WIDOW BOOED.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20221, 3 February 1934, Page 31 (Supplement)

WIDOW BOOED.

MURDER TRIAL DRAMA. GROOM SENTENCED TO DEATH. “CRUEL AND BRUTAL CRIME.” Ernest Brown, the thirty-five-year-old groom of Saxton Grange, was found guilty of murdering his employer, Frederick Ellison Morton, a cattle factor, and sentence of death was passed by Mr. Justice Humphreys at Leeds Assizes. For some hours groups of men and women waited outside the court to hear the verdict, and immediately after sentence had been passed hundreds of people collected at the entrances in the hope of catching a glimpse of the chief witness, Mrs. Dorothy Louise Morton, the widow. The police had been warned that a section of the crowd were planning a demonstration against her, and Mrs. Morton and her companion, Anne Houseman, a pretty girl, were taken to a private room, where they remained for three-quarters of an hour while preparations were being made to smuggle them from the court. Angry Crowd. The crowd, which must have numbered a thousand by this time, had split into two groups at the front and bucK of the town hall. As Mrs. Morton and Miss Houseman appeared they began a tierce demonstration against tlie two witnesses with booing and angry cries. Preceding them down the steps came the chief constable of Leeds, the deputy-chief constable, several detectives and seven or eight policemen. Round the car, forming a cordon, were a posse of policemen, who held the angry crowd at bay. In a moment the car containing the widow and the girl, accompanied by a detective, accelerated and drove straight at the mob, who scattered in all directions to avoid being knocked down. Throughout the four days of the trial Mrs. Morton, who in evidence confessed to an immoral association with Brown over a period of four years, listened intently to the case. (She sat with her father and Miss Houseman in the body of the court, only three or four yards from the dock. Aged Mother Waits. It was not until the jury retired to consider their verdict that she left the court. Miss Houseman remained to hear the result. Brown’s aged mother and his sister, who sat in the gallery immediately above the witness-box, where Brown had emphatically denied the charges made against him, also decided to leave the court at the same time as the jury. Brown’s sister, who wept silently from time to time during the closing stages, looked down toward the dock as she left, and gave him a wan smile and wave of the hand.. His mother, too, waved at him, but Brown sat immobile and made no signs to his relatives.

An hour and ten minutes later the jury of ten men and two women returned. Brown never flinched as the foreman gave a verdict of “Guilty,” nor did he betray any emotion when Mr. Justice Humphreys put on the black cap and told Brown that he had been guilty of a “cruel and brutal murder.” The judge said he entirely agreed with the verdict.