Moreton Bay by F.W. Mole — Read

There is little cause for wonder, therefore, that the heart of the nation was stirred to its depths. The chief witness was Inspector Barnes, who graphically told the court the story of how he had managed to gain the confidence of the prisoner and to worm out of him his confession of the murder. It was on the strength of that confession, made in the depth of night in the woods of Grassmere, that he had arrested the prisoner, who, however, stoutly denied having made any such confession and brutally and strenuously resisted arrest. He (the detective) admitted that there was no corroborative evidence of the crime, and that it was, after all, only his word against that of the prisoner's; but since the prisoner's arrest and imprisonment, pending his trial, he had made certain statements to other prisoners, which would be used in evidence against him. James Hethercote, a police officer, the next witness called, stated that in the rear of the public office in Worship Street, there were some strongrooms for the safe keeping of prisoners pending their successive examinations before the sitting magistrate at the Police Office, Worship Street. In two of these rooms, adjacent to each other, and separated by a strong partition, the prisoners were separately confined. Immediately behind these rooms was a privy. In this privy he took post regularly after each successive day's examination; and as the privy went behind both rooms he could distinctly overhear the conversation of the prisoners when they spoke fairly audibly to each other from either side of the partition. Of this conversation he took notes which were afterwards copied out very fairly and proved before the magistrates and which he now read as evidence in court.

Mr. Magill, counsel for the prisoner, objected to this sort of evidence, it being impossible, he said, that the officer could overhear all that was said, and that the conversation thus mutilated, might be misconstrued. Besides, the minds of officers, for the sake of reward and promotion, were always prejudiced against the prisoner. His objections were, however, overruled by the Court.