"EAT DRINK AND BE MERRY-"

Stratford Evening Post, Volume II, Issue 22, 18 August 1932, Page 6

"EAT DRINK AND BE MERRY-"

CASE OF MRS. BARNEY Biting Commentary on Wasted Lives Special Service LONDON, July 7 .--- Art extravagantly furnished 1 Converted flat With a cocktail bar ... a cocktail party . . , dinner at the Cafe de Paris . . . the Blue Angel Night Club in Soho ... a quarrel . . . screaming and shouting . . . 'Get out, get out! I will sl«oot you! I will shoot you!' ... a shot . . . "Chicken, Chicken, come back to me! 1 will do anything you want.'" "Was it to hear all this again in wearisome reiteration that crowds fought to secure entrance to the Old Bailey? Was it to hear this twicetold tale, with which the world was familiar, that queues formed, and were dispersed, formed again, and were dispersed again, for 24 hours before the police would permit people to stand in rank? Was it curiosity to hear at first hand the sordid details of tragedy that brought hundreds upon hundreds in an attempt to iill one of the 36 places open to the public in the grim court? Was it the social prominence of the parents of Mrs. Barney, accused of murdering her paramour—the knowledge that Sir. John Mullens, her father, was a Government stockbroker, woll-known, doubtless, to several of the City Aldermen who sit on the high dais beside the judge'? Camera Flatters Was it the personality of the accused? The suggestion that she was a beauty, a dazzling creature? But the truth is that Mrs. Barney is not beautiful. The photographs flatter her irregular features, tiptilted nose, and short chin. She looks 10 years older than her age of 2G. And in the plain, black, ill-fitting two-piece dress she appeared a very ordinary type. Her only striking feature was the almost platinum blonde hair that glistened under the tight black toque, and curled Huffily about the ears.

This woman was being tried for her life, but the occasion might have been the first night at a theatre. Stage i stare and writers crowded into the benches of the Court, where obligingofficials had found room for 47 in' the j space usually filled by 36. George Arliss, the film actor, with his monocle; Temple Thurston and Gilbert Frankau, the novelists; Marie Lohr, Marie Tempest, Graham Browne; Sir Landon Ronald, a writer of musical comedies; Seymour Hicks, two millionaire newspaper proprietors. Every briefless barrister in London —many of them women —seemed to have poured into counsels' benches, and all one morning there leaned against the dock four coloured men, all bewigged, one of them a coalblacls negro. Two Burmese and other people from the Orient were there, apparently in conformity with some unfortunate urge i that drives people from distant lands to witness the unpleasant side of Occidental civilisation. They must carry back home strange tales that make the white man's task more difficult. Night Club Set In the seats behind the dock were types of the extravagantly dressed young women and effeminate young men of the Night Club set, come to hear the latest scandal that had grown up about the institutions, they patronised. All the star reporters and sensational writ"!- of the London Press were working a! "specials" that were to appear beside verbatim reports of the case running to the length of pages. And outside, mounted police were riding off crowds, and foot police—even the monumental metropolitan "bobbies" —were being pushed hither and thither like leaves in the wind by the throngs in the narrow street above which the blindfolded figure of Justice, high overhead, holds forth her scales. According to one of these writi ers, there was little that was dramatic, nothing that was sensational, no excitement —just a revolution of the machinery of the law, jurywomen stumbling over the taking of the oath, a dull recital of evidence, relieved occasionally by. Sir Patrick Hastings clicking the revolver at the roof—how the clicks resounded through the Court—to show how easily it would be fired, and a little rehearsal by himself and his somewhat aged and stout "junior" of the struggle, in which' the revolver clicked repeatedly, in order to demonstrate how the weapon could have been discharged.

In Dock and Box What of Mrs. Barney herself, who was being "devoured" throughout the three days of the trial by hundreds of eyes! A mixture of well-governed selfcontrol and partial collapse, she showed little emotion until the photographs of the body of Stephen, lyingdistorted at the head of the stairs with the revolver near the outstretched hand, were handed about the court.

Memories of that tragic dawn must have flooded in upon her as Dr. Durrant precisely and calmly told his story of her frantic behaviour and distress when he arrived to And Stephen had been dead some time. It was then that wardresses gave restoratives to bring her back to full consciousness. Sometimes, at certain details, as when the bloodstained yellow pullover was shown, her body shook with sobs, and a little handkerchief, at which she had been tearing with trembling hands, was pressed to her streaming eyes. And then the eyes of the watchers would go to her father and mother, sitting pale and tortured, in the benches below the dock, Lady Mullen plainly in agony. . . . Then came Mrs. Barney's own tes timony. The tired little figure in the dock pulled itself together, and walk e'd at first slowly, and then strongly, through the crowded seats to the wit-ness-box, attended by a wardress and a prison nurse. She sat in the box, face lit by the green-shaded light. Gone were (he tears and closed drawn eyes that had accompanied any reference to the dead man when she had been in the dock. Her face was rigid, her answers were given in a low flat-toned voice that carried far more clearly (ban thai of many witnesses,

GRIM INDICTMENT OF NIGHT LIFE

Only now and again did she falter and moisten her lips with the tip of her tongue during an ordeal lasting nearly two hours. But; even then, in his cross-examination, Sir Percival Clarke, dogged and worrying as he had to lie, used soothing tones, and obviously was as gentle as his duty permitted. Last Tragic Minutes Throughout three days the most dramatic moments were when Mrs Barney, with long halts and in tones now broken, told of the last j.w utes of life of her lover. She had spoken of how he had wanted money to gamble, and she had begged h ir. not to, and of how unhappy she v..... Then came the party and the mani ciub, and the return to the flat. "He made love to me, but was very angry because I did not respond. and he said perhaps my feelings had changed. I told him it was only because I was so unhappy at what had happened during the day, and I could not forget it. That only made him more angry.

"He said he was not pleased with the way things were going and he wanted to go out the next day, and not see me again. . . . He got up and dressed. . . . I asked him not to leave me. I said it he did 1 would kill myseii. "He got up from the dressing table and made a dash for the armchair" (where her revolver lay covered with a cushion) "and said, 'Well, anyway, you won't do it with this' . . . "We struggled with the revolver. He had it, and I wanted it back. I kept saying, 'Give it to me,' and 1 don't know whether he said 'No,' but the more I tried the more he tried to get it away. . . . The struggle became more and more hard. We were moving about. I cannot remember all our positions, I was so unhappy. "I was crying ... 1 don't remember, but I know we were struggling, and suddenly I heard a shot. ... lie just looked at me with an expression—the only word I can think of is—of astonishment. He turned away, and went a few steps into the bathroom." Another moment of drama came when Sir Percival, in his cross-exam-ination, shot two rapid questoons at Mrs Barney—

"Whose finger was on the trigger when the shot was fired?" Mrs. Barney hesitated a second, and replied, "I have no idea." "In whose hand was the revolver when it went off?" "I don't remember." The Summing Up Came Mr. Justice Humphrey's summing up—a model of the impartiality of the justice symbolised by the Sword that rose behind his chair; his reference to the story of two rather wasted useless lives; to the young man, strong and healthy, who when he did any work had been a dress designer, and there was scorn in the judge's added remark, "I suppose that mean's a woman's dress designer." He went on to speak of how Stephen had "descended to live, in part at least, on the private means of this woman," who although her parents' house was open to her, "chose to live in this converted garage, in the lounge of which there was a service counter with a cocktail bar." Their letters revealed "passion, devotion and a sort of rather hysterical intimacy and affection based on sexual, matters rather than upon any real abiding love based on mutual esteem." Followed the observation that of direct evidence there was absolutely none for the prosecution, and emphasis upon the fact that all Mrs. Barney's statements had been identical with the story she first told, in incoherent, disjointed phrases to Dr. Currant, immediately after Stephen's death. And Dr. Durrant had given it as his opinion that she was not in the mental condition to invent any untrue statement during those minutes of wild excitement and grief. Finally, the fact that the fingerprints on the revolver were so blurred as to be undecipherable—except one belonging to a detective —supported the evidence of the struggle. It was clear that at the most a verdict of manslaughter could be anticipated. At the foreman's words, "Not guilty," Mrs Barney collapsed for the first time, and had to be earned from the dock, while from her mother it drew a heartrending cry or joy and relief that echoed through the Court. The Real Issue at Triai Sir Patrick Hastings, opening his speech for the defence, disclaimed any intention to indulge in flights of oratory or dramatic surprises. "They may be amusing, but we are not in this court to amuse. We leave that to the people who have been here the last two or three days, no doubt • enjoying and gloating over every expression of agony; the distinguished authors here to see that people outside not sufficiently fortunate to join in the amusement should not miss the slightest sign of the things these distinguished gentlemen can show them.

"We rather despise some of the people here and loathe these things." Certain people whom the cap might well have fitted had the grace to look uncomfortable, but there was no diminution, of the spate of articles describing the scenes, and even moralising upon the case. There is, it must be admitted, justice in many of the things that the writers have said. There is the view that the trial of Mrs. Barney Avas an indictment, not only of one woman, but of a whole philosophy of life —of hundreds and hundreds of people who di'd not stand in the dock.

They, at least, were found guilty — guilty of the code of life which says, "Eat, drink and be merry, for to-mor-row someone else dies." It was the phase of modern life which has been adulated and flattered and advertised throughout the world —the night club and cocktail life which the films have made seem joyous and gossip writers have eulogised enticingly—that was brought; to trial and condemned. The wasted lives of thousands oi so-called "Bright Young Things" who think it smart to make night hideous with drinking parties, who glory in books that decent, people will not open, and bleat over plays that respectable individuals would not go to see, are the pitiable factors that many people see chiefly in this saddening affair; this sterile existence with no ideals of duty and no sense of the healthfulness anil sacredness of the trust of life.