"I HAVE SHOT A WOMAN."

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 233, 1 October 1932, Page 3 (Supplement)

"I HAVE SHOT A WOMAN."

MAN'S STARTLING CONFESSION,

TRAGIC VISITOR TO DOCTOR'S SURGERY—SORDID DRAMA OF IyCIT UNION—THE TRIAL OF EDWARD fAMOUS FORENSIC TRIUMPH OF NOTED CRIMINAL LAWYER.

At the beginning of 1909 Marshall Hall, one of Britain's most famous criminal lawLrs was retained "specially" to fight a Lβ'which he himself regarded as the neatest triumph of his forensic career. On a bitterly cold snowy night on December 29, 1908, at about a quarter to ten, a Dr. Galbraith, of Wolverhampton, was disturbed by the visit of a man obviously distraught , and under the influence of drink, says the late Edward Marjoribanks, in his hook on Marshall Hall's murder trials. "Come at once, doctor," he said, «I have shot a woman." The man was Edward Lawrence, a rich br ewer and a well-known character of the town He had received a good education, Wome an excellent man of busings and had married a charming woman. But a craving for drink was a fading in his family had killed his brother, and was fast ruining Edward. His wife had obtained a decree nisi on account of a brutal assault upon her, and his misconduct with a beautiful barmaid named Ruth Hadley. His wife was, how devoted to him,, and in his own inti*este had never made her decree absoTnt7 He was a generous, open-handed aan hut when in drink violent and imS>le to deal with He had recent y K£ convicted and fined for savage y Sting with his teeth a police constable against whom he had a iancied grievance. What Doctors Found.

As the doctor entered the brewer's house Lawrence made as if to lock the door and the former refused to come in without another doctor. The two medical men found" a young woman etretched on the floor of the dining room in her outdoor rlnthes An almost meal for wessons was laid upon the tab e She was the girl for whom he had left his and children. There was a bullet wound in her. right temple and a slight / wmmd on her right arm. The case was hopeless, and she died soon after. Lawrence was hysterical, and alcohol seemed to have so unbalanced his mind Shis moods alternated between heartbroken anxiety and a brazen pride in what had happened. At one moment ne would be saying, "Good God, shes not dead, is she?. For God's sake do everything you can for her," and the next moment, "I'm glad I did it. She is best dead- she drove me to it. You what a ■nicked woman she has been. When the police arrived one spent cartridge was found in the dining room and one bullet had penetrated through the window and lodged in the wall opposite. But in the revolver found upon him there were four undischarged and only one spent cartridge, which seemed to prove that Lawrence had reloaded in an attempt to conceal the fact that he had fired twice. Attitude Changed. When questioned and charged by the police, Lawrence assumed a bitter, defiant attitude. "Murder," he said, "you say, do you? That's all right." Up to this point his every word and action seemed to be an admission, indeed a confession, of guilt. Later his attitude changed. "Well," he observed, "there's one thing— I didn't do it. You were not there when it was done. . . She shot herself." Ihis statement, if anything could have, made matters worse; it seemed a fatuous contradiction of everything he had yet said. The prisoner reserved his defence at the Police Court, and on the face of the matter the task of defending him appeared almost hopeless. His bad reputation, his violent character, his statements to the police, and the strong local feelirig against him, were all considerations which no jury could.easily banish from their mmds. On the other hand, some person whom he had befriended printed broadsheets in verse extolling his generosity and begging for an acquittal for "Poor Old Ted." Mr. Justice Jelf was the judge, Mr. F. M. gherwood appeared for the prosecution, and opened the case as '.' one , o£ murder, wilful murder, and nothing less than murder." The Court was packed ■with spectators, among whom was Edward Lawrence's wife, wfro had nobly stood by her husband since his arrest. She satin the gallery through every day of the trial. . After the opening, the prosecution called their evidence. Two sisters of the dead woman said that Lawrence had shot at her twice before, and had threatened to murder her. One of them said she had seen him threaten Ruth with a revolver. : The Last Person. The last person to see Ruth before her tragic death was a little fifteen-year-old servant girl. She had seen the beginning of a quarrel between Lawrence and Ruth, in which he had accused her of being drunk, and she, indignantly denying the charge, made as if to throw a cruet at him. The servant girl was then dismissed by Ruth, and Marshall made much of the fact that she heard the key turn in the lock pust after she went out, and knew that it was Ruth, not Lawrence, who had locked it. The case for the prosecution ended with the cross-examination of a Dr. Powell. Marshall suggested to him that the revolver had accidentally gone off while Ruth and Lawrence were struggling. But in spite o£ ■» dramatic demonstration by Marshall Hall, the. doctor would have none of it. "hings were looking very black for.Lawrence.' The jury seemed "decidedly hostile, and the judge did not appear at all impressed by any points made by Marshall . But ■with his first sentence to the jury, in opening the defence, the atmosphere began to change. In a short and powerful speech ne disclosed the prisoner's defence, and at once obtained the jury's rapt attention. He would, he said, put a score of witnesses into the box, before calling the prisoner himself, to prove that Ruth had tpreatened the prisoner on many occasions; that she was a violent woman at all nmes, but in ; December 1908 she was maddened by the fact that Lawrence had WKen another woman in her place; that ™e prisoner: had been terrified of her tempers; that just such a scene had happened before in the presence of an independent witness who had prevented the tragedy on that occasion.

What Witnesses Said. • the prisoner himself would go }"«>•■ the box and swear that he had no S. b -<rf murder, but that the death °.-V th was the result of a drunken brawl, unicli terminated in a " fatal accident." n -7 sc ?f e or so of witnesses were called to f™I e that Euth h ad threatened to shoot ifaST 1 ? • on manv occasions; she had *; a P° ed km with a hat-pin, struck him, ana broken on his head the steel handle of ,**, and, when he had sat dazed jS,™ wound, she had said in scornful iimV i- " " as been my privilege to WnT v m pott y-'" Sli e had assaulted r«L W i h , any domestic utensil which was ready to hand. " r e , 3°,fße at first seemed disposed to th« • all this evidence as irrelevant to deL,r!! ue i but Marshall ingeniously tW « 4 ? ts admissibility on the ground S, « tended to prove the terror that faUl „■ U n the Prisoner's mind on the MM* rt S Whicb WOuld make him eXa «- a 5-m.ti ?, an Ker when she faced him with luZ?l er : r Once admitted, the evidence published far more than this in the jury's ft2 n +iH e a ? er noon of the fourth day of went? * a *; a tout two o'clock, Lawrence a Bl ?» n e box - He wa s an educated a ! 2 f. elI -spoken man, but he had jaundice, into rt a lP ear ?nce was ghastly. On going fw ft* 5 °? he faeed the P ull,ic R allerv loolceS B i t ime dur '™s this trial, and up boldly into the e W s of his

Accused in the Box. It was an audacious step for Marshall to put this man into the box; he had been exceedingly difficult to handle in consultation, and his outbursts of temper had put a severe test on Marshall's patience. At one moment, so impossible did Lawrence become, Marshall had actually to threaten to return to London i£ Lawrence did not behave more properly. Everything depended on Lawrence's evidence. A favourable prologue had been spoken for him, but he alone could explain the drama itself. His two shots, his apparent admissions to the police and the doctors that he had shot her, followed by the statement that she had shot herself, had all to be explained. He gave his evidence in a cool and collected way. Since adventurous days of his youth in South America he had always kept an old revolver under his pillow, but had not bought any new ammunition for twenty years. He had become a terrible drinker; so had Ruth been, even when he first met her, and he had been through hell with her. On the night in question, a few days after Ruth had come back to him, they had both been drinking heavily. She had thrown crockery and fire-irons at him when he accused her of being drunk. She threatened him, and he told her to leave his house for ever. He then went upstairs to his bedroom to fetch his revolver intending to frighten her. He had fired wide of her to alarm her, but he must have wounded her slightly on the arm as she lurched sideways. He did not know j ?K, e time - He had tllen returned and hidden the revolver under the mattress in his bedroom, and come downstairs again. Ruth then rushed upstairs, turned everything upside down in the bedroom, in order to find the revolver. At length she iound it. In fact, the bedroom was found to be in great disorder. When they met

again in the dining room she pointed the revolver at him. He saw the hammer rising and sprang forward to save his life. He gripped her right wrist, and, as they were struggling, the weapon went off and the girl dropped to the floor. Demonstration to Jury. Lawrence demonstrated on his own wrist how the revolver, when the wrist of the holder was gripped by another hand, would automatically point upwards. J.he judge then ordered him to stand on the bench near the jury, and to demonstrate with his clerk what had happened on the night of December 29. Lawrence did this three times within a foot of the jury, and each time the experiment was successful. The judge had really been hostile to the prisoner at first, but was won over completely by his demonstration. It shows, he said thoughtfully, after it had taken place, "that it was possible to be done. The fifth day was occupied by speeches. Marshall Hall made one of the most dramatic and masterly orations of his lite, and for the first time performed the dramatic exhibition which _came to J>e known as "Hall's Scales of Justice act. He began by admitting, and almost ..rnking capital out of Lawrence's previous bad character. Broad Eloquent Phrases. He drew the portrait of the drunken, jealous woman in broad, eloquent phrases. Always jealous and violent- from the moment Lawrence had turned to other women she had become mad, and when, a few days after her last return, Lawrence ordered her out of the house, she was in a frenzy? "She had taken that revolver down, knowing that her life with Lawrence was finished, and intending to finish Lawrence, too. She was desperate, defiant, dangerous." Then, dealing with the final tragedy, Marshall, seeking as he always did to make each juryman put himself into the place of the prisoner, took up the revolver "When he entered the room, he said, "he saw her pointing the revolver like this." As he spoke, he poirTted the revolver straight at the jury. He eaw the hammer rising, as you may see it vising now as I pull the trigger It was hard to pull, and it might have been that her arm was weakened by the injury of the first shot. It might have been that she was feeling the sting of that injury, and that it aroused all the worst passions in her beyond her control, and that she was then in the act of shooting him . . .

"Terrible Lesson." The judge summed up in favour of Lawrence, being obviously impressed by his evidence. The jury retired and returned after twenty minutes. "We :have carefully gone through the evidence with honest sincerity," the foreman said, "and our verdict is one of not guilty." Addressing the prisoner, Mr. Justice Jelf said, "Before I discharge you, I have to add a few words of advice 'to those which your brilliant counsel, I have no doubt, has already given you. You have had a most terrible lesson. . . . You have seen that yqur wife is ready to forgive you. ... If you will turn over a new page in your life, you may yet have a happy time with your lawful wife and children, and then, perhaps, God will forgive you for the life you have led. . . . I earnestly trust that what I have said to - ou will bear fruit in your heart and in your life." Thus ended, according to Marshall Hall's expressed opinion, his greatest victory, in a murder trial. .'■'.< >