“ACCIDENTAL MURDER.”

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVI, Issue 1259, 16 June 1914, Page 4

“ACCIDENTAL MURDER.”

Can murder be held to he accidental ? At first sight it would seem not, for deliberation enters into murder, and what is done by design cannot, one would think, be accidental. However, the highest court in Great Britain is of the contrary opinion. This was the way of it. A master in an Irish school detected one of his pupils in a theft, and prevented others playing in a certain shed. The aggrieved boys, to “ get even ” with him, arranged to attack him, and two of them assaulted him so violently that his skull was fractured, and he died the same day. The question then arose : Did be meet his death by “ accident,” “ arising out of and in the course of his employment ?” if the answer was 11 Yes ” his mother was entitled to compensation under the Workmen’s Compensation Act of 1906, The County Court Judge said “ Yes,” and so did the Irish Court of Appeal, but the case went up to the House of Lords. That tribunal upheld the findings, of the lower Courts, but only by the narrowest of margins. The four Ayes were the Lord Chancellor, the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Loreburn (ex-Lord Chancellor), and Lord 1 Shaw, and the three Noes were Lord Dunedin, Lord Atkinson, and Lord Parker—also great lawyers. Lord Dunedin contended that “accident” was the very antithesis of design, and that as the schoolmaster was murdered he could not be considered to have met with an accident, but the majority regarded it as an accident for the purposes of the statute any injury not expected or designed by the employee. Lord Loreburn put the case for the Ay:": in a way that will appeal to many laymen. “ Suppose some ruffian laid a log cn the rails snd wrecked a train, was the guard who had been injured excluded from the Act ? Was a gamekeeper who was shot ]by poachers excluded from the Act? There was design enough in either case, r,nd of the worst kind. In either case, he would have thought, if the nature of the man’s employment was looked at, it might be said he was injured by what was accident iu that employment.” And do not many teachers take the risk —infinitesimal though it may be —of injury from a criminal-minded pupil ?”