ATTACK WITH STICK

Evening Star, Issue 22720, 6 August 1937, Page 7

ATTACK WITH STICK

MENTAL PATIENT'S DEATH YOUNG GIRL SEES KILLER Passing through some woods in the grounds of Wiltshire Mental Hospital. Devizes, recently, a girl of 11 witnessed the escape of a patient on parole who had killed another with a heavy stick. This was revealed, at Wiltshire Assizes, Salisbury, where the recaptured patient, Robert James Conduit, aged 17, of Salisbury, was found unfit to plead to a charge of murdering Frederick Charles .Tonkin, aged 51, of Swindon, while they were out for a walk together. After Conduit had been ordered to be detained during His Majesty’s pleasure and bad been removed from court, Mr Justice Lawrence recalled Dr James Spear, assistant medical superintendent at the hospital to the witness box. “I want to know,” the judge remarked to Dr Spear, “ in what circumstances inmates of the mental home are allowed out to roam about the countryside ?

“It appears from this case that the little girl was riding in Potterne Woods, which appeared to be open to members of the public, when she saw this man who is being tried.” Dr SjKsnr; The girl was riding in a lane which runs through our grounds, and we allow patients who are wellbehaved and on parole in these grounds. Judge: Do you also allow the public to go into the grounds?—The public are allowed on this roadway. “ It seems to me,” concluded his lordship, “ a most unsatisfactory thing that the public should have access to grounds where patients such as this boy may bo abroad. I think it is a matter for consideration of the authorities.”