Mr. H. P. Wilkinson (Crown Advocate) with whom was Mr. 8. H. McKean, prosecuted. Mr. T. Morgan i Phillips and Mr. R.A. Frost represented the accused.
Liout.-Col. Bruce, Captain-Superintendent of Police, occupied a seat in Court during part of the trial, Inspector G. Matheson represented the police, la the conduct of the case.
The Crown Advocate in opening his case endeavoured to show the jury that! accused must have been cognisant of the state of affairs when he took over management of the Watch Clab and that he carried on the ces" under Mr. Black's fatherly interest." Coun-tel referred to the correspondence which showed that complaints had been made to the effect that the business of the Clab was not being conducted properly. The Crown Advocate disclaimed responsibility for the closing of the Watch Clab in the manner now well-known to the public. He said that it was not on account of any harsh action on his part as a representative of British sathority that this Club was shut up, at any rate temporarily. The Club was closed through the Chinese going for their watches and not being able to get them. The Club was going to pieces and was rotten and getting worse from week to week, when he, the Crown Advocate, took action. Mr. Wilkinson proceeded to explain the scheme of the Watch Club and emphasized the promise that each Clab should consist of forty members and that if one happened to be in a Clab without forty members there was no drawing or demand for payment weekly subscriptions night. until the forty had been completed. Of the eighty clubs supposed to would be running at the time Mr. Thomas dobe had forty members in it. "that," said the Crown Advocate, " was an absolutely, clear, easy, square and well-understood fraud." Mr. Wilkinson pointed out that if there were not forty members in the Club the conditions laid down for the drawings were not carried out. Counsel said he proposed to call Mr. Black to give evidence as to how to ran a Watch Club Mr.
Wilkinson reviewed the evidence be proposed to call and said that in addition to the witnesses who gave evidence in the lower Court, and Mr. Black, he would call _Detective-Inspector McDowell who would state that he bad warned accused when he took over the management of the Watch Club from Mr. Black that the Clab was not a sound financial undertaking.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.