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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Brussels Post, 1953-2-18, Page 7The .an Who Put "Murder On The Map" The man ,wilo "put murder oil the maps as far as the Engle() reading world is concerned was a cherubic, rosy#"aeed, elderly, kind-hearted Scot. who died at 84 last year, and whiiee name was William Roughead. His was a familiar figure in the law courts of Edinburgh, Glas- gow ,and the assize towns. Every court 'official in the country knew him, and knew, moreover, that if there was an unusual, ex- citing, or even mildly interesting murder .trial on that William Roughead would be -there taking notes, watching, listening, and observing the slightest detail in the'behaviouteel the accused, the witnesses, the counsel, and the Judge. 'Chat About Crime I knew Roughead for many years. I used. often to visit him on Sunday evenings for a chat about crime over his admirable malt whisky' (warm and mellow like himself), writes Moray Mc- Laren in "Aeswers." He was a Scottish lawyer, and used his legal knowledge to explore the +byways of crime — particularly murder. It was his editing of, and his introductions to, a well- known series of books, ehtitled Notable British Trials," which made that series famous indeed. Roughead's methods of writing, about crime were as painstaking and pupctilious as those of any detective in fiction, or in real life bent on tracking down the crim- inal. There was no detail that be left untouched in his researches. He not only read through the verbatim reports, of the Scottish trials taken down by the official shorthand writers to the High Court in Scotland, but pursued down to the smallest point of fact every known thing in the history of the accused, of the victims, of the witnesses, and often of the legal officials in the trials, 1Uunian Drama He had in his possession a small museum of crime, including the chair with which the unfortunate Miss Gilchrist was battered to death the by t e mysterious and un- known assailant for whose vic- ious icious attack Oscar Slater was un- justly condemned just before World War One, that it was large- ly due to Roughead's unremitting toil and the late Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's publicity efforts that Slater's penal servitude for life was cut short and a free par- don granted him, with a sum of money by way of recompense. Neither Roughead nor Conan Doyle got much thanks for this Light For Coronation—The fila- ment of the light bulb, above, In the form of a crown and the royal cypher • of Queen Eliza- beth II is one of the souvenirs of Coronation Year which have seen approved by the Corona- tion Souvenirs Committee. long labour in 'foe rause of pure justice. Roughead used to take two or more years to prepare one,of hie famous "Trial" books„ He knew-- of nern -of course, everycorner of every: Court of Justice in the country, and every official eersonality connected with them. But he would also visit the places where the' murders or alleged, murders had taken place. If the trial was concerned with a happening that httd occurred many years ago, he would dig out of the obscurest libraries every piece of printed material, whether exact or Scurrilous, whether picturesque or merely libellous, and sift the grain from the chaff. - If the trial was of more recent date he would (without giving offence) talk to every available person connected with the, event. Roughead so lived in his books when he was writing them that re used to conceive quite an af- fection for his character$. He used to refer to 'Katherine Nairne, the Baby Farmer, as "My Katherine." He told me that for the first ten years after he began to be interested in the classic Madeleine Smith case, he was convinced that she had been guilty of poisoning her lover L'Angelier by arsenic in' a cup of cocoa. For the next ten years he thought her innocent, butfor the remainder of his long life he held her guilty. "But," he would add, "what a lass she must have been — what a lass! I was ns love with the idea of her all the tine,' He began his writing about crime with a two-year study of , the Arran murder in the 1890s, when one mountain climber was accused of pushing another over a precietice. This two years' labour was wasted for fear of of- fending relatives. Pangs of Death In disappointment, Willie Roug- head turned to the unspeakable poisoner, Dr. Pritchard. This man murdered his mother-in-law, the maid in his house, and bis wife, praying by her bedside while she was in the pangs of death which he had induced, and actual- ly entering in his diary on the day she died a note of his sorrow and the words of his prayer. Willie Roughead specialized in dry comment on dreadful facts, but on this occasion he really let himself go: "Thus perished on the scaf- fold one whom many in that vast assemblage" (Pritchard was the last man to be banged in public in Scotland) "must long have known only as the urbane and courteous gentle- ntan, the kindly physician, and the amiable and pious philan- thropist ... However, no crim- inal career of which we have any record exhibits a mole shocking combination of wick- edness, hypocrisy, and blas- phemy." "Truth," they say, "is stranger than fiction." Wille Roughead certainly proved the truth of this maxim in the realm of murder. OVERWORKED WORDS The odds are more than 100 to 1 that you use 10 words one fourth of the time; the, and; to, you, of, be, in, we, have, it, Without them you could hardly talk at all. The odds are also 100 to 1 that 300 words make up three quarters of all the words you speak and write. For the record Shakespeare used 16,000 words. Milton, 8,000, The Bible uses 5,000. A well-educated man commonly uses 2,000. An un- skilled laborer hardly. knows the meaning of more than 'the 800 most common' Words in the lan- guage. IS Cn5a CROSSW RD .0 Dalt. CoauLt 32 Affirmative vote 03 Lyric poem 20 marry ACROSS 7 Ruggrd 20 Courageous mnut talc crest Small ° nat ow 2 bonkev �0, Profession 4Ocean 30 Part of the 7 Welk nlortlY 0 Tuinal mouth 1. 0.1" number 10 14UI4OII 31 One of Da Nd 13 Vita, 1 no ore rulers 14 Srrat ht d °e g 0 6 17 nettleat 17 nettle o utt,.l plant 29 1o, I a p 21 Night before 04 Night before 7 Suri atter,, 27 Stolrird.nnlmdl .0 nran,. ao et -menthe of lines' 33 low aloft P as Part of lin eye 29 011 of rnew natal. 33 rlentln ,tis ntn 20 r1m'ugblyd 40 Rsaminations. 44 Return 47. Send ei t 42. Bland& bleatng 60. 1§artbiv fid. nerving title 54, lora St 0ar02 Itnock 27 Corded fabric 4. Of tth4 see 2. env 3. Danger 4. Inatltate stilt 5.. Ciaeilo 4, Deer'° bore PUZZLE 92 Snit of nitric acid ,. erlal sees 2' Recrystallized pproduce 09 Immures 4 . Daub 42 Sllgat • coloration l re t lime 4 C p 41 Tissue s' 40 tissue 43. [Ven lien , Tent 1 z 3 " SlEi®© 4 5I 4 ,'� •• 7 9 9 1 0 1 12 5 ' iti0+,; 13 yy a' V �%�/] '?i' 15 ft; lq - 20 17 2G la .. r Ct rf " 22 ,�T" r%.. 26 23 3:4 .r,,,, r ..• X29 S," f\',l'' bo• 31 32 - .,r21: Mt 37 31 3 s 34 30 ' 4a0 y. 44 4.2 41 44 4s^Y 47 40 40e nee, 50, 5, 53 5M At15wer Elsew ere 0I Phis t age Use Rats To Test Diet,Alcohol Theory Two Yale University scientists have shattered a growing belief that bad diet has much to do with alcoholism. Their tests were made with rats, but are all the more startling because they are .tut ex- tension of others made here and abroad. All told, 25,00D individual tests on forty albino male rats were carded out over an eleven - month period. After world-wide attempts to connect defects in nutrition or metabolism with alcoholism in man itwas discovered that if rats could choose between drinking water and alcohol, they would choose water on a good diet, alcohol on a deficient diet. To some scientists .this helped to ea:plain why men and women be- come alcoholics, Taste for Alcohol Greenberg and Lester decided that the evidence in favor of such a conclusion was insufficient, They fed experimental rats in test cages on diets of varied nutrition- al value. In each cage, just as theirpredecessors had done, Greenberg and Lester put a cup of water and another that con- tained alcohol. The poor -diet rats promptly went for the alcohol. Next the Yale team carried out their .simple idea to prove the whole thing wrong. In each cage they put a third cup which con- tained a different solution, some- times just sometimes a fluid fat, sometimes saccharine. The result was immediate and startling. Rats on bad diets that had been lapping up alcohol, gave it up on the spot and turned to the third cup. Lf the third solution was sugar - water, even rats used to large amounts of alcohol quit their tip- pling entirely. But if the sugar - water cup was empty the rats went back to the alcohol. Sac- charine and fat solutions also drewthe rats away, but not so readily as the sugar -water. Temperate Rats To Greenberg and Lester it is clear "from the present data that as the choice of substances pre - They Met at the Pump -While Mike Baglin, left, 18 months old, was having a quantity of ant poison pumped out of him in a hospital; Bobby McPheter, 1, showed up, also needing a pumping - out. Bobby had swallowed moth balls. Nurse Bonnie Norman tends the howling infants. sented to the rat is widened to in- clude more than alcohol and water, the seeming preference for alcohol vanishes." The extension of the idea to human alcoholism is not justified—"not only be- cause man is not bound by the restrictions imposed on animals in experiments of this type, but because the behavior of the animals does not parallel that of the huinan alcoholic." The Yale men found that rats, even though they were kept con- stantly supplied with alcohol, never became intoxicate& Tbey spread -their' alcoholic intake over an entire ` day, never drinking enough at any one time to get soused. It seems thatrats don't drink like men, human alcoholics drink to get drunk. Rats don't, T�IEFARM FRONT Jok2; Harry Sokol, of Monmouth Co., N.J., hasn't had any coccidiosis on his place for the past 3 years —yet he raises a 6000 -bird re- placement flock every year. •The secret of his success, he believes, lies in following as closely as pos- sible the methods of the broody hen who steals a :nestand raises a brood of chicks. "She doesn't keep them in a hot room and protect them from fresh air," he declares. "Neither do I." I, 0 M Even in Jan. or Feb. the win- dows on the front of his brooder rooms are kept open day and night as soon as the chicks are 2 or 3 wks. old. Often, there will be a little ice forming on the drinking fountains. Yet his mor- tality for the 10 -or 11 -week brooding period will be only 1 to 9%. e Sokol starts 400 chicks in each of his 20 -by -20 pens. "They grow better in small families," he ex- plains. "In a small pen you never get too much of a crowd under one stove," a * a The "warm spot" in each pen is provided by a gas-fired brooder stove—and it's placed not in the center, but near a corner. After the first week or 10 days, Sokol cuts the temperature under the hover to no more than 70°. The local gas company reports that ha uses less gas per stove than anyone else around writes M. A. Clark in Country Gentleman. a a e For a deep, drr,'4 estlike litter, Sokol uses 4 bales per pen of eitherchopped cho ed straw or shredded sugar -ane fiber. The latter cost him 51.85 a 100-15, bale early in 1952. When fust put in, the litter • --especially the chopped straw litter --is nearly knee deep' and Sokol hasto be careful in step- ping around so that he doesn't put a foot on some chielt that has burrowed down after the grails he scatters about tige pan each day. . 4 M b Littee was fluffy and dry as dust all the way to the concrete floor, although it rained for 8I'r days straight last April. Only time there is ever a trace of dampness, Sokol says, is occasion- ally under the roosts the first few days after he lots there down from the ceiling. He does this when the birds are 4 or 5 wits, old. a + a Sometitnes, Sokol will re -use the same litter for a seeded brood, yet still has no trouble from "coxy." With cool room brooding, plenty of fresh air, and deep, dry litter, his birds feather fast. To further help them make the change from brooder house to range gradually, he has a fenced -in "yard range" outside each pen and opens the door so they can run outside after they are 5 or 6 wits. old. 'Td be able to put them on open range even younger than I do if it weren't for the crows," he says. II * a a Aside from his unusual brood- ing methods Sokol follows gen- erally accepted methods in feed- ing, vaccinating and other man- agement practices, He has had 25 years experience in the poultry business, Speedy Camera A new camera, believed to be the fastest of its kind, has been developed by the 'University of California's Los Alamos Scienti- fic Laboratory, Explosive pheno- mena can be ,photographed at speeds sop to 3,500,000 frames per second (about 150,000 times as fast as .the usual picture seen at a movie theatre). A small thin two-faced mirror which ro- tates at 10,000 revolutions per second makes this high speed possible. The image of the ob- ject is relayed from the surfaces of the mirror to successive posi- tions on the film strips through a series of lenses. The "shutter" is a small block of plate glass which is s rx batt ed and rendered vir- tually opaque within a few mili- lionths of a second by a shock wave from a high -explosive "open," Initiallyopegg," tike shutter remains so during a com- plete sequence of fifty to 100 pic- tures, which are taken in one twenty-' housat dth.:of a second, Will This Year See Mt. Everest 'Scaled? A to -man team of British climbers believes that better planning may help them scale the as yet unconquered peak of Mount Everest in the spring of 1953. Two military men used t o operational stall work have been given the job of master -mind- ing Britain's assault on the world's highest mountain. Every man's place is being worked out in advance, every piece of equipment tested and re -tested, every move charted to big -scale maps. Since 1922 seven attempts on Mount Everest have been made by the world's toughest climb- ers. But seven times the grim mountain has hurled man back, killing several ranking climbers and Himalayan porters. Getting to the top of the empty mountain would serve no practical purpose, of course. But the challenge of the dangerous peak makes restless man deter- mined to reach the summit and live to tell the tale. When asked why they want to scale it, mountain climbers usually reply "Because it's there," The official figure for the height of Mount Everest is 29,- 002 feet but no one knows for sure. A Swiss party this past summer reported their figure for the elevation as 29,610 feet. Except for two Swiss attempts this year, all previous Everest assaults have been conducted by Britons, Col. John Hunt has been chosen leader of the new British party, while another soldier Maj. C. C. Wylie, is chief staff officer. Hunt and Wylie are now busy preparing plans in a special once set up in the headquarters of the Royal Geographic Society. Most of the remaining 14 men who complete the team are se- dentary workers who happen to like mountain climbing. Sonse of them have scaled easier }lima= layan peaks. They include a civil servant, a statistician, a school- master and a brain surgeon. Col. Hunt at 42 is the oldest member of the' party. Mast of the others are in their 20's or early 30's. Reports of previous expeditions are being carefully studied, es- pecially notes sent along by the •Swiss this year. The }Britons believe the Swiss failed for one simple reason-. they left the climb until too late in the year and the peak was too cold for man to endure. Warts In "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" the recommended treat- ment for warts was to bury a bean, half covered with blood. from the wart, at a crossroads at` midnight in the dark of the moon. Since that time, the treatment of warts has improved very -lit- tle, according to a study of warts published by Dr. H. V. Ailing - ton, associate dermatologist in the 'University of California Health Service, "Until a specific remedy for warts is discovered and made available for general use," Dr. Allington said, "their treatment will continue, at times, to be a difficult , and distressing prob- lem." Caused by a Virus Warts apparently are' caused by a virus, Dr. Allington said, They are quite common, appear in children and young adults most frequently, with the highest incidence in the ages between. 16 and 20 years. Frequently warts disappear spontaneously without treatment, which adds to the complications of evaluating wart treatments, he reported. One study showed that the average duration of an initial attack of common warts without treatment is about two years and three months. Crude "vacines"'made by crushing and extracting wart tissues have been tied without success, and no spe- cific vaccine is available, Most Popular Cure Mental suggestion, such as that used in Tom Sawyer, has been the most popular treatment, Dr. Allington said. Exposure to lightning, or a new moon or the blood of a hedgehog and other tricks of magic have been recom- mended. In modern times, some psychiatrists have reported spec- tacular results in wart treating from direct suggestion. Indirect suggestion seems to have an ef- fect. Observation by a physician has resulted in cure between the time the patient was first exam- ined and the date set for removal of the growth a week or two later. Injections of sterile water have proved to be as effective as in- jections of supposedly efficacious medicines, according to the re- port of the Californian physician, Another study showed that sub- jecting warts to a noisy X-ray machine which was not really emitting X-rays was quite effec- tive. For warts, in other words, see Tom Sawyer, To "A New, liberated Egypt"—Celebra ing six months as Egypt's premier, Gen. Mohammed Naguib, reaffirms his loyalty lo Egypt as he addresses a crowd of 100,000 gathered in Cairo's liberty Square. IINOAY SCHOOL LESSON i3y Res It Barclay WOrrets B.lt. 13 ,0,, How Jesus Answered: QUU4stiontt Matthew 22:1:5 a ;;Ze """84..; LO Memory Selection: Never mare epake like this matt, John '32441 Many questions are asked' of those in public life Some aft for information; others are for the purpose of entangling lass public speaker. Hut Jesus was more than a match for his ene- mies. His answer with respect 20 paying tribute is a classic, They used Caesar's coin; they must ad- mit his right to collect tribute.. But there is also an. obligation 20 God. Some today would mar the truth that Jesus was teach- ing. They place their business life and their religious life in two mutually exclusive compart- ments. ompartments. What goes on in one is no business of the other. A col- oured woman was openly approv- ing of the preacher's sermon. But when he began to speak of the evil of stealing chickens she turn- ed to the woman next to her and said with disgust, "Ale now he's quit preaching and gone to med- dling.' Jesus silenced the Saducees who did not believe in the res- urrection. Ile gave them more than they asked. He lifted the conception of the future life from the merely materialistic. To the clever lawyer he gave an answer at which we would never have guessed but to the truth of which we must all readily assent. Picking out two commands which had Iain separate and obscured' in the Old Testament he put them together and said, "On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." Of course, to love God supremely and our neighbour as we love ourselves is the answer to all our 1115, personal and social. Yes, Jesus gave the answers quickly and simply and the world has been pondering then ever since. "The Saviour ran solve every p>:oblem, The tangles of life can undo; There Is nothing too hard for Jesus, There is nothing that He can- not do:" NO REPERTOIIL2 Abel Green, the editor of Variety, tells about a vaude- villian who boasted to an agent, "My name is Projecto, and I can fly. Just let me show you my act" The blase agent consented to go with hint to an empty theatre nearby. True to his word, the actor promptly took off from the stage, spiraled to the ceiling, circled the auditori- um a couple of times, and zoom- ed down in a perfect glide. The agent yawned and said. "So you can imitate boids. What else can you de?" (ilpsicle t'own to prevent peening)' riM® ©sae` i?®®© 112l' " SlEi®© !1 do;eel 5 ' iti0+,; yy a' V �%�/] '?i' � r ' oripnt,, ©®EligiV p ehGt��iJ 1' �.7 iiUt'.t d t,,�esta7 itl-� r Ct JITTER woAr, Aearee43 r`H otait fT10N0 '41415 ONE'S. A Ha>ar,r Pul'A. 'KMAoL RADlp d£r 4N JITrSR'S w,mR THIS PORTAatit our a,Y Nit CAN 05040' -aA5r SMA to 12r MIND. r0E0 WHAT Na 0455 .'woliMN ri'e IroeT,,, TH IS ISllUD... �- TN IS IS FReo,.. 13: A',a,rur Pointer tY b1 mt.ap uc t,,(r co O 04 Yot7tI., MANN. ,,. ,