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THE LANCASHIRE DAILY POST Preston, Lancashire, England 13 April 1934 (page 12)
“BLACK MAGIC” CASE: JUDGMENT FOR ALL DEFENDANTS.
COSTS AGAINST MR. CROWLEY.
JUDGE AND STORY OF MISSED LETTERS.
DOCUMENTS KEPT.
Mr. Justice Swift’s Strong Comments.
A woman witness who alleged that she had seen a sacrificial ceremony in which a cat’s blood was drunk and further cross-examined to-day when the hearing was resumed by Mr. Justice Swift and a special jury in the King’s Bench Division of the “Black Magic” libel action brought by Mr. Aleister Crowley, the author, against Miss Nina Hamnett, author of a book entitled “Laughing Torso.”
The jury found for all defendants, and judgment was entered accordingly, with costs.
Messrs. Constable and Company, Limited, publishers and Messrs. Charles Whittingham and Briggs, printers, were joined as defendants.
Mr. Crowley complained that the book imputed that he had practised “Black Magic,” which, he said, was a libel upon him. The defence was a plea of justification.
Mrs. Betty Sedgwick [Betty May], whose former husband Raoul Loveday, died at a villa which Mr. Crowley occupied at Cefalu in Sicily, stated yesterday that on one occasion a cat was sacrificed in the course of a magical ceremony, and her husband then drank a cup of the cat’s blood.
Mr. Crowley, in his evidence, had declared that there never had been any sacrifice of any animal in the ceremony or any drinking of blood.
Mr. J. P. Eddy (for Mr. Crowley), resuming his cross-examination of Mrs. Sedgwick to-day, asked: “Immediately before your marriage to Raoul Loveday, would your life be fairly described as drink, drugs and immorality?”
“No,” replied Mrs. Sedgwick, who said she had not drugged herself for years.
“Fast Life” Denied
She denied she was living a very fast life in London. “I was a model, and I sat to keep both of us,” she added.
Mrs. Sedgwick agreed that on the day of her arrival in England from Sicily she supplied information to a Sunday newspaper.
“I am suggesting,” remarked Mr. Eddy, “that you are the source of all these stories about ‘The Worst Man in the World.’ ”
Asked if there was a word of truth in her evidence about the “Terrible Sacrifice of a Cat,” she replied, “Absolutely true—everything about the cat is true.”
Mr. Eddy suggested that the shooting of a wild cat by Mr. Crowley was the basis for her story.
Mrs. Sedgwick: No, no.
She was turned out of the abbey a few days before her husband’s death.
After he drank the cat’s blood he was violently ill and sick, and Mr. Crowley gave him laudanum, a lot of it, as medicine. She told Scotland Yard that it was laudanum poisoning at the time.
Mr. Eddy: Your fourth husband had a very serious illness, didn’t he?—The fourth? I don’t think so.
Mr. Eddy quoted from “Tiger Woman” (Mrs. Sedgwick’s book) the fourth husband’s mother as saying, “You foul, wicked woman. You are killing my son.”
Mr. Eddy: Are you “Tiger Woman?”—Yes.
Why?—Because I am rather feline in looks. I thought perhaps it was rather a good name for me.
Mrs. Sedgwick said she slapped her fourth husband’s mother because she annoyed her.
Teeth and Wig
Mr. Eddy quoted from the book a passage describing how she aroused the resentment of a man’s female companion by sitting at the same table.
“She became insulting,” the passage continued. “My nostrils dilated as they do when I am angry. At last she got up and danced with the man. As they passed by she looked backwards at me and said, “she is a pretty little thing, but it is a pity she has false teeth.”
“I jumped up and slapped her as hard as I could on the face. Waiter immediately bundled us upstairs into the street, fighting all the time.
“I meant paying dearly for that insult. False teeth indeed!
“I plunged my fingers into her hair and pulled hard. The result was not what I had expected. I found myself lying in the gutter, and clutched in my right hand—I could hardly believe my eyes—was a chestnut wig.”
“You have got a very violent nature?” asked Mr. Eddy. Mrs. Sedgwick: No.
After questions about letters Mr. Eddy asked, “Did you ever authorise anyone to extract those letters from your case, and give them to Mr. Crowley?”—No.
Mr. Justice Swift” Are these produced by Mr. Crowley?—Yes.
Do you know how Mr. Crowley got possession of your letters?—I can’t imagine how he got them.
“All Stolen”
Mrs. Sedgwick declared that all the contents of her case were stolen.
Mr. Justice Swift: Where were they stolen from?—From my cottage of from the hotel when I was in London. I always took the case about with me everywhere.
Mr. Hilbery called on Mr. Eddy to produce a letter of February 24th, 1933, from the defendant’s solicitors to Mrs. Sedgwick.
Mr. Justice Swift: He clearly has no right to have it. Whoever has possession of those letters is in possession, according to this lady’s evidence of stolen property. They have no right to have it. Merely asking somebody whom you suspect of being in possession of stolen property to produce it doesn’t give you the right to give secondary evidence of the document, if that person doesn’t produce it.
Mr. Hilbery: The witness says she has been permanently deprived of the possession of the letters against her will.
Mr. Justice Swift: I don’t see why we should not use the good ole English word “stolen” if the facts warrant it. We shall never know in this case how, because we shall have no opportunity of finding out. But it would be very interesting to know how Mr. Crowley came to be in possession of these letters.
When some of the copies of the missing letters were produced and referred to, Mr. Justice Swift agreed with Mr. Hilbery that they should remain in the custody of the Court. He instructed the Associate of the court to keep them until the case was over. “Then remind me to discuss them again, please,” he added.
“Money Explains”
Mr. Hilbery said this was all his evidence. He wished, however, to refute any suggestion that the solicitors instructing him had been a party to purchasing any evidence.
Mr. Eddy: “My suggestion was, is, and will be that money explains the presence of Miss Betty May (Mrs. Sedgwick) in the witness-box. I do not make any sort of imputation upon the solicitors.
Mr. Justice Swift: Does not money play a very important part in producing in the witness-box most witnesses who have no interest whatever in the case? They all expect to get their expenses.
Mr. Eddy: I am not prepared for a single moment to assume that the money paid this woman really represented expenses. My position is that she was in fact demanding money, and getting it.
It was indicated that the solicitor would be called later.
Mr. Martin O’Connor, for Miss Hamnett, referring to Mr. Crowley’s refusal to accept his challenge to try his magic in court, said it was appalling that “in this enlightened age a court should be investigating magic, which is arch-humbug, practised by arch-rogues to rob weak-minded people.
“I hope this action,” he added, “will end for all time the activities of this hypocritical rascal.”
Later, seeing two jurymen talking together, Mr. Justice Swift stopped Mr. O’Connor in his address.
One of them said, “The jury wish to know whether this is a correct time for us to intervene.”
Mr. Justice Swift: You cannot stop a case as against the defendants. You may stop it against the plaintiff when Mr. Eddy has said everything he wants to say.
Mr. Eddy finally addressed the jury for Mr. Crowley.
Mr. Justice Swift, directing the jury, said “Never have I heard such dreadful, horrible, blasphemous, abominable stuff, as that produced by a man describing himself as greatest living poet.
“I have been over forty years engages in the administration of the law in one capacity of another,” he added. “I thought that I knew of every conceivable form of wickedness. I thought that everything which was vicious and bad had been produced at one time or another before me.
“I have learnt in this case that we can always learn something more if we live long enough.”
He asked the jury if they were still of the same opinion as they had intimated earlier.
The foreman said that the jury were unanimous. They found a verdict for all the defendants with costs.
Mr. Justice Swift said that there was no reflection upon the solicitor for the publishers and printers.
“Another Jury—”
When Mr. Eddy asked for a stay of execution and referred to the summing up, Mr. Justice Swift remarked, “I thought I had followed the instructions of Lord Justice Scrutton. I still think that I did, but you can go and point out to him that I did not. Some day another jury will reinvestigate this matter.”
The Judge refused a stay of execution.
As to the documents in his custody, he told the defence, “We will keep the letters in court and we shall certainly have them in proper custody if you take them to another court.” |