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necessary to employ a jury in a case about a pearl necklace, but out here in a case where the life of a human being is at stake, we can manage with two assessors who are allowed to mix with their fellow men while the trial is proceeding.’

      Then, ‘for the benefit of any poor devil who may be called upon to suffer the awful agony of mind my poor young wife went through’, Proudlock lists a number of irregularities any one of which today would almost certainly result in a mistrial.

      1. The assessors were not only friends, they were business associates which meant, he said, that, for all practical purposes, there was only one assessor at the trial.

      2. During the six-day hearing, the assessors, instead of being sequestered, mixed freely, not only with members of the public, but with police officers and lawyers, and witnesses for the prosecution. This, Proudlock said, was highly improper and raised questions about their objectivity. (The chief secretary of the FMS would later defend the assessors. Their behaviour ‘had the appearance of wrong,’ he said, ‘but I cannot think they were discussing the case. I have no hesitation in describing both of them as imbued with a high sense of honour.’)

      3. While his wife was being tried for murder, the chief commissioner of police had approached a man in the Selangor Club and had offered to bet him ‘five, ten or anything he liked that she (Mrs Proudlock) would be strung up’. (The chief commissioner would later receive a reprimand, the government arguing that demoting him would ‘only add to the further public washing of excessively soiled linen’.)

      Proudlock claimed as well – and this was the charge that Wyatt said questioned his integrity and resulted in his suing for gross and malicious libel – that the detective-inspector had beaten Proudlock’s servants because they refused to incriminate his wife.

      ‘I feel sure’, Proudlock finished, ‘that all who read this will agree that things out here are far too slack and that no person – white, black or yellow – be tried by less than twelve sound men even if they have to be imported from England.’

      At 10.30 a.m. on 31 October, the trial began with H. N. Ferrers, Wyatt’s counsel, describing Steward’s murder as ‘the most painful episode in the annals of crime in this country’. It was also, he said significantly, a case that everyone hoped had been closed. To the charge of libel, Ferrers now seemed to be adding another: with these frivolous accusations, William Proudlock was opening old wounds and prolonging Malaya’s agony.

      Ferrers then proceeded to paint the defendant as a radical – something he clearly was not. When Proudlock wrote to M.A.P., he said, he was a man on a mission, a man whose purpose was ‘to reform the very state of things as they existed in KL’. Proudlock was not present to hear himself characterized like this. For thirty minutes, the trial had proceeded without him – in itself irregular, one would have thought. All apologies, he arrived in court half an hour late.

      Ferrers said Wyatt denied ever having assaulted the defendant’s cook and ‘boy’. The charge was not just without foundation; it was unfair. The detective was a friend of Mrs Proudlock’s and had demonstrated as much by waiting seven days before imprisoning her and then going ‘to considerable pains to assure her comparative comfort’.

      According to Proudlock, Ferrers said, the ‘boy’ was asked if he had seen his master practising with the revolver on the day of the murder, and when he said he had not – that he’d only heard the shots – Wyatt is alleged to have struck him six times in the face.

      Ferrers said the charge against Wyatt was intended as a preemptive strike. Mrs Proudlock’s lawyers knew there had been intimacy and improper communication between her and Steward, and that were the matter to be pursued, her servants were likely to incriminate her. That’s why the charge of beating had been concocted – to deprive any fresh evidence of its value by suggesting it had been coerced.

      Mrs Proudlock had abandoned her appeal, Ferrers suggested, not as she had said because the strain would prove too much for her, but because she and her lawyers knew that the evidence against her was overwhelming and that ‘the only chance of getting the lady off was by means of appealing to public sentiment’. This was done by representing her ‘as a poor, persecuted, young and modest woman’.

      On the witness stand, Proudlock claimed that Wyatt had asked his ‘boy’ if he had ever carried notes between Ethel and Steward, and that Wyatt became angry when the boy said he hadn’t.

      Proudlock also testified that Wyatt, asked by E. A. S. Wagner, Ethel’s lawyer, if he had struck the servants, admitted that he had, saying: ‘I had to straighten them up a bit. Cookie, the old fool, couldn’t tell whether the lights were on or not.’

      Wyatt then seemed to regret his candour, telling Wagner that were he ever to repeat this, the detective would bring a dozen witnesses to testify that he had not touched either of them. ‘Do you think I am such a fool as to put my neck in a noose for a damn China man?’

      Proudlock told the court that he’d written to M.A.P. because he had a duty to his wife. ‘I believe that many things out here are slack, and I wanted to bring the things I knew about to the notice of the British public.’

      Cross-examined by Ferrers, Proudlock denied being married when he and Ethel were wed in 1907. He had arrived in Malaya in 1901, he said, and for a time afterwards had lived with a Chinese woman – the mother of one of his pupils. Asked if he had continued seeing this woman after marrying Ethel, he admitted that he had.

      While living with him, he said, the Chinese woman had had some jewellery stolen. He estimated its value at $1,500.

      FERRERS: Wasn’t it speculated that you had stolen it?

      PROUDLOCK: That speculation was false.

      FERRERS: After the jewellery was lost, weren’t diamonds seen in your possession?

      PROUDLOCK: Yes, but they were not part of the jewellery stolen.

      Proudlock said the story that he was the thief had been put about by a European who later sent him a letter in which he withdrew the charge. While VI’s acting headmaster, he had been responsible for large sums of money, and no one – with the exception of the letter-writer – had ever accused him of being dishonest.

      Bennett Shaw, who had worked with Proudlock for ten years and may have known him better than anyone, said the defendant had never told him anything but the truth. Proudlock’s reputation for probity was a matter of record, he said; he considered him an honourable and upright man.

      Shaw was not alone in that opinion. On 24 April 1907, the school’s masters and boys hosted an entertainment at which Proudlock was the guest of honour. The programme consisted of ‘musical items’ and scenes from The Merchant of Venice, ‘but the chief interest of the evening’, said the Mail, ‘centred on the speeches and presentations made to Mr Proudlock in view of his forthcoming marriage and departure on leave’. It was an emotional two hours. In speech after speech, Proudlock was praised for his commitment and dedication, his boundless energy, and his enormous decency. The school owed him a huge debt of gratitude, he was told, and there was no one – teacher or pupil – who did not hold him in the highest regard.

      After being presented with three ‘purses of gold’ – one each from the students, the old boys, and the staff – Proudlock said his five years at the school had been so pleasant and so interesting, he was looking forward to resuming his duties in January. Shaw wound up the proceedings by wishing him ‘a good holiday and all happiness in his matrimonial venture’. He then called for three cheers for Mr Proudlock and his future bride ‘which were given with great enthusiasm’.

      On the stand, Wyatt denied telling Wagner he had beaten the servants. Wagner, he said, had invented the conversation. As for his treatment of Mrs Proudlock, he said his consideration sprang from an awareness of the grief and trouble she was going through.

      In a summation that lasted almost four hours – at one point Mr Justice Innes had to plead with him to hurry up – T. H. T. Rogers, Proudlock’s counsel, said his client was convinced that, had his wife been tried by a jury, she would never have

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