After they had brought in a verdict of guilty in Manchester Assizes last week, a horror-struck jury of townsfolk and farmers were rewarded in a manner almost unprecedented in the annals of British justice. Cried Presiding Justice Singleton: "I excuse you all from jury service for the rest of your lives because of the dreadful and gruesome details you have been forced to hear."
In these details Britain's Press has wallowed for weeks. In the dirty, smoky Manchester Assizes a special telephone switchboard was set up with private circuits constantly open to the great organs of the a London Press — "just like in America." In his summing up Justice Singleton told the jury that the Crown had built up and fitted together "the strongest case possible on circumstantial evidence." The verdict of guilty was a blow to Britain's outstanding criminal lawyer, Norman Birkett, K.C. Finally, the wretch found guilty in "Britain's Goriest Murder Case" was a particularly good example of the risks run by overeducating in Britain Indian subjects of the Emperor.
Hakim Bakhtyar Rustomji Ratanji, a high-strung Mohammedan with a natural flair for obstetrics, won his brilliant academic way to Edinburgh in 1927 and in this dingy grey and bleak seat of Scottish learning seduced a waitress by the name of Isabella Van Hess. Student Ratanji was then using the name "Gabriel Hakin," but on marrying his waitress he proceeded to become legally "Buck Ruxton." Soon, as Dr. Ruxton, he became a popular and prosperous gynecologist who delivered hundreds of well-to-do Lancaster mothers and had last week a fine snug house in Dalton Square.
Assuming that the Crown's masterly build-up of circumstantial evidence revealed the facts, what happened last September was as follows:
The excitable Mohammedan had come to believe that Mrs. Ruxton, of whose morals as a waitress he was particularly well aware, was now carrying on with a young lawyer in the Town Clerk's office. Therefore Dr. Ruxton encircled his wife's neck with strong, jealous fingers and, as her screams became faint gurgles and she died of strangulation, the Mohammedan looked up to find staring at him in petrified horror the pretty nurse of his three small children, Mary Jane Rogerson.