FAMOUS JUDGE’S DEATH

Greymouth Evening Star, 28 March 1930, Page 8

FAMOUS JUDGE’S DEATH

MURDER TRIALS RECALLED The death occurred recently in London of Sir Montague Shearman, formerly a Judge of the King’s Bench Division of the High Court, who retired last October owing to ill-health, against which he had struggled for years. ' Sir Montague, who was 72 years old, conducted many famous murder trials during his 15 years' on the BCnch. None aroused so much interest as the trial of Mrs Thompson and Bywaters at the Old Bailey in December, 1922, for the murder of the woman’s husband at Ilford.

In the course of his summing up he said: — “The courts of justice in this country are open to the public, and it*ris right that the public should be admitted. But it is inevitable that you (the jury) have been surrounded by a different atmosphere than prevails during the ordinary humdrum of the courts. . This charge, however, is an ordinary common charge of a wife and an adulterer murdering a husband. That is the charge. I am not saying whether it is true or not.% He was amazed, Sir Montague continued, when he heard it suggested that never before in the history of crime had anyone been charged with, a murder when he was not the person who took a hand in inflicting the blow. Mrs Thompson, whose amazing letters to By waters urging him to murder her husband were read at the trial, was indicted as an accessory. These cases, said Mr Justice Shearman, were not uncommon. History was full of cases in which husbands, in order td* marry someone else, wanted to get rid of their wives, and wives, for a similar purpose, to get rid of their husbands. Sir Montague Shearman, who was

the son of a solicitor, was in his youth noted for his high spirits. While at Merchants Taylors’ School, he had an uncle named Catty, who was chief clerk at the Guildhall. One day the Guildhall cat died, and the youngscapegrace sent an advertisement to the Times announcing the death of “M. Cat, of the Guildhall.” The next morning there were many inquiries at the Guildhall, on the assumption that the advertisement contained a misprint. Young Shearman had an exciting interview with his uncle when he next saw him. Among the more important trials which Sir Montague conducted as a judge was the trial of Harold Greenwood, who was acquitted of the charge of murdering his wife by poison at Kidwelty in 1920. He also sentenced the two murderers of Sir Henry Wilson, and delivered the judgment of the Court of Appeal dismissing the appeal of Vaquier, the Frenchman, sentenced to death for the murder of Mr Jones, the landlord of the Blue Anchor Inn at Byfleet, Surrey.

Although firm in his judgments, Sir Montague was not harsh. On one occasion, wishing to deliver a little homily, he waited until the woman, an official of an Irish organisation found guilty of being in possession of bombs, had left the dock, when he said: “These are observations which I think it fitting to make, but I did not feel it my duty to hurl them at a prisoner who could not reply to them.” Sir Montague shared with Lord Darling the distinction of being able on occasions to dispense with an in-

terpreter. In 1027 lie conducted an important commercial case in French, and the only time he faltered was over the word “firm,” for which, he said he could not find a satisfactory French equivalent. The late judge was very severe with motorists charged with causing accidents by reckless driving. “The state of things,” he once said at the Devon Assizes, “is getting appalling. The professional driver is careful and kindly; it is the individual driving a car not on business who is reckless.”