THE UNWRITTEN LAW

Otago Witness, Issue 3314, 19 September 1917, Page 17

THE UNWRITTEN LAW

RECOGNISED IN ENGLAND. LONDON September 11. Lieutenant Douglas Malcolm, of the Field Artillery, has been tried on a charge of the murder of Anton Baumberg, otherwise known as Count Deborch. In opening the case for the prosecution counsel admitted that Deborch seduced Malcolm's beautiful young wife while he was absent at the front. Malcolm returned, discovered the intrigue, and thrashed Deborch. Malcolm pleaded with his wife to give up Deborch, but she refused, saying that" she loved him. Malcolm then challenged Deborch to a duel, but the challenge was not accepted. Malcolm subsequently shot Deborch. Then he lit a cigarette and walked across the street to a policeman, to whom he surrendered, saying! "I did it for my honour." Counsel for the prosecution said that the " unwritten law" nad never been pleaded In a British court, and he hoped it would not be pleaded now. Sir John Simon, K.C., M.P., who defended Malcolm, elicited the fact that Deborch was well known to the police as a whito slavei\ and that he had lived in London with a German spy variously known as " Baroness Veremberg" and " Mrs Meyer," and who was subsequently shot as a spy in France. Sir John Simon, addressing the jury in the case, asked them to say that Malcolm was not guilty according to law, and acted under the compulsion which the law recognised when every other resource for the defence of his own life and his wife's honour had failed. Sir John Simon claimed that Lieutenant Malcolm intended to whip Deborch, who thereupon attempted to get a revolver from a drawer. Malcolm fired in self-defence. The Judge, in summing up, said the husband had no property in his wife's body if she decided to give herself to another man. He appealed to the jury to regard the supremacy of the law as more important than sympathy for Malcolm. Malcolm was acquitted. The public cheered and demonstrated for five minutes, the court officials being powerless to check the cheering, which also extended to the crowds outside the court.