SUPREME COURT “Man In Pub” Story Not Believed

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31908, 8 February 1969, Page 18

SUPREME COURT “Man In Pub” Story Not Believed

The “man in the pub” from whom Dougal Edward Searle claimed to have bought his uncle’s stolen washing machine, was no more substantial than the ghost of Hamlet’s father, a Supreme Court jury decided yesterday. Searlie, aged 32, a farmhand, had pleaded not guilty to a charge of breaking and entering his uncle’s washhouse at Annat last November with intent to commit a crime. Pleading Searle’s case, Mr

S. G. Erber told the jury that Searle’s story of having bought the missing washing machine from “a man in the pub” might seem strange, but reminded them that Horatio had thought the same thing about Hamlet’s story of his father’s ghost. . “And you may remember Hamlet’s reply,” said Mr Erber. “He said: ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” The jury, however, brought back a verdict of guilty, and Searle was remanded in custody for sentence on February 12.

The Crown Prosecutor (Mr N. W. Williamson) had described Searle’s story of buying the machine from a stranger in the Springfield Hotel as “preposterous.” He had offered to get a washing machine for a Sheffield woman, and took the machine to her house at 10 p.m. on the day it was presumably stolen. Searle’s first explanation to the police was that he had bought it more than two years previously, and when that was proved untrue, he gave the story about the hotel.

In his summing up, Mr Justice Macarthur told the jury- that it might consider Searle’s explanation an insult to its intelligence.