A NOTABLE TRIAL.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 411, 16 July 1908, Page 4

A NOTABLE TRIAL.

A trial of Mrs Jane Baikie, on a charge of murdering Alexander Brown by administering arsenic to him, was concluded at the Central Criminal Court at about 9 o’clock last night (says the Sydney Daily Telegraph of the 19th ult), when the accused was found not guilty by the jury after two hours’ deliberation. Extraordinary public interest was manifested in the trial, and the attendance of women, curious to gaze upon another woman tried for her life, grew day by day during the four days that the trial lasted, until the whole of the floor space at the back of the court was yesterday reserved for them. The appearance of this portion of the court last night was like that of the ladies’ gallery in the Legislative Assembly when something unusual is likely to transpire in the House. In fact, a solicitor of over forty, years’ criminal practice remarked'that he had never in his life seen the like before. So fearful were the fair sex of losing their seats or missing some portion of the final stages of the trial that they sat tight throughout the addresses and the summing-up and did not move even to get a morsel to eat, during the long adjournment, from 7 to 9 p.m., during which the jury were supplied with tea, and agreed upon their verdict. The accused woman, who displayed some agitation while making her statement to the jury, was overcome with emotion once or twice while her counsel (Mr Mack) was making an appeal to the jury on her behalf, received the verdict of acquittal without a movement of either features or muscles. Then she slightly bent her head, and murmured, “ Thank you,” in an almost inaudible voice, some peosons in the gallery broke into cheers and clapping of hands when the foreman announced, ‘‘We find her not guilty.” This demonstration was immediately suppressed, but the relief from the tension of the previous moment was apparent in the hum of subdued conversation that swept the crowded court-room. Mrs Baikie, when formally discharged and released from the dock, was surrounded by her friends, whom she embraced and clasped by the hand, and as she left the court in company with,her hhsband, the crowd, which still gathered in knots about the front of the building and around the gates, made another demonstration in her favour. There were several remarkable features about the trial, which will go down as one of the most notable of recent years.