The Assizes
| DOI | 10.1177/002201833700100103 |
| Published date | 01 January 1937 |
| Date | 01 January 1937 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
The
Assizes
SLEEP-WALKING AS A DEFENCE
S
LEEP-
WALKING
was successfully pleaded as a defence
in a case at Bristol Assizes, before Charles
J.
The
accused man was charged with a sexual offence against a girl,
and this rare answer acquitted him.
There
was evidence before
the Court, not only that he had walked in his sleep in the past,
but
also that the room which was occupied by the girl on the
night in question was one which the accused himself had
previously occupied.
THE CROFT FARM MURDER
R. v. Maye
The
recent Croft
Farm
Murder
case, in South Devon,
deserves more attention than has been given to it in any of
the printed reports which have appeared, and we are able to
give our readers a first-hand account.
It
was one of the most
interesting cases there have been for many years, and will go
down to posterity as a case to which nobody can find any really
satisfactory answer.
The
one thingthat is clear, out of the obscurity, is that the
innocence of the accused man was proved, and not his guilt.
In
this country, of course, the defence need prove nothing.
The
proof rests with the Crown. But here the accused's
innocence was proved by definite affirmative evidence, as
cogent as, indeed more so than, the evidence in many prose-
cutions upon which juries are asked to rely and convict.
The
facts, in outline, were these.
The
accused, Thomas
Maye, was a farmer living near Kingsbridge, a man over
seventy years of age, whose family the neighbourhood deeply
46
THE
ASSIZES
47
respected. His wife was little younger, and he had two
daughters, Joan and Gwen, both in the twenties, and both
outdoor and athletic girls.
One June evening, this year, all was apparently peaceful
at the farm. Maye himself had been talking business with two
passing friends and seemed normal in every way. Gwen had
been out the previous evening, watching the " shooting "
of a "
thriller"
film by night at a village near by. Lockhart,
the house-boy, had gone to a local dance. All the members of
the family then retired to bed.
A light was left on in the kitchen, and the back-door open,
against Lockhart's return. When he did return, in the small
hours of the following morning, he found blood, which
proved to be Gwen's, flowing on to a step in the kitchen.
He immediately fetched help, and appeared most upset.
Lockhart had, of course, the alibi of the dance, where he
had been seen by a policeman. There was also no trace of
blood upon his clothing. His first words, however, were
significant:
"Someone
has been after Farmer
Tom."
The
helpers and the police found Gwen dying at the foot
of the stairs, down which it was later proved she had fallen.
Her
pet spaniel was licking her face. Joan was found dead at
the top of the stairs, upon the landing. Mrs. Maye was found
dead on the floor, beside the double bed which she shared with
her husband, in a room off that landing. Maye himself was
found in that bed, extremely badly injured. Many men
indeed would not have survived his injuries.
In
every case the wounds, which were on their heads,
had been made by the use of a long and heavy " walling "
hammer, which was found in the house, broken into two
pieces.
Mrs. Maye's body and parts of the house were much
burned. Paraffin had been freely sprinkled around, and set
alight.
There
were also the marks of bare footprints in blood
on the linoleum upstairs and upon the kitchen flag-stones
downstairs. That, in short, was the state of the house.
Now the case for the Crown, which culminated in the
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