OTAGO.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XXV, Issue 1635, 13 March 1866, Page 3

OTAGO.

THE WAIPORI MURDER,

SENTENCE OF DEATH.

We abridge from the Daily Times the following report of this case, which was heard at the Supreme Court, Otago, before Mr. Justice Richmond.

John Jones, alias John Poole, alias John King, was charged with having murdered Richard Atkinson, at Waipori, on the 23rd December last. Mr. Kidston appeared for the The deposition of the deceased Richard Atkinson was put in and read as follows «I am a farmer aud gardener residing at Waipori. I know the prisoner, and recollect his coming to the Hibernian Accommodation j House about ] a.m. on the 23rd December. A . short time afterwards he left, saying that he was going to Waipori. He returned about 11 a.m., when there was no person in the house except my daughter and myself, and lie spoke to my daughter at the counter. Some time after he came in, at my daughter's request I proceeded to hang up a piece of meat, and in order to do so, stood upon a chair and raised my hands up, and was in the act of placiDg it on the hook, when the prisoner, who was standing at my right side, stabbed me on the right side of the abdomen. He used the knife with his right hand. I fell on my back. My daughter Margaret called out," What is that you have done to my da," and he made a dash at her. She called out, "He has killed me." I attempted twice to rise, but fell; the third time I succeeded in getting up aud scrambled to the room, where I found a pistol. On returning I met the prisoner without his hat, rushing towards me with a knife in his hand. I presented the pistol at him, when he rushed out at the front door, my daughter Margaret running out at the back door. She in a short time returned, and I then endeavoured to hold in my bowels with my left hand, and barred the doors and windows with my right hand. I had no conversation whatever with the prisoner before he stabbed me. The trousers produced are those I then wore, and the cut pointed out to me was caused by the stab.. I next saw the prisoner on Monday, the 25th instant (December), in the custody of the police. I identified him when amongst three or four other men, and have no doubt whatever about the prisoner being the man who stabbed me." Margaret Dickson : I am the wife of Thomas Dickson, who keeps the Hibernian Accommodation-house, near Waipori. On the 23rd December I was living at that house with my husband and father, the deceased Richard Atkinson. The Accommodationhouse is on the main road to Weatherstones, about three miles from Waipori. There are no stores nearer our house than Waipori, but there are some miners' tents down a gully a good way from our house. I know the prisoner. Some time before the 23rd December, the prisoner came to our place and had dinner. He slept at the house on the night of the 22nd December. He came about two in the morning, when I was asleep. On the morning of the 23rd, I saw the prisoner in his bedroom, when I gave him water to wash. He came out, but did not breakfast. I saw him leave the house, and he came back between ten and eleven o'clock. He then remarked to me that he had not stopped long away, and asked for a drink of porter. Before he got it, he asked where my husband had gone, and when I expected him back. He asked me several times, and I said I expected him back about twelve o'clock. My father was then in the shop along with me, helping me to do some work. The prisoner had another glass of porter, and then examined some flannel shirts, but declined to purchase them. I left from behind the counter, and went to clean up the shop. I wanted to scrub down a meat stand, and I asked my father to hang up the meat while I did so. He placed a chair, and stood on it to bang the meat on a hook. I reached him the first piece, as he was in the act of hanging it up, with his arms extended, the prisoner stepped in front of him and stabbed him. The prisoner had been standing, leaning back with his arms on the counter, when he stepped right in front of my father to make a thrust at him, hitting him in the belly. I did not then see anything in the prisoner's hand. Father said, "Why did you do that ?" and fell on his back on the ground. Immediately after father fell I saw a knife in the prisoner's hand. When father fell I came forward between the prisoner and my fath«r, and said " why did you do that? 1 ' Without speaking a word the prisoner stabbed m® with a knife. He was then standing in the doorway. When I was stabbed father got up and ran into a bedroom for a pistol. v I rushed into the dining-room, and the prisoner was following me, when father came out of his bedroom with the pistol. When he saw the pistol he ran out at the front door. I ran out by the back-door crying " Murder," and on looking down the road I saw the prisoner running towards Waipori. He looked back and then came towards me, wheu I went into the house again by the back door. We bolted the doors, and I did not see any more of the prisoner. I shortly afterwards fired a pistol out of one of the windows to alarm some men who were working a short way off. When they came up they went for the doctor. I never heard my father speak to the prisoner. There was no quarrel between them or between him and me. The prisoner had been about half-an-hom in the house after his return at eleven o'clock before he stabbed my father. I next saw the prisoner on the isth December, when he was brought back by the constable. My father died on the 30th December. Constable John Dunn: I am stationed at Waipori. From information received on the 24th December, I arrested the prisoner in Timber Gully, on the Lammerlaw Ranges, about eight miles from the Hibernian Accom-modation-house, at Waipori, by the track. The prisoner was in a tent with two other men; and when I arrested him at half-past eleven o'clock at night, I told him the charge. I searched him, but only found on him a sixpence. I remained with him all night, and in the morning took him to the station. Before going into the station, the prisoner asked me, "Is the old man very bad ?" I said, "Yes, very bad." He said, " I did not do much to the old man." The same day I took the prisoner, along with four other men, before Richard Atkinson as he lay in bed. Atkinson at once identified him as the man who stabbed him.

Charles Archibald Campbell: I am a doctor of medicine. My diploma is from the Glasgow University. I was called to see Richard Atkinson at Waipori on the 23rd December. He died in about eight days. I got to the accommodation-house on the 23rd, at halfpast twelve o'clock, and found that Atkinson had received a wound on the right side of the abdomen, about an inch and a half or two inches long, caused by a stab. Part of the bowels, about nine inches, was protruding in the shape of a loop. This part of the bowels was not wounded. There was no feculent matter on the surface of them, but there was inside. The patient was suffering no pain whatever. I first did all I could to return the protruding parts, but in order to do bo, I was

obliged to enlarge the opening. I returned all that was protruding, sewed up the wound with three stitches, applied a bandage with a board, in order to keep the bowel in its place. From inquiries I made of Atkinson, I found that he was of a very constipated habit—naturally so. Before giving him any medicine, I returned to my house at Waipori, and consulted " Dreuittthe medical authority I go by. I returned about three o'clock in the afternoon, and administered to Atkinson an enema of castor oil and warm water, and shortly afterwards I gave him a dose of castor oil and between twenty Ave and thirty drops of opium. His stomach would not retain it, and he vomited it in a few minutes. Immediately after sewing up the wound, I applied cold water bandages, which were continued for a few days, until there was no further occasion for them. Beef tea and gruel were given at intervals, and I sent to Tuapeka for either Dr. Harvey or Dr. Stewart. The latter gentleman arrived about half-past eleven o'clock that night, and I had been up to that time with the patient. On consultation, we resolved to open the bowels, and administered one ounc# of Epsom salts, which he vomited shortly afterwards. I then administered an injection of turpentine, which caused a copious evacuation about four o'clock on the morning of the 24th. Dr. Steward had gone home by this time. I then gave the deceased a drop of croton oil, which lie also vomited. I then prescribed, as the result of the consultation Vith Dr. Stewart, calomel and opium, to be taken every two hours. I applied mustard and a fly blister to the abdomen, and on the night of the 26th, I gave the patient two drop-doses of prussic acid, which greatly abated the vomiting. I also administered turpentine injections, and gave him croton oil, but I cannot now tell exactly how often. The deceased generally vomited the nourishment which was given him. I attended him up to the time of his death, and I made the post mortem examination. In the abdomen I found a pint and a half of blood and serum. It was dark coloured blood. The bowels were generally healthy, and there were no symptoms of inflammation of the peritoneum. There was no injury done to blood vessels. In my opinion death was caused by excessive vomiting, caused by the blood lying in the abdomen. I believe this blood came from some minute blood vessel in the mesentery, which must have been wounded when the blow was struck.

Alexander Stewart: lam a legally qualified medical practitioner, residing at Tuapeka. I went to the Hibernian Accommodationhouse, Waipori road, on the 23rd, not as a medieal man, but for the purpose of accompanying the Magistrate, who was going to take the dying deposition of Richard Atkinson. When I got there, I examined Atkinson as a medical man, and found that he had received a wound about an inch and a half in length on the right side of the abdomen, which had been dressed. I had a consultation with Dr. Campbell on the case. The dressings were removed to allow me to see the wound. The result of the consultation then was that the patient's bowels should be opened, and when this was obtained he was to receive calomel and opium. In order to open the bowels, an enema was to be given, and a dose of salts administered. If the salts did not bring about the desired result, he was to receive croton oil. This treatment was considered proper by me in consequence of Dr. Campbell having told me that there was no wound of the bowels or any bleeding. I was present when the dose of salts was given, when I left. I saw him again on the 26th, and he appeared to be in the same condition as formerly ; the tongue moist, and the pulse at 110. It was then agreed to give him drop doses of prussic acid, and to discontinue the calomel and opium, and apply a mustard blister to the abdomen. The vomiting decreased. On the 29th I found that he was weaker and sinking, with no particular symptom except |the vomiting, and the pulse weaker. My impression of the case was then much weaker then formerly. On the 24th, when I first saw Richard Atkinson, he was in danger of losing his life from the wound he had received. On the 26th he was still in that danger, which was not removed on the 29th. On the morning of the 30th he was dead. I assisted to make themortem examination, and found in the abdomen a quantity of blood measuring over a pint and a half. There was no sign of inflammation, except slight local inflammation on the skin round the wound. The other organs were healthy. Assuming that the deceased was stabbed, and from what I saw when he was alive and after death, I am of opinion that death was caused by the loss of blood, and it being retained in the abdomen, causing irritation, excessive, vomiting, and exhaustion. I believe this blood had come from some mesenteric vessel which had been wounded when the blow was struck. I have now heard the detailed treatment which the patient received from Dr. Campbell in my absence. There is nothing there to alter my opinion as to the cause of death. On the 24th and 26th the deceased seemed to breathe freely, but on the 29th he was more embarrassed. The blood found in the abdomen was only very slightly coagulated.

The Judge summed up : In this case the evidence had, he thought, put before the jury every matter of fact, in the clearest possible light. There was a single question upon which it would be his duty to direct them, and to lay down the leading principles upon which they must go. When that had been done, he thought he would not be going too far when he said that the guilt of the prisoner would be made as clear as the sun at noonday. Where a man wilfully inflicted on another a wound dangerous to life, and he neglected that wound, or allowed nature to take its course, and gangrene or fever ensued, it was murder on the part of the person who struck the blow. Suppose a wound dangerous to life to be given, probably a mortal wound, but while the man lay languishing with his wound, some other person came and struck him a blow which killed him, the murder lay not with the man who struck the first, but with him who struck the second blow. These two cases were very clear, but there was a third class of cases as to which there was some difficulty, namely—where a wound has been given and is improperly treated—and it was alleged for the prisoner in this case that the improper treatment was the actual cause of death, but that the man was killed, not by the prisoner at the bar, but by the doctors. He would tell them that in this case if the treatment was the best which could possibly be obtained under the circumstances, it was no answer to say that if more skilful treatment had been obtained, the man would have recovered. Supposing a number of men were passing over one of the mountain ranges of this country, and one struck another and wounded him, and he had to be left there where it was not possible to do more than to bind up his wounds with the garments of the by-standers, and it was afterwards to be advanced that the man died not of the wound but of exposure, there was no law to bear out such an answer as that. If a man is wounded at a place where the best surgical aid and appliances were not available, the person who struck the blow is not to answer that, if the victim had been at another place, and had other appliances, his life might have been saved. Even if it were shown that the treatment was grossly improper, it still ought ! to be made distinctly to appear that | the treatment and not the wound was the ! cause of death. It was therefore very material for them to inquire whether the wound in itself was an adequate cause of death, they should be very cautious not to consider that anything else might have killed the man. Now, Dr. Hulme's opinion was of great value, because he was the highest medical authority examined in this case. _ In his (Dr. Hulme's) opinion the wound described in this case, if it produced an effusion of blood to the extent of a pint and a-half, must have resulted in death. They were also to bear in mind that Dr. stated that the vomiting was not first occasioned by his use of croton oil, but he said that it began before he gave the deceased anything else than an enema of castor oil and water; and when he administered his first dose of opium the man vomited it. So that the vomiting brought on exhaustion, and exhaustion brought on death; and it appeared that death waa not caused by the medicine but by the wound. There was a case in a Scotch law-book, in which a man was tried far murder because he

struck a lad over the shoulder and dislocated his arm. But it appeared that the boy had been operated upon by an ignorant bonesetter, whose manipulation caused a white swelling to set in, and the prisoner was acquitted, under the direction of the judge. There was also a more recent case, in which a person was indicted for murder by shooting in a duel. It appeared that after the man was wounded, the surgeons performed an operation under which the man died, and it was argued that as the operation was unnecessary, it was the cause of death. But it was held that the party who gave the woundjwas responsible for the death. If the jury were of opinion that the deceased received such such gross ill-treatment, that it killed him— that he was killed by the croton oil, and not by the wound—it would be their duty to acquit the prisoner. The jury retired at twenty minutes to eight o'clock. At a quarter past nine o'clock they returned into Court with a verdict finding the prisoner "Guilty," but strongly recommending him to mercy on account of the treatment which the deceased received at the hands of his medical attendants. The prisoner, on being challenged, said his age was 25 years, and on being asked if he had anything to say why sentence of death should not be passed upon him, simply replied "No." * ~ The Judge put on the black cap and said : Prisoner at the bar. In discharging the duty which now devolves upon me, I have very few words to say to you. The act by which you have incurred a heavy doom, is one which places you on a level with the most ferocious beasts of prey, which man everywhere destroys as his enemies wherever he can find them. Your act is one of senseless ferocity —not so much one of devilish malignity as of senseless ferocity. Whatever sympathy 'might be felt for a man in your position must vanish when one looks at the unoffending victim of your unprovoked attack. I am thankful to say that your ultimate fate does not rest in my hands. You have heard the recommendation of the jury that has tried you, and it shall be transmitted to his Excellency the Governor, who can alone give effect to it. It is my clear duty to pronounce on you the extreme sentence of the law. His Honor concluded by passing sentence of death in the usual form.