THE MURDERED FARMER

Evening Star, Issue 22772, 6 October 1937, Page 18

THE MURDERED FARMER

INHERITANCE CASE LEGITIMACY OF POSTHUMOUS SOH QUESTIONED [Per United Peess Association.] AUCKLAND, October 5. A further step in the litigation concerning the inheritance of the estate of the late Ernest Severin Nelson, who was murdered on his farm at \\ aihou Valley, Okaihau, on June 9 of last vear, was taken before Mr Justice Lallan in the Supreme Court. Ultimate possession of tho estate turns largely on the question of the legitimacy of the son born to Mrs Nelson after her husband’s death. The estate was recently conservatively valued at £15,000, and the income from it as £/0o a year. The purpose of the sitting to-day was to take the evidence of. Dr G. J. Frengley, who is shortly leaving the Dominion for about a year. Legal steps were taken last June by three brothers of the deceased to have a declaration of the court that the child born to the widow on November 10 last is not the son of Ernest Sevenn Nelson. The deceased, who was then 65, was married to Mrs Nelson, then 18, at Rangiahua on February 26, 1936. He died leaving no will. Tho plaintiffs in the proceedings are: William Sidfrid Nelson, a farmer, of Bay of Islands, and Neil Rudolph Nelson and Charles Oscar Nelson, farmers, of Hawke’s Bay. The defendants are the guardian ad litem of the infant, Ernest Severin Nelson, the guardian ad litem of the widow, Jane Nelson, and the Public Trustee and Miss Nellie Nelson. Mr North, for the plaintiffs, said that one of the allegations in this action was that the deceased Nelson was sterile as the result of an operation performed by Dr Frengley. The plaintiffs were suing for a declaration of the court that the infant, Ernest Severin Nelson, was not Nelson’s child, and consequently was not entitled to succeed to any part of the estate. Dr G.- J. Frengley, of Kawakawa, the superintendent of the public hospital there for the past 12 years, said that he had first seen the late Ernest Severin Nelson in February or March, 1934. He was suffering from an enlarged prostate gland, and on April 25 witness operated and removed the gland. For the first 12 hours after the operation Nelson’s condition was serious, but not at all critical. From then on he made steady and very satisfactory progress, and was discharged on May 24. The results of the operation were completely satisfactory, said witness, and he would say that the operation would have the effect of making tho patient sterile, but not sexually impotent. Ho gave reasons for his statement that sterility would result. He had done 40 or more of those operations in the last 12 years. _ Witness said that'nothing of importance had happened to Nelson that he had not mentioned. Nelson’s operation was one of the easiest of its kind that he had ever had to do, and that was ■why he remembered it so well._ Ho agreed that he was not a specialist in this type of operation. He would send his cases to a specialist if they wore able to travel. He could find no record of a controversy in the medical world ns to whether sterility resuited from this operation. His expression of opinion was based partly on experience and partly on reasoning process. The hearing was adjourned sine, die.