DRAMATIC DECLARATION.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 97, 30 May 1914, Page 3

DRAMATIC DECLARATION.

DOCTOR WHO HAS LOST HIS IDENTITY. i There was a dramatic scene in the Southampton . Borough Magistrate's Court recently in connection with a mysterious Case of lost identity. Before the Court, was.an elderly man, a picturesque figure, with flowing hair. He was prosecuted for unlawfully causing, to be inserted in the register of deaths a false entry, relating, ito the death of Emily Moore. •' .

The Public Prosecutor, on whose behalf Mr S. Pearce appeared, 't- alleged that defendant, Who practised as a doctor at Southampton in the name of Hugh Munroe M'Leod Mackenzie, was not that person at all. There was. only one person of that name on the medical register, and he was now living at Uniondale, Cape Province. Defendant, said Mr Pearce, came to Southampton a short time ago and succeeded in becoming a panel doctor. He stated he had lost his diplomas in a shipwreck. Three witnesses said that, defendant gave them death certificates. They had no cause to complain of his treatment. Miss Christian Elizabeth Mackenzie gave evidence, and said she was the sister of the real Br Mackenzie, and was in Edinburgh at the time he qualified as a medical practitioner in 1894. The following year her brother went out to South Africa, and had been there ever since. She identified her brother's signature, and put in a letter recently received from him as evidence that he was still at the Cape. "Is that, your brother?" said Mr. Pearce, pointing to the defendant. "No" was the emphatic-reply. At this point, defendant,. who had been showing obvious signs of illness and distress, rose to his feet and asked for an adjournment of the case. "I was left for de,ad in the Boer war," he said huskily, "and it is only at times I remember about my own identity. I am a qualified medical man, but I am not in a fit condition to plead today. lam practically.a dying man. I collapsed outside the Court. I don't know really who I am, and if I am not Dr Mackenzie I should be only too glad if my.identity could be proved." Mr Pearce suggested, that defendant should be examined by two medical men who were in Court, but the magistrates decided to adjourn the case*