THE UNWRITTEN LAW.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 2012, 7 August 1919, Page 4

THE UNWRITTEN LAW.

CORNISH MINER- AND HIS DAUGHTER’S HONOUR.

JURY ACQUITS PRISONER.

All the material for a powerful drama was present in a case at Bodmin Assizes recently. A wellgroomed, much-travelled man (something of a Bohemian), the belle of a picturesque seaside village, and an irate father, figured in the first and second acts. The third came with the trial, with the much-discussed “unwritten law” once more in the foreground. Albert John Nieholls, a miner, of St. Ives, Cornwall, was charged with the manslaughter of Captain Ernest Frederick Schiff, but without leaving the box the jury found the accused not guilty. It was stated that Schiff had been living in Cornwall for about a year, and met Nieholls’ daughter at Zennor, a holiday place on the moors, where she was engaged as a domestic servant. On March 20th, Nieholls, after receiving a communication from Police-Sergeant Matthews, went to tire Grey House, Carbis Bay, where Captain Schiff lived. What the information was Nieholls had received counsel did not know, but the effect of it was to make him indignant and resentful against Schiff. BOTH EYES BLACKENED.

Nieholls reached the house about 12.30. He and Schiff together went down a pathway that led from Lelant to St. Ives, and about a quarter of an hour afterwards a Mr Simesby, a resident, found Schiff rising on all fours from the ground, moaning and holding his side. Both his eyes were blackened. Lying on the ground were certain keys and small change that had fallen from his pocket. Schiff was helped to his house, but died on March 24th.

Accused, in his evidence, described the visit to Sc biff, who, he said, exhibited a violent temper, and threatened to kill., the lad who had given him (the accused) information about Captain Schiff and his daughter. When he went to see Schiff at Carbis Bay it was because the officer had been sending notes to his daughter, enedavouring to get her to go to London with him. During the interview Schiff became violent, and struck him on the head. “I went for him,” added accused, “because I knew he was a violent man, and I did not know whether he might have a 'shooter on him, or anything of that sort,” CRIME UNDER A CLOAK. Mr Justice Lush, in his summing up, said that of late there had come up from time to time in this country a suggestion that juries were permitted to recognise what, in an abuse of language, was some times called “the unwritten law.” So far from being entitled to the name of being a law, written or unwritten, to give it that name was to hide crime under a cloak of respectability. It was a pernicious doctrine if they were to allow a man to take the law into his own hands.

He appealed to the jury not to be swayed in their decision by the natural sympathy they must have with a devoted father who found that his daughter was the victim of a wicked intrigue. They .all had sympathy with him, but that did not justify a father in taking the law into ins own hands and inflicting chastisement.