MORBID CURIOSITY.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 66, 19 March 1925, Page 4

MORBID CURIOSITY.

A GLIMPSE OF MOUAT. COURT STORMED BY CROWD, A RUSH FOR SEATS. (By Telegraph.—Special to "Star.") CHIUSTCHURCH, Wednesday. The apparently insatiable desire o£ human nature for the morbid makes itself from time to time evident in criminal trinls. However sordid, and sometimes bestial, the circumstances serve to focus attention on a latent public trait. It is left to psychologists to guess at the motive which impels men and women to waste time in crowded courts, fearful lest they should miss a single facial expression on the person in the dock, or lose a single syllable in the muck raking details which the prosecution must collect for its puitposes. In the present murder charge against Frederick Peter Mouat, the interest of the public is shown up in bold relief. Not only have hundreds of people visited the home of the accused at St. Martins, but on each day that he has appeared in Court the room has been packed to the doors. To-day, when the doors opened, there was a queue waiting, and a rush of men and women for seats took place. When the seats had been filled vantage points were at a premium. Men stood on the backs of seats at the extreme rear, the lobbies wore crowded, and the doors were blocked up. Young and old craned their necks to see the man in the dock, and squirmed and shoved to hear what was said. Then, with Mouat's departure from the dock, many people rushed round to the other door to join the crowd with bicycles and cars, waiting to see Mouat enter the police van. But the police worked a ruse by driving the van away for petrol. This led a portion of the crowd to disperse, but twothirds of the women and men waited and had their curiosity satisfied.