SON NOT GUILTY

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 462, 2 July 1937, Page 3

SON NOT GUILTY

DEATH OF FATHER Husband Attacked Wife London, June 12. Arthur Phillips, a 34-year-old chauffeur, ot Essex Roud, told a reporter a few hours after the Old Street magistrate had dismissed a charge against him of murdering his father—that he still “loved hit father’s memory." He described his father’s Jekyll-and-Hyde nature that ltd, him at one moment to hit his wife with a hammer, the next to give pennies to children he had never, seen bfore. “Apart from the rows he had with mother," he said, “I highly respected him and loved firm, the same at' he loved me and my brothers and sisters." , “Wherever he went he loved kiddies—even strange kiddies he gave money to. Occasionally he stood on the doorstep and gave kiddiee pennies to run races in the street. “He used to carry his grandchildren for pick-a-back rides until he was exhausted. “That was how I first found out that he was really ill. He had a bad heart. His illnesses had turned! his brain. "Even after all the trouble my mother had during his lifetime she still loved him, and bought ground for hit burial, and when she dies she wants to lie near hifn.” Cheers and handclaps had greeted the magistrate’s decision to dismiss the murder charge earlier in the day. Ate he left the Court he saw his mother unconscious on a bench in a corridor overwhelmed by the decision. When she recovered she said to her son: “Tliank. God you are out of it. No worries at all now.” A-tragic story had been told of the son’s struggle with his father after the father had attacked: his wife. The father was said to have a “terrible criminal record.”