HIS APPEAL

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 690, 15 June 1929, Page 18

HIS APPEAL

DOCTOR FROM KUMASI CONVICTED OF MURDER, GOES BEFORE PRIVY

COUNCIL.

TRAGEDY ON GOLD COAST ■ N Easter Monday a short, slightly-built man, with face yellowed by many years spent in the glare and heat of the Gold Coast sun, stepped along the gang-plank of the tender which had borne him front the ElderDempster liner Apapa. on which he had travelled from Kuinasi, West ] Africa, to the quayside at Plymouth. The man was Dr. Benjamin Knowles, and he had been taken to England to make a grim fight against the sentence of life imprisonment passed upon him at Kuinasi for the murder of Madge Clifton, one-time vaudeville artist, and principal boy in pantomime, and at the time of her death thought to be his wife. Dr. Knowles (according to the “News of the World”) is to appeal against his conviction before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. The appeal which is to be made on his behalf means one of two things—liberty, or imprisonment for life. On October 21 Dr. 'Knowles was arrested for the murder of his “wife,” as she was thought to be, following a luncheon party which had taken place at their bungalow at which several Government officials were present. The party had passed off without incident, and according to the evidence given both at the inquest and at the trial, the latter went to his bedroom shortly after lunch. Here, according to his statement made at the trial, he went to bed to rest, and was almost asleep when his wife came into the room and commenced to undress. Suddenly he was awakened by the sound of a shot. Startled, he jumped out of bed only to see his wife crumple up on the floor crying as she fell: “My God —I am shot.” Blood was flowing from a wound in her left side. The doctor attended to her and plugged the wound, and it was admitted by the medical witnesses for the prosecution that he had rendered correct and efficient treatment in every way. “It Went Off!” While he was attending her, the wounded woman said that she was afraid that people might think she had tried to commit suicide, whereupon the doctor is alleged to have told her “not

to worry as he would take all the blame.”

The woman was taken to hospital at Kumasi, where she died the following night. She had made a statement, which was taken down by the police commissioner at her bedside, describing how the shooting occurred. In this statement, which is included in the petition for appeal on behalf of the doctor, occur the following passages:—-

“There was a revolver standing or lying on bookcase. It has been cleaned. I took it up and put it on a table near the bed. The boy came with the afternoon tea. I put the revolver carelessly on a chair near the bed. I took a cup of tea, sitting on the chair. I sat on the gun. As I got up it caught in my dress with a lace frill. I tried to take it away from the lace and suddenly It went off.” That same night the doctor was arrested for the murder of his wife. Dr. Knowles is a member of a Scots family living at Aberdeen. His wife had been a popular figure on the stage. Madge Clifton, so the news of her death and his arrest received prominence.

Then came the most amazing revelation of all. “Mrs.” Knowles was already a wife. She was already married to a man carrying on business in a* provincial town —a man to whom she wrote frequently, telling' him of her experiences abroad, mentioning hardships, and telling of a yearning to be hack home with him. Mystery of Bullets All the time she was writing affectionate letters, she was living happily with Dr. Knowles in their bungalow. She was a charming and popular hostess, and strikingly handsome. In his evidence, the doctor stated that only one shot was fired. All the servants who were present in the house, and who went rushing to the scene when the shooting took place, also declare that there was only one shot fired. Two bullets were found by the police in the bedroom where the woman lay wounded, one of them being- found on the floor, the other embedded in a panel of the wardrobe door. Only one expended cartridge case was found in the revolver, however, this supporting the evidence that only one shot was fired. In addition an independent witness was called to prove that his attention had been drawn to the singed hole In the mosquito netting, and to the hole in the front panel of the wardrobe on a day prior to the day of the tragedy. Against the statement which the wife made before she died exonerating her husband from blame was one alleged to have been made by the doctor declaring that he had shot his wife that afternoon after a quarrel, and it was this statement to which Judge McDowell, who was called upon to try the doctor on the charge of murder, referred when in his lengthy summing up he stated that it had been the allegation of the prosecution throughout the trial that the case was clearly one of deliberate murder. Knowles enlisted as a trooper when the war broke out, though he was on leave from the Gold Coast. For his bravery he gained the Military Medal and Military Cross, and after the war he received a medal from Afghanistan.