss Savidge was wrong if she .said it lasted till 7.10. Replying to Lees Smith, Chief Inspector Collins said ho was acting according to the routine of Scotland Yard. He had never known witnesses signatures to be finally obtained at the end of an interrogation owing to exhaustion. He regarded Miss Savidge • His a normal woman of twenty-two. He did not think she was suffering from nervous exhaustion when she

signed. . Collins added: It is difficult to lay down precise- rules regarding the talcing of statements. He always impressed on young officers to use courtesy and proper methods. Nothing in ' the rules forbids cross-examination of prospective witnesses. There was no need to cross-examine Miss Savidge, ■ because she was ready and willing to make a statement. No rule requires the presence of a woman during the interrogation of a woman, but sometimes they arrange for a police woman to attend or accompany the woman to Scotland Yard to comfort her and put her at ease, but there was not the same need to keep her during the interrogation. Detective-Sergeant Clark, who recorded Miss Savidge’s statement, in evidence said Miss Savidge’s wMingness to go to Scotland Yard and her r— willingness to let a police woman go about her business, corroborated Col-, lins’ evidence. He denied Collins implnyed threats and blandishments. He admitted Miss Savidge might have refused to go to Scotland Yard if she had known beforehand tho intimate nature of the interrogation. Miss Lilian Myles, a woman inspector at Scotland Yard, said she told Miss ISavidge that Collins was a nice kind man. (Laughter). Cross-examined, she said women sometimes went to Scotland A art * alone. •„. ~ Hastings: Would you have told Miss Savidge she was going to have an unpleasant time. Myles: “I did not suppose there would be mipleasant^juestions.”