SENTENCE ON STEPSON

Greymouth Evening Star, 21 June 1937, Page 3

SENTENCE ON STEPSON

JUDGE ON FAMILY ENMITY.

LONDON, May 2. Sentence of 10 years’ penalty servitude was passed at the Old Bailey yesterday on Douglas Leoni Scott, 22, of Chiswick, W.. who was found guilty of the manslaughter of his stepmother. He had been originally charged with murder.

The jury had been absent for an hour and 20 minutes.

Mr. Justice Finlay, passing sentence, said that he rejoiced, as he was sure everyone did, that the jury had been able to take a merciful view. Scott heard the verdict and sentence with complete composure.

The stepmother, Mrs. Alice Sarah Scott, 55, was found dead at her house in Idmiston Road, Worcester Park, on March 3.

Mr. Justice Finlay, summing up, referred to the evidence that had been given of friction between the stepmother and children of the first marriage. “We have heard of this kind of thing in real life and read about it in fiction,” he remarked. “One fears it is a very common thing, and it plainly happened in this case. There is no contest that there was enmity between the prisoner and his stepmother.”

Continuing his evidence yesterday, Scott, said that before he left home in November he did not get on too well with his stepmother, who did not want him at the house. When he called there on March 3, he asked her if he could come back to live there. She made no reply. Scott continued: “She tried to push me out of the house. She appeared angry, and I think she used some bad language. I struggled with her and pushed her away. She screamed. I pushed her into the dining-room to avoid her pushing me out of the front door. 1 am afraid 1 lost my temper. She extended her arms, as f thought, to claw my eyes, and I struck her. She scratched my face with her finger nails before I did so." Scoti said that, after he had struck Mrs. Scott, two blows in the face with his gloved fist she fell and struck her head against the sideboard. She continued to scream, and I tried to get one end of the scarf she was wearing over her mouth. She was still trying to reach :me with her hands. 1 got the scarf I partly over her mouth, and her scream- ! lug more or less stopped. 1 struck liter once while she was on the floor. | lit the struggle the scarf somehow or 'other got tight round her neck. 1 'did not realise it was tight and 1 left her. She was then still writhing about jon the floor. I went into the kitchen 'and had a cigarette, and then returned to the dining-room and had a strong drink of brandy. There was an open purse on the kitchen table, and 1 took two £1 notes from it.”

.Mr. Norman Birkett. K.C., defending: Did you intentionally tighten that scarf round her neck?—No, sir. Had yon. at any lime, an intention to kill \oiir stepmother?—No. Mr. G. B. McClure, prosecuting: You ha'd been at enmitv with her for vears? --Yes. Can you think of any living person you haled more?—No. Asked by .Mr. Birkett why he hated his stepmother. Scott replied: “Because she always disliked me and all the other members of my family. I am afraid there was hatred right throughout the family."