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Manuscript of direction to a Jury in case of murder, written by Chief Justice Archibald Paull Burt. Five pages, all but page three are written on front and back in black ink on cream coloured off-white paper.
This manuscript is likely to have been the script read to the jury in the third hearing of Kenneth Brown's murder trial.
Manuscript of direction to a jury in case of murder. Handwritten by Chief Justice Archibald Paull Burt, this manuscript is likely to have been the script read to the jury in the third hearing of Kenneth Brown's murder trial.
The previous hearings had resulted in a hung jury, after which Burt decided on a closed court with only him, as judge, reading the evidence presented previously to the court for this final trial.
Brown was accused of murdering his wife Mary Ann (nee Tindall) by fatally shooting her in the head at their home in Geraldton on 3 January 1876. The jury (of the third trial) found Brown guilty, and sentenced him to death. He was hanged at Perth Gaol.
Pages are numbered by author. Slight foxing on pages but otherwise good condition. Pages have been folded into quarters horizontally.
Kenneth Brown was Edith Cowan's father (first woman elected to an Australian Parliament, 1921 WA Parliament), who was one of four surviving children of his first wife Mary Eliza Dircksey (nee Wittenoom, the daughter of the first Colonial Chaplain, Rev J.B. Wittenoom). She visited her father in Gaol. Brown's family was part of the colonial elite. Having arrived in Fremantle in 1841, his father Thomas Brown was appointed to the Legislative Council by the Governor and was a Resident Magistrate; his brother Maitland Brown was elected to the Legislative Council. His position in colonial society fuelled rumours that Brown had not been hanged, but rather had used his family's influence to escape the colony and was secreted away to America. This was finally disproved by the State Records Office of Western Australia in 2017.
"Law Intelligence: Supreme Court Criminal Sittings (The Geraldton Murder Case)", The Inquirer and Commercial News, 24 May 1876, page 1
Kent Acott, "Cowan's Dad Revealed in Archives", Mid-West Times, 18 January 2017, page 13
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